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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."
Apparently not, Slashdot.
The funny part is, they're removing an Electric Car display to make room for an SUV display.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Lots of things that people like are canned all the time because no-one buys them - and personally I'm not sure I would have wanted a world of all eletric cars when the time came to recycle the batteries...
The time will come when all electric cars will be more practical, but in the meantime do we have to be so sensationalistic when something we like vanishes?
Perhaps if there had been a cool movie about electric cars BEFORE they were cancelled we might still have them. If you really like something then now is the time to drum up support for it! Be an evangelist, not a mere consumer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Also, the insistence on making electric vehicles look as unsexy and unstylish as possible was not a deliberate ploy intended to kill public interest in them. We all know that most people would just love the chance to be seen driving around in something which looks like a French milkvendors cart.
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Who leaves Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the martians under wraps?
We do! We do!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Who robs the cave fish of their sight?
Who rigs every Oscars night?
We do! We do!
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
GM is pushing "flex-fuel" over hybrids. Ethanol over electric cars. For GM to have this first commercial electric car and then lose the hybrid market is embarassing. But at least they have the good sense to put SUV's in their place: in a museum.
We are all just people.
I'm really torn, I like electric cars in principle, but as you say, lacking 'oompm' (power) is my reason not to get one. Along with statistics that show more powerful cars are less likly to get into accidents. but then, the only reason I have to think that they are weak is from what other people say in side comments like yours. Maybe their acceleration is better than gas powered cars. Maybe you own a gas station, and are telling lies to stay in business, maybe... YOU killed the electric car!
They need better ads, depicting them zooming along, speed of a dead dinosaur vs. speed of a lightning bolt... meanwhile, last I heard, people were selling Hybrids for more than they paid, and some delivery/shuttle fleets are getting them. Like with Natural Gas vehicles, they may be more economical if your business is willing to provide the infrastructure themselves.
Alternative fuels have always been repressed by the US government and big auto makers because of the global dependence on oil. Do you think it has taken us 50 years to get a car to go supposedly 40mpg?
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Back in the late 70's there was a little know company called AMECTRAN, that a the first production ready electronic vehicle that could go 80mph, had a range of 100+ miles, and costs less than $10,000. Electric cars suck? Yea right! Take a look at the inventor's website: http://www.amectran.com/
. . . 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.
The question is, why did they buy the SUV rather than the EV-1? At least in part, they liked the size, and felt that relatively cheap gas (remember the "gas glut"?) was worth the mileage.
But at least according to the film, more was at work than the market in that decision. They blame the oil companies for anti-market tactics like astroturf groups to oppose charging stations, as well as buying congressmen to give tax credits to SUV owners. (SUVs over 3 tons, most famously the Hummer, were treated as commercial vehicles, and given huge tax breaks. And non-enormous SUVs got to count their potential carrying capacity towards that 3 tons under a 2002 "economic stimulus package").
Oil companies also campaigned vigorously against emissions restrictions and higher CAFE standards. In market terms, those are attempts to monetize externalized expenses.
So the cards were stacked in favor of SUVs and against the electric car. Not by the market, but precisely counter to the market, when powerful companies get a larger say in regulations than consumers do.
Electric cars can be quite fast. Electric motors have all their torque starting at one rpm and it just goes on from there. There isn't a fuel engine made that can compare horsepower to horsepower down where the rubber meets the road with an electric motor. People who managed to *lease* an EV1 loved them (EV1's were leased, not sold for the most part), they tried their darndest to get GM to sell them at end of lease and GM just took them away and crushed them while they were still in perfect working order. Read up on it, or actually go see that movie in the article, that is what this is all about.
Electric cars are a threat to auto makers because there is much less stuff to break and they are simpler to make (think about that one for a long time, it is a critical part of the equation), and they are a threat to governments because there is no way to apply the road fuel tax to them (short of the GPS tracking deal they just started in oregon). You can theoretically own an electric vehicle, own some solar panels, and eventually be driving for pretty darn cheap per mile. Many people are happily doing that today, proving it is possible and can fill a lot of niche driving. As to range,50-100 miles on a charge is doable *now*, which would handle just millions of commuter profiles, that is *easily* extended and handled by having an additional tow behind trailer with a fuel burning generator in it for trips, which would then morph your ride "on demand" into a hybrid vehicle..
Pure electric cars are a clear cut example of what is called "disruptive technology" that threatens big auto, big oil and big government. A lot of big money and big juice there that doesn't want that sort of threat, yes? That is why electric cars "failed",not that they don't work or can't be built in mass productyion style, of course they can,but they were never offered in the first place.
