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GM Cornered Into Defending the Volt
Al notes a story in Technology Review reporting on a CMU study (now over a month old) claiming that the Volt doesn't make economic sense, and GM's response. The study suggests that hybrids with large batteries offering up to 40 miles of range before an on-board generator kicks in simply cost too much for the gas savings to work out (PDF). Al writes: "Unsurprisingly, GM disputes the claims, saying 'Our battery team is already starting work on new concepts that will further decrease the cost of the Volt battery pack quite substantially in a second-generation Volt pack.' Interestingly, however, GM admits that the tax credits for plug-in hybrids will be crucial to making the volt successful. Without those credits, would an electric vehicle like the Volt be viable?"
"...claiming that the Volt doesn't make economic sense, and GM's response."
The GM response is that they understand that whole "make economic sense" statement. Like some foreign gibbersh to them.
Apparently there are quite a few of GM's product lines that don't make any sense.
Sure, it might cost too much, but hopefully enough rich, environmentalists will buy it, that the price will come down so that it will be economically feasible, and affordable for the rest of us. They can use the same selling model as the Tesla Roadster.
Ol' Rick Dawson had a farm EIEIO
They forgot the actual link.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
It might not make the most economic sense *TODAY* without tax credits but putting the money into the technology being developed for battery and hybrids will make cheaper more efficient cars available in the future. The main cost right now is the battery pack but with more mainstream production as well as further research, this should come down in cost (higher capacity / cheaper batteries in future cars).
shocking. It might, however, prove ... revolting... to some...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Simply because someone else is footing the bill, doesn't make it economically viable. The money doesn't come out of thin air.
Maybe that's what GM was thinking the bailout money they got came from...
Anyway, I have no interest in footing the bill with my tax money to pay for something that is a net drag on energy. If they can't afford to make it commercially viable on their own, they shouldn't look to do it on the taxpayer dime.
I expect that as technology progresses that the batteries will get better, but I am still hopeful that there will be more effort put into developing hydrogen powered cars. Then you would not need the huge acid lead batteries, emissions from the vehicles would be literally just water, and all the innovation could be focused on generating hydrogen.
Considering that GM is surviving on taxpayer money right now, and is begging for more, I don't see how GM has any credibility on determining if anything makes Economic Sense. Maybe the Green Movement can buy the technology off GM, and produce the car themselves. Let's see if that is successful.
"...cost(s) too much for the gas savings"
Depends on the price of gas? Here in the UK we pay approx 0.90 GBP for a litre, = 0.90 x 1.42 (Pounds to Dollars) x 3.785 (Litres to US gallons) = 4.84 US dollars a gallon.
This is much less than a few months ago when gas here reached close to 1.20 GBP a litre and with the pound being stronger at that time it was over 8 dollars a US gallon.
Would you consider a gas/electric hybrid if gas was 8 dollars a gallon in the USA?
the issue is not that current battery technology can't adequately replace typical american highway needs
of course it can't
the issue is american car companies aren't even trying to solve the problem. meaning there is no advances in the technology that could make the replacement economically efficient
there is also the issue of american consumers, who will blindly buy SUVs while they send their sons and daughters to die in the middle east to fight for the oilfields needed to drive their precious SUVs
what is needed obviously is strong american legislation that will mandate battery recharging infrastructure and non-fossil fuel dependent car design
but of course, the conservatards will whine "socialism"
you know what conservatards? sometimes you need a large government and strong regulations. no, really, you really do
the market will NOT take care of itself on some issues
simple market dynamic only drives us into the status quo, since consumer demand is not coupled with the geopolitical realities about fossil fuels
government policy is the only way out of this mess. strong government regulation from a strong and powerful central government
market forces aren't cutting it. market forces don't drive progress on all issues
wake the fuck up conservatards
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The Union is *currently* unwilling to cut back wages or benefits which is a requirement for GM to even get access to ANY of the "stimulus" money.
Only when GM goes into bankruptcy protection (chapter 11) will GM have more of a free hand to cut what needs to be cut.
Until one of the 2 happen, the Volt won't see light of day at a dealership.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
...is that 10 years ago GM was telling us exactly that about the EV1, and we (the people who wanted one) were saying "but it's awesome, why are you telling us we don't want one?" and they were saying "there's no demand, it's not cost effective, it's terrible anyway".
Damn CARB for crumbling and allowing any car with a slightly larger battery that can crank itself along with its starter motor to count as a "low emissions vehicle".
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Yea, it doesn't make economic sense. GM knows they are going to lose money on every Volt that rolls off the assembly line. Thats not the whole story though. They need a new image for the brand, and they have pinned that image to the Volt. Forward thinking, efficient, and revolutionary in the auto industry is the idea right now for the Volt. Them going out of business might hinder their cause. But, then again, its their own damn fault for behaving like asses for 30+ years. Seriously, they may have made money of trucks and Hummers, but they were certainly not innovative or groundbreaking in their designs. Their overall structure was hosed for so long, its hard to see what restructuring they are gonna do to recover.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
There are tons of people working on better electric storage system technology. This makes it sound like they are doing the engineering on their own.
Look here and this one is really interesting IMO.
When they get a breakthrough on high capacity systems it will make a lot of things possible that currently are not, not just cars. It is the battery technology that really puts the hobbles on generating your own electricity at home. Well, that and solar collector technology as well as HOA restrictions etc.
If I could get tax breaks to install a 95%+ self sufficiency system I'd do it in the blink of an eye. Having an electric car on top of that would be even better. I would like a nice little commuter car or two; 40 mile range is great if it will also support solar trickle charging while parked etc.
With an initial investment, I could become 95% free of the grid ... well, if I could do that, I'm all in... big time.
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I bet the same thing could have been said about the Prius during it's development phase. GM could always offer the Volt for lease like the Honda FCX, another car probably even more expensive to be economically feasible at this time, not to mention that hydrogen stations are few and far between.
GM has made tons of stupid mistakes, and frankly they deserve to be in the situation their in for it. On the other hand, the Volt is actually ingenious and I believe a more logical application of a hybrid powertrain than anything else currently on the road. I think it's cool that, like in diesel trains, the gasoline engine generates the electricity which powers the electric motor which in turn motivates the vehicle.
And for a change, I think it looks nicer than either the Prius or the new Insight. Hopefully, GM will be in business long enough for the Volt to see production. I do acknowledge that the risk in this car being too expensive is that enough people won't be able to buy for it to help GM in any meaningful way.
I'm not a huge fan of this technology replacing the existing infraustructure (gas powered vehicles) yet. But only because of energy density in the fuel, not what fuel it is. And these vehicles do have a niche market -- must be about as frightening as Apple is to Microsoft (oh, wait... that's not a fair comparison. Apple might actually be double-digits now). But as the technology develops, and the energy density problem is solved, gas-powered vehicles will go the way of the dinosaur. /tongue in cheek
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I have one major reason for not having interest in GM products:
I cannot stand an automobile product that loses one-third of its value the moment it's wheeled of the dealership.
To those that say "buy local to support local jobs..." I say:
GM manufactures about three-quaters of its products outside the USA. How about that?
Sorry GM, but I am not interested.
Recently my car got crushed by stuff falling off the roof of a business. So I've been the market for a new car. I looked at toyota between the Corola and the Prius. Both are similar size, but the Prius gets about 10 miles more to the gallon...for $6000 more.
I did the back of the envelope calculations and there was no way that I'd make up the $6000 price difference in the time that I am likely to own the vehicle. Even if gas goes back to USD 4.00 a gallon.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
The increase in your electric bill is only a bad thing if it increases more than your gas bill decreases.
And if you really think electricity produced by your car engine is cheaper, then why aren't you powering your home with it?
Electric light bulbs will put a huge demand on today's electric grid.
... but not a real practical one for the general public.
What does that mean?? Expensive electricity for EVERYBODY. Not just the owner of the electric light bulb.
With the raise of demand, the environmental requirements will be dropped to compensate for the need to build new power plants fast. By dropping the requirements, we will get power plants that will generate 3 to 4 times more pollution that gas lamps would have generated.
And lets not talk about all the pollution generate in the production and disposal of electricity. (wait what? disposal of electricity?)
The Edison bulb is a nice "concept" lamp
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Mgt: "Quick... mock up some electric-car to help w/ our plea for bailout money so they don't think we're not forwarding-thinking w/ inept management".
Anyone who falls for this trick deserves the billions being thrown down the tubes. Inept management coupled w/ a draconian union equals insolvency.
It doesn't make sense, right now. Right this second. But last time I checked they didn't have it in any showrooms yet, so that point is moot. Just because a global economic meltdown happened that made driving a gas-guzzling GM make sense for approx 6-12 more months, doesn't mean GM should bet the future of its company on gas prices staying low. That's basically what they've been doing. If gas prices stay low it will be because the economy is horrible, and GM will go out of business because no one buys their trucks. If gas prices rise GM will go out of business because they still don't build vehicles that anyone will want to buy at $6/gallon of gas.
The Volt is the ONLY thing GM is doing that makes the tiniest bit of sense. For goodness sakes, they released a passenger car hybrid that costs about the same as a prius, but gets about the same gas mileage as a minivan.
... I'd buy one of their dog-shit cars or invest in their dog-shit stock. They haven't made a decent car or sensible strategic business decision in 40 years. It's bad enough my tax $s are supporting this corpse, what happens when the Volt doesn't sell even WITH subsidies? The solution: more incentives to buy GM cars and disincentives to buy the car you REALLY want.
Extinctions are essential in nature and in business, and GM need to become extinct. They're already dead. Why can't everybody see that?
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
You can charge off peak. Thats the idea anyway. Then, ideally during peak hours you can sell energy back to the grid at a profit.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Plug in electric cost to drive 100 miles should be less than $2. Your electric bill may be higher, but you will be charging at night when rates are low and wouldn't have to spend any money at the gas station ever again. If you spend $300 a month on AC maybe you should switch to CFL bulbs and a little insulation to your house. Your high electric bill does not make driving an electric car expensive.
We have the best government that money can buy.
I believe one of the Volt options is that you can have most of the top of the car covered in solar cells. Or it's at least the sun roof and maybe the trim. That makes it go well over 40 miles so I guess that means it's economical now. I don't know why they couldn't just mention that.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
You'll have to at least specify where you live, since that will indicated how much you pay in electricity (per kWh) and what type of climate might justify your AC bill.
For example: I don't have AC since the climate in my area is mild enough to get by without it (Though summers can get pretty hot, it's survivable without).
Electricity costs me about $0.17 per kWh. It's tough to put an exact price on it because the utility company loves to obfuscate things with delivery fees and shit, but I think it's close enough to do meaningful comparisons.
Gasoline is currently about $2.00 per gallon in my area, plus or minus a few cents depending on exactly where you go.
1 gallon of gasoline = 125,000 BTU = 36.6 kWh, which will cost me $6.22 at my estimated rate.
But! Upwards of 80% of the energy from gasoline goes to waste, whereas the overall waste of an electrical system would be around 20% plug-to-asphalt (less with regenerative braking and other stuff).
So I get only 25,000 BTU of useful energy out of every gallon of gasoline, which is only 7.3 kWh ($1.24). If I waste 20% of the electricity I'll need a bit more to start with: 9.1 kWh ($1.55).
So! All things considered, it's currently cheaper for me to go with electricity than gasoline as an energy source. The only real limits are: 1) Range, and 2) Initial cost of the vehicle.
=Smidge=
Electric is not the answer, because it only shifts fuel costs to your electric bill.
Electric is half the answer. What is the question?
Since my electric bill goes well over $300 a month in the summer (AC usage), I can't even begin to guess how expensive it would be to charge my car every night.
Electricity is just a way to make the energy source flexible. You can generate electricity with gas or many, many other ways. The second half of the issue is generating the electricity in better ways both economically and environmentally. And make no mistake, environmental factors are part of economics, just such that the people causing the problem can try to divorce themselves from the costs. If global temperatures go up due to fossil fuel use and there are more storms and it cost insurance companies more, that is worse for the economy than if people pay that same amount more to buy and run electric vehicles charged from clean power sources. The reason being, then the cost relationship is direct and innovation is much more strongly encouraged (financially).
I'm not a fan of Hybrids (yet), but at least that system doesn't accrue the additional cost of an electric bill to go with your gasoline bill.
But does it increase your homeowners' insurance costs? Does it increase your healthcare costs and tax burden to pay medicaid to people who have cancer or breathing problems caused or worsened by pollution and nano particles emitted?
That's the real problem with fossil fuel use in general, is there are lots of costs and likely costs associated with it, that are not paid for just by the people using them.
They were leasing them at a loss. People didn't want them at a price where GM could make money on them.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The Prius doesn't make economic sense in terms of gas savings either.
This completely ignores the fact that electricity is cheaper per mile driven than gas. Based on comparing a 25mpg car to a Tesla (55kwh/220mi=250Wh/mile) and CA 0.12/kwh and $2.50/gallon of gas. I also removed the battery replacement since the Tesla's battery is good for 100k miles.
http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/~jarrett/EV/cost.php
Total came out to $0.126/mile per mile for gas, and electricity is $0.049/mile
Over 8000 miles a year, you save $600.
Is GM even going to be around to be able to release Volt, let alone Volt mark 2 ?
