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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."
Who killed it, Physics. There is only so much energy you can put into a battery. Hulling around 50% of the cars mass in batteries (as is the case of the EV) is not very efficient. Nor is the whole concept when you factor in the energy creation from (coal, oil whatever) to end disposal of the car.
EVs have nice performance and are can be fun cars. But there is a practical side that needs to be factored in. They typical person may have a EV capable commute, but odds are they also make a few trips a year that are outside the range of the car. That alone makes them a no go for most people. Also they tend to be small 2 seat vehicles. Which again are not practical for most people. People want 1 vehicle that does it all.
Furthermore, hybrids are far more practical in the end and much more environmentally friendly from an entire life cycle standpoint. That's why all the car companies killed their EV programs (EV1, S10, Ranger, Epic.. All now dead).
The EV1 was also not that spectacular. I've worked on one. It's a 1980s tech car developed by Aerovironment and sold to GM to put into production. It was a very crude and dated car when it went into production. GM dumped 2 billion into the program, and never even leased 1000 units in the couple years the program ran. They lost money hand over fist on it. It also had technical problems of the charge port catching the car on fire which was the final nail in the coffin.
EVs do have a place. Fleet service they can work out well for. There you have a fixed usage, daily schedules you can use it around. So the limits of an EV are not a problem. And the durability is a plus. But for consumer usage, they just aren't there.
Now if you manage to make a battery pack that fits in a 13 gallon space, and has the same amount of energy as 13 gallons of gasoline, and weights the same. Now you are on to something. But that isn't going to happen tomorrow.
The reason this is so fishy is because GM denied renewal of leases (despite begging and protest) and took back cars back to have them destroyed. They seemed intent on obliterating the EV1 to remove it from public memory, much the same way the Egyptians did with Akhenaton when he tried to change the whole of Egypt to a monotheistic religion. And now, on the eve of the release of a motion picture that brings light to a set of events not many people are aware of, the Smithsonian removes (AFAIK) one of the last places people can see a real-life EV1 (like so much stone from a bas-relief sculpture), making a documentary seem, for all intents and purposes, more like fiction in the public eye. Oh, and GM had nothing to do with it. They were not under pressure to engage in some uber sparagmos-like act of worship to the oil gods at the detriment of all EV1s ever made.
Makes me wish I had GTA'd one and hidden it somewhere for future generations.
Well, that was a fun conspiracy theory. I'm going to drink some more vodka.
the cars couldn't be sold for the amount of money it took to build them
Change that to "the cars could not be bought for any amount of money". That's right: GM never sold a single EV1, they were all leased with no option to renew the lease or buy the damn car! On top of that, GM made the customers jump through hoops to even get an EV1.
Still some people were persistent and patient enough to get their hands on EV1s. But after the leases had expired, they had no choice but to return the cars to GM. What did GM do with them? They crushed them! Every single one! Crushed them and dumped them in a junk yard! Seems like the prudent business decision would be to *ahem* sell your product rather than trashing it, no?
Here is more information on the whole fiasco: link. My take on it is that GM set EV1 up for failure so that they could point at it and say "see? no one wants electric cars!". But when, despite GM's best efforts, customers actually showed interest in it, GM decided to pull the plug.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
One last thing, had the type of electric car been marketable, why aren't there anythings similiar? how come coutries like china? they would benefit greatly from electric cars, why aren't they used there?
Because they already use bicycles.
Seriously, why do you think China would benefit greatly from electric cars? The population centers are very dense - so cars aren't too useful there, outside of the cities, the roads are not like America's and the majority of people who live outside the cities generally could not afford a card of any sort anyway.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
That was certainly a huge factor and I totally forgot about it.
The California regulations required that some percent (5%? 10%?) of the cars sold in California be zero emissions by a certain date. So companies start to make electric cars.
And what does California do? Back away from the regulations. First, they declared that some gas-powered could be qualified as partial zero emissions vehicles (PZEV) and thus qualify for the regulations. I don't have a problem with SULEVs (the less Orwellian name for PZEVs), but anyone who thinks they deserve credit for being zero emissions should have to sleep in a bedroom ventilated by the exhaust of PZEVs for a couple nights and report back how the "zero" emissions are treating them.
So after GM spends a lot on real ZEVs, California allows other companies to spend less than 10% as much and make the grade. then they flat out ditch the program making GM (and Honda's) efforts an almost total waste of money.
No wonder the car companies fight new regulations that seem likely to force them to make vehicles there probably isn't a market for. Once bitten, twice shy.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
My chemistry teacher actually owns one of these. He purchased it when they were first introduced, and then was offered almost twice of what he paid for it to sell it back to them. He turned them down and still drives the thing to this day, much to GM's dismay, I'm sure.
mining concerns and warehouses use electric drive vehicles all the time. while joe public has concerns-like yours-those folks are just going to work and getting the job done daily with "ohh dangerous high electric voltages", all over the world. Just because GM made a working but overy expensive and semi crippled on purpose car doesn't mean that a normal reliable and simple one isn't possibe. the one does not mandate the other. That's the point -who killed the electric car and why-and how.
Perhaps *you* should do some more research on it. And there are *thousands* of people all over the planet who have conversions and DIY models, and don't seem to suffer a whole lot. Hey, how about the millions of golfers, we don't seem to hear of them magically exploding or whatever from battery driven vehicles. It is old tech man, there were electric rides a hundred years ago, electric motors and batteries are just not that exotic, it is classed as "normal" human technology, just we are just starting to see more interest from the pollution angle and from the cost angle now.
