Who Killed the Electric Car?

[Aurora Black]

There's a new documentary out, "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

WKTEC Trailer

What do you make of this?

 

[Selena_Kitt]

There's a new documentary out, "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

WKTEC Trailer

What do you make of this?

woo hoo!!!!!!!!!!!
can't wait to see this one...

 

[Boxlicker101]

I haven't seen the movie, or whatever, and probably won't. It sounds like something Michael Moore would make.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

In 100 years or less most people will drive electric cars. We will have an electric economy. The electricity will come from clean, safe, non-polluting nuke plants. The cars will be comparable in comfort and convenience to what we have now, except better. You will drive 200 miles, or maybe 500 miles as battery tech improves, pull into a "gas station," and back up to a battery dispenser that will automatically pop out the tired one for recharging and pop in a fresh one. All this will cost slightly more than the current system, but because our society will be so much wealthier it will actually absorb a much smaller portion of the typical family income.

All of this assumes we don't blow the whole thing up in the meantime, of course, but there is not much point in discussing that alternative.

Why did the electric car fail? Because nobody wanted to buy one. Because in a hundred ways they cost more and deliver less than fossil fuel cars today. When it's time to build electric cars, we'll build electric cars.

 

[rgraham666]

I'm remembering a joke I heard many years ago.

"When will we get solar energy? When Exxon figures out how to deliver it to us in a truck."

And in one hundred years most of us will be living lives similar to people in Nigeria. Lucky I won't be around to see it.

 

[R. Richard]

Why did the electric car fail? Because nobody wanted to buy one. Because in a hundred ways they cost more and deliver less than what fossil fuel cars deliver today. Because most people aren't stupid.

All true. However, research on the steam car does not give nearly the same clear picture.

 

[Boxlicker101]

All true. However, research on the steam car does not give nearly the same clear picture.

Both steam cars and electric cars were available in the early twwntieth century. The electrics had too short a range to be practical but more efficient batteries would change that. People would probably be able to repower the batteries at home, much like they do with smaller devices. I don't know how this would compare economically with gasoline engines.

Steam cars took too long to operate. They burned kerosene and the driver had to light the burner and wait until the water in the boiler reached a high enough temperature before they could operate them. Although they had some advantages over internal combustion engines, that drawback was fatal.

If you want more on them, google Stanley Steamer.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Glass Half-Full....

In 100 years or less most people will drive electric cars. We will have an electric economy. The electricity will come from clean, safe, non-polluting nuke plants.....

Glass Half-Empty....

And in one hundred years most of us will be living lives similar to people in Nigeria. Lucky I won't be around to see it.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Glass Half-Full....


Glass Half-Empty....

LOL! It's what makes the world go round . . .

(I beg your pardon, but I thought my glass was overflowing - with champagne! Half-full - hummph!)

 

[NoJo]

I'm working on a methane-powered vibrator.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I'm working on a methane-powered vibrator.

If somebody is going to be using it in their ass, maybe it can be set up to take power directly from its environment.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

In 100 years or less most people will drive electric cars. We will have an electric economy. The electricity will come from clean, safe, non-polluting nuke plants. The cars will be comparable in comfort and convenience to what we have now, except better. You will drive 200 miles, or maybe 500 miles as battery tech improves, pull into a "gas station," and back up to a battery dispenser that will automatically pop out the tired one for recharging and pop in a fresh one. All this will cost slightly more than the current system, but because our society will be so much wealthier it will actually absorb a much smaller portion of the typical family income.

All of this assumes we don't blow the whole thing up in the meantime, of course, but there is not much point in discussing that alternative.

Why did the electric car fail? Because nobody wanted to buy one. Because in a hundred ways they cost more and deliver less than fossil fuel cars today. When it's time to build electric cars, we'll build electric cars.

In a hundred years they will have straightened out the fusion reactor and just like in Back to the Future all cars will have a fusion reactor on board to power the electric motors. The fusion reactor will run on almost anything but works best with water, sea or fresh, but will also except any liquid. So in a pinch you can urinate in your reactor and get to an appropriate fuel source.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

In a hundred years they will have straightened out the fusion reactor and just like in Back to the Future all cars will have a fusion reactor on board to power the electric motors. The fusion reactor will run on almost anything but works best with water, sea or fresh, but will also except any liquid. So in a pinch you can urinate in your reactor and get to an appropriate fuel source.

That would be way-cool. It requires some scientific breakthroughs to become plausible, but a good way to lose money is to bet against there being scientific breakthroughs. (That said, another good way is to bet on when exactly they will come and what specifically they will be.) The vision I described requires no breakthroughs, though. Just engineering, and incremental, marginal improvements in current technologies.

 

[Quiet_Cool]

Who Killed the Electric Car?