Ahh, posting a flamebait against an oil company gets you a +5 insightful despite a total lack of insight.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I don't see that anybody on the GM board has anything to do with an oil company. Perhaps you can tell me more specifically whom you are talking about? (Or is your remark just uninformed rhetoric?)
for problems where the producer and buyer drive progress. electronic gadgets, for example: i want my iphone cheaper. i want my iphone with more doodads. competitors are happy to oblige. congratulations: progress
there are other problems in the world, where neither producer nor buyer have a vested interest. and yet these problems are very real. here's one: justice. crime
you need a government, a strong one, with police powers, to run the judiciary since producer and buyer need an impartial justice system that favors neither producer nor buyer
now you could ignore justice and criminal law. and the social environment will deteriorate such that the marketplace deteriorates. or you could have a justice system run by populism that ignores the needs of producers. or a justice system bought and sold by corporations that ignores the needs of consumers. which are just two forms of injustice
the physical environment is the same thing: neither producer nor buyer has a vested interest in maintaining it. so its get dumed on by both, and the marketplace deteriorates. so you need a third party, a government, to engage in maintaining the environment by setting environmental regulations and enforcing them. the marketplace WILL NOT TAKE CARE OF THIS PROBLEM ON ITS OWN IN AN EQUITABLE MANNER
i say: leave to the marketplace issues that progress in the marketplace can solve
but that does not describe all of the problems in the world
irrefutable fact you need to learn: the marketplace is not where all progress in the world takes place, and does not answer every question that needs answering. this sort of marketplace fundamentalism some morons believe in is a simpleton's ideology that needs to die
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Interesting comment, but I can't pick out the "oil company and foreign oil company interests" that are in the board of directors. Who are you talking about?
Erskine B. Bowles
President,
The University of North Carolina
Director since 2005
John H. Bryan
Retired Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer,
Sara Lee Corporation
Director since 1993
Armando M. Codina
President
and Chief Executive Officer,
Flagler Development Group
Director since 2002
Erroll B. Davis, Jr.
Chancellor,
University System of Georgia
Director since 2007
George M.C. Fisher
Retired Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer,
Eastman Kodak Company
Director since 1996
E. Neville Isdell
Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer,
The Coca-Cola Company
Director since 2008
Karen Katen
Chairman,
Pfizer Foundation,
Retired Vice Chairman,
Pfizer Inc and Retired President,
Pfizer Human Health,
Director since 1997
Kent Kresa
Chairman Emeritus,
Northrop Grumman Corporation
Director since 2003
Philip A. Laskawy
Retired Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer,
Ernst & Young
Director since 2003
Kathryn V. Marinello
Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer,
Ceridian Corporation
Director since 2007
Eckhard Pfeiffer
Retired President
and Chief Executive Officer,
Compaq Computer Corporation
Director since 1996
G. Richard Wagoner, Jr.
Chairman
& Chief Executive Officer,
General Motors Corporation
Director since 1998
http://www.gm.com/corporate/investor_information/corp_gov/board.jsp
The increase in your electric bill is only a bad thing if it increases more than your gas bill decreases.
So yes, it will be a bad thing then. Saving 40 miles in gas by using the electric part saves 2 gallons ($4). Charging that battery all night on the grid will cost more than $4.
And if you really think electricity produced by your car engine is cheaper, then why aren't you powering your home with it?
I didn't say anything of the sort. I assume you are saying electricity is cheaper than gasoline, which is fine and dandy. But until you figure out a way for my car to be connected solely to an electrical grid I stand by my assertion that electric/gas cars are not a viable option.
Oh my. All economic sense means is that you get more out of it than you put into it. Everything you do should make economic sense (it doesn't have to make economic sense in terms of dollars, but if you don't see any value (of any kind) in doing something, I'm pretty sure you don't do it!).
It could be that the problem GM is having is short term (that is, over a long enough time period, the idea would make economic sense), but batteries are, compared to gasoline, expensive, heavy and weak, so it isn't that surprising that it isn't particularly worth it to put a big battery and big electric motor inside of a small car that already has a gasoline engine.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
What the hell does that mean? GM doesn't have oil company representatives on their board. If you'd like to see, I suggest you Google search GM's board and check out the board member bios.
Also, if oil companies are stopping GM from bringing electric cars to market, then how do you explain GM betting the ranch on the Volt? Wouldn't GM have *accepted* this argument that electric cars don't make sense, rather than defend their electric car project?
But hey, didn't stop this post from being modded to 5. I guess any paranoia about oil companies automatically gets modded up...
I remember playing NBA 96 on Playstation and complaining about how horrible the 3d models looked compared to sprites. Sure, sprites were terribly limited, but the game looked like complete ass. I later realized it was a necessary step toward genuinely good 3d graphics. You can't just skip to the end result.
Whale
I agree in principle, but need to play devil's advocate here:
#1 cannot be proven easily. We were saying that about hydrogen for ages, and despite a massive R&D effort, nobody was able to develop an efficient process. It also doesn't apply to plug-in hybrids.
#2 and 3 would be solved by market forces and responsible foreign policy. Neither has anything to do with GM, and everything to do with an irresponsible government.
#4 could be solved with a (gasp) gas tax. Causes people to drive less, take more public transport, and drive more efficient cars (most of which are paradoxically not sold in the US -- Fiat could make a killing if they re-entered the US market).
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
No, high electric bills (in my brand new, green home, btw) DO make electric cars more expensive, because the electric company charges MORE money, the more energy we use (kwh rates shoot up in the summer, coincidentally?). Unfortunately in Austin, TX, there's no escaping high electric bills in the summer months.
As far as never spending money on gas again, from what I've read, the current battery technology would allow for 40 miles per charge, which is 10 miles short of my round-trip commute. Am I to hope my employer will let us charge our cars while at work?
Anyone else read the headline and think this was another story about the Volt paycuts at Microsoft? I wondered why GM would defend them!
YES. it is viable. with out with out the tax credits. but if tax credits are issued, the more will sell... the more on the road, the cheaper they will be sooner. not to mention Green effects sooner too.
People would stop diggin your heals in to this car. So what if its not a sporty looking car they said they would release. give it up.. one day we'll get a sporty hybred that looks good, and is affordable too... but we need these out first.
Ahh yes... Big brother knows best. People don't make good decisions on their own. They need someone else to make decisions for them.
Consumers are complacent about fossil fuels, but they are not complacent about their wallets. Why do we continue to buy fossil fuel cars? Because they are the cheapest technology right now.
Take an economics course. Government mandates HURT ECONOMIES. There is no exception to this rule. The government produces nothing and does not act in the best interest of the people with tax dollars.
As far as your points below:
1) yes, and as it becomes cheaper, electric cars will become viable, but they aren't today
2) once again, fossil fuels getting more expensive will move us towards electric cars, but today oil provides the cheapest energy and that allows us to use the savings to invest in the next energy source
3) Regardless of where the oil comes from, it costs money. Us not buying it from the middle east will not stop terrorism. They will simply sell to China. The problem in the middle east is a lack of education and unfair governments. You are suggesting we bring that here rather than fix the real problem.
4) Yes, CO2 is bad for the environment, we need to mitigate the effects of this. However, the effects are HUGELY blown out of proportion, with Al Gore being a major contributor. I suggest that we focus on switching from coal to nuclear, which is economically viable and will reduce carbon output much more than electric cars.
Oh wait, the government is preventing nuclear power plants from being built an operated efficiently... Maybe your theory is flawed after all.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The problem isn't the Volt costs too much, it's the fact the cheap cost of a gas vehicle and oil to put in it doesn't take in to account the true cost of the vehicle.
If the full cost weren't externalized to the same degree, for example the cost of healthcare for those made ill by exhaust, the cost of dealing with the impacts of climate change, even just the health and economic costs of people injured in road accidents, the price of a gas guzzling car would be a few times higher.
Instead the system externalizes these and others in society, not the actual drivers of these vehicles, are made to pay the costs. In some cases such as the impacts of climate change, those paying the true cost for gas powered vehicles could be on the other side of the planet.
It shows how our entire economic model must be reworked so the true cost of a product, cradle to grave, on all of society is taken in to account. A holistic approach to economics.
It's the same externalizing that Walmart uses, prices are kept down because things such as benefits and healthcare are pushed on to state governments through minimum wage paid employees.
It's time all members of society becomes accountable for their actions.
Why? Because the Volt sucks. Not only will it be too expensive, it won't even be particularly energy efficient.
What should own that market segment instead? Something MUCH more promising, like, say, the Aptera 2e.
http://www.aptera.com/.
Listen to what I say, not what I mean...
My old car (a 1998 Toyota Corolla with 104K miles) was failing (transmission trouble) so I bought a new car - a 2009 Nissan Sentra. I would have loved to have gotten a hybrid, but I found that hybrids tend to be priced much higher than I'm willing to spend on a car that's mainly used to move me from home to work and back. A Toyota Prius would have cost me nearly $8,000 more than my Nissan Sentra. I travel only about 8,000 miles per year. For my Nissan Sentra (29 average mpg) that means about 276 gallons of gas. For the Prius (46 average mpg) that means 174 gallons. If I got $3,000 as a tax credit, I would have to make up the remaining $5,000 in saved gas. At 100 gallons per year, and assuming I keep the car for 10 years (not a bad assumption, I had my last car for 10 years), gas would need to average $5 a gallon or more. Right now, with gas under $2.50, it just doesn't make sense for me to put down more money for a hybrid.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
My impression was that the EV1 crowd was like the Amiga crowd. Or to put it more bluntly: the smaller the fanbase for something is, the more vocal they become. Basically, GM didn't sell anywhere near enough EV1s to make the economies of scale work out. The supporters will probably argue "and they didn't even try!", but it was clear from the get-go that GM didn't think they would be viable and wouldn't have built them at all except for the tax breaks.
I read the internet for the articles.
A lot of the comments here are missing a key point: Detroit wants to keep on doing things the way they have been. They are happy to try and tweak 2-3 MPG out of an existing vehicle and claim victory.
My wife and I have been discussing this for a while and I think some points are worth bringing up on how to resurrect the US auto industry:
1. Create an "open source" equivalent to the systems and electronics for the vehicles--something open and standard that eliminates a lot of custom widgets that only work on one model for one year. Hold on for number two and three before rebutting this one...
2. Build vehicles with a standardized chassis (or a small set of them: compact, regular, huge, truck) that allows you to have a plug and play engine/power source. You can then start with gas/diesel/hybrid and upgrade the engine to newer technologies as they evolve.
3. The body--grill work, cabin, trim, bling, etc. are things you can swap out as you needs/desires/wants change. How would you like to start out with a convertible, change it over to a van (when the rugrats arrive) and then go sporty when the kids are out of the house...
Can Detroit do this? They were starting with with the Hydrogen car (at least GM was) in the early 2000s.
More important: Will they do this, given their management and culture? My bet is NO. I'm singling out the management of the big 3 here for this one. They've had ample opportunities to work on this and have squandered the opportunities time and again "because it doesn't make sense for the quarterly earnings report."
Hate to say it, but companies that don't invest in R&D for the "next big thing" wind up having NO quarters to deal with...Oracle almost bit the dust in the early 90's because they skimped on R&D until that point; Microsoft is still trying the catch up with that Web thing...(two companies most Slashdotters will grok)
Sounds too idealistic or naive, right? Uh, look at the software and hardware you are using now to look at this. Most of it wasn't around 10 years ago or was very primitive by today's standards.
Of course, I'm still grumbling that it's the 21st century and I still don't have the untethered personal jet pack they were touting in the 60's Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines.
Supreme Granter of Doctor of Obviology Letters ("A FIRM Command of the Obvious")
The Volt is nothing more than a gas guzzler with an electric engine who's batteries need nightly recharging.
You complain that it is a gas guzzler, but then complain about it needing to be recharged???
The Prius (and Civic) is a vehicle with an efficient engine assisted by an electric engine who's batteries are refueled with energy from the vehicle
Do you even know the basics of how the Volt works? The whole point of the Volt is to have it recharged with a small efficient ICE and regenerative breaking while on long trips. Yes, it recharges it's batteries exactly like the Prius and Civic, but with the option of going gas-free for trips shorter than 40 miles.
Seriously, do you even read your entire sentences before posting?
"Gas guzzler" ?? Are you serious? The Volt has a 1.4 liter 4-cylinder engine and will go 640 miles on a 12-gallon tank. Yes, that's over 53 MPG -- Higher than the Prius 45 MPG! I have no clue where you got "gas guzzler" from. And that's to say nothing of the best feature of the volt over prius/civic - you can charge it overnight and make your daily commute using ZERO gasoline and producing ZERO emissions. (yes, I know the electricity generation station emissions have to be considered as well) Finally, the volt's engine is used for one thing - driving an electric generator at constant speed. So the engine can be tuned to produce the most power/efficiency at that exact speed, and further generations of this engine will get only more efficient. The Prius/Civic must have a standard engine capable of wide speeds and flat torque curve, reducing efficiencies.
Contrary to all of the "GM is in bed with big oil!" nonsense, the reality is that the automakers have been battling the conflicting voiced desire of consumers to have more efficient vehicles, with the reality that cheap gas has them buying inefficient beasts when it comes to putting words into actions.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/automakers-join-call-for-higher-federal-gas-tax/
It's hard for products like the Volt to come to market in any real way when gas continues to drop to undercutting levels that eliminate the advantages, so the CEOs are asking for the price of gas to be normalized to a level that more realistically incorporates its full cost.
This is why it matters.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Their results simply ignore the vast majority of control strategies that exist to improve the performance of PHEVs when they are operated in the "blended mode". As noted on Page 5, they say "Since the performance of blended configurations can vary widely based on a broad range of
control strategy parameters, for simplicity and fair comparisons we restrict attention to
the range-extended PHEVs that run entirely on electrical power in the charge-depleting
range and switch to operate like an HEV in the charge-sustaining range."
My question is, How can the authors make tall claims about the lack of performance of PHEV, if they eliminate interesting options citing simplicity
Then, ideally during peak hours you can sell energy back to the grid at a profit.
