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General Motor's EV1 Electric Cars Scrapped
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Mar 16, 2005 04:10 PM
from the bye-bye dept.
from the bye-bye dept.
jangobongo writes "Yesterday, the last of General Motors EV1 electric cars were transported to their final resting place, the GM Desert Proving Grounds in Arizona, for "final disposition," which for most of them means crushing and recycling. The experimental GM cars were originally leased (starting in 1996) to owners in California and Arizona for three years while GM developed electric battery technology, but the expected breakthrough in battery technology failed to materialize. GM spent more than $1 billion developing and marketing the EV1, but concluded that the electric cars would not be profitable. The EV1 program was ended in 2003. Some of the cars were donated to engineering departments of colleges and universities, while others went to museums, including the Smithsonian Institution. Despite protests and petitions, GM would not sell the last available cars to the public due to the lack of replacement parts for repairs, and because of potential liability claims. It's sad to see this chapter on electric cars close."
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What you don't see can't hurt you? (Score:5, Interesting)
See here [xtronics.com] for energy densities of various materials.
Could there be a reason that gasoline is the energy storage mechanism of choice for vehicles?
Why not concentrate on GM's current hybrid timeline [gm.com], or on vehicles that are actually useful and that normal people might buy, like GM's 2007 GMT-900 platform (Tahoe/Suburban/Yukon/Yukon XL/Escalade) which will have a strong hybrid option, with a standard 5.7L Vortec V8, but with Displacement on Demand, disabling 2 or 4 cylinders as conditions permit, and featuring two 30kW electric motors housed in the standard Hydramatic transmission case that doesn't require major resigns and retooling entire truck production lines for use, but still yielding up to a 40% mileage improvement, instead of making ugly little cars on which it is apparently mandatory to have the rear wheelwells covered like hearses?
Re:What you don't see can't hurt you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What you don't see can't hurt you? (Score:5, Insightful)
And most of our electricity, of course, doesn't come from fossil fuels.
...
Hey, I'd love to have electric vehicles powered from all-renewable sources. But frankly, nuclear would be the way to go, and no one, except, oh, I don't know, China, seems to want to talk about building new plants that would actually have a hope of satisfying our inevitable, insatiable, and increasing demands for energy.
Re:What you don't see can't hurt you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, every time you see "hydrogen", it's a code word for "nuclear".
Sure, we may end up switching to hydrogen fuel cells in lots of places. But that's mostly because it's far more efficent than any other storage mechanism for power, even after the losses in electrolysis efficency to convert water to hydrogen and the losses in fuel cell efficency to convert it back to water again.
The thing is, if they said, "We need to research how to create the nuclear economy, for when the oil runs out," they'd get no money. But if they say, "We need to research the hydrogen economy, for when the oil runs out," and then figure that we'll eventually come to terms with there being no good alternatives to nuclear.
The wheel of politics (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, you have groups of environmentalists who don't want these things because Birds get caught in the turbines/propellers, or because hydroelectric plants require damming rivers, thus altering habitats. Tidal will mess with sea habitats, and while solar might be acceptable, but it's too inneficient for large scale generation.
And the dominant politicians in California are beholdant to the environmentalist groups, and since the disparate factions can't seem to make up their minds, the politicians just blame everything on the greedy oil industry, or on fear of the "China syndrome".
This is not a troll. This is fact, and it's the case out on the eastern seaboard as well from what I understand. It's a damn shame that in the name of environmentally sound energy generation, we are sticking primarily with coal and oil.
Re:What you don't see can't hurt you? (Score:5, Informative)
I like the Integral Fast Breeder design, which could be the closest we get to safe, unlimited, and abundant energy for a long time. But it needs to be demonstrated in well-publicized tests and aggressively marketed to a public that is ignorant of physics. Then it needs to be mass-produced to make it cheap.
But before any of this happens, it has to get funding. The IFBR got the last of it's funding pulled in 1996, even though there was an example operating in Idaho.
Re:What you don't see can't hurt you? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0102.html
That's about 6.00485039 × 10^19 Joules. Let's be generous and assume a very high 5 kw-Hr/m^2 solar intensity over our land mass, and a very generous collection/Hydrogen conversion efficiency of 20%, in effect yielding 1 kw-Hr/m^2 in hydrogen. 1 kilowatt hour = 3 600 000 Joules, and we need to produce 6.00485039 × 10^19 Joules, so that works out to be 1.668014 × 10^13 kilowatt hours that we need to produce in a year. A production rate of 1 kw-hr/day = 365.25 kw-hr/year, so we need 4.56990137 × 10^10 m^2 to generate the same number of kw-hrs in the same year, or 17,644.4878 square miles. Delaware is 2,489 square miles. Now, Arizona is the sixth largest state, so it looks like this facility could still rest entirely in its borders. But I think you can see why this is not an even remotely cost-effective solution.