When is the last time you saw a pure electric car at a normal mainstream dealer *for sale*? I'm an old gear head,and I have *never* seen one for sale, never. I have seen anything and everything else under the sun with an engine that moves for sale, the only electric "car" I ever saw for sale was a golf cart, not a real car. I have seen a few low production prototypes that people hand built, and you were able to buy them used that way as one or two-offs,but that's it, nothing mass produced.
They say "there is no market", well it is a self fullfilling prophecy if you never even try to sell them.
Since most electricity is still generated by burning fossil fuels, an all-electric car would most likely be worse than one burning the fuel directly. I have never heard of a perfectly efficient method of transmitting electricty from where it was produced to where it was needed (e.g. charge up the car). Ergo, there would be a net increase in "environmental badness" to use the e-car vs what we have now.
Not necessarily. Your argument is only true if the electric power plant and the gasoline-powered car operate at the same efficiency. If the power plant is significantly more efficient than a gasoline engine, then it is quite possible for the electric car to be more environmentally friendly than the gasoline car, even with transmission losses.
Your argument also ignores the fact that its generally easier to implement and upgrade pollution controls on a few dozen power plants versus several million automobiles.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
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?
Actually, the *real* reason to go electric (or hydrogen) is that it lets you leverage alternative energy sources, meaning more flexibility. In addition, the centralization makes it easy to upgrade existing plants with new technology. Not so easy with millions of little ICEs.
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.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
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....
Help us build a better map!
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
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.
Do you think it has taken us 50 years to get a car to go supposedly 40mpg?
The *SAME* car? No - the problem is that the American consumer will pay more for a car that is heavier (safer) and has more features/trunk space/acceleration/handling/etc than they will a car that has the weight, trunk space, acceleration and handling of a car from the 1950's that gets 80 MPG.
We have gotten REMARKABLY more efficient with engines in the past 50 years. We just spend that efficiency on things OTHER than MPG because that's what the consumer wants.
paintball
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.
That's because using corn for ethanol production is a net energy loser. You invest more energy in producing the ethanol than you ever get out of it, especially after you factor in transportation costs to distribution centers (i.e., gas stations).
Ethanol can only be efficiently produced from very high-energy crops like sugar beets - or even better, sugar cane. Unfortunately most of the land that's being used to grow corn doesn't do very well growing sugar beets, and can't be used to grow sugar cane at all. In fact, the places best suited for both of these crops are in central and south America. That is, places where there aren't any American farmers, nor any representatives in Congress.
You ever wonder why corn syrup is used as a sugar substitute in so many things, like, for instance, cola drinks? Because Congress, in it's infinite wisdom, outright bans the import of sugar past a certain allowed tonnage each and every year. The sole reason for doing so is to support corn farmers, who'd otherwise lose the corn syrup business to sugar cane farmers in other countries (it takes far less sugar to make something taste sweet than it does corn syrup, and sugar tastes better than corn syrup). It makes no economic sense for the rest of the country, but there you have it - your tax dollars at work in a government protection racket.
These same farmers push for corn-derived ethanol despite the fact that it can never be efficient, nor can it ever be economical for the rest of us - those of us who aren't corn farmers. Ethanol from corn is a bust, but don't expect the government to ever admit to that, or to admit that the only truly productive ethanol will come from places like central or south America, or Hawaii, or perhaps southern Florida. Too many Congresscritters would be out of a job if they ever admitted to that.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
How about asking those who actually drove them every day?
I drove the Smithsonian's car here in San Diego for two years. (Yes, the very same car. See http://www.ka9q.net/ev/). After that, I drove another EV1 for three years.
The EV1 was a great car, a lot of fun to drive, and it met nearly all of my needs. I don't know about you, but none of my other cars could do 0-60 in 7 seconds, and I considered that pretty spectacular. In fact, my gasoline car went unused for so long that I lent it to a friend. I had a charger at home, and I was also lucky enough to have one at work. (Truth be told, I didn't really need the charger at work.) Since those are the two places my car spends most of its time parked, it was nearly always fully charged when I came out to drive it. I never had to go out of my way to a gas station (except to use the car wash), and I hardly ever had the need to drive more than its range in a single day. On the rare occasions I traveled out of town, my EV1 could still take me to the airport. And on the even rarer occasions I needed to drive out of town, my EV1 could easily take me to the local Enterprise lot where I could rent a vehicle more suited to the purpose (such as a SUV for desert camping).
The charge port problem to which you refer was only in the Gen 1, model year 1997, which includes my first car. It was caused by a defective capacitor which had already been removed in the Gen 2 (1999 model year) design. I know of no problems with Gen 2 cars, and I'm pretty sure I would have had there been one.
This is what's so frustrating about having been an EV1 driver: knowing from personal experience just how great a car it was, and seeing others without that experience mouth total gibberish. But I guess we just have to educate people one by one.