If that becomes a reality, then yes, that is a good point. It will take a huge cultural shift (and probably massive infrastructure changes as well, but IANAEE).
I question their actual desire to see this succeed. In the warped multinational conglomerate thinking they're probably trying to put on a good face and attempt to bring an alternative market. In the end they get to say, "Uh nvermind it's not practical. . ." See we tried nobody bought it. . . They've been dragging their feet kicking and screaming the whole way. Do they really want to change? That's my question.
Because Communists have never done anything that didn't make economic sense, right? Like the USSR's rampant mismanagement of Russia that led to the starvation of millions?
At least with a Capitalist system everyone is doing something a little different, instead of all doing exactly the same thing. That diversifies our risk, which does make economic sense. Humans are fallible, so you can either choose between a large number of small fuck-ups, or the chance of one really big fuck-up.
If everyone came together and bought electric cars, the cost would eventually come down as the capital provided to the company would allow further R it would also signal a demand for the car to GM's management.
Which is where the tax credit comes in. It gives a further incentive for everyone to make the best collective choice, without directly seizing their freedom (which engenders resentment and rebellion). Personally, I think we should raise the gasoline tax as well, in order to force a faster transition to non-oil energy sources.
The fact that policymakers in the U.S. could do that really just goes to show that we have a mixed economy with aspects of socialism now; like almost every other industrialized country in the modern world.
as for number 4, while I agree that Nuclear power > coal/oil, you still have one main problem
Uranium is a finite, non-renewable resource
Now don't get me wrong, there's plenty of Uranium to go around for quite some time, and with proper breeder-reactors, there's very little waste, but in effect, you're pushing the supply/demand problem down the road a few years.
I think Solar is the way to go, to be honest with you, but that's going to take, once again, significant investment
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
GM didn't renew any leases on EV1s.
The primary reason GM decided not to go into even limited production came from the dealers who serviced EV1s. They didn't break down. No service revenue during the lease, of course, but the writing was on the wall. EV1s would starve the service department.
Wait until true elecrtics start to gain market share. The service needs will be much lower, and the dealer network will find their service revenue dropping. Unless, of course, the makers install some planned maintenance items.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Why not turn down your AC?
depending on where you live, often a well-placed fan can drastically cool down a house, Just remember "Heat Rises"
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Until we can get apples to apples comparisons, we don't know which is more cost effective. Yes, the Volt battery costs more now than it will in a few years. Look at hard drives: they used to be $100/MB. Now they're $0.1/GB.
As for gas, how much money will we have to pay in the future to clean up the environmental mess we've created? Climate change is happening now. That's not a question. The question is this: How bad will it get?
Live in Maine?
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Electric is half the answer. What is the question?
I guess electric is not the solution to the presumed problem (of weaning ourselves of gasoline), if you must be a pedant. Otherwise, if there's no problem here, then we are just talking about a really expensive hobby in electric cars.
Oooo very sexy... looks practical...safe too... Oh and don't forget great in the winter.
I'm not happy with whats happened to the Volt since inception... but that doesn't mean it can't still happen.
They need to get their family vihical on the road first. Than they'll have the resources to make the sport versions.
Don't expect to see something like that on the road any time soon not in any number worth mentioning anyhow.
some people believe if we allow gays to marry, we also have to accept pedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia, polygamy...
no: this is retarded hysteria. but some people actually believe this. because they are letting their irrational fears overpower their logical thought
as you are:
you believe if we accept a little government regulation, we're on an unstoppable slippery slope into a black hole of mind control communism
uh... how about no? how about you are irrational and fear addled?
we need a market that is mostly free for a rich society. no brainer. we also need a strong government and strong regulation so the market doesn't bubble and pop. no brainer
and, on either side of these obvious and prudent realizations, from the left and the right, we have fear addled folks, like yourself, who beleive in the slippery slope
there is no slippery slope. your fears are unfounded
really
please lose your irrational fears of a little prudent regulation leading to a communist apocalypse
NOT GOING TO HAPPEN
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The second law of thermodynamics says that pushing the problem down the road is the best we can do.
Cars are not bought and sold solely on whether they make the most economic sense. GM has done a lot of research on the salability of the Volt. When you mass produce a car you need to include as large a cross section of the population as possible. In the end it was decided that making a more complex/expensive vehicle that is marketable to a larger percentage of the population won. In the end its all about volume. The lower the mileage, the more people you exclude from really considering your product. That makes it rather hard to sell large volumes. Now it could possibly be that they are wrong in their decision. But it doesn't mean they were stupid in their decision making process.
This is why you don't see very many diesels in the US. For the most part any state that follows CA emissions won't sell them. That's a massive portion of the population that you take right out of the equation of possible buyers. The result, cars like the Jeep Liberty Diesel were practically DOA and too expensive to produce because of almost guaranteed low volume sales.
The GM response is that they understand that whole "make economic sense" statement. Like some foreign gibbersh to them.
Ladies and gentlemen of Slashdot, GM would certainly want you to believe that the Volt makes sense. And they make a good case. But I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca drives a Toyota Prius. Now think about it; that does not make sense!
Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to drive a hybrid, carpooling with a bunch of environmentalists? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this post? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this post! It does not make sense! If the battery pack does not fit, you must acquit!
The defense rests.
...right now today in terms of dollars. For instance, we run a rather decent garden, have a small fruit orchard, plus grow poultry and beef. The cash made isn't that hot, but the *independence* of it, having a large amount of our food produced onsite and free from most worries about outside forces, means quite a lot to me. I can't put a dollar amount on that independence, but it sure eliminates a lot of worries about this economy to me. There's the actual dollar cost of replacement for the organic produce, grass fed beef and free range poultry there (worth some decent amount if I had to buy all of that), but the additional independence is worth more to me than the outright one for one cost savings/replacement. The same with using a woodheater for heat, and only using the propane that has to be bought as an occasional backup. Wood I got onsite, and a nice stack of it is comforting, "stored solar in the bank" as it were, that is rather easy to replace.
Electric cars and plug in hybrids are the same at this point in our tech history. They offer a driver the chance to get all or most of his "transportation stack" independent, paid off, done, and not be at the mercy of the oil cartels. (same with the guys who are making their own biofuels now at home) Many early adopters of electric vehicle conversions are also early adopters of alternative energy like solar PV, and can fuel their cars with onsite produced power, or eventually do that, get the ride, pay it off some years down the road, then take that amount your were spending for ther car note and put it towards your windcharger or solar PV, etc. Long range thinking.
Right now, penny for penny, maybe not such a clear cut economic advantage, but considering you can get independent of OPEC and commodity price swings, and political wildcards like an accidental WHOOPS in the mideast and some huge additional war breaking out, etc, and have your transpo covered and paid off for the next decade or two or even more with just an eventual (much better by then, and cheaper) battery pack replacement, this seems quite a good deal to a lot of people and is an example of a long term investment strategy using tangibles, instead of dumping your cash at the wall street crook store to "manage" for you in exchange for electronic promises of future money from a class of chronic serial liars....
Plus, all this early adoption helps, where would we be in the market now without all the early personal computer adopters? It was way expensive back then, not a lot of programs that "made money" for people and so on, there wasn't a lot of early "return on investment", but eventually there was. The people who did that (probably a huge percentage of the people reading this, thanks guys!) helped get us to where we are today with computers, which to me is science fiction come to life considering what we had in the 50s that I remember compared to today. It ain't flying cars, but damn, the internet and smartphones and the personal computer are still pretty slick compared to the ma bell long distance and being limited to only what the local library had in stock. No early adoption=not much in the way of advances. That's just how it works.
Just looking at the exact cost today is not the total picture at all with such tech advances, The intangible benefits of being one of the early adopters can be profoundly rewarding to those who want them and take advantage of it, and eventually it will be quite "cost effective" for most everyone.
And that works as long as electric cars are rare. As soon as they become popular, they create a peak of their own.
GM sells the Malibu in a 'hybrid' version. A 'mild hybrid'.
The engine has an oversized starter motor and a 36V battery pack in the spare wheel well. At a stop, the motor shuts down and is restarted in 500ms when the driver presses the acclerator pedal. Apparently, the Belt-Alternator-Starter system also can kick in and add a power boost to help with accleration, and in the city can improve MPG by 10-20% Interesting concept, and saves gas, but hybrid? Not by a mile. At least not IMHO.
But GM will claim it, and plenty of people will buy it. It does save gas, this is good. But it is an example of the slow, painful, scratching-and-clawing approach Detroit is taking towards hybrids.
I'm not very hopeful for an alternative fuel either. My personal choice is some form of ultracapacitor. A capacitor makes a lot more sense than a battery; quick recharge, fewer chemicals hopefully, lots of available current hopefully. Still got the issue of the catastrophic release of energy if the capacitor got damaged, but batteries blow up too.
I'n not hopeful we are gong to see ultracapacitors within 10 years. A long time to wait.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Ok, so I turn down my AC. How do I "turn down" the charging of my two cars at night? And for the record, the reason I don't turn down my AC is two-fold: I can afford to keep my house comfortable, and it is usually about 100 degrees with moderately high humidity in Austin, TX.
The problem is that the cost to mine, process, manufacture, and deliver large quantities of batteries is actually LESS than the cost to do so on a small scale.
Due to efficiencies of production, permitting, delivery, costs of finance, etc.
As an example, let's say they get the mineral from a small mine right now - if they move to a large facility like say Tek Cominco (who get most of their power from hydro - green power) and have low costs of production due to large efficiencies - with lower costs due to lower demand for other materials right now so they bid low to deliver the material - then the price drops, since it represents steady work with low retooling for jobs - and low frictional employment costs since they have people who can handle that.
Combine that with say Ballard Power fabbing the batteries in similar circumstances (most of their power is hydro - green).
Total cost per unit NEXT YEAR may in fact be up to ONE-TENTH total cost per unit THIS YEAR.
That's what economy of scale during a cyclical downturn gets you when you move from fabbing 500 batteries in year one to 100,000 batteries in year two.
A hamburger today may not cost the same to make as a hamburger tomorrow.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
to make any progress on any issue in this world without some passion for the topic
and with passion, this often leads to calling a moron a moron when you see a moron
sorry about that. i don't know how to not be passionate. nor how to tolerate a moron
deal with it. or don't listen to me. no one is forcing you to read my posts
we are not robots who care about these issues
that you are, or that you can only consider topics when impartially and mind-numbingly dispassionately regurgitated robotically, speaks more to your failures than mine
i care. you don't seem to you. i am not here to serve you. and you don't have to read my posts
in other words, good bye, good riddance, happy to never have to deal with you again
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I KNEW IT!!!
John H. Bryan
Retired Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer,
**SARA LEE CORPORATION**
Director since 1993
I guess now we know where the ETHANOL nonsense came from! I say we will never be rid of ethanol until we remove all sugar pushers from our board rooms!
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
The Volt isn't much different that the Prius or Civic hybrid in that you don't have to ever plug it in if you are really that lazy. But, since it has a larger battery you have the option of charging it up at night or while you are parked at work and then running on electric only for the next 40 miles or so and at highway speeds. That's not an option with the current hybrids.
If you don't typically drive more than 40 miles between charges then you may get away with never having to use gas. You could, in theory, go months without buying gas at all but if you take a long road trip you don't have to worry about range because you can put gas in it every 3 or 4 hundred miles like any other car.
GM stated the following criticism of the study:
1) The cost/benefit ratio was based on a battery price several hundred dollars more than they're currently paying. And GM claims they are making advancements that will lower the cost in the future.
2) The study compared the 7 mile electric only mode of some proposed plug-in hybrids. However, GM criticized the study for not taking into account the need to recharge every 7 miles.
I know for myself, that 7 miles doesn't do me much good. Even going to the grocery store doesn't would eat up a lot of that range.
More thoughts with better quotes here...
http://gm-volt.com/2009/03/04/gm-vp-jon-lauckner-blasts-carnegie-mellon-phev-study-and-says-volt-cells-several-hundreds-less-than-1000-per-kwh/
The thing that I don't quite understand is if an indirect ICE powertrain is so great, why don't they try to apply it to every model? Can't an electric motor output any torque at any RPM, limited only by how much power you can cram into it? Forget the batteries, if I were a truck manufacturer I'd be all over that. More power, better milage, more control at low RPM with high torque, what's not to like. And to think of all the advancements that could be made to the ICE if its design requirements went from a broad range of RPM/torque to one specific setting, or perhaps a few (for variable electrical output). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the indirect gas/electric powertrain design has legs even without being supported by large battery banks.
With the raise of demand, the environmental requirements will be dropped to compensate for the need to build new power plants fast.
Yes because California has a HUGE demand and they have power plants going up so fast.... If your statement was true California would have no shortage of power in the summer and no rolling blackouts right? Do you have any proof that in high demand for electricity environmental regulations have been lessened?
By dropping the requirements, we will get power plants that will generate 3 to 4 times more pollution that the "green" vehicles will generate.
Also you are assuming that all power plants being built will be coal or oil burning. Natural Gas burns clean, Wind is clean, Solar is clean, Hydroelectric is clean, and in some respects nuclear is clean (in regards to CO2 pollution.)
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
I don't understand how GM is "betting the ranch" on a car that is going to cost somthing like $40,000 per unit, and GM expects to only produce in runs of 10,000. That means that they expect the Volt to sell something like 40,000 units.
They might be wagering that the second generation Volt will sell better, but the first is definatly just a prestige car.
