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#67398 - 07/04/06 04:30 PM Re: anyone bought hybrid car?
Arney Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 09/15/05
Posts: 2485
Loc: California
The documentary movie I mentioned before, Who Killed the Electric Car?, finally came out and I saw it this weekend. Not surprisingly, there is a pro-electric vehicle slant to the movie, but it still presented a quite comprehensive overview of why GM's EV1 car disappeared and really makes you think about "What could've been..."

As Ironraven mentioned in an earlier post, the first batch of EV1's had a lot of flaws, but from various EV1 fansites I have read and in the movie, GM quickly improved it. By the time the Gen II batch came out, the inadequate lead acid batteries were replaced with NiMH batteries, giving the EV1 up to 140 miles of freeway driving range, according to one EV1 driver's experience and solved the temperature sensitivity problem. With a 0-60 mph time of 8 seconds, it's no slouch, especially when it generates high torque at even low speeds, so it feels very zippy in normal driving. The EV1 was electronically limited to a top speed of 80 mph, but without the limiter, it could go 180 mph on the test track. Not bad.

No one really knows why the EV1 was killed off. The movie examines the possible motivations of various players--General Motors, the California Air Resources Board, Big Oil, battery technology, and yes, even whether the buying public was to blame. It's a tangled web. GM's motivations are particularly complicated and schizophrenic because on the one hand, as the manufacturer of the EV1, you would think that it wanted to heavily promote the EV1, but on the other hand, there was stiff pressure from the top to kill it off through lame or nonexistent advertising, laying off knowledgable sales staff, keeping supplies low, leasing only even though many owners wanted to buy, pressuring CARB to drop its requirement for a certain percentage of zero-emission vehicles in California if GM could prove that there was little demand for all-electric vehicles. That's the kicker, GM tried hard to prove to CARB that there was scant demand for the electric car it was producing so that California would stop requiring that car manufacturers produce a certain percentange of zero emission vehicles.

Battery technology is one segment that was particularly eye-opening for me. In this movie, engineer/inventor Stanford Ovshinsky is painted as a hero whose revolutionary NiMH technology is suppressed, first by GM and then his company is bought out by Chevron-Texaco. Actually, there is debate out there whether Ovshinsky actually "sold out" to Big Oil for the money to save his ailing photovoltaic business, and criticism that he has spent more time and effort simply suing every other manufacturer of NiMH batteries rather than trying to promote and sell his own batteries, so it's unclear if he's the victim or a willing participant in holding back battery technology. Actually, this is an interesting taste of the claims that electric motor and battery technology is deliberately being held back. I can't vouch for its sources, but it raises enough questions to make you wonder. According to this webpage's argument, there are powerful forces backed by Big Oil, the military, and others that don't want to see advanced electric motors and batteries becoming commonly available, whether to reduce our demand for oil or to prevent the spread of long-range, ultra-quiet submarines.

Actually, from the movie, you get the impression that although interests like Big Oil are looking 10-20 years down the road, GM killed the EV1 because they could only see ahead to their next quarterly earnings report and the EV1 wasn't immediately profitable for them. How's that for strategic thinking? And to me, maybe confirms why GM is in such dire straits these days with no good alternatives to selling more full-size pickups and SUV's. There's an interesting factoid in the movie, the EV1 program was terminated the same year that GM bought the rights to the Hummer. Coincidence? Hmmm.

You walk away from the movie with the impression that the EV1, although not a perfect replacement for a regular car, was actually a perfectly viable car for many people and that the limitations of the car weren't what really led to its demise. So, who really killed the electric car? I guess it'll be the fodder for heated debate for years to come.

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#67399 - 07/04/06 04:45 PM Re: anyone bought hybrid car?
bmisf Offline
Member

Registered: 03/19/03
Posts: 185
Arney - nice review. It's refreshing to see a report devoid of political slant one way or another and simply trying to lay out facts and observations. Much appreciated (perhaps we'll get a chance to check out the movie here, too).

