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Smithsonian Removes EV1 Exhibit
johnMG writes to mention a Seattle PI article on the Smithsonian's move to remove the EV1 electric sedan from display. From the article: "The upcoming film 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' questions why General Motors created the battery-powered vehicles and then crushed the program a few years later. The film opens June 30th. GM happens to be one of the Smithsonian's biggest contributors. But museum and GM officials say that had nothing to do with the removal of the EV1 from display."
. . . was very, very simple. GM couldn't make any money from them. They knew that going into the project, they knew it when they were making prototypes under the "Impact" name, etc., etc. Thirty thousand dollar loss per vehicle.
So why did they make them at all?
Well, California was going to impose a zero-emissions vehicle standard, that required a fixed percentage of the vehicles sold in California from every manufacturer be zero emissions. GM figured it could own the Californian market if it could put together a from-the-ground-up electric car, while companies like Chrysler were doing things jurry-rigging electric Voyager minivans. After all, if GM were able to dominate the electric car market, then the percentage-of-sales rule would allow it to dominate the normal auto market in California. Who cares if you're losing thirty thousand dollars per vehicle on a couple of percent of the Californian auto market, if you simultaneously wind up with much higher, law-guarnateed market share on profitable cars?
So, after GM puts in all this investment, California repeals the law just as it's going to go into effect, leaving GM with no way to actually make a profit from the vehicles. They go ahead with the program anyway (it's too late to save much money, since the tooling was already ordered on year-plus lead times), they recoup some cash leasing the cars), and then when the liability calculations make it cheaper to recycle and scrap than continue to lease or sell them, they got rid of them.
Five gets you ten that the movie comes up with some wild-ass conspiracy theory involving oil company influence at GM, though. After all, when an activist-favored technology fails utterly in the marketplace, it has to be the fault of Big Evil Corporations.
While it's true that a battery-only car is still fossil fuel powered in the end, a gas burning electric plant is FAR more efficient than a 3 liter V6, thanks to economies of scale, and all that jazz. An automotive engine is optimized primarily for fast acceleration and small size, whereas a gas generator in a plant is optimized for maximal power generation per gallon -- size and acceleration are totally useless.
So, it's not actually clear without hard numbers wether or not driving an electric car 500 miles requires more fossil fuels than driving a gasoline car 500 miles.
Except that
a. most of the vehicles were kept in a specialized lease program that generally didn't allow the leaser to purchase them at expiration even if they wanted to. You're claiming to know how people who weren't allow to vote would have voted there. Very few of these vehilces are in the hands of actual owners today. There are people wanting to purchase one even today who simply can't get one. GM isn't selling, even at prices above the initial new value.
b. The State of California decided in the middle of the 3 year lease program, that inductive charging was out, and only conductive charging would qualify a vehicle for the state's 0-emissions tax breaks. (That's from GMs own letter to EV1 leasers)
c. At that time, there were about 210 stations with inductive paddle charging in the state of California, and about 80 stations in Ga. and Fla. If you lived in any of the other 47 states, you couldn't get charging. Over 1/2 the Ca. stations were in the process of converting to a smaller paddle size when the Ca. board announced its decision, and GM had to eat all those costs at once, plus in some cases drivers had to deal with their local stations being down for days or weeks as part of the policy turn-around.
d. GM mentioned in their same letter that some people had asked to get out of the lease program early. Yes, that might support your statement, but there has never been an automobile leased in numbers where some people didn't want out early. GM hasn't disclosed what the percentages were, and saying that less than absolute perfect consumer satisfaction was a factor in their decisions isn't really telling the rest of us anything. You can infer suckage from that if you want, but there are several alternate inferences. Ca's decision alone was certainly enough to make the program unprofitable, so this and other subsidiary factors cited in the letters seem to be just additional justifications for a decision already made.
e. The 1997 model 1 had very poor range, with some leasers reporting as little as 40 miles on a charge. Suckage indeed. However the 1999 Model 2 used a Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery array, and was officially rated for 100 Miles. A substantial number of users reported it did far better than the rated milage, typically reporting 140 to 180 miles/charge for mixed highway/city. This is the origin of some of the claims that the project was deliberately screwed up - why would GM underate its own product? Leasers also praised the car's pickup and sportscar like handling. Apparently there were weight savings from NiMH that made the second generation quite a bit better in multiple respects.
e. The design had near instantanious heating and cooling for the passenger cabin, and, at least for the Model 2, near noiseless driving (I don't know that the first designe wasn't quiet as well, just that I haven't seen leters specifically praising it as I have the 2nd. generation). Offsetting this was charging time and limited range, but just offhand I'd suspect that the charging station problem, making that range more for round trips than one way, was a more important factor, and that came almost entirely from the state government's actions.
Who is John Cabal?
Sure you can, just not in terms of miles-per-gallon. You have to use the lowest common denominator: BTUs per mile.
Your average 2-ton gasoline automobile uses about 6350 BTUs of energy per mile, and your average 240-ton electric light rail train uses about 1150 BTUs per mile. I would imagine a battery-electric vehicle probably does a bit better than a commuter train.
Let's look at rail transport, which has already gone through this battle almost a century ago. Electric vehicles are more efficient. This was plainly obvious to the railroads very early on. Railroads switched to diesel-electric in the 1960s, which was really taking an old concept (there were a few 100% electrified railroads like Oregon Electric Railway and others by the 1930s, running off overhead wires like many light rail and the Amtrak Northeast Corridor and Florida Funnel lines do today) and making it portable (bringing the power plant along for the ride by installing a few generators on board).
And if you want anecdotal evidence, next time you get stuck at a busy railroad crossing near a rail yard (thus trains speeding up as they leave), watch the locomotive exhaust. It's hardly noticable. Now when the gates go up, look for a dumptruck and watch how much soot it blows out. And the locomotive has four engines roughly the size of the dump truck's cab....
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When was the last time you did your research, early-1990s?
Every modern hybrid today (Prius 1997, Insight 1999) have used regenerative braking, or have tried to.
o Highway? Toyota's HSD (Hybrid Synergy Drive) puts the engine into maximal efficient RPMs while you drive and then pumps the excess energy into the battery.
o Slowing down? Engine drag is simulated through regenerative braking until battery is overcharged, then it goes into compression drag.
o Engine braking especially going downhill? Aggressive regenerative braking until the battery is full.
o Coming off the freeway? Again, very light regenerative braking before you even hit the brakes.
It's not just plain red-tail light regenerative braking you're thinking of.
Supercaps? That would be nice, but I think Toyota threw out that idea already. There's a few modders on the Prius using Can-view to watch the voltages going in and out of the plain NiMH system as well as total state of charge.
While it's true that a battery-only car is still fossil fuel powered in the end
While your statement applies to much of the US, here in BC, Canada we use mostly Hydroelectric power... which isn't really consumed in use. And of course, many places use other power sources such as nuclear, tidepool generators, etc.