What energy are you going to sell back? Does the Volt come with a solar pack or something? Also, the concept of 'off-peak' power requires meters that distinguish time of day. Most of the ones out there just spin mindlessly and tally up total kWh
Russian Chevy's are the new thing. What do you think they did with your money? They spent it everywhere but here. The Volt is just a GM magician pulling asking a German engineer to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Do you know why the Camaro was discontinued after 2002? The Canadians wouldn't let us use the name... oh snap.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
how come the markets, in their infinite wisdom, are not immune to human fear and human greed?
So your answer to that is to impose regulation? And who imposes regulation? The Government. Your magical entity obviously immune to human fear and human greed.
And conservatards? Seriously, most of your posts are much smarter than that. I think you're confusing fiscal conservatives and Republicans, they don't overlap that much anymore on a Venn diagram.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Perhaps they stopped leasing them because they predicted that it would be cheaper to stop than it would be to continue?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I liken many of these new technologies to those ripoff infomercials about losing weight.
"If you take this Pill, you will lose all the weight you want!"
Its the same as industry saying, buy this new technology car and be as wasteful as before!
As anybody that has half a brain will tell you the secret to losing weight is simple, it is a lifestyle change. Eat less food, eat better food when you do, and be more active.
Same can be said about our current dilemma. You want to have cleaner air, and help the environment, etc... Well here is how you do it: Its called walking. Alternative crazy machines like "Bikes". Also the concept of "Mass Transportation", etc... This isn't new technology, its called being responsible. Sure new technologies help, and sure they can do great good, but don't believe the BS that the auto companies are trying to "sell" for one second. Because that is exactly right, they all they are interesting is in selling and the status quo. They want eveyone to buy one of their products, or two even. If it wears out, but two more. The fact that the total cost of ownership in terms of pollution etc, is actually higher then proven efficient old technologies doesn't matter. Its about PR, hype, and selling product.
If you are really interested in the environment, clean air, etc... try walking to work, or biking, or taking a bus, or train, etc... Buy a house or rent close to where you work. Try not to be wasteful in anything you do. The simple basic things you do are likely way more effective than anything else.
And of course, none of the other automakers have brought an electric car like the Volt to market yet either. I suppose hackus believes the oil companies control every automaker.
I'm opting to buy a plug-in prius next year. It will be cheaper than the Volt, and most likely higher in reliability.
At least I am seeing some return on my tax dollars, as the Volt has stimulated Toyota to keep their Lithium-ion plug-in on schedule.
It's funny how people love to take this stance about government. Sorry, government mandates do not always hurt economies. If that were the case then we'd have no Internet right now, no public roads, no police, no public schools. These are all things that commercial interests would not have picked up on their own that required massive investments.
Even gas powered cars would not have taken off so readily if the government hadn't helped oil companies grow. Lack of oversight became the real problem, not involvement in general.
That said, the CO2 problem is irrelevant. CO2 does cause temperatures to rise and does cause massive amounts of algae to grow in the ocean killing many other species. The impact we have as humans is up for pointless debate but the reality remains that the earth will get warmer even if we stop all emissions today. The question is whether we want to prolong this process by reducing emissions or help it move forward by continuing as we are. That is the real debate as such you are right that we should shift our focus to nuclear technology although I have no idea how government is somehow preventing nuclear plants when here in AZ they were going to build another out near Yuma but private citizens banned together and blocked it, not government. In fact, the government was heavily encouraging the development through very enticing tax credits.
Electric cars probably won't ever become viable because batteries are tough to make, although they are 100% recyclable so it might be worth it. Fuel cells are probably the best future bet, but hydrogen is the only thing we currently have enough technology to deploy widely at the cost of having to build more power plants through hopefully renewable sources which can be combinations of technology thankfully. Nuclear power is nicely dense, solar power has its merits here in AZ, hydroelectric power works beautifully in lots of places. There are a lot of options and we need to leverage as many as we can.
The story of the EV1 is much more complex. There is a great movie about the EV1 called "Who Killed the Electric Car." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489037/ It's clearly produced from an anti-GM standpoint, but it raises a lot of questions about GM's practices, motivations, and their current inability to provide a hybrid-electric vehicle that works.
Per kilogram of fuel is variable. It's distance traveled per unit of energy that matters.
unless you think any sort of emotional response is an inability to deal with criticism. maybe you are just dealing with someone who is passionate about the subject. how do you differentiate between someone who is just passionate versus someone who is emotional due to an inability to deal? or do you differentiate ebtween the two? ;-) xoxoxoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
At present level of technology it would be possible for the US to build enough solar plants to fill it's entire electricity needs (requires lots of investment, but the money required is in the same order of magnitude as the Iraq war). It would only take a small part of the deserts and salt flats in the US (environmentalists would be pissed off, but they are perpetually pissed off).
Nuclear is still slightly cheaper, but with such a scale project I doubt that advantage would survive. Also it's a lot easier to ramp up the building of these because they require less expertise and security than a nuclear plant.
Of course with a ~25% round trip efficiency from electricity->hydrogen->electricity hydrogen is still not that great a way of storing energy.
They were leasing at a loss because they made LESS THAN TWO HUNDRED of the damn things. A production run of them would bring the price per unit down hugely. As said below, the problem with electric cars is that they are _too good_, they're too reliable and they don't break down. The only secondary industry other than smash repairs and tyres is replacing the battery packs, and that's not something a car company like GM wants to retool to become.
If they were genuinely not a good product, and that's all there was to it, then why would GM have recalled and quietly crushed them instead of just letting people buy out the leases? Don't say liability or maintainence reasons, they're easy to get around with contract terms.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
EVs are virtually maintenance-free because they never need oil changes, air filters, tune-ups, mufflers, timing belts, or emission tests.
Just like I'll never need a hysterectomy because I'm not a girl? Seriously, do EVs not have mechanical parts? Just because they don't have a muffler means the brake rotors will never need replaced? Awesome, where do I get one!? Why does my mountain bike require so much god damned maintenance? It doesn't need an air filter or emissions tests either.
GM has no choice at this point. They have taken so much government cheese that they will build whatever they are told to, no matter the cost.
That said, as much as I liked and wanted a Prius, the numbers did not add up. I could get a Fit that averages 38/41 on my commute for $10,000 less than a Prius that averages 45/47mpg on my commute. The Prius no longer has a tax subsidy and 10 grand is a huge nut. I went for the cash in hand.
My VW Rabbit in high school got 60mpg, and my friends' Civics and CRX's got 40+ in the 1980's....why do even small 4cyl cars get such bad mileage today? Is it just the weight of added safety features?
The Government is only fulfilling one of it's basic functions by giving tax breaks to both GM and the consumer for the Volt. This is one of the reasons we have a government, to steer us into a better future, despite the fact that neither the producer nor the consumer will benefit economically by going that direction in the short or medium term.
That is true. However, I'm quite comfortable with the 'window' that solar energy gives us until it runs out.
.there is enough of everything for everyone.
It probably got modded troll because it is anti-libertarian in it's slant, which doesn't go over well in these parts, I hear.
The government is infinitely less prone to hysteria than individual mobs. in fact, it is less prone to emotional fluctuations than any other entity in the equation You haven't really been paying attention, have you? Democracies will reverse course on a dime in order to pander to the shrieking lunatics of the moment.
Don't expect to see something like that on the road any time soon not in any number worth mentioning anyhow.
I don't. But I can fantasize might have happened if Aptera Motors had been the recipient of a sizable chunk of that $25 billion of "improved efficiency" money that was squandered on Detroit.
Listen to what I say, not what I mean...
#4 -- Fiat is coming back to the US market (or is it Renault?) Unfortunately, the last time they where here, they made crappy cars, so that's what sticks in consumers minds.
Could be solved with a ... gas tax
That doesn't seem very valid since there already is a gas tax but there seems to still be a problem, since you felt the need to offer the solution of a gas tax.
and yet that still makes them the most stable entity in the room
as you described them, that still makes them more stable than the mobs of greedy/ fearful investors
as further proof: please describe to me an entity in your mind that you think is MORE stable than the awful government entity you just described. i don't think you can think of one. no one can. no one has
the point is not to find the perfect regulatory entity. none exists. the point is to find the best regulatory entity possible. simply because no regulatory entity is worse than a messy regulatory entity. feel me now?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Some already do. Many(almost all?) diesel trains are really diesel/electric. Trucking companies are getting electric assists motors that are powered by electricity generated when idling at the dock or in slow traffic.
You do need some storage though. That, and how powerful an engine you can fit before displacing the ICE, are the limiting factors.
At the current gas price at about $2.25 here in the L.A. area, the choice currently is OPEC, not the Energizer. But at the price of fuel going over $5.00 a gallon, those cars with Battery Power will very tempting. Solar is starting to look good also, as Edison says it needs a 100 Million Dollars to give to it higher level staff as bonuses for doing such a wonderful job. Let's see, energy from the Sun and the Wind, that I can plug into at home. It's starting to look like a very straightforward solution.
There appear to be a few common myths being repeated here.
No, it isn't. Octane rating methodology is different. Read Octane Rating
1. Please make sure your are not quoting UK gallons - they are bigger than US gallons, and therefore get more miles.
2. Please understand that fuel efficiency measurements in Europe are quite different than in the US. The 2008 US EPA measurement methodology is much more conservative.
Diesel in Europe is cheaper than gasoline only because it gets vastly preferential tax treatment.
It may have something to do with poor diesel history in the US, but also with health side effects. Even with ULSD, the nanoparticles are suspected contributors to pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases.
BTW, I love diesels. I love driving them, I love the torque, I love increased fuel efficiency. However, it is important to know the whole story because the other side has very good points as well.
As for hybrids and plug-in hybrids, yes, I will likely buy the new Honda Insight when it becomes available even if it costs more than a regular vehicle of the same kind, and even if I cannot recoup the extra price. I would rather pay more money for R&D into technology than drop coins into Al Qaida's collection box.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
absolutely. do whatever you want on your land. if it affects NO ONE ELSE'S LAND. duh. why do you think i want to regulate wha tonly affects you? didn't you read my comment? didn't you see the part where i talked about about imposing on other people's freedom and was against that?
(smack forehead)
why do you think you just negated my point? what the hell does property rights have to do with it? why do think changing the entire subject is a valid line of thought?
if you throw the beer can on public land, WHICH WAS MY POINT, or if you examine my example of the coal plant dumping CO2 in the atmosphere, WHICH WAS MY POINT, you can see that my point remains completely untouched by your tirade about private land, and therefore completely irrelevant
you meanwhile, have completely changed the subject, and i don't even think you noticed
"So why would you take away my property and rights to live as I see fit (read: freedom) over something has been happening naturally long before man existed?"
ok, again this bizarre confusing of public property and private property in your mind. i'll let you try to work that out. i don't want to touch that lunacy with a ten foot pole
meanwhile:
are you saying man has been dumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere long before man existed?
(snicker)
wait: actually, you are right, there IS a natural corollary to what man is doing: volcanic explosions
which fucking basic science and historical record shows DRAMATICALLY CHANGES THE CLIMATE
here, let me educate you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
you lose
good day sir
(if you respond, please try not to change the subject. or confuse public and private property. it doesn't win the argument. k thx)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
one doesn't even care to make an argument
duh
issues are not brought forth, nor are they settled, by robots
you care about an issue, and you therefore get involved. right?
rather: how does one solve, never mind get involved in, an issue they don't even care about?
consider this intellectual charity on my part for you about some simple concepts about the basic functioning of human social interaction
i hope you educate yourself further on the subject matter before you respond and make yourself look like a bigger fool
but i'm glad by responding to me you've shown some passion for the subject
(snicker)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
meanwhile, when you throw your beer can from your hunting blind, you're an asshole.
Mod +1, freakin' hilarious.
What most posters fail to recognize is that tax credits and federal subsidies are part of virtually all new energy projects. Wind? Solar? Batteries? Biomass? Energy storage? Nuclear? All receive numerous subsidies. The Production Tax Credit, or PTC, available to most "green" generation resources, is absolutely critical to making these resources economic. Without the PTC, wind and solar would cost consumers substantially more -- much further above the 2-8 cent per kilowatt-hour premium over conventional coal and gas generation.
And forget about the "subsidies" available to oil and gas, including military build up, nominal fees for access to public land, etc. My only point is that people need to can the outrage that GM is subsidizing the Volt. We do it every day for public policy reasons, and frankly, there's nothing wrong with that.
And lastly, one personnel note about the cost of new alternatively fueled vehicles, including the Prius. No matter how high gas prices go, it is rarely going to make purely economic sense to buy a hybrid/electric car. Not only do they sell for approximately a 20 percent premium, but there's also an added risk factor of purchasing a relatively new concept vehicle without the decades of experience that we've had with other cars. People focusing on this miss the point.
I bought my car because I love it and wanted to be part of making the world a better place. It's cool and the most technologically advanced mass production car on the road. It drives well, and still makes me happy when I cruise to a stoplight and the engine shuts off. This is about love; not dollars and cents.
Clearly, economical cost is the only reason to select a car for purchase. When I bought my last car, I took no consideration whatsoever of comfort, capabilities, personal preference, and desired features. I do not personally know anyone who has ever purchased a car other than a used car in the $1000-$2000 price range. Certainly a good portion of these used cars break down, require maintenance, and get poor gas mileage. But the cost savings alone are tremendous. Even when the car gets 17-20 MPG, saving $15,000 upfront buys a lot of gas.
I've never been tempted to buy a car because it looks cool, drives well, is comfortable, or suits my personal philosophy of life. I simply walk up to the dealership and say "I need to drive between 12,019 and 16,302 miles per year; I presume any car I buy will between 2.14 and 5.86 years; and I expect that the price of gasoline will be between $1.86 and $3.72. Please provide me with a calculator so that I can select the correct vehicle to purchase."
