[Mesuge]

Cao> you are basically right but in the case of plugin hybrids which have full EV operation mode is the situation as folllows. You have got a Li-ion/polymer battery pack electronicaly controlled where you get 1500-2000 cycles in the 40-85% state of discharge as well..
That's why the action radius in EV mode is limited to say few dozens miles for the 5-10kWh plugin pack..

Full EVs with 20-30kWh pack and better aero/weight parameters can have the radius mux bigger but you can't just drain the batteries 100-0% that will kill most of the advanced chemistries out there, especially Li-ions. Understanding the inner chemistry during discharge and translating it into the battery electronics is the key for battery longevity..

[fastbike]

Just looked at http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledth ... ctric.html

LOL - under their "timeline" they show 1930 as the year that Ford introduced the Model T, thus killing off EVs. Shame they haven't bothered checking their facts - the "T" was actually produced from 1908 to 1927.

[Terrapin]

LOL, obviously Sony is part if the conspiracy.

[LGW]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'W')hy couldn't a solar electric hybrid work? Coat a light car with solar panels. Park it in a solar garage (with grid backup). Whenever the sun shines on the car and on the garage, you're making energy. Store that in the car's batteries or on the grid. What's the problem?

[Revi]

[/quote]See, the thing is, that when you mention "7hp", people think it's a motor meant to be used in a lawnmower, not something for serious transportation...[/quote]

The thing is that reality will not allow larger vehicles for most people. Peak oil will take care of that. The idea of driving around in a 6000 pound lump of steel on decomposed organic matter will seem like a strange dream in 20 years.

We'll have to get around in lighter vehicles. Some may be able to go up to 50 mph, but I doubt that the average person will own one. We'll have to rely on mass transportation to get around between cities.

This life is very similar to what people live in most parts of Europe and the rest of the world. The only place people really live in a car culture is here. Look at what they use for taxis in India. Small 3 wheeled taxis are the bulk of the transportation in towns. In the countryside people walk. Busses and trains transport people between cities.

I know it'll be hard for people to get used to, but 7hp is going to seem like a large vehicle in the near future, unless you are a high mucky muck in the government or industry. How else are we going to get around if we have less than half of the oil we're using now? A solar- electric car much lighter than a golf cart would work just fine to get around town. We'll be happy to have one soon.

[Mesuge]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('LGW', '
')See, the thing is, that when you mention "7hp", people think it's a motor meant to be used in a lawnmower, not something for serious transportation...

[dohboi]

Think about what we are talking about here. Up until quite recently in human civilization (and still in much of the world) having seven horses or their equivalent in power put you near the top of the heap. Hitching 200 horses to your buggy would have been the height of absurdity. In fact it still is.

[Mesuge]

The director Chris Paine is complaining that he is on MSM blacklist and that his multiple award winning movie gets virtually no press before theatrical release 6/28..
http://www.ifmagazine.com/feature.asp?article=1517

We all know that most of the people in MSM are moronic lackeys living in big part from automanuf. advertisement budget so that's not a conspiracy per se. That's just capitalism at its best..

[Wildwell]

I never smelt a conspiracy here either

The concept of a rechargeable, emissions-free vehicle is as old as the milk float and workable versions have been around for years. Sir Clive Sinclair’s C5 had a range of 20 miles and a top speed of 15mph. It was a flop. Makers claim to have increased range and performance with lightweight materials and improved battery technology: those advances mean the electric car is here to stay, they say. Perhaps. The truth is that just as the debate on global warming is hotting up, motor manufacturers are dropping out of the electric car market. Ford’s TH!NK city car was recently discontinued along with Peugeot’s Partner. The electric version of Citroën’s Berlingo was the latest to be unplugged. “We sold 11 in 2005 and 14 in 2004,” said a spokesman.

So what is putting buyers off?

Recharging: it’s fine if you have a garage but if you keep your car on the street it means leaving a power cord through your letterbox for hours, which could attract vandals.

Reliability: battery life for the G-Wiz is estimated at two to four years, depending on usage. The car is covered by a two-year warranty but if the battery fails outside that, it costs £1,200. Twike says its batteries will last for 50,000 miles, with a replacement cost of £3,180-£6,980.

Price: electric cars may be cheap to run but are pricy to buy. The cheapest is £6,999, £400 more than the entry model new VW Fox, which has a top speed of 92mph, has airbags and air-conditioning and has a four-star Euro NCAP rating for both adult and child occupants. Critics say electric cars won’t catch on until they are priced like motorcycles, say £2,000-£3,000.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/ ... 31,00.html

[LadyRuby]

People the answer is plug-in hybrids. Of course they rely on electricity, but have gas as a back-up. And in theory, with time, we can get a lot more of our electricity from solar power, wind power, and even (cringing) nuclear power.

How to Get a Plug-in Hybrid

Yes, plug-in hybrids are the wave of the future, and I'm hoping my 1990 Honda holds out for a few more years until they're commercially available.

