Is it time for electric cars?

[PeaceBrother]

Electric cars past

GM leased the EV-1 more than twenty years ago to a select group of californians. They all loved them. They were way quiter than the internal combustion engine. They could get roughly 120 miles to a charge. They were pretty cool looking in my opinion. And they required far less maintainence. They also had as good if not better performance features than thier gas guzzling counterparts.

When thier leases ran out the former owners wanted to buy them but GM didnt let them because they realised it would turn the industry upside down and that they would lose tons of money because the vehicles wouldnt need to be serviced nearly as much as thier counterparts. So they destroyed all of the EV-1 s and have put the blue prints in the GM vault.

The point is not that GM is evil, but that the technology was here years ago. We just need to put it to use.


With gas prices at an all time high and tension in the middle east, what better time to release the electric car. I think it would be the best thing to happen to the economy in a long time. The lack of maintainence costs would free up tons of cash to be used else where. It would cost far less to ship stuff across the country and would lower prices on everything. The enviromental benifits would be substantial.

Furthermore we already know how to make renewable electricity through solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, etc. So it would be a long term solution the fuel crisis.

Thanks for your time and tell me what you think gang.

 

[oldreliable67]

They also had as good if not better performance features than thier gas guzzling counterparts.

This part I definitely do not remember. Can you point me to some confirmation of this?

 

[::Major_Baker::]

 

[faithful_servant]

...and just what is going to be source fo the electricity to power these cars??? Current power generation is barely sufficient as is, how are you going to provide the huge amount of electricity needed for cars?

 

[::Major_Baker::]

...and just what is going to be source fo the electricity to power these cars??? Current power generation is barely sufficient as is, how are you going to provide the huge amount of electricity needed for cars?

we need to harness the power of wind more!

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced a goal of obtaining 6% of U.S. electricity from wind by 2020--a goal that is consistent with the current rate of growth of wind energy nationwide. As public demand for clean energy grows, and as the cost of producing energy from the wind continues to decline, it is likely that wind energy will provide a growing portion of the nation's energy supply.

http://www.awea.org/faq/tutorial/ww...uch will be added over the next several years

 

[faithful_servant]

we need to harness the power of wind more!


http://www.awea.org/faq/tutorial/ww...uch will be added over the next several years

I always firgured that Capitol Hill would be a great place for a wind power project. However, you'd have to develop a special design to handle all of the caustic fumes that come with the wind.

 

[::Major_Baker::]

I always firgured that Capitol Hill would be a great place for a wind power project. However, you'd have to develop a special design to handle all of the caustic fumes that come with the wind.

very true, but if we followed the enormous gusts of hot air coming from the republican right, we would be swept out into the atlantic to our deaths, almost immediately.

 

[faithful_servant]

True, but if we could just find a way to tap into the bottomless resevoir of alcohol in the Kennedy family, we wouldn't even need wind power and we'd be completely independent of foreign oil.

 

[Jay R]

Is it time for electric cars?

Bottom line, no.

Batteries are too heavy and don't hold enough juice so you need lot's of them, they're heavy so they then hinder performance and the motors have to work harder to move the weight. Plus they get plugged into the national grid at the end of the day and electricity is expensive enough as it is, coming from principally dirty power sources. Hydrogen is difficult to produce, and fuel cells even more so.

There's also the complete redesign of the road networks that may prove necessary for widespread use of electric vehicles. Someone who walks out in the street and gets run down by a silent electric car will have grounds for a lawsuit, assuming they had checked before crossing then they could not reasonably be expected to be aware of it if it appeared quickly or from around a corner. You may need to completely seperate pedestrian zones from any traffic, requiring substantial changes to town planning.

Alternative fuels is the way to go.

 

[justone]

the caustic fumes that come with the wind.

Tell me. I don't know but interested.

 

[Billo_Really]

Originally posted by faithful_servant
...and just what is going to be source fo the electricity to power these cars??? Current power generation is barely sufficient as is, how are you going to provide the huge amount of electricity needed for cars?

Maybe Iraq might have to wait, but we got the power. As long as we don't have to go through any phony "brown outs"

 

[128shot]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliica


its pretty ugly, but shows the potential of eletric cars. They're not wussies, and they can hold a charge for 200 miles, whichs more than most people drive in a day.

so whats the problem..