I have heard rumors that some consumers make stupid decisions based upon non-cash factors. In fact, some deluded souls have even been known to value a car that is less polluting over one that is more polluting. I even was told that an acquaintance once purchased a car because he liked its looks and its "road feel", whatever that is. I'm glad there aren't any magazines devoted to those kinds of people who care about automobiles for anything other than practical cost effectiveness.
Battery replacements are horrendous for the environment and they're expensive.
Insightful my ass. What a ridiculous analogy, unless we were all using gas powered lamps yesterday and all suddenly decided to buy light bulbs today.
So how come no one has stepped in and built one? Certainly, tens of millions of sure sales (after all, they are terrific...) is enough to get funding.
I'm pretty sure the problem is battery technology, just to make that clear (especially relative to cheap gas/oil...). In the last ten years, they have improved significantly and are reaching the point where you can build a practical vehicle around them (but that vehicle still isn't as practical as a gasoline vehicle, especially if gas costs $3).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
For all you morons who say "duhhhhh, I don't see any oil execs in GM's boardroom", what the parent is referring to is GM's partnership with Chevron to license large scale NiMH battery technology way back in 2000 to effectively shut down all electric vehicle. Cobasys was basically a patent troll which sued Toyota over their electric RAV vehicle way back in 2002, plus preventing this same battery technology from letting the (then) EV-1 from getting a 200 mile range! If it weren't for the oil companies doing this blatent power grabbing anti-capitalist move, we might have been driving EV-1s by now. Even fucking TODAY people who want to retrofit Prius with extended range NiMH battery packs have to worry about "intellectual property" so those fucking oil companies are STILL inhibiting innovation in electric cars. Guess what these oil companies are doing with all the trillions of dollars they recently received from the recent $4/gal last year? Wonder if they're looking into Lion technology :-/
Next time, get a fucking clue before you speak...
Just because you bought a crappy mountain bike...
Ingredients: Turkey, Mechanically Separated Turkey, Water, Salt, Flavour.
the contrast between freedom and security is a false dichotomy. terrorists are not people who take advantage of freedoms in order to make havoc, therefore showing us the need to constrain freedoms. rather, terrorists are people produced form societies with no freedoms at all. thereby showing us the need to maintain freedoms and EXTEND them
Brilliant idea--let's go into two of the most notoriously unfree countries in the world--Iraq and Afghanistan--and we'll EXTEND our freedoms there. Saudi Arabia ain't great either, let's EXTEND our freedom there. Because, like you said "terrorists are people producted from socieities with no freedoms" ... your conclusions is we need to extend freedom. Mission accomplished!
Secondly, freedom and security is indeed a false dichotomy that you injected into this conversation.
you don't have the freedom to be irresponsible in such a way that it hurts me, my environment, that i share with you. the notion of freedom never ever included your right to be irresponsible in such a way that it hurts other people. when you litter, you impose on my freedom, and i, in the name of my freedom, and the freedom of y societ yot have a clean environment, will fight lazy irresponsible assholes like you, who don't even understand what freedom really is
What you've just spoken on is the tyranny of the masses and the worst in oppressive tendencies of the left. I assume you threw in the "hunting blind" example I assume this is just a classist way of attacking your political enemies? In any case, the parent said absolutely nothing about being allowed to throw beer cans on the ground--yet another one of your straw man arguments you keep tossing out.
is that enough "straight talk" for you genius? am i unclear on any concepts?
You are ABSOLUTELY unclear on what true freedom is, yes. You make your point--and what kind of society you want to live in--absolutely clear.
I've been reading Slashdot for many years, but never registered. This one got me.
IMHO, you can summarize the whole article with this:
1) Heavier cars have worse fuel economy.
2) Batteries are much heavier than gasoline per joule.
3) Carrying around batteries on a trip that you aren't going to use wastes energy.
That's pretty much it. The only conclusion you could draw for the Volt is that in the opinion of the paper's authors, the Volt's battery should be smaller. GM disagrees. Personally, I think the ideal solution would be to offer 3 versions of the Volt with batteries that will take the car 10, 20, or 40 miles depending on how much you paid for the battery. I believe that would make the authors of the paper happy. The problem from GM's POV is that the Volt is a very low volume car. Adding options like that is probably something they would like to do when the volume is higher.
What the paper authors are missing is that electric vehicles are much cheaper to operate than gas vehicles. Tesla estimates it costs about a penny a mile to operate the Roadster. If the cost of operation is 10% higher because of the extra batteries being carried around, I don't really care. 1.1 cents per mile is not a problem.
The authors just glance at what, IMHO, the real problem with pretty much all electric cars is. The cost of the batteries is HUGE. The cost has almost nothing to do with the materials in the batteries. This is an assembly problem. The only way I know of to solve that is volume.
That means that, IMHO, the government tax credits to subsidize the PHEV vehicles based on battery size are a good solution. If mass production can dramatically lower the price of the batteries, then the subsidies won't be needed in a few years, and the batteries will be cheap. If they can't figure out how to make the batteries cheap, well then we are screwed. But the government subsidies do have caps on them so after the experiment, the government money turns off automatically.
I've taken many economics courses and your response doesn't take into consideration all of the economic issues... Points 2 and 3 leave out consideration of hidden economic costs not calculated directly in the cost of fossil fuels. The cost of wars in the Middle East are not accurately reflected in the cost of the fuel we get from there. And regardless of the fact that Middle Eastern oil will be sold to other countries, it is an economic benefit to the US not to have to rely on the Middle East for oil. It means we can more readily avoid costly wars in that region, and it also means we can devote less resources to stockpiling oil as we have to do now because of the fact we cannot afford a long term disruption in that source. Your analysis also doesn't reflect the economic benefits of decoupling the fuel source from the transportation sector of our economy... there are economic benefits when we are able to arbitrage the energy source for the transportation sector over many energy options.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Depends on how you drive and whether you ride the breaks. I drove my normal car for 80K miles and I barely needed to replace the breaks. I'm one of those people that don't follow too closely and I ease up on gas when I see a red light coming up in the distance so I let wind and engine compression slow me down. If I'm going down a long mountain, I put it in 3rd or 2nd gear and let engine compression control my speed rather than trying to use the breaks for something they're not designed to do. Breaks are not supposed to be used for slowing you down; they're designed for stopping.
Also, you need to factor in the brutal cost of changing the battery in hybrid cars. It's a LOT more money than breaks.
The main items are the same ones as on a conventional car - headlights and other bulbs, tires, wiper blades, and front-end alignments.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Consumers are complacent about fossil fuels, but they are not complacent about their wallets. Why do we continue to buy fossil fuel cars? Because they are the cheapest technology right now.
Yes, because it's all too convenient to save a few dollars today, and don't bother about getting screwed tomorrow. Because, for one thing, it's tomorrow and not today, and for another, maybe someone else will get screwed.
Short-term thinking. It's precisely what has lead to the ongoing financial crisis.
Take an economics course. Government mandates HURT ECONOMIES. There is no exception to this rule.
Did you take an economics course? 'cause that's not what they're teaching in any decent university when it comes to economics, you know. The government produces nothing and does not act in the best interest of the people with tax dollars.
You wrote "Seriously, do EVs not have mechanical parts? Just because they don't have a muffler means the brake rotors will never need replaced?"
The maintenance of EVs is WAY lower than typical cars today. Your example of brake pads is a perfect example. Yes, EVs have brake pads. Since the EV uses regenerative braking, a huge percentage of the energy of stopping is recovered electrically and there is little wear on the brake pad. With the right driving habits, the original brake pads on an EV could easily last the life of the vehicle.
Yes, there are mechanical parts, but there are fewer of them, they are much simpler, and they have proven to be far more reliable. This clear superiority led some of the original car makers 100 years ago to build electric cars. Those all quickly went away because of the one real huge problem with EVs, those darn batteries.
Solve the battery problem (which modern technology may actually be doing), and no one will want an IC car anymore.
could you contrast that with the society you want to live in?
i don't see that we actually disagree on anything. except perhaps the belief that people from unfree societies will leave free societies alone
oh, right: islamic fundamentalist nutjobs are the product of american policies. as opposed to being products of strict religious backgrounds?
which do you believe?
darling: when you cross the rio grande, or the straights of bosporus, or the ural mountains, or the rock of gibraltar, human rights don't magically warp into some other concepts. human rights are human rights are human rights
now you don't have to agree with neoconservative bullshit "bomb them to freedom"
but surely you don't believe that when someone is unfree somewhere else in this world, that that has no effect on you, and you don't have to get involved, and the effect of lack of freedom elsewhere won't come bite you in the ass someday, WHATEVER the usa did in the cold war? (the typcial braindead way of explaining away what religious nutjobs do to the west, as somehow deserved by the west, is what the west did in the last century when fighting the soviets. please!)
lets put it this way: if the usa NEVER EXISTED, would there still be islamic nutjobs blowing up their fellow muslims?
and would it still be valid or not to fight these assholes?
in the name of the freedom you, and i, hold dear?
or do you believe only westerners deserve freedom?
i am a human being. that allegiance for me is stronger to me than being a westerner
how about you?
is the west some special club? that has no need for a human conscience to care that human beings, your fellow human beings, are not free elsewhere?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Few new technologies make economic sense. They need early adopters to allow production to ramp up and get the price down.
And the fact that it doesn't make economic sense is clear from the premium you pay for those cars. Nevertheless, people are willing to pay the premium anyway.
I just spent a few days driving around Germany in a rented Opal Zafira. Its the first transmission I've ever used that I'd truly call a "semi-automatic"
No Clutch Pedal
No Park Gear - You park in Neutral and use the hand brake
Automatic shifter mode, or you can shift up/down sort of manually.
Lots of cars have this manual-shift control to go along with what is otherwise an automatic transmission, but not like this thing. You could feel that in this car it really was a standard transmission with a clutch plate and release bearing rather than a torque converter.
It made for a truly terrible drive. Constantly shifting like a manual transmission -- very jerky -- but since you don't control the clutch you never know when its going to happen and its not nearly as smooth as a skilled driver would be with a clutch pedal.
Why would anyone want this? Without control over the clutch, you don't get the benefits of driving a manual transmission.
The only good thing I'll say about this little car was that it had plenty of room in front and got good fuel economy. Otherwise -- ugh.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
i would like you to look at the stock market today
its kinda low, you think?
maybe because people are afraid right now
operating in fear
as opposed to the greed lust they felt a few years back, when they were busy inflating a bubble
right?
so why did this happen?
BECAUSE THEY ROLLED BACK REGULATIONS AND ENFORCEMENT YOU BLIND MORON
when a market is unregulated, guess what? it bubbles, and pops, bubbles and pops
why?
because the players in the marketplace are not impartial robots. they are emotional human beings
got that?
there is no such thing as a perfect market place, because it is run by HUMAN BEINGS
so it needs ot be REGULATED, to save it from bubbling and popping
furthermore, there is this hilarious belief that you don't need regulations in automobile manufacture. that auto makers, in the benevolent reading the unspoken desires of consumers, would inject billions into the investment of safety features
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
man you are bloviating fool
hey, einstein: salmonella in peanuts? melamine in chinese milk? HELLOOOO? been paying attention to the news? how did this happen: LACK OF REGULATION EINSTEIN
or is your argument tha tdeath of human beings just a perfectly valid part of market corrections?
please, run with that, you'll go far
you NEED market regulation. if you don't see that, you are blind dumb fool
you are truly a grade a market fundamentalmist moron
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Not to mention that coal fired power plants in the US spew more radioactive materials into the environment than what is used for fuel by all the nuclear power plants in the US.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
FTFA: We find that when charged frequently, every 20 miles or less, using average U.S. electricity, small-capacity PHEVs are less expensive and release fewer GHGs than hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs) or conventional vehicles.
At least 95% of my trips are 20 miles or less round trip. If I can charge the vehicle at my destination, I can make 40 mile round trips - assuming it doesn't take a week to charge.
Also FTFA: For moderate charging intervals of 20-100 miles, PHEVs release fewer GHGs, but HEVs are more cost effective.
I might make a 100 mile trip 3 times a year at the most.
Yes... government mandates hurt economies. Usually what is cheaper is better in the short term. That is pretty much the definition of capitalism. But that doesn't mean it is better in the long term. The government needs mandates to tax externalities like pollution. By your logic, we should get rid of the EPA. Companies having to pay to dispose of their waste cost money, so hurts the economy, so is therefore bad??? Also, even if you want to destroy the environment, having our country's energy source dependent on other countries is also not a good thing (but it is cheaper). Capitalism is not the end all be all, it has to be regulated. It naturally promotes unfair situations (monopolies) and doesn't take into account a lot of things that do not have a monetary value associated with them (security, freedom). Were you in the US when gas was $4 a gallon? People were struggling quite badly. They had these big gas guzzlers, but could not afford to buy a more efficient car because all of their money was going to paying for gas. Its a vicious cycle. We should wean ourselves off gas at our own rate when people can adjust for it, not just wait for gas to start doubling in value every year. Also, do you know why gas is at $2 a gallon now. It is because demand went down. The middle eastern countries are getting LESS MONEY per barrel because Americans stopped buying as much gas. That is simple economics. If the US totally got off oil, the oil would become very cheap and the middle eastern countries would lose a lot of their power. China would be happy because they have cheap oil, but they don't want to take up the slack in our demand because they are polluted already. I think I addressed all your points, if not tell me which ones and I will continue to tell you why you are wrong.
Just because you bought a crappy mountain bike...
Gary Fisher disagrees with you.
And further fact checking results in it getting moderated all the way down to -1 Troll. Turns out the system works, just over a longer timescale than some people are patient enough to wait for.
