Cranky Customer

A few years ago I went to a Saturn dealership and asked if they had a hybrid, or one under development. They said no. I live in Miami (which has insane traffic, construction everywhere, and a public transportation system that goes in a straight line) but it doesn't have the standards that CA has. I drive a Prius and LOVE it, but have never driven pure electric - what a dream!

I had the chance to see one of those when I was visiting friends in Los Angeles. We were staying at his parents' house, went out for a walk and saw this strange vehicle in the driveway of a neighbor. We stopped to look at it, the owner (well, the guy who leased it I guess) came out and even let my friend drive it! I kept waiting and waiting to see more on them, but then I heard they'd all been collected to be crushed. What a waste.

I invested many years ago in a startup electric car company, the Amectran EXAR-1. (Amectran was short for "American Ecological Transportation.) The developer had a beautiful working model, the body of which was designed by an Italian auto designer whose name I cannot now remember but who also did designs for Lambourgini and/or other very well known auto brands.

The EXAR-1, in which I have ridden, performed beautifully with a range of 100 miles, top speed of roughly 80 MPH, was quiet with only the wind noise at highway speeds, had an interlock system designed to prevent drunks from driving, a clock so accurate it would not lose a second over the twenty or so years the car was expected to last, and carried its own built-in charger (no special charging box which could be used only at your home). Unfortunately the developer could not develop the funding support he felt he needed in order to start the mass manufacturing facility required.

There might be more hope: http://www.teslamotors.com

A 2 seater @ $80K. But with a 200 mile range.

They had a press release saying you could buy them last week, but the "buy it now" page just says soon.

Add an extra 10K if you don't live in CA, Miami or Detroit (iirc)...

I still don't get them trying to ding you for an air dam....

There is some info about this in the London Sunday Times:
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22750-2280024,00.html

It includes info on the movie, and on suppliers of electric cars.

First, I have to say that I just don't understand this whole electric car thing - the "toxic waste dump" comment referring to a gasoline station, and talk of "zero emission vehicles" in legislatures. Where do you think the electricity comes from? It comes from a power generation plant that, (surprise!) emits something - either the same type of emissions as a conventional gasoline powered automobile (in the case of an oil or gas fired power plant), tons of crap (if it's coal fired), or, eventually, nuclear waste!

Now I realize that SOME of our electricity comes from wind farms, geothermal energy, hydroelectric generators, and various solar plants, but such sources account for only a small percentage of power generated in the world, and in the USA. I hope we continue building more of these things, but there are limitations, and the majority of the electricity you use to move your electric car is not going to come from one of these sources. And while a gas or oil fired power plant should be more efficient at capturing combustion energy than the average automobile, once you subtract transmission and storage inefficiencies (you do know that you put more energy into a battery than you get out of it - every time you charge it!) the amount of fuel burned to move your car isn't all that much different (if you would compare vehicles with the same power and weight, being driven the same way), especially compared to cars with variable displacement, CV transmissions, and any sort of hybrid system that utilizes regenerative braking and better matches power production to load requirements (conventional drive trains are VERY efficient in certain areas of the driving envelope - such as accelerating, going uphill, and carrying heavy loads; idling in traffic and driving at slow speeds is wasteful though).

Manufacturing efficiency should also be taken into account - electric and hybrid vehicles are more expensive to manufacture, which equals more energy (fossil fuel mostly, but a little nuclear, and, of course, a little bit from the sun/wind/tide/etc.) used. Therefore, the total energy used over the life of the vehicle (and, therefore, total emissions) aren't much, if at all, less, and might be more. It is hard to accurately add it all up, but electric vehicles and hybrids are more expensive, even after all us taxpayers pitch in through various subsidies and tax breaks for the manufacturers, and in some cases, dealers and owners, of hybrid and/or electric vehicles.

In a free market, only the wealthy could afford to own and operate electric and hybrid cars with current technology. We need a real breakthrough in battery tech - current batteries suck in terms of energy density (which means you lose efficiency by hauling around more weight in batteries, and you lose range and power performance, compared to conventional drive trains), and storage efficiency.

Comparing the actual operating costs of current electric and hybrid cars with current gasoline powered cars may be somewhat deceptive, as there are multiple variables present - size and weight of vehicles, aerodynamics, the way they are driven, and so on. While electric and hybrid vehicles may be superior in some such aspects in current applications, it is not fair to compare a gas powered vehicle directly to an electric vehicle if the gas powered vehicle is larger/heavier, and has more power. Ford is supposed to be coming out with a hydraulic hybrid, which their initial tests shows to be much more efficient than current electric hybrids. Combined with a clean diesel, or a engine running on natural gas, such technology might soon really spank a "zero emission" electric car, if all things are considered. Hydrogen might make a better energy storage medium than batteries - you could take your "zero emission" electricity that just appears out of nowhere (or at least it is assumed to in all these discussions), and use it to separate water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, then store the H, release the O, and use the H to power a fuel cell, turbine, or reciprocating engine inside your car. Hybrid tech will help total reduce total emissions as the products mature, but a pure electric car is never going to make an appreciable difference (over the lifetime of the vehicle) with current battery technologies.

Now that we are through with all of that, I have to say that GM's conduct in the case of the EV1 is indefensible. If you like the car, you should be able to buy it. Of course, you must realize that each of those cars probably cost GM a hundred thousand or more to build, as the production costs were much higher than a conventional drive train, and the engineering/design & tooling costs were amortized over a relatively small number of vehicles. So to sell you the car without losing money (and taking a big tax write off loss, which is what they are actually doing - the tax write off being larger than the loss, due to the gov's incentives to develop and sell such vehicles) the end of lease purchase price would still be quite high. But once they decided not to sell them, and especially once they decided to destroy the cars, charging you for damage/excess wear (and if the same "damage" has happened to a large number of the cars, it sounds like a design flaw, and not something you should be responsible for), is ridiculous.

There is a fascinating article about hydrogen as a vehicle fuel in the current issue of Home Power magazine -- http://www.homepower.com -- with some numbers and comparisons that I haven't seen elsewhere. A poor tradeoff.

The considerable hazards of carrying hydrogen around aside, the effort to create a whole new infrastructure to make it available nationwide would be staggering.

Oh, and there was a fascinating interview on Pacifica radio a couple of weeks ago, in conjunction with release of the movie Who Killed the Electric Car, with a person who was hired to do marketing for the EV1 (already a booster/enthusiast); her comment was that when they ended the program (claiming nobody wanted one, among other things) there was still a waiting list of some 5000 potential customers for them. Counterintuitive? Tickle the paranoia spider-sense? Hmmm...

I've got a one word response to sum up why I would never buy a hydrogen powered vehicle:

Hindenburg

Denise, your one-word response is quite a bit too short. Read up on the Hindenburg disaster, say at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_%28airship%29 -- you'll find that hydrogen was only part of the problem.

Bear in mind that the hydrogen in a car's fuel tank would be much better protected than was Hindenburg's, and that wrecks of hydrocarbon-powered automobiles quite often result in spectacular fires from their own flammable substances.

So, I say, it's usually not the fuel in the vehicle that's the problem, but the fool driving it!

To Stuart: LOL!

I actually thought about that ten seconds after I hit "Post". -sigh- In the rush to be clever, I outsmarted only myself.