Grab a coffee and watch at least 30 minutes of this. Watch the whole 1 hour 25 mins if you have the time. I’d love to see your comments and discuss this at the next poker night.
Who killed the electric car…
December 20th, 2007 | blowfish | interesting, movie |
7 comments ↓
Look forward to the comments too. Interesting film, VERY biased but thought provoking.
How about one to start with?…
Would YOU lease the EV1? I find it very hard to ever envisage driving a car that had such limited range.
Lastly, if the batteries are same tech as laptops. They only last 1-2 years! How much would replacement ones cost!
Not sure about leasing…I’d very much think about buying one though. I drive exactly 31 miles per day when I’m at work. I rarely done any more in a working day in the little car since I started my new job nearly a year ago. If I needed to pop home that would still make my total travel 62 miles. My car costs about £42 to fill up and lasts 2 weeks. That means I’m spending just over £1000 per year to travel the 15 miles to and from work.
The EV1 first used lead batteries which were rubbish and then in later models used NiMH. The NiMH batteries would last longer than the car. There was talk in the movie about moving to Lithium Ion but the heat was a concern so they didn’t do it. I’m not sure if that’s the right battery choice for this application anyway.
One of the interesting things is that if the EV1 was built today, what advances would help it now. Two things I can think of is cheaper and more efficient solar panels that can now be produced as a flexible film. If these were installed on the roof, the car would have greater range. Also the innovative breaking system the Prius uses where putting your foot on the break channels the cars breaking energy into generating electricity and so recharging the batteries. In fact, the Prius is really close to being an EV, all it needs is the batteries. There are mod kits already available to change the Prius to do just that. If Toyota put their minds to it, they could produce something like the EV1 relatively easily. And because it would come from a nation that is not an oil producer, it’s got a better chance of making it in the market place.
All very good points. Love the idea of generating power from bralking! Genious.
But in the true spirit of argument for the bloody sake of it:
MiMH are NOT everlasting. All Laptop/iPod/Mobile batteries have been NiMH for years and they all fail to perform after 1/2 years depending on frequency of use. The EV must have had special NiMH tech.
It was a two seater! No boot! Not at all a family car or are you subsidised by your hummer ;) The colours were bad too!
And with regard to how it would be today… it would have the exact same issues regardless of newer tech; slow take up, high deployment/dev costs, long proof of concept issues and most importantly it would cost more than todays vehicles. See FuelCell!
What I find most intersting is the politics. Given my last point, how would any new fuel system take hold without complete buyin by the motor cos, the gov & the oil companies. Look at FuelCell, that looks to be at lest 20 years away and DOES have all of those!
Lastly, and most interestingly, did you notice that no mention was given regarding the running costs. Unlkess I missed it, who’s to say your costs would be less to charge the car on electricity than your petrol costs. This film was commissioned by tree huggers, not low budget thinkers, they are talking from a clen air perspective rather than a more cost effective standpoint.
There wont be any left for poker!
The NimH batteries in EV’s are guaranteed for 8 years. Not as much as I thought but a lot better than 1 or 2 years.
Yes you are correct, it wasn’t a family car. I’m purely thinking from my point of view to replace the Corsa. I’m sure there are a lot of families that have a big car and a small one.
Don’t forget the Prius is already in the market and is an EV, the only difference is that it doesn’t have a plug in ability. It uses the internal combustion engine part to charge its batteries. There must be a business case there or Toyota would dump it.
I don’t think we will see a fuel cell car in mass production in our lifetimes. It stinks of being put on a track that will guarantee all oil reserves are exhausted before the tech is ready. If ever.
Yes I did notice the running costs were left out. A little hard to calculate though given the massive differences in electricity costs around the world. It would have been nice to be told how many KwH’s it would take to charge though so a calc could be made. As for the argument that charging the car would cause more polution due to the electric coming from coal based generators (USA), that isn’t so much of a problem here given we use less coal and have even committed to planting a few giant desk fans into the North Sea.
Correction…they did mention costs. They said it was like running a petrol car with petrol prices at 60c per gallon.
I must read more about the Prius, looks v interesting! I didnt realise it was an EV, thought it was a hybrid.
I hope we do see it in our lifetime.
The Prius is a hybrid, part electric part petrol. It uses the petrol to charge the electric part and the electric part is used when the performance requirements don’t require the boost of the petrol.
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