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#67400 - 07/04/06 09:33 PM Re: anyone bought hybrid car?
spuddate Offline
Newbie

Registered: 11/27/05
Posts: 37
Loc: Southern California
I realize people like conspiracies, but no one is holding back battery technologies. Developers present their best results, played up in the press, and they dismiss the bad development results because "something" must have gone wrong with that experiment. However, when the process is scaled up, those bad results come to light and kill the technology. Trace impurities in bulk materials, as compared to high purity materials used in research batteries, also cause serious problems. I have been in this business for over twenty-five years; it isn't easy.

To the point of the initial post, I haven't purchased a hybrid because I am concerned about the environment. It takes a lot of energy to create a NiMH battery. Something like a Toytoa Corrola gets 40+ MPG, takes less energy to produce, lasts longer, and most of the vehicle is easily recycled when it dies. Overall life energy cost to the environment appear to me to be less for the Corolla.

Spud

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#67401 - 07/05/06 02:42 AM Re: anyone bought hybrid car?
ironraven Offline
Cranky Geek
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 09/08/05
Posts: 4642
Loc: Vermont
I'll look to see if it's around here. I doubt they'll be unbiased, but it's not likely to be as bad a Moorumentry.

Did they mention only the one GenII EV1, or did it discuss the rest of the G2 prototype fleet? The one that got 140 miles was a quirk, a freak, a mutant, at least from the information I saw when they were withdrawn. Most of them were lower than that, by quite a bit.

Again, there is no conspiracy as to why the EV1 died. There is no grassy knolle this time, there is no second shooter in the crowd, there is no mysterious doctor to visit the healthy inmate who died 18 hours later from a rare germ. The long and the short of it is, even the second generation EV1s (EV2s?) were still maintence intensive and way too expensive. When they were tested, battery costs were a lot higher for cells that size than they are now. The reason why the EV1 died is becuase it was too advanced to be economically viable.

General Motors has never been able to find the will to work on what can be on the road in mass production and at a middle class price tag in three to five years. And until they do that, they better buddy up with Nissan and Renault, or they aren't going to exist in ten years except as a defense contractor. Even then, LockMartNorth or GenDyn will probably by that part of the beast as it dies.
_________________________
-IronRaven

When a man dare not speak without malice for fear of giving insult, that is when truth starts to die. Truth is the truest freedom.

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#67402 - 07/05/06 07:45 AM Re: anyone bought hybrid car?
Arney Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 09/15/05
Posts: 2485
Loc: California
I've Googled in vain to find people who bash the EV1 for being maintenance intensive and have yet to find a single instance. In the movie and on the Internet, I only find praise about how little maintenance is required--basically rotate the tires and fill up the washer fluid every 5,000 miles. There's no complicated internal combustion engine, no transmission or drivetrain, there isn't a whole lot to break, except maybe the lame lead acid batteries in the first batch to be produced, but that's not really a mechanical problem.

I've seen real-world quotes from different drivers using the NiMH batteries in the 100-140 mile range on a number of different websites, so it doesn't seem freakishly abnormal. Current electric vehicles, like from Tesla Motors claim double that range already. Besides, one of the side effects of the zero emission mandate in California was the proliferation of state-subsidized charging stations at parking garages, shopping centers, etc. (at least in Northern Cal) so you could actually top off your batteries as you went about your daily business. Some people criticize the car for how long it takes for a full recharge (one website said 15 hours), but hardly anyone would drain the battery almost empty every day anyway, so it's unlikely that you would ever need to wait for a full recharge. In the movie, they quote an average daily commute of 23(?) miles, which means recharging each night would be quite quick even if you didn't have a recharging station at work.

In my Googling today, I ran across the interesting fact that the Smithsonian Museum had one of the few EV1's that escaped the shredder, but they removed it from display last month, just before this movie came out. The museum's transportation exhibition hall is named after General Motors, which donated $10 million in 2001 towards its construction. Coincidence? <shrug>

I probably shouldn't have mentioned that other "witholding battery technology conspiracy" webpage--that's just something I stumbled on. The movie is not necessarily saying that there was a conspiracy or secret outside forces involved with the EV1--just that there was a deliberate decision to kill off a car whose customers loved it, and then exploring reasons why GM would do that. However, facts like Chevron-Texaco buying the supplier of NiMH batteries for the EV1, Ovonics, from GM does make me scratch my head.