Yes, but I'm not the one claiming that an EV is "virtually maintenance-free". "EVs have much lower maintenance requirements than gas engines" is a responsible statement; "virtually maintenance-free" is not. That's a biased statement, made to mislead and further an agenda. Even if an EV has a lot fewer parts, they will still need maintenance, as strictly being an EV doesn't exempt mechanical parts from breaking.
and i believe the neoconservative "bomb people for freedom" is bullshit and backfires. you can extend freedom in far more effective and subtle ways
however, the problem is that isolationism doesn't work
#1: you live on a tiny piece of rock in a giant void in space. you are not isolated, in any physical or social or material way from the tribesman in kandahar. what they think affects you. and visa versa. especially in an age of jet air travel and internet. perhaps isolationism would be valid in the days of colonialism, and you could fight for isolationism then. but even then, sailing ships were beginning to mix cultures, and i don't know how you can fight that, since that impulse is simple commerce, and people want their spices, regardless of the fact that their desire for spices destroys the validity of isolationism as an effective philosophy. and EVEN when a society chooses isoloationism, along comes admiral perry and forces your society open
#2: isolation doesn't work especially in a roomful of arrogance. that is, that islamic scholar or that chinese technocrat: they believe their ideology can be exported. the islamic fundamentalist thinks the whole world should be under a caliphate, since islam is the only valid way to live. the chinese authoritarian technocrat would like to stifle "subversive" thinking worldwide, since it just riles up the complacent zombifaction of the working chinese slave. and these arrogant beliefs have no problem disregarding your beliefs, especially since, in your silence and your isolationism, you have indicated you won't fight for what you believe, when they will
furthermore, you cannot label humanism as just a version of western arrogance. fucking bullshit. humanism is humanism is humanism. sure, you can say i don't have a lock on what humanism is, that i'm no authority and i am wrong on certain points. in no way i am saying i am authority. but humanism, the concept of universal humanism, having nothing pro-western or anti-western or anything western about it, is a real and valid concept, regardless of how wrong i might be
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And diesel fuel is taxed more in the US because it's mostly used by large trucks. It's an attempt to shift the burden of road repair onto the vehicles that do the most damage.
Of course, this whole fund-the-roads-from-fuel-fees idea is going to break down as plug-in vehicles become practical. We should just shift to a user fee where once a year you go to a DMV station, they weigh your vehicle and look at its odometer, and send you a bill.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Environmentalists should care about miles per BTU. If you only care about dollars, then it should be miles per dollar traveled. Dollars per gallon don't really tell you anything.
No, that's what you are referring to. The parent was quite obviously talking about board members and was incredibly off base. You may have your own point, but it is not the point of the OP.
You might also look at hackus' prior comments in other threads. They're all fairly inane, disjointed ramblings. A couple of my favorites:
"This whole economic crisis was obviously contrived, and planned. No way could a bunch of home owners cause a 2 trillion bail out."
"What is the only way to send signals instantaneously without distance becoming a limiting factor in todays world?
Do we know of any such system today?
Well, yes we do. But, I won't mention it here, because it is at the very leading edges of computing and you will just have to look for yourselves. But it involves tapping unseen states of matter which exist outside time and space."
I would also state that the design of most hybrid cars, including the plug-in Volt introduce a needlessly complex automotive design that will require more maintenance during product lifetime. While this will benefit the automotive and automotive service industries, consumers could easily pay more for maintenance. Since hybrids utilize both internal combustion and electrical motor components in addition to new, unproven battery technologies, many complex automotive systems must remain functional to drive the vehicle successfully. The Volt will introduce even more complexity by adding the plug-in features to hybrid design. Automobiles should utilize one energy source for the simplest and most reliable design possible. This will also decrease the weight of the vehicle. Either efficient gasoline vehicles or 100% electric plug-ins would be much simpler than any hybrid model. Furthermore, most hybrid fuel efficiency ratings are reportedly far more efficient than experienced under most driving conditions.
GM has no intention of ever making electrics for sale. GM made electrics, leased them, had very happy leasees, destroyed them and refused to let people buy them. GM always wants longer range, just wait another few years, not a car to buy today. 10 years ago I wanted a car with less than 20 mile range. Today my trip is still 3 miles out, 3 miles back. A 15 mile range electric for 2 people would be good for daily to-from work travel. For longer travels just hitch a generator trailer. Generator trailer could add 300 mile range, luggage rack, enclosed cargo, pickup bed or what you need. Still wondering Y GM will be bankrupt?
Fair enough, and a rather valid point... there are many little companies that would do well to have a piece of the pie.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And sasquatch hate them too.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
in fact, it is quite arrogant to say to me that an indian, or an egyptian, or a brazilian, or an indonesian, or a japanese, cannot enunciate humanism, and believe in it wholly, and conceive of it originally, in every way you think is some sort of magically and unique western conception
pure unadulterated bullshit
if you really believe that humanism as a rational and universal concept is a western conception, then you have to believe that the very conception of universality and rationality are somehow distinctly western. as if a nonwestern can't grasp those concepts like a westerner? if you believe that, this is incredibly ethnocentric of you
but i won't go so far as to call you ethnocentric. what i will say is this, and let the reality sink in:
"western humanism" is an logically invalid concept. just as invalid as "indian humanism" or "russian humanism". either its humanism, or not. there is no such thing as a regional flavor to an ideology which is foundational on universal truths. there is no such thing as a nonuniversal universality. see my drift? your entire conception is logically invalid and void of substance
please get off your high horse. there is nothing special about the west. universal humanism is a real and valid concept. i can deviate from my conception of what it is. you can deviate from a valid conception of it. neither of us are authorities. but it doesn't mean that the conception is invalid, or still somehow valid with a regional flavoring
you can talk to me about westernism
you can talk to me about humanism
but you can't talk to me about western humanism. this is like trying to talk to me about dry wetness, or bright darkness. self-contradictory terminology
and also, you can't say i am a westerner when i talk about humanism, or criticize my humanism based on western ideals
simply because i don't confuse the two. YOU do
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
True on your beer and your land. However, that still gives you no right to spill your motor oil on your property, or to dump arsenic waste on your property. The point being: just because something happens on your property doesn't mean it doesn't affect anybody else, and that all laws are suspended. You live in a society, you give up certain freedoms to do so.
As for Global Climate Change, it's actually fairly well understood. I can't help it that you don't.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Weather kills people all the time. The forensics is a little trickier though: fewer fingerprints and more computer simulations, fewer explosives and more droughts. On the flip side, there's still plenty of expert testimony.
That's very true. Weather kills all kinds of people. However, none of that weather can be attributed to man-made global warming (although, I've heard people claim that the recent tsunamis were global warming related!). Weather has killed millions of people throughout history, weather the earth was warm or in an ice age. Actually, ice ages are more of a hazard.
But to get this back on topic... In a flood, would you rather be in an SUV or a Volt? For that matter, I would say that the fight against global warming has killed more people than global warming itself. How many have died of heat stroke in California brownouts because the greens in CA won't allow new power plants to be built? How many people have died riding motor cycles and mopeds because they got better gas mileage? I don't have the numbers, but if it's greater than one, it's a bigger killer than global warming.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
With breeder reactors and pulling uranium out of sea water we have enough fissile material to last virtually indefinately. Ok sure, we'll run out eventually but by that time the earth will be inside of a very large, very red sun so we'll have plenty of energy available.
Government mandates HURT ECONOMIES
No, BAD government mandates hurt economies, GOOD government mandates help economies. Take California - they deregulated electricity generation and transmission, and the result was blackouts and brownouts that hurt other industries. Removing government mandates hurt their economy.
How much did the people who got sick and died from food poisoning help the economy? Clearly, mandating food safety is GOOD for the economy as well.
Free Martian Whores!
I blame CARB not for crumbling, but for issuing a mandate in the first place. GM had voluntarily started to experiment with electric cars, and in their eyes they got punished for their good intentions. It's no wonder that they turned around and fought back hard against CARB, and did what they could to banish the distasteful memory once they'd won.
A carrot was needed to encourage cars like the EV1, and CARB used a stick. The stick was probably all they had, but it was still the wrong approach. The EV1 was probably too early to really be successful, but without CARB's pressure they would have been more likely to keep trying.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
The Volt can work. It's simply designed not to. This is the EV-1 (Impact) all over again. GM seems to be run by people that are determined to ruin it. It would not surprise me if that is the plan. Take the free taxpayers' bailout money, steal it, bankrupt General Motors and get hired by the new owners who planned the whole thing out. This could also be planned to break the Detroit unions that cost so much and make American cars so uncompetitive.
You're correct as far as you go. However, you missed the fact that in much of Europe the "regular" gas is labeled as 95 octane, while their "premium" is 98-100.
So even accounting for the measurement differences, Europe still has higher octane fuel.
can be traced back before the enlightenment to arabic, chinese, and indian lines of thought. it is part of a human whole, and was never truly isolated anyways
but forget all that. here's the real crux of the matter: the ideas of humanism are universal, and require no special effort other than just trying to be a moral person
in other words, you wish to propose to me that some herculean edifice of great western effort delivered to us a conceptualization of humanism only valid after much trial and error and deep thought
fucking bullshit
all humanism is can be understood, and is understood, by most elementary school students, the world over, in every culture, across every time period
the biggest lie religion tells us, especially judeochristian thought, is that it originates much of morality
no, it coopts it
true morality, true humanism, is organically understood by individual human beings in most societies, as a simple byproduct of simple normal human social development
if every religion and every ideology were destroyed today, simple humanism would be what would develop in its place. its the default human ideology, not the height of extreme intellectual effort and some bizarre exception (and then of course, new religions would form and new contrarian ideologies would develop, and the whole jungle of human thought would reassert itself and begin to crowd out simple humanism again)
for example, most of humanistic morality can be understood simply be putting yourself in someone else's shoes. there is no intellectual or ideological prerequisite to this mental effort. simple human empathy is exactly that: simple and human
it is certain religious, and apparently in your case, academic fools who somehow believe this great magical effort has to go in conceptualizing these very simple, face value ideas to humanism and morality. fucking bullshit. burn every philosophy book and every religious text. kindergarteners will grow up with a sense of morality and reason perfectly sound. most of morality is simple mental efforts, not deep and convoluted and evolved ones
the very notion of all men being equal is not some amazing intellectual discovery no one thought of before voltaire
it is an idea a kindergartener can enunciate, understand, and organically create. and they do, on a daily basis, in every culture on this planet, in every time period that has existed
the path to true powerful universal humanism is simply to stop prevailing ideological and religious notions from coopting and perverting simple human organic social instincts about basic simple moral ideals. it does not involve the west, or some other area, imposing something on some other area. for example, currently in iran there is a large feminist movement. this is not because of the west. this effort does not depend upon the west. if the west never existed, this movement would still exist. the feminist movement is organically and innately discovered in human beings looking at treatment of females as opposed to males and finding simple logical problems with that
now some western gasbag would talk about the evolution of western feminist movement this or that anjd spreading here and there, but its all academic douchbaggery bullshit, meant to fill tenured positions, not describe self-evident human reality
simple humanism is organic and innate and a basic byproduct of the socialization of any psychologically normal human being, not beholden to any culture. for you to posit the west as some great originator of a really simple idea is really absurd and ethnocentric
take what you wrote above, read it to any nonwesterner, and your blind arrogance is nothing but a source of humor
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Comparing a Fit to a Prius is pretty crazy, unless you're simply looking for "a car". The Prius is a midsize sedan, while the Fit is a compact economy car. The capacity, ride quality, performance, sound isolation, and such are going to be totally different.
My bet is that while early EV's will have brake pads and shock absorbers like IC vehicles it will be more economic to power the motors backwards to bring the vehicle to a stop. Shocks can be solenoids, both sourcing and sinking energy. Batteries will be the major maintenance item but they easily be made user removable (see mobile phones) so you won't need a mechanic for that.
I don't see any reason why an EV couldn't go 100 or 200 thousand km without a service.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Sounds like near Boston, we pay $.17/kwh (sum of 3 or 4 different items) and it doesn't get that hot here (at least, not to someone who spent half their life in Florida and Texas).
And it's people like you that PHEVs are designed for.
Once again, Slashdot does its best to continue ignorance by leaving out the core criticism of the study: that the study's authors assume a battery pack price of $1000 per kilowatt hour, and that's not even close to they cost today, let alone 5-10 years from now. And that's hardly their only mistake. I'll list their assumptions, and make a few quick comments on them:
* A 2004 Prius with varying size packs
* They upgrade the size of the motor to be sufficient to operate as series, but still keep the parallel configuration (why...?)
* 52 kW motor (70hp), yet weighs 40kg (huh...? The Tesla Roadster does 185kW with a 31kg motor)
* The main assumption that 1kg of batteries requires an additional 1kg of structure (Um.. really?). They also test 0kg and 2kg per 1kg of battery mass.
* Li-ion (unspecified chemistry). 100Wh/mi -- similar to LiP and some spinels -- and a 25% packaging weight penalty (on top of the 1kg weight for every 1kg of batteries)
* Only 50% depth of discharge (i.e., they're only using half of their pack)
* Charging at $0.11/kWh (US residential average)
* Gasoline at $3.00/gal (probably a reasonable long-term value)
* Assumption of $1,000/kWh battery cost (Um, no. I can get Thunderskys at non-bulk rates for a fraction of that. I can almost get A123s at non-bulk rates for that. The Th!nk's pack is $500/kWh, and they think they can cut that in half with production rates of several hundred thousand per year. Conventional li-ion, like Tesla uses, is ~$300/kWh currently. In short... no.). They justify their number by pointing out that it's cheaper than the original price of the Prius's battery pack (ignoring that small HEV battery pack prices don't scale linearly to BEV or PHEV packs or linear with capacity in general)
* GHG emissions of the grid are assumed to be fixed over time (Um, no)
* Vehicle lifespan of 12 years (the average vehicle *on the road* today is nearly 10 years old, and that number is increasing, so... no)
* 12,500 miles/year (reasonable)
* Vehicle base purchase cost, excluding the battery pack, of $17,600
* Assuming by default no carbon tax, both on electricity and gasoline, but considering it under alternative scenarios
* No tax credits assumed
* No battery replacement (in the base case; an alternative scenario includes replacement)
* A 5% "consumer discount rate", No clue what that is, but they state that the higher it is, the less competitive PHEVs are. So it's some sort of penalty. (Perhaps purchase interest rate on the auto loan? If so, too expensive.)