 

[Jay R]

The estimated cost of development was in excess of US$320,000.

1 GBP = 1.83468 USD
320,000.00 USD United States Dollars = 174,416.93 GBP United Kingdom Pounds. Buys me any Ferrari currently in production.:smile:

On a more serious note, this project has clearly got hung up on a p***ing contest with petrol cars. As I tell anyone who drools over the Bugatti Veyron, when in the hell are you ever going to need a car that'll do 250mph? Where in the hell are you going to find the space to do that sort of speed? They would be better off trying to get this technology adapted to a small European hatchback. Still, it's probably the best example of an electric car yet, but I direct you back to my previous post, there are problems with such vehicles beyond simply getting them to work.

 

[Stinger]

we need to harness the power of wind more!


http://www.awea.org/faq/tutorial/wwt_statistics.html#How%20much%20wind%20generating%20capacity%20currently%20exists%20in%20the%20U.S.%20How%20much%20will%20be%20added%20over%20the%20next%20several%20years

You aren't serious. Have you calculated how many windmills it would take to produce enough electricity to power them. And as far as I know windmills ususally are most productive during the day when the winds are most active, most people would be charging them at night. How would you manage that?

Nuclear. You want electric cars then you need nuclear.

 

[Stinger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliica


its pretty ugly, but shows the potential of eletric cars. They're not wussies, and they can hold a charge for 200 miles, whichs more than most people drive in a day.

so whats the problem..

Where do you get the electricity?

 

[justone]

Have you calculated how many windmills it would take to produce enough electricity to power them. And as far as I know windmills ususally are most productive during the day when the winds are most active, most people would be charging them at night. How would you manage that?
.

I had the same question before faithfulservant confused me with the caustic fumes that come with the wind as a more important problem. I still have no clue what he is talking about.

Have you calculated? As far as I have heard the rumors ( something I’ve not had a chance to check myself) the windmills are advertised as something which has been working successfully for decades.

 

[Stinger]

I had the same question before faithfulservant confused me with the caustic fumes that come with the wind as a more important problem. I still have no clue what he is talking about.

Have you calculated? As far as I have heard the rumors ( something I’ve not had a chance to check myself) the windmills are advertised as something which has been working successfully for decades.

A windmill works fine if you have wind and you need the electricity now. As I asked have you calculate how many would be needed to power all of our cars and trucks? Where would you put them all and what would you do at night when winds calm down and everyone is trying to charge their cars?

 

[justone]

A windmill works fine if you have wind and you need the electricity now. As I asked have you calculate how many would be needed to power all of our cars and trucks? Where would you put them all and what would you do at night when winds calm down and everyone is trying to charge their cars?

I did not have el. cars in mind - I see too many problems with them. I am talking about pollution and dependancy on oil. A lot of el. is produced by burning fossil fuel. Wind mills do not pollute, and, plugged into an el grid they can peak up loads hundreds if not thousands miles away.Actually the load of a grid maximises during the daytime and goes down at nignt as a rule.

 

[Stinger]

I did not have el. cars in mind - I see too many problems with them. I am talking about pollution and dependancy on oil. A lot of el. is produced by burning fossil fuel. Wind mills do not pollute, and, plugged into an el grid they can peak up loads hundreds if not thousands miles away.Actually the load of a grid maximises during the daytime and goes down at nignt as a rule.

Once again when everyone is charging their cars at night where will you get the electricity? And tell the Kennedy's windmills don't "pollute" one of the objections to oil drilling off the coast is because it "pollutes" the vista and they are objecting to windmills off thier beach homes because of it.

Are there some places where we can use windmlls to suppliment other forms of electrical generation? Yes, but what do you do on a calm day? You have to have some other source in place.

 

[Columbusite]

Electric cars and other alt fuels will never solve our problem; suburban/exurban sprawl. We'd still be using a ridiculously high, unsustainable amount of oil and other resources even if we had hydrogen, electric, etc cars today. We need walkable neighborhoods and cities, like those in Europe and basically everywhere else in the world. Also needed is mass transit like high-speed rail to get around the country and to stop relying on trucks for transporting goods. So many people die from car accidents, you'd think people would want well-planned "new" urbanist neighborhoods. The price of suburbia is just too high, in terms of actual costs, use of oil, and lives lost to car accidents.