I did, in the Conservatory, with the candlestick.

Deal.

I'm working on a methane-powered vibrator.

Don't get your hopes up on this, Joe. I remember your foray into anal vibrators powered by little treadmill sprinting gerbils. Aside from Richard Gere, no one bought a single toy.

Q_C

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Here is the methane powered grill I'm working on...

http://aycu29.webshots.com/image/2548/1057332332323759330_rs.jpg

 

[cheerful_deviant]

There's a new documentary out, "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

WKTEC Trailer

What do you make of this?

The films writer and producer, Chris Paine, was a rabid EV1 fan. (The EV1 was General Motors grand attempt at a really viable electric car in the 90s). His main thrust as far as I have read (I have yet to see the movie) is that the major manufactures (GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota, Nissan...) killed off the electric car. The problem is that while he stated this constanly thru the movie, most agree he never really proves it. It's just an unproven thesis.

Most manufacturers played with electrics in the 90s in the face of looming CARB regulations that they had to have a certian number of zero emission cars on the road by 'X' date. So they all worked on electrics. The problem is, no one bought them. In the 4 or 5 years that the EV1 was onsale, GM was only able to unload 700 ot them For comparison, Ford sold 65,452 F-Series trucks last month alone. GM spent millions developing and marketing the EV1, showing it off on TV shows, advertisements... the whole 9 yards. Still... no sales.

Toyota had similar trouble with it's Electric powered RAV4. No one wanted them.

The electric vheicle fanatics keep insisting that there is a demand for these vheicles and that ther reason they don't sell is because the manufacturers crush them but I recall reading an ad for the electric RAV4 up her in New England where it wasn't even available. The companies tried to move them but no customers bit. Limited range and high manufacturing costs made them unpracticle for 99% of the population. That's what killed the electric car. The current battery technology just isn't up to the demands of moving a 3000 pound machine around all day. People demand more range than 150 miles then a 10 hour fill-up.

Electrics are a grand idea but the technology just ain't there yet. Chris Paine can spout off about the manufacturers killing the cars all he wants but in the end is was the customers who decided and they killed the electric car.

 

[Aurora Black]

I just want to state for the record that I don't have any real opinion on this topic. I just saw the trailer, found it interesting and thought it would be good for a debate.

 

[Xelebes]

If somebody is going to be using it in their ass, maybe it can be set up to take power directly from its environment.

It would have to be very efficient....

But that high efficiency might pose problems...

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

The films writer and producer, Chris Paine, was a rabid EV1 fan. (The EV1 was General Motors grand attempt at a really viable electric car in the 90s). His main thrust as far as I have read (I have yet to see the movie) is that the major manufactures (GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota, Nissan...) killed off the electric car. The problem is that while he stated this constanly thru the movie, most agree he never really proves it. It's just an unproven thesis.

Most manufacturers played with electrics in the 90s in the face of looming CARB regulations that they had to have a certian number of zero emission cars on the road by 'X' date. So they all worked on electrics. The problem is, no one bought them. In the 4 or 5 years that the EV1 was onsale, GM was only able to unload 700 ot them For comparison, Ford sold 65,452 F-Series trucks last month alone. GM spent millions developing and marketing the EV1, showing it off on TV shows, advertisements... the whole 9 yards. Still... no sales.

Toyota had similar trouble with it's Electric powered RAV4. No one wanted them.

The electric vheicle fanatics keep insisting that there is a demand for these vheicles and that ther reason they don't sell is because the manufacturers crush them but I recall reading an ad for the electric RAV4 up her in New England where it wasn't even available. The companies tried to move them but no customers bit. Limited range and high manufacturing costs made them unpracticle for 99% of the population. That's what killed the electric car. The current battery technology just isn't up to the demands of moving a 3000 pound machine around all day. People demand more range than 150 miles then a 10 hour fill-up.

Electrics are a grand idea but the technology just ain't there yet. Chris Paine can spout off about the manufacturers killing the cars all he wants but in the end is was the customers who decided and they killed the electric car.

Yeppers, you nailed it. One minor clarification: The technology exists, but not the infrastructure that would make it practical, as decribed in my first post above. And there's no reason that it should exist right now. As I said, when it's time to make electric cars, the free market capitalist system will make electric cars, without any need for subsidies or mandates. Damn fine and desireable ones, too.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

...and in a hundred years, there'll be chocolates and teddy bears for all the recluses of the forests. Candy-cane bridges and streets made of gold will be trod on by air-matic hovercars that are free and clean and provide jobs without taxes.

Personally, I think we've reached a good deal of the end of this era's popular fuel and subsequent vehicles. Mostly because while solar power (electric) and battery power (electric) make machines work, them driving machines aren't getting much in the way of smaller and lighter, nor do people want to go less far.

