I have watched a few movies since the last blog post I have written. The topic of this post is based from the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? I found the documentary very informative and there was a lot about the debate that I did not know. Through this blog post I want to inform my readers as to why the Electric Car was not made a success. Some of you may find the information shocking, others may not be shocked at all. First of all I want to tell you about hybrid vehicles, give you a little background information to