And yes, EV1's were expensive and the movie raises that point, too, but so were VCR's, DVD players, flat-screen TV's etc. when they first came out and revolutionized their particular industries. Unlike other EV's like the RAV4 or Ford Ranger EV, the EV1 was designed from scratch and GM apparently was practically handmaking all their EV1's, so there were no economies of scale or recycling of car parts involved. And Ovonics apparently wasn't churning out many of its batteries either. If both GM and Ovonics had actually gone into mass production, I can only assume that the cost would have come down significantly.

And maybe all-electrics aren't dead yet. Who knows, maybe this this cute (but 4-seater) all-electric Subaru will hit American shores someday in the near future. Maybe when the average price of gas hits $4 a gallon?

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#67403 - 07/05/06 01:23 PM Re: anyone bought hybrid car?
ironraven Offline
Cranky Geek
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 09/08/05
Posts: 4642
Loc: Vermont
When I was in college the first time, I was part of the school's alternative energy club. We got to take a very close look at the EV1 that the state was leasing. That last word is key- none of the people who drove an EV1 was a private owner of the vehicle. It cost almost nothing becuase GM underwrote the maintence past tires.

The one we got to see needed to have a new battery every 18 months, and had corrosion issues. They didn't like salted roads, and sucked on hills. Guess what Vermont has half the year, and what Vermont has all the year. Maybe the state's toy car (sorry, that's just how it felt to me) was the only one that needed a lot of maintence, but for some reason I doubt that.

As for going 140 miles on NiMH, no doubt it can be done. In fact, I saw better with some Tour de Sol rigs. But they had larger batteries than the the EV1. Most G2 EV1s, as I recall, were getting closer to 120 miles on a charge. That doesn't sound like much, but it is 16% difference. You see the same kind of variability with infernal combustion engines- a car model that is rated for X amount of mpg may have quite a bit of difference between exact specimines. The reason I ask is because I've heard the 140 mile claim, and it is misleading. Anything over, say, 5% probably should be discarded from those kinds of numbers for the sake of honesty.
_________________________
-IronRaven

When a man dare not speak without malice for fear of giving insult, that is when truth starts to die. Truth is the truest freedom.

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#67404 - 07/07/06 06:23 PM Re: anyone bought hybrid car?
Matt26 Offline
Enthusiast

Registered: 09/27/05
Posts: 309
Loc: Vermont
As a Firefighter we just recently underwent training specificaly for hybrid vehicles. Structurealy (sp?) they are no different than their traditional counterparts. The only real difference is that there is a high powered electrical source onboard. Awareness and education is key! In that spirit I offer up the following link that has emergency response guides for most all of the Hybrids out on the market currently.
http://www.sceneoftheaccident.com/wst_page16.html All of the guides are on pdf and are availble to be downloaded and refered to as needed. Enjoy.
_________________________
If it ain't bleeding, it doesn't hurt.

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#67405 - 07/07/06 06:40 PM Re: anyone bought hybrid car?
JIM Offline
Old Hand

Registered: 03/18/06
Posts: 1032
Loc: The Netherlands
Matt 26,

We in Holland are busy introducing the 'Crash Recovery System'.
It's a program that can be accessed from the fire-engine and gives specific info about the location of airbags, powerlines, etc with every brand and type of vehicle.

Do you have something similair in the US?
_________________________
''It's time for Plan B...'' ''We have a Plan B?'' ''No, but it's time for one.'' -Stargate SG-1

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#67406 - 07/07/06 07:52 PM Re: anyone bought hybrid car?
Matt26 Offline
Enthusiast

Registered: 09/27/05
Posts: 309
Loc: Vermont
Yes and no. Most reference information is kept at the station or dispatch center. The information that we keep in the truck are in binders and is limited to hazmat and a street directory with hydrant locations and some preplans for the few commercial structures we have in town. Our rescue truck does carry more detailed info including all of the new information from the website that I mentioned. Some of the larger departments in the US may use a similar system to yours but my department is small, 7 peices of apparatus. Check it out at www.mallettsbayfire.com
_________________________
If it ain't bleeding, it doesn't hurt.

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