In short: stupid assumptions in, stupid results out. Note this paragraph that they just skim over:
Cheap battery costs of $250 per kWh would significantly increase competitiveness of PHEVs, making them similar to or less expensive than HEVs and CVs across all distances driven between charges. A battery technology with an increased SOC swing, which would allow more of the battery's physical capacity to be used in operation, would also improve PHEV competitiveness, making moderate ranged PHEV20s cost competitive with the HEV and CV.
In short: "If we pick more reasonable numbers, PHEVs are great. But with the bad numbers we picked, they're not."
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
But what is the difference in the cost of the cars? That's pretty much the whole point of the article. If you drive the car for 20 years and save only $12,000 (on the one hand, gasoline could get more expensive, on the other hand, $6000 saved in years 11 through 20 is worth less than $6000 saved by buying a cheaper car now).
From the wikipedia article, a US rating of 87 corresponds to a European rating of 91 or so. However, "regular" gas in Europe has a rating of 95, so by your own evidence European gas is around 4 points higher octane.
I don't want to start a flame war, because you make some good points. First of all, I have no problems with the EPA. And I wouldn't call forcing companies to properly dispose of their waste as a tax. I consider companies to be leasing land from the government. Thus they are to be held financially responsible for any damage they do to the land.
Capitalism does not naturally create monopolies. They are naturally created, but if there is a monopoly, then capitalism is not present. Also, security and freedom are assigned monetary value in capitalism. Not everyone may agree on the price, but at some level you have to decide if your security and freedom are worth paying taxes to the US. You can always move somewhere else if the tax burden is too high (which is why American car companies build cars in Mexico).
I was in the US when gas was 4 dollars a gallon. And I am trying to be part of the solution. I am currently in school, but I am opening myself up to flames by saying that I co-op, and have a job after graduation for an oil company. I do hope that by working to improve the transportation of oil and products (the area in which I work), I can help to bring cheaper gas to your car for year to come.
The company is upstream and downstream, and yes, oil extraction creates huge profits when oil prices are high. But we'd rather have oil prices low like they are now. Then we can make money on the refining process and even more so, from the retail items in the convenience stores. And I know it's hard to believe, but even employees working for oil companies cringe at the pump when gas is expensive. The number one question at company wide meetings was if we could get discounts for employees, and it was repeatedly denied (they used to do that, but too many people abused the system).
Don't blame the middle east and oil companies for families of 2 buying big ass SUVs to drive 20 miles of highway to work every day. That was fiscally irresponsible and wasteful even if gas is $2 a gallon. I drive a modest 10 year old Chevy Malibu and it gets fairly good mileage. When it becomes to expensive to operate, I want to get a turbodiesel. Diesel truly is the better technology. It has a higher energy density, is more efficient, and now that ULSD is required, it is a much cleaner fuel (one of the few good government mandates I might add).
I agree that the middle east is getting less money with oil cheap now, but the problem is not that the middle east is getting money, but how they are using the money. They are being stupid with their money, for when their oil dries up they will go back to being a barren desert with no means of sustaining a modern economy. Rather than trying to take money away from them, we should encourage them to invest in a better infrastructure and improvement so that it will cost less money in the long run to maintain standard of living.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
A Volt would be exempt from both Carbon Taxes and impacted by reduced labor costs if we adopted Canada's Health Care system here in the US, dropping production and operating costs dramatically.
Most systems permit all-electric cars to ride in HOV lanes, which puts operating costs even lower, and are exempted from various federal, state, county, municipal and parking taxes.
Total cost of ownership thereby drops dramatically, and economies of scale for year 2 or 3 batteries drops quite substantially.
Assuming all these, you can see a profit point by year 3 of vehicle sales, including retooling and startup costs.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Springs and shocks are pretty reliable and cheap. I doubt an active suspension will be cost-effective
and an active motor-assisted braking system will suck when the power fails. Give me disc brakes and hydraulics.
yYou don't have to reinvent the wheel to build an EV. Keep what works.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
'Nuff said.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
You are the only person I've ever known to not like it. Now you were driving in Europe, so maybe the car was different or low end, but I and every one I know love semi-auto. It feels exactly like an automatic, but has all the benefits of manual. Volkswagon does it right. But you can also put it into manual control.
Uhh.. yeah. It won't cost you $4 a night to charge your batteries unless you're in an area with bizarrely expensive power. Try 1/3 or 1/4 that, probably less.
"The government should tax gas by enough to offset the cost of the environmental damaged caused by digging it out of the ground, refining it, and burning it."
I don't agree, but for the sake of argument, I'll go along.
Now then, Mr. Government, now that you've collected money on gas, how will you use that money to undo the environmental damage that you feel it's caused? Or is it simply a punitive measure?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
My fathers Corolla was affected by the engine oil sludge problem. He purchased it new, had all of the scheduled oil changes and maintenance, and about 15k miles, the engine oil light came on. The dealer said the engine was ruined and said that Toyota wouldn't cover it because he had oil changes done by a mechanic instead of the dealer. He told Toyota what they could do with themselves and had the mechanic clean out the sludge. Since then he has been able to keep it from blowing up by using synthetic oil and changing it every 2500 miles.
My 9 year old Chevy S-10 does seem well engineered. 2 weeks after buying it, I hit black ice and was saved by the anti-lock brakes (standard on S-10s but not most other vehicles at the time). It also saved me recently when a garbage truck backed over it. :( I never had any major problems like the engine oil sludge. The biggest problem I had was a new head gasket ($600), and that was only last year. I have NEVER had any service on the engine other than Jiffy Lube.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Somebody has to buy the first few thousand Volts at a higher cost, but one production ramps up, I'm sure the price will drop.
This is nothing new.
There are thousands of examples...
The first Toyota Priuses (plural: Prii?) cost a lot more than they cost now.
In fact, I bought a 2008 Prius (even though I prefer buying used cars) because it was CHEAPER than the 2007 model, which was cheaper than the 2006 models!
Actually, you don't _power_ the motors backwards, you _drain_ power from them while using them as brakes, and charge your batteries with it. It's as if engine braking in your car sucked back some of the CO2 and NOx and turned it back into petrol.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
(but that vehicle still isn't as practical as a gasoline vehicle, especially if gas costs $3).
Bingo. The other problem is that most people are so hung up on one of two things: 1) "it's electric therefore it's slow" (um, no), and 2) "I can't drive it to Zimbabwe and back on the weekend" (Well, no, not unless you can add a range extender module which you easily can).
The range issue seems to be the major one, because people can't handle the idea of "filling up" their car each evening when they get home instead of leaving it for 500+ kms. They don't seem to be able to look past the "plug it into your garage wall when you get out" to the "and for $2 you have a full battery".
As for people stepping in to build one, they fall into two groups, the golf buggy manufacturers who make golf carts with headlights and wind up windows and expect people to use them like cars, and the "let's make a ferrari-beating electric car to prove something to the world" types who make a car that's awesome, but costs as much as a private jet. If only these people could see that the right market is actually "people who'd buy a Toyota Corolla". Just make it go fast enough to be fun, and far enough to get them to work or drop the kids off at school, with a stop at the shops on the way home, and it'll be a perfectly good second car. They have to stop trying to build a vehicle which will do everything and take over the world, and just take baby steps to start with.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Yeah but regenerative braking doesn't work when the voltage out of the traction motor is less than the battery voltage. Electric vehicles use brake pads below a certain speed for this reason. My suggestion is to just waste power to that the motor can be used as a brake at slow speed. Doing that saves on maintenance because magnetic fields don't wear out the way brake pads do.
Maybe EVs would still have a mechanical emergency brake, possibly single use.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The stick was working. The Rav4 EV, Ford Ranger EV, Honda EV+ and the EV1 were all developed specifically due to the CARB mandate and redacted by the Ministry of Truth the moment the mandate was dropped.
The carrot is there, in terms of waived onroad costs in some states (others actually tax MORE because EVs don't pay fuel tax, which I think is horribly ass-backwards at this stage of their development), free reign to use carpool lanes etc. The reason EVs are having image problems now is that people are stupid and believe advertising (that's why they do it) and that most of the major car manufacturers went on a 5-year smear campaign to convince everyone how crap EVs were.
What really annoys me is Toyota's marketing of the Prius, where they actually tout its defective-by-design inability to charge the batteries from an external source as a major benefit! "You never plug it in!" they say, and people are too stupid to think "charging from wall: $0.20/kWh, charging from petrol using onboard generator: $1-$2/kWh at least".
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
As long as electric is substantially coal, I don't see any reason to pay more for a less capable vehicle, so the electric with a 200 mile range needs to be cheaper (for me and a whole pile of other folks) to even be a consideration, and that hasn't happened yet (fuel is usually much less than 1/2 of the cost of the vehicle, so the savings from cheaper energy don't add up quite enough). Even if electric were entirely clean, I would have to think on it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I couldn't help but wonder who funded the study, or funds one or more of the study's authors' pet projects: Is it another case of money in, garbage out?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
You might want to take another look at Kia, as they seem to be one of the few auto manufacturers nowadays who seem to be actually trying to improve their vehicles, and it shows. The quality of the Japanese vehicles have been on a slide the past few years as they ride out the reputation they gained in the 90's, the Americans are still playing their planned obsolence games, and I'm not sure what the Germans are up to but their vehicles of late have been overly complicated and have awful reliability.
In the end the stick didn't work, precisely because the political system couldn't stand up to the intense lobbying the mandate engendered. You can say the political system failed, but it is what it is. There are plenty of carrots now to motivate GM to build the Volt, if only they can stay solvent.
How much do the Prius batteries hold? Googling give me answers of 1.3 or 1.5 kWh depending on the year. And when you get home they will probably be only about half empty because of the way it operates. Being able to plug it in would be nice but I don't think its lack is a huge loss.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
I Call EEE
Sure, but there's pushing it down the road 50 years, and pushing it down the road until the expansion of the sun. I'm willing to settle for the second.
-josh
There is a flawed assumption in the study that the vehicles will last 12 years and 150,000 miles (12,500 miles/year) independent of all other variables.
For example, the study assumes that a car driven 7 miles per day will last 12 years and 150,000 miles. (7 * 365 * 12 = 30660). You'd actually have to drive a car 7 miles a day for 58.7 years to go 150,000 miles.
The study further assumes that a car driven 60 miles per day will also last 12 years and 150,000 miles. (60 * 365 * 12 = 262800). You'd actually have to drive a car 60 miles a day for 6.8 years to go 150,000 miles.
Using the flawed assumption, a car with an electric range of 7 miles and driven 7 miles a day appears surprisingly inexpensive, because the battery is effectively being amortized over a 58.7 year life. Correspondingly, a car with an electric range of 60 miles and driven 60 miles a day appears surprisingly costly, because the battery is amortized over only 6.8 years.
Not surprisingly, the study concludes that small batteries are better in all cases.
A more reasonable assumption would be that the battery will last the same number of years and same number of discharge cycles regardless of size. Consequently, larger batteries will last proportionately more miles (if in fact driven further each day).
http://xkcd.com/756//
Not to mention that the oil industry is doing quite well, but GM is on the brink of collapse. If GM has been so cooperative with helping big oil, letting the company just die without some angelic investment isn't very smart.
Well, like I said before, if my electricity bill goes up $200 a month in summer, just because I lower the thermostat two degrees, I'm a bit cynical that charging my cars will be less than $4 a night.
Yeah, 'cuz that totally didn't happen about a hundred years ago.
Oh, wait.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
The car companies want hydrogen, not electrical, because it preserves their profits.
-still requires gas stations
-high maintenance combustion engine, $$$
-sounds good because you can get hydrogen from water (but not just water unfortunately)
Of course hydrogen engines don't really make sense because they don't solve any problems. Hydrogen works as a large, inconvenient battery. But the American car companies all say hydrogen is better than electric and it is what they are aiming for because they would rather remain unchanged and lose out to imports than make any change to their businesses.
The American car companies, like the banks, have no one to blame but themselves. They don't want to change with the times. 30 years ago they could afford to pay someone a lifetime pension for 30 years work, now they should admit they can't (and can't afford to pay huge wages for repetitive work). 30 years ago there was no competition and they could make whatever they want, now they should follow the market (small cars=small profits, so no small cars for US automakers -> fail). 30 years ago they made cars that lasted too long and they lost money, but now they choose to make cars that die soon and need lots of maintenance. Greed leads to failure.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
I have to agree they are getting to be pretty nice cars. A buddy just got his second after giving his 2007 to his wife. Both ride nice, have cruise, air, tilt, one finger steering, 5.1 CD player, nice 4 door. Compares nicely to my moms Toyota Camry at about half the price. So I don't know where he got his info from but from catching rides with my buds that own Kias I wouldn't have any problem owning one if it weren't for the fact I need a truck.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I agree with you in not starting a flame war. I will try to respond to your points and not make inflammatory statements this time.