That old wive's tale AGAIN? (Score:5, Informative)
- Multicrystalline: 3.7 years
- Thin film: 3.0 years
- Multicrystalline, anticipated: 2.1 years
- Thin film, anticipated: 1.1 years
Warranty on today's PV panels is typically 25 years, and panels can be expected to go on producing well beyond the warranty period.What you choose to ignore can hurt you... (Score:5, Informative)
There's no question that gasoline is the most convenient vehicle fuel available right now, but it's stupid not to look for alternatives -- including more fuel-efficient gasoline-powered vehicles, hybrids, and electric cars (of various kinds).
Re:What you don't see can't hurt you? (Score:4, Insightful)
If car GM put out a ne Corvett with a big 300+HP engine and a 50+HP hybrid electric assist, I think it would show that hybrid tech isn't just some putty little economy item. It'll be later that people notice that the Corvett now gets 25-30MPG rather than 15-20.
Re:What you don't see can't hurt you? (Score:5, Insightful)
NPR (Score:5, Interesting)
My neighbor drives a very nice Honda Insight (Hybrid). Seems like a lot less hassle than an electric-only vehicle, until hydrogen (or the next big thing) comes along.
Hybrids replaced electric cars (Score:4, Insightful)
Electric only cars are in some ways a waste, because of lossed in electricity transmition and pollution at the plant, they might end up causing more pollution per mile than a gas car. Just its pollution somewhere else.
Muted Protests? (Score:5, Funny)
I drove one. (Score:5, Informative)
I took one for a spin at a GM proving grounds, and floored it from every stop sign. After about 10 minutes, a fully changed car was almost dead. A kick to drive, but I'd never buy one.
There's a reason GM didn't sell them, and chose to only lease them. GM knew they were just a big experiment, and had no intention of supporting pre-first generation EV parts for the Federally mandiated period of time (5 years?).
-MrLogic
I wish (Score:4, Funny)
Eradication Fascination (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if they just made them inoperable (to avoid liability concerns) and sold them as collectable on ebay if they wouldn't make the program profitable after all.
To heck with hybrid/electric ... (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Better efficiency than gasoline
2) Longer engine life
3) Diesel fuel can be produced from non-fossil sources such as soy and corn (even hogfat!)
But aren't diesel engines dirty, you might ask? Not inherently. The problem is the quality of the fuel, specifically the level of sulfur. Here in the States, in less than a year the standard will reduce that nasty impurity by huge amount.
A whole lot of goodness, no? Plus, it is a way for our struggling farmers to increase demand for their products.
For more info:
http://www.biodiesel.org/ [biodiesel.org]
What's wrong with hybrid/electric? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Better efficiency than pure diesel
2) Longer engine life than pure diesel
3) Diesel fule can be produced from non-fossil sources
4) Extra 10 to 40 percent efficiency due to regenerative braking + running the engine at peak efficiency
Re:To heck with hybrid/electric ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why can the train companies develop these huge, fuel efficient engines decades ago, but we can't seem to learn any lessons from these and apply them to cars.
Photos of the carnage (pun intended) (Score:5, Informative)
I can understand some of GMs thinking, especially the part about litigation, but it seems a waste to crush so many perfectly usable automobiles.
Before and after photos of at least 60 EV1s being crushed: http://ev1-club.power.net/ [power.net]
Parts liabilitt (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, yes they did. The problem that GM has is that, if a car is on the road, they are required to provide spare parts (either by manufacturing them or providing diagrams for third-party manufacturers) for those cars for 10 years past the date of building that particular vehicle. In other words, GM would have to come up with suppliers (or themselves) for parts for these cars until at least 2009, and with the problem of the suppliers not being willing to make those parts, it puts GM into a bad situation.
GM was fortunate in that, with these cars only being leased to customers, they could pull them off the roads and thus limit their liability. I would love to own one of these vehicles myself, but I can understand GM's position.
Disclosure: I used to work for GM, and work for one of their automotive suppliers now, so I do know a little about what goes into these types of decisions.
That's a BS argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Ford doesn't make replacement brakes for model T's, either. Yet people still collect, own, and yes even in some circumstances drive them.
Because there are collectors, there is a market, and *someone* makes replacement parts, even if it's a machinist down the block making them custom.
The EV1 would have made a fantastic collectible, even if it wasn't licensable as a primary driving vehicle. No court in this country would have listened to a collector trying to sue GM after his unlicensed EV1's brakes failed. GM could easily have sold them off to collectors at the very least.
Someone would have been willing to make custom replacement parts (even computerized ones) for collector's EV1's, because their existence would have made a market for it.
GM's argument is a red herring - they explicitly wanted the cars to disappear, and they aren't saying why.
Re:AAAaaah (Score:5, Insightful)
I have yet to see the numbers on how much comparative environmental damage is produced in making both cars, though.
Re:No surprise, this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, people were paying $525 a month to lease a car that cost nearly 1.5 million each to build. Small wonder they liked them, and small wonder that GM scrapped them.