[Ibon]

Read the link. Rumours of Toyota launching their next generation Prius by 2008 with 94MPG to compete with the European diesel competition and E-drive after market PHEV's. You can see what drives Toyota toward this direction....the competition. Toyota though seems not to be rushing into PHEV's yet. I wonder if they can engineer that much of an increase in fuel efficiency without it. I think Ladyruby waiting a few years will give her a number of interesting options to choose from. In the meantime let gas creep up to $5/gallon to increase the incentives.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/04 ... pant_.html

[Mesuge]

Wildwell> your numbers are bit off..

TS lithium so far the most tested Li-ion battery in electric vehicles during the past years have 2000cycles from 70% DOD at cost around 0,7Wh..

That translates for 10kWh pack into:

2000 x 7000 Wh / 88 Wh/km (140Wh/mi) = ~160 000 km.
6300 eur/160 000 km = 0,039 eur/km (0,04992 @1,28USD/EUR)(0,799 USD/mi)

That's for a smaller aerodynamic car.
When used in UL efficient cars like Loremo you can get even 30%-40% better performance. Or when used in traditional bigger sedans increase the cost by 1/3 accordingly..

So, the operational and overall ownership costs of EV due to zero maintanace are less than ICEs. The emissions are 1/3 or better from coal plant and much better from hydro or nuclear..

It won't save the day now, it's just too late to turn around the fleet but EVs were and are better than ICEs you can't spin enough around it..

[Mesuge]

BBC 4 will air today at 12pm (13:00 EU continental time) show dedicated to the electric car and this movie..
Lets hope they will report it fair and wihtout the oily spin..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/

It will be in their archive for the other time zone people too..

---

In other strictly "who killed the EV" movie news there are new interviews and movie clips available, check it out here:

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2726393

[KevO]

anyone seen this film yet?

"It was among the fastest, most efficient production cars ever built. It ran on electricity, produced no emissions and catapulted American technology to the forefront of the automotive industry. The lucky few who drove it never wanted to give it up. So why did General Motors crush its fleet of EV1 electric vehicles in the Arizona desert?"

interesting trailer here - guess who's to blame?

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/whok ... ectriccar/

[Mesuge]

Yes this document is great but there are many threads on this topic already with additional links and discussion. Mods pls. lock up or delete this thread..

People pls. use the search function!

[Revi]

The movie is a must see for all peak freaks. It brings up the whole problem with the oil, car and military industrial complex in America, and how they conspired to kill the electric car. It really is an amazing film about the way things work. We may have reached a turning point back in the early 90's. At that point we could have been the world leaders in the emerging technologies of hybrid vehicles and electric cars. Instead we elected to go with the same otto cycle engine that has been around for over 100 years. We doomed ourselves to has been status. Now the Japanese are using the Nickel Metal Hydride battery technology that was invented here and sold to GM and are beating us at the car game. Soon we will be stranded in our outsized, internal combustion dinosaurs while the rest of the world starts to transition into small electric cars. What were we thinking? This movie should open a few eyes. It is like a detective story.

Chris Paine was on the daily show last night. Did anyone see it? He was on Now with Brancaccio a couple of months ago too. I really enjoyed the interview he did then. He is a bit of a rabble rouser. I think we'll have some people finding out about peak oil through movies like this. One thing that they mentioned was that we have about a trillion barrels left and that the oil companies will want to sell them as dearly as possible. Something like an electric car puts a wrench in that plan. Lots of peak oil in this movie! Worth the price of admission!

[Chicken_Little]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grabby', '
')that is called faith.

But putting faith in technology is going to un work.
60 percent of our grid runs on Carbon fuels.
we would need at least 15 complete new electric grids to replace our oil use in cars.
it is un possible
thats why it died.

Hey I have a better Idea!
Why don't we run all our cars on HYDROGEN! its plentiful the sun is 99 percent hydrogen.

Oh, i just thought of something, if we sent rocket ships to the sun to get all that hydrogen, its pretty hot, it would catch fire when it hit the atmosphere, and burn up! so I guess we cant do it then.
shucks.

[matt21811]

Chicken Little,
Toe_cutter has an excelent post on how many Electric Vehicles the US grid can take without modification.

http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic9721-0-asc-0.html
(towards the bottom of the first page, in Italics)

To save you reading, the figure is about 100 Million.

If every car in the US was converted to fully plug in electric then you would need to double the grid. This is not even close to the 15 fold figure that Grabby just made up.

You can keep on getting enjoyment from Grabbys "grasp of the figures involved" and so will I.

[dukey]

maybe we should just drive smaller vehicles
smaller/lighter vehicles require less energy to move

i guess someone should have told ford and gm that ..

[Revi]

The movie does a nice job of debunking hydrogen. There is a guy who drives a hydrogen demo vehicle who says that the technology is 30 years away. The bigwigs who started the whole hydrogen hype are shown to be just shils for the fossil fuel lobby. Search this one out. It's a peak oil movie!