Capitalism does naturally create monopolies. Capitalism is just an economy where basically everything is privately owned (labor, land, businesses, utilities). Some areas of the economy naturally create monopolies. Utilities are a good example. There is no economic sense for two different gas companies (or electric, water, telephone, internet) in running their infrastructure to a single house to give them a choice. Monopolies result from capitalism and the presence of monopolies does not mean that it isn't capitalism. In some instances, monopolies are the best solution and provide the cheapest solution.
I don't think that oil companies are evil. If that is what you want to do, then go for it. They are just providing a service. It is when their actions try to stifle technologies that compete with oil (classic example is the Great American Streetcar Scandal) that I have a problem them. I would not work for an oil company, though, because I think it is in our country's best interest not to use oil as our primary fuel source. I think the government is going to enact regulations that are not supportive of oil (as they should) and oil companies are going to suffer. It is possible that they can adapt though. I think shell has made many efforts to diversify the energy sources they use.
Eventually oil is going to get more expensive. And if you don't try to do anything about it, politicians will try to keep it cheap so that they stay popular. Then it will become too underpriced and the bubble will pop and the price will increase dramatically. The market reacts in jolts and jerks, which is not good for items which people rely upon for their livelihood.
I completely agree with you about dumbass Americans buying big cars. When gas went up to $4 a gallon, I had a hard time not laughing at people who commuted to and from work in big ass SUVs when they complained about high gas prices. But that is what happens when you let capitalism go free. People make ignorant choices that come back to bite them in the ass later. That is why "big brother" should impose regulations and penalties that help people not make bad choices. The purpose of our government is to maintain stability, and there should be a cost to people that make choices that threaten that stability. I should be able to buy a huge SUV that gets 4mpg and commute to work in it. But I should have to pay extra for it.
Oil is what is wrong with the middle east. Power corrupts and having huge reserves of oil is a huge source of power. It has resulted in the US manipulating the middle east for a long time. The reason the people of Iran hate us is not because of their religion. About 40 years ago the CIA replaced their democratically elected leader with a monarch so that we could get their oil cheaper. And the US has muddled in the internal politics of other Middle Eastern countries as well. Why do you think we went to war with Iraq? And they are not just barren deserts. Civilization originated in the Middle east. They have deserts but they also have very fertile areas as well. I am sure they can find a way to survive without oil.
(usually lithium carbonate -- $5-7/kg)... Show me where the expensive raw materials are in this list.
You're right that this isn't particularly expensive, but it is more expensive than steel at less than $0.50/lb or aluminum at approx. $1/lb which is what is used on every other car. Copper motor windings are also more expensive than steel and aluminum.
Secondly, since the battery is a bigger cost (which provides benefits in terms of operations costs), it makes more sense to build out of lighter materials in an EV than it does in a gasoline car -- you raise the body cost but lower the pack cost.
This is only true when the benefits of using an electric drivetrain (subsidies, lower operation costs) are large enough to make up for the increased cost of both the expensive drivetrain and the expensive body components. Otherwise, the economic viability of lightweight and aerodynamic body materials is completely independent of the economic viability of electric drivetrains.
Absent a large enough benefit in operational savings, choosing an expensive body part because you chose to use an expensive drivetrain will never make your car more economical than a car that uses a cheap drivetrain with the same expensive body parts.
And this seems to be the path the automotive industry is currently on. If carbon taxes are imposed, electricity prices are set to rise faster than the cost of gasoline and natural gas. The lower manufacturing costs of aerodynamic, lightweight gasoline cars already outweigh the operational cost savings of electric cars, and the operational cost benefits of electric vehicles appear to be shrinking.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
incredibly patronizing, condescending, and flat out historically inaccurate
Ok, so, since it is so flat out historically inaccurate, the onus is on you. Prove it.
i also especially love how you boil my argument for innate humanism as a conceptualization of "the noble savage"
Yes, that was my little bit of humor (which you obviously didn't get!). That IS in essence what you're getting down to though--you've blamed primarily religion for creating ambiguity in what you see as true human morality. You claim that people in their "natural state" (the "kindergardeners" you mention) are all able to just BAM, figure out what is moral and what is not. That's abundantly clear from what you've said--do you disagree with my interpretation? Now, go read a little bit about primitivism (the more polite name for the "noble savage" theory)
your arrogant blind ethnocentrism deserves far worse than rudeness
The amusement continues. The person who drones on and on about empathy and how even "kindergardeners" can understand this has precious little of his own.
what a fucking ideological fossil you are
Basically, in the past what, 5 messages? You've proved that you are great at ad hominems, at putting up straw man arguments and at claiming people said things they didn't. What you haven't done is addressed a SINGLE question I've raised.
Your arguments would really be more effective if you didn't launch off into bizarre rants and tirades everytime you come across something that is slightly different from your worldview.
Here's a great question for you...it's obvious you and I disagree very clearly on a number of points. These are the arguments that you claim are so simple a kindergardener should understand it all, yet we totally disagree. You still think human rights is a simple issue?
This one certainly didn't have "all the benefits" of a traditional automatic. Most noticeably, it was a much more rough shift feel - like an inexperienced driver with a standard transmission.
Then, if you wanted to make it go fast, you didn't have the ability to clutch rapidly or rev the engine and dump the clutch, or anything else.
For a small call looking for fuel efficiency I'd rather see diesel with a cvt transmission. If I recall, isn't that what most of the German auto makers are pushing toward?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
All i can comment on is how it felt riding in one, as I've been a truck man for quite a while now. The little Kia Rios that my buddies drive are zippy and comfortable, but then again we are riding them in town and not some back road in BFE. As far as trucks I MIGHT look into Ford if i can find one cheap. But after getting screwed by GMC and Dodge I am a little leery. I have owned 2 Nissan trucks and both have managed to get over 300k before I finally drove them into the ground.
When I buy a vehicle I expect it to "last ten years like it should" not fall apart 3 seconds after the warranty expires like a damned Chinese DVD player. That said my dad swears by Ford Diesel Duallies, so maybe if I can find a Ford that is the right size for the right price(I don't need Duallie power) I might go for it. Anybody have exp with the F150s? i need something with an auto that will haul around 750 pounds. I can't drive stick anymore due to a bad knee. I usually buy them 1-2 year used so I don't get the "60% tax" from driving a new one off the lot, so any exp with the 2004-2007 Ford trucks would be welcome.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Perhaps...
Perhaps not...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
This is productive discussion (in my opinion), so I'll continue it.
Capitalism is based on the idea of free choice. In a monopoly situation, there is only once choice: Have or have not. This is not freedom. Where do monopolies come from? I do not agree that monopolies are required. You cite the power grid, yet there are power companies out there who don't own any lines and continue to sell power. The power lines and telecommunications should be owned by local governments, as they should be free for all to use, like roads are today. Then power companies could sell energy to any consumer connected to this universal grid. Oil companies share pipelines every day. You keep track of what goes in and what comes out, and it really doesn't matter whose it is at the end, because it should be the same product.
Most of the monopolies that have existed got ahead of their competition by government intervention. One of the first cartels was the railroad industry, who was given land through emminent domain. Also the telecos were given the same thing for their communication lines. This is what happens when the government helps a corporation purchase infrastructure. It hinders competition.
I don't know what happens at other oil companies, but at mine, we have done nothing to stifle competition. In fact, our company has moved to embrace ethanol, and despite its price compared to gasoline at the moment, we are working to get E15 at all pumps. As far as the government enacting anti-oil legislation, it just won't happen, and it shouldn't. If you want to protest oil go for it, but don't force it on me.
No arguments with your market bubble statement. But government regulation is part of the problem. They have created at least as many of the bubbles as the free market.
As far as the SUVs go. The government doesn't have to punish them... They punished themselves when gas was $4 a gallon. If it bites them in the ass later, it's not my fault, why should I pay for it? When big brother gets involved, he prevents stupid people from doing things, but he also hurts the average American as well. Legislating to protect the dumbest 10% doesn't help anybody (see No Child Left Behind).
As far as the middle east, I do realize there is fertile land and it is the cradle of civilization, but they do not have the resources to maintain their current standard of living without oil. They will go back to being farmers and nomads. I agree with you that we've meddled far too much in the middle east, and the rest of the world for that matter. Since WWII, America thinks we are World Police (America... Fuck Yeah). However, this hurts our economy as well as everyone else's.
It's high time the US government started reading the constitution and upholding the ideals that this country was founded upon. You might recall a statement that says that any power not granted to the federal government is left in the hands of the states. How many amendments after 10 try to take extra powers away from the states? How many current federal laws specifically take away state sovereignty? When is the last time the federal government did anything useful for this nation?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Take an economics course. Government mandates HURT ECONOMIES. There is no exception to this rule.
I have taken an economics course. There are a number of very important exceptions to this rule. If you really have taken an economics course, and learned something from it, you would remember these exceptions.
One important exception is monopoly power. Another one is externalities. A third exception is asymmetric information. A fourth exception is public goods. All of these exceptions are relevant in one way or another to the auto market. I will leave it as an exercise to figure out why each of these classifications applies. If you really took an economics course, it should be very easy.
Uranium is a finite, non-renewable resource
Uranium is finite in the same sense that solar power is finite. With breeder reactors, the uranium on earth will be sufficient for billions of years.
Yes, I said billions.
Consumer Reports tends to have an anti-domestic bias, and their reliability research uses shoddy methods.
Edmunds.com, Dan Neil of the LA Times, and dozens of other automotive sources were just as brutally critical of Detroit products 6 years ago as Consumer Reports. More recently, all of the other sources have started to give domestic products good reviews when they felt the good reviews are earned. Consumer Reports is the stand out that, with very few exceptions, tends to ruthlessly criticize anything made by Detroit.
Their reliability research is:
1. Voluntary - so everyone who happily drives a Kia or anything else and completely forgets to fill out a survey will not contribute to the Consumer Reports database. If most Kia owners who fill the survey are unhappy and most Honda owners who fill the survey are happy, it's going to bias the results tremendously. Consumer Reports has no way to know.
2. Not quantified in terms of problems - If your car is in the shop because a coolant sensor failed or the transmission started to fall apart, either way it counts for a reliability problem.
3. Not quantified in terms of maintenance - My friend was proud because she only ever had scheduled maintenance on her Honda Accord, including replacement of the timing belt. I never had the replace the timing belt (or chain, whatever) on my Chevrolet Impala in over 100,000 miles of ownership. So the Chevy was cheaper to maintain ($150 in unscheduled maintenance in the first 120,000 miles of ownership) - but Consumer Reports does not measure that.
4. Does not deliver its figures in absolute terms - If the most reliable family sedan has a 3.2% chance of failure and the least reliable has a 4.5% chance of failure, the reliability rating of either should not factor strongly into the buying process. By most metrics, the least reliable car you can buy in 2008 is likely to have fewer mechanical defects in the first 100,000 miles of ownership than the most reliable car you could buy in 1998. The whole industry has made tremendous improvements in vehicle quality.
5. Delineates reliability ratings in 5 categories. A car with reliability 79% out of the absolute scale gets the same 4 stars as one with reliability 61% of the absolute scale, and that 18% may (depending upon the size of the absolute scale) be a big difference. It's certainly a bigger difference than the one between the car at 79% and 81%, and that 2% gap merits an additional star.
Bullshit. I have the 2009 Car issue righ here. Kia is in the $6000-$8000 range, with the Optima '06 and the Spectra '06. They make the $8000-$10000 list with the Rondo '07 and Spectra '07. I could go on. Honestly, I wouldn't expect a strong showing here, as I said Kia has really improved over the past few years, and their '09 line up is significantly better than their '04 lineup, which is in term is far better than their '99 line-up (which honestly I wouldn't touch). About the only other major automaker who can make a claim like that in my mind is Ford and their offshoots. Everyone else seems to be in a decline in quality, Toyota and Nissan in particular.
Once again, bullshit. They recommend the Optima, Rondo, and Sportage.
Maybe next time try getting some basic, easy to verify facts right.
The real bottom line is that this is a gimmick. The reason that GM has hitched their horsepower to the Volt is that they need to sell a story to potential investors in GM: in the future there is going to be a huge untapped wide open market for us to sell cars by exploiting people's desire to be green.
The fact is that they are correct that in the future the marginal cost of battery technology will come down. The dynamic of a cost effective solid state battery (the flavor du jur right now is lithium-ion, so we can use that as an example) works in general like this: the more the capital markets and specialty chemical companies believes that there is going to be a market for the composite materials that go into the batteries, the more they will retool and compete to bring those materials out to meet the expected market. Cheaper raw materials means cheaper batteries as an end product, self supporting the decision to build more infrastructure. Rinse repeat.
In GM's entire response, they never make any claims that these cars will be cost effective to the consumer simply that they can develop the technology profitably to them.
The entire analysis hinges on the pitch that burning less oil in your car is a good thing, but the vast majority of Americans will charge up their Volts by plugging them into a wall, and that electricity comes from burning coal or natural gas. I haven't done the analysis, but wouldn't be surprised that if you used the carbon offset benchmark that the marginal hydrocarbon burning associated with increased electricity demand would give you a net environmental result off just burning diesel in your commute.
When you add in the massive grid improvement that is going to be necessary to actually bring the electricity to power people's car to their houses reliably, then the value proposition to the consumer becomes even more shaky: a jump per kwh in retail electricity (needed to keep the utility companies profitable) is certainly going to eat into the marginal savings per mile driven.
It's the ethanol/ corn subsidy all over again.
I know that the environmentalists are going to flame me, and that the capitalists/libertarians are going to flame me, but as far as I am concerned the real bottom line is that if there is no simple solution to the complicated problem of global warming.