"The body count from road accidents in developed economies is 390 times higher than the death toll in these countries from international terrorism, says a study appearing in a specialist journal, Injury Prevention.

In 2001, as many people died every 26 days on American roads as died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it says." (emphasis added)

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/11/30/051130231753.72wocvgo.html

 

[Jay R]

Electric cars and other alt fuels will never solve our problem; suburban/exurban sprawl. We'd still be using a ridiculously high, unsustainable amount of oil and other resources even if we had hydrogen, electric, etc cars today. We need walkable neighborhoods and cities, like those in Europe and basically everywhere else in the world.

This is a highly relevent point, I can't speak for the rest of Europe but British town planning is a disaster, local councils have been so unwilling to allow big store chains to expand in the town centres (protests from owners of small stores, general dislike of big companies, outright NIMBYism, etc) that everything is heading to out of town retail parks. And at every level of government there is a fear of building upwards to maximise space (probably related to the disaster of the high rise tenements in the 70's), London in particular adopts an unnatural refusal to build real skyscrapers in the manner of New York, Tokyo, Shanghai. As a result the suburban sprawl is concreting the whole of South East England, forget the green belt.

 

[SFLRN]

They may not wholly solve our problem but it would take huge changes to make walking a viable means of transportation on a consistant basis for our society. And to counter the point made by Columbusite, with the proliferation of these technologies prices will go down as more companies offer them and thus more competition. Along with that oil prices will rise because of growing demand due to the development of India and China to name a few. People would be motivated to switch to alternative fuels much quicker as the price of oil continues to make its way upwards. This would also help lower our growing trade deficit since we wouldn't need to import as much oil. Sure more walkable cities will help, the proliferation of this technology for use by business and consumers which will be brought on by rising oil prices is what will lower the oil problem.

 

[Columbusite]

They may not wholly solve our problem but it would take huge changes to make walking a viable means of transportation on a consistant basis for our society. And to counter the point made by Columbusite, with the proliferation of these technologies prices will go down as more companies offer them and thus more competition. Along with that oil prices will rise because of growing demand due to the development of India and China to name a few. People would be motivated to switch to alternative fuels much quicker as the price of oil continues to make its way upwards. This would also help lower our growing trade deficit since we wouldn't need to import as much oil. Sure more walkable cities will help, the proliferation of this technology for use by business and consumers which will be brought on by rising oil prices is what will lower the oil problem.

The problem with your point lies in the fact that all the alternative fuel options we have now depend on oil. What are you going to use to make electricity turn water into hydrogen? What do you need to use to process corn into ethanol? They are not some panacea, we need to revamp our way of life. It's not going to be easy and for the surburbs I don't know what we can really to with them. While we can rehabilitate older urban neighborhoods that are currently decrepit, there is much less we can do for far-flung suburbs. It would be very costly. We've got to learn to build up, not out and we've got to make it accomodating for public transportation. After all, when we've totally run out of fuels in the far future, wouldn't it be nice if everything were in a walkable idstance?

 

[PeaceBrother]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1


Thats where its at. All the Info on the EV1 thus proving the electric cars worth.

Then as for the "Where will the electricity come from?" question. Where do you think all the oil and gas comes from? Either way we have almost endless supplies of coal here in the USA and we can easily use that to make the electricity. Plus there is always wind, hydro, nuclear, solar, and any other alternative electricity resource.

Everything is in place, we just need the EV1 back. Its cheap and it would break our addiction to oil. Then we'd be addicted to coal, and sun, and wind, and I can live with that.

 

[PeaceBrother]

Plus I might add the EV1 looks pretty hot. its like a little dodge viper. I wish I could buy one.

The electric vehicle doesnt produce hardly any noise either. Think of all the noise pollution it would cut out. Not to mention all the normal pollution.

One theory of why they canned the EV1 was because they didnt need much maintainence which would lose autodealers money. If thats true then tack on another huge plus.

A documentery called like "Who killed the electric car" just came out recently that was all about this. I suggest you check it out. Its very interesting.