I was watching the show NOW on PBS last night. There was a segment called "Who killed the electric car?" They interviewed the director of a new documentary film coming out about GM's ill-fated EV1 electric car and why GM mysteriously took them all back and then destroyed all of them despite their rabid popularity with the small number of people who were given the chance to lease one.

I had totally forgotten about the EV1. The director leased one and he, like most who have ever driven the EV1, totally fell in love with them. He said that it really moved and it "just worked".

According to the director, as for why GM pulled the plug, so to speak, on this experiment even though people offered them lot's of money to keep their beloved EV1's, is that all-electric vehicles threaten a whole host of industries--from Big Oil to parts manufacturers to your local Jiffy Lube. It's interesting that companies like Toyota have steadfastly refused to consider building plug-in hybrids even though people have made conversion kits for the Prius for some time now. We could all be driving electric vehicles right now. It's been done. Think about it.

Oh, Minnesota's governor just signed a law that promotes plug-in hybrids for the state's vehicle fleet, the first such law in the country, I believe. A part of the plan is to eventually start building plug-in's at an old auto plant in the state that is slated to be closed down by the company. Boy, that law must annoy a lot of vested interests. If you get a chance to catch the movie later on this summer, it could be interesting.

I'll have to look for the transcript for it.

Did they talk about the fact that when the EV1 came out, the batteries were the reason why it was commercial unviable to manufacture them? And I don't mean some grand industrial conspiracy, I mean that if they tried to sell, rather than rent at a loss, the things they might have sold them to the kinds of people who buy Segways. Ask Dean Kamen sometime how well that's working out for him.

Add in the fact that they had lousy range and low top speed due to thier weight, thier batteries were much more sensative to tempurature fluctuations compaired to what a hybrid uses, the required maintence level (think jet aircraft levels of hanger vs operations time), and that they had about as much room in them as a small pickup, and it just wouldn't not have worked. People would not have bought them. Keep in mind what I mentioned above- GM owned every single one of the EV1s, and they leased them. They took a bath. Great concept. I saw one displayed at the Tour de Sol one year. But concept. Just like GM's hydrogen "skateboard" that they are playing with right now. GM can't get thier designers to stop thinking about a big revolution. As a result, they will loose, beucase they want to make big leaps onto technology that is neither ready for widespread operation nor supportable by existing infrastructure.

I've found PBS' quality of source to loosing ground over the past few years; NPR hasn't had that problem. It sounds like they are cooking up a "grassy knole" where there is non.

Oh, and I hate to point this out but "plug-in hybrid" is an oxymoron. Hybrids generate thier own electricity by the burning of a combustable, be it a petrochem distillates, ethanol, methanol, solid biomass (saw one prototype generator once that burned cow chips- eww), methane or hydrogen. A pure electric car needs to be plugged in. That is why a hybrid is, well, a hybrid.

Izzy, what type of driving are we looking at? That is so far out the parameters of the Prius' design that it had to be a bad one. She should have taken her complaints past the dealer to Toyota's regional office, that dealership was playing with fire. And if they told it was covered, they were shooting themselves in the jimmies, becuase the standard warrenty DOES cover the entirity of the power pack, unless that has changed in the past two model years.

It sounds like a bad dealership with something that never should have passed QC, and offering to bring the state in was a good call. I hope she wrote an ugly letter to Nagano or thier US office to, becuase someone should have the hood slammed on thier fingers.

Still, the Matrix a good car, if you have a skinny backside. Sitting in one is a little better than flying coach to me, but I'm not skinny, and they are spiffy cars. And if she isn't doing a lot of stop and go, the Matrix should be comperable over it's life cycle to the Prius.

What do you think of this Hypercar® Concept.
This Hypercar seems a nice answer to our transportation problems ...

Many links on this site about hydrogen, other related subjetcs, etc....

Only two problems with hydrogen.

Support infastructure, and how to produce it at a sane cost without using fossil fuels. By the time we get that second item worked out, we'll have the mass production bugs out of fuel cells and the idea of hydrogen "burning" hybrid will be obsolete.

Anyone interested in watching that NOW segment "Who killed the electric car?" can watch it online in its entirety or download an mp3 or the transcript here .

Here's an interesting article on the current state of hybrid technology and what's coming down the pike as far as battery technology goes.

It sounds like she got a serious lemon with problems beyond the battery & inverter. I know a father & son with three Priuses between them & they are getting 50+ mpg. The one I know better is getting IIRC 55+ in mixed driving.

I agree that the DOT tests are stupid - many of them are based on the hydrocarbins coming out whien it is driving. I don't have problems with the mpg - we average 56mpg each tank(when I am driving - husband averages45mpg). The video game aspect helps more than with othey hybrids I have driven.
The batteries up here in Wisconsin have to be disposed of seperately and recycled anyway. And Toyota has a recycling program in effect for Prii batteries.

Rena

Here's an article talking about potiential safety problems and (a) possible solution. Wired Article

Here's an article about Retrofiting LiIon batteries. It seems the retrofit outfit is using the batteries from the company in the first article. I didn't make that connection until now.

JimJr