I can remember getting gasoline at a scosh over 12 cents, that's my cheap record I recall, so I have a little historical perspective here. Of course there wasn't a lot of interest back then and up to now, it was incredibly cheap to drive, and most cars then were paid off in 12 months, that was a common loan then. Times change, stuff is expensive now, so people are looking at the electrics and the net is making a lot of shared knowledge and research possible. It's coming, ready or not, along with a ton of other neat stuff.
GM intentionally crippled their car (BTW, I used to *work* for GM and was in the UAW) and made it overly complicated and overly expensive on purpose, then never offered to sell them, just so they *wouldn't* have to keep making them., because electric vehicles are a considerable threat to the gas vehicle status quo. Like I said, disruptive technology, the main part of the article at the top-who killed the electric car and why. You can keep on trying to debunk it, I heard the same or similar about hybrids a few years ago, I heard it about solar a long time ago, and now that they are getting common, they are the hottest styled new type of car out there. And plugin hybrids are coming, because it makes sense and people want them. And solar PV is in extremely hot demand, new factories going in all over. We have neat new battery tech coming out now, and...just an exciting time now, stuff is coming together.
I'm not saying they are perfect, far from it, and so are gas buggies, I should know, been wrenching on them since they were mostly all flatheads. But for the target market, commuter cars, one guy driving, the tech we have now is more than adequate. My normal flooded lead acid storage batteries for my solar rig are 8 years old and still working fine. Why is that? I have had all sorts of internet "experts" tell me that "your batteries won't last". Well, they do and have, and they are cheap ones too. Sorry, but I have heard fud after fud after fud about alternative energy stuff over the years, and that is what most of it is, fud. Some is real, a lot is just fud.
The stuff works, and it is a clear and present danger and serious threat to various multi-billion dollar industries, that is the primary reason it has taken so long to reach good market penetratrion, but now it has. You *will* be seeing more pure electrics, plug in hybrids, a lot more solar installs, wind chargers-you name it, whether you think it "works" or not, because just way too many other people actually are doing it and it *does* work and can be made affordable.
Sorry,. I just have no truck with entrenched luddism on this subject, it has been an interest and hobby of mine for over three decades now. I have worked on superinsulated homes that practically needed zero additional heating in the winter other than the lights burning and cooking. That is possible with just normal tech we have had for year
They work fine, and the specialists are no more specialists than any other shop mechanics. This is ho hum stuff here. I've used electric pallet jacks and forklifts quite a bit, they are robust and actually *don't* break that often. I also used an electric golf cart converted into an outdoor gbrteenskeeping utility wagon one summer, ran the piss out of it, it never broke down that I recall, just plug it back in at night, that's it. You?? You actually used them -electric forklifts or mining equipment, etc, day in day out for full shifts, do you have personal experience? I have, so don't teach gramps about it, 'k? I know exactly how much they break down or not. They are robust and the batteries are fine as long as the nimrods don't cheap out and put mineraly tap water in them, then, sure, they can kill the batts quickly, but that is just common sense, and you don't run them completely flat, again, common sense and working within your limitations.
I still stand by my statement, electric cars are disruptive technologies to the established car companies, a big fnancial threat long term, a threat to governments from loss of road tax, and a definite threat to the oil companies and by allusion to the established electric grid monopoly suppliers because it is one step away going from an electric car to contemplating being your own power producer with solar or wind, etc. This is big time folding month *threats* to those wealthy and powerful folks, of course they are gonna FUD it out and deny and delay. It's only logical from their POV.
And that is the primary reason you don't see them out there on the dealers lots. And that is why the government is pushing hydrogen, it keeps control and the money directly where it already goes now-eventually. The big companies and big governments make no profit in you becoming independent of them. The car companies are not going to bork their long term sales and repair business by releasing vehicles with just a few moving parts that function well.
I have worked in some factories that have big electric motors running heavy machines for FIFTY YEARS or more and they hadn't broken down. One factory in particular I remember had some in the 70's when I was working there that were installed in the *teens* IIRC. They had oiler reservoirs for the bearings, big huge honking motors that drove belts all across the floors and simultaneously ran a lot of older but still quite functional woodworking machinery. three shifts a day when I worked there, those electric motors ran just about constantly, day in day out, months and years on end-and didn't break. The factory also burnt their own wood scrap (mostly lathe hearts, what we called them and what was left over after sections got run through what is called a peeler lathe-I ran one, that was my job there), anyway, burning that wood fed the boilers,which went to a GE steam turbine,and generated all their own electricity-everything- and they still sold off 10 grand a rough monthly into the grid, which more than paid the two firemen and some incidental repairs or the GE plant.
Electric motors *don't break* very easily. If the bearings stay good, that's it, blow them out and clean them with compressed air once in awhile or put some new brushes in if they are required.
Eventually you'll see them, but only after a lot of startups start selling them en masse, then you'll see the big car companies reluctantly jump in, just like they did with hybrids once toyota showed them how popular they were. There's already any number of smaller companies out there selling electric cars or offering conversions or kits. It is in roughly the same situation personal computers were in the early 70's, but, it has the potential to really take off. I expect some chinese companies to release them first actually, but that is a pure SWAG on my part, based on them now pumping out a lot of scooters and golf carts and atvs and tractors and now regular engine cars that will be hitting north american and european markets next year-cheap, as in under 10 grand new cheap.