Until the invention of fuel-o-type X, which puts out the same rawrrrr as gas, we're not going to be switching, I don't think. Not for fifty or a hundred years.

I dunno, I just don't have faith in the inevitable improvement of battery technology to the point of it producing more power than an internal combustion engine.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

...and in a hundred years, there'll be chocolates and teddy bears for all the recluses of the forests. Candy-cane bridges and streets made of gold will be trod on by air-matic hovercars that are free and clean and provide jobs without taxes.

Personally, I think we've reached a good deal of the end of this era's popular fuel and subsequent vehicles. Mostly because while solar power (electric) and battery power (electric) make machines work, them driving machines aren't getting much in the way of smaller and lighter, nor do people want to go less far.

Until the invention of fuel-o-type X, which puts out the same rawrrrr as gas, we're not going to be switching, I don't think. Not for fifty or a hundred years.

I dunno, I just don't have faith in the inevitable improvement of battery technology to the point of it producing more power than an internal combustion engine.

No candy-cane wishes needed to make it happen - just $10/gallon gasoline. Which will happen some day in the future. Before it gets there the infrastructure described in my first post will become a reality, and liquid fuels will be be reserved for specialty uses, like airplanes. We won't "run out" of oil, it will just get to a price where alternatives like the one I describe will be more cost effective. With current technology you can drive about 150 miles before having to charge batteries, or under "my" system trade them out (kind of like you trade-out propane tanks on backyard barbecues today.) All of today's "gas stations" would be battery-change stations, so there would be no loss of mobility by the general population. I'm confident that gradual, marginal inprovements in battery tech will improve that range figure, to 250 miles or more. As far as performance, electrics can spin wheels just as readily as fossil fuels right now - that's easy. (In fact, there was a news item today of some silicon valley guy who's building an electric race car.) As for cost, it will cost a little more, because we lose the "dinosaur subsidy" that fossil fuels provide, and have to produce the energy the old-fashioned way - by splitting atoms. (An 8-billion year old technique.) But if you extrapolate economic growth and familiy income growth of the past century into the next, my point about transportation absorbing a smaller portion of family budgets is inevitable.

Is my system guaranteed? Will there be no unexpected social, cultural, economic, geopolitical, etc. bumps in the road? Is it guaranteed that we won't blow the whole damn thing up before it comes about? Of course not. But the notion that our current energy-intensive industrial civilization with all its comforts and conveniences is inevitably doomed when fossil fuels become scarce is misguided.

Actually, I find it curious that many people seem to have a lot invested in that notion, for some reason (and I'm not pointing any fingers, this is not directed at anyone here). Maybe there's an apocalyptic streak in human nature - we find it comforting to think "the end is near." Maybe we take comfort in the notion that all those bastards who have more than ourselves will be leveled when the end comes, even if it means we ourselves will be shivering in the dark and squabbling in the mud right alongside them.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I just want to state for the record that I don't have any real opinion on this topic. I just saw the trailer, found it interesting and thought it would be good for a debate.

Then this is your lucky day - you can read all my posts, and henceforth have an informed opinion!

 

[rgraham666]

It isn't the lack of fuel that's going to cause the problems. It's social change.

Things continue the way they're going and we'll have a feudal system. A feudal system can only support a feudal economy and feudal social structure no matter how advanced the technology is.

Feudal systems are great for the nobility or what ever the elite call themselves. Very few people will fall into this category.

People closely attached to nobility will lead fairly good lives. The scribes, lawyers, priests, tutors etc.

People who do the grunt work will survive.

And the serfs and people who fall outside the system will lead brutish, desperate lives.

Like I said, I'm glad I won't be around to see it.

 

[Boxlicker101]

It isn't the lack of fuel that's going to cause the problems. It's social change.

Things continue the way they're going and we'll have a feudal system. A feudal system can only support a feudal economy and feudal social structure no matter how advanced the technology is.

Feudal systems are great for the nobility or what ever the elite call themselves. Very few people will fall into this category.

People closely attached to nobility will lead fairly good lives. The scribes, lawyers, priests, tutors etc.

People who do the grunt work will survive.

And the serfs and people who fall outside the system will lead brutish, desperate lives.

Like I said, I'm glad I won't be around to see it.

I don't believe anything like you describe will ever happen. We have been moving away from that for about 150 years. Generally speaking, the US is not all that much into inherited wealth and power, which is the basis of feudalism. There is also too much upward mobility, too much chance for newcomers to break into what you describe as "nobility".

 

[Belegon]

The greatest enemy of tyranny is education.

I doubt a feudal system could be made to work in the modern world...too many of us know too many alternatives and sooner or later a bunch of twenty-somethings will be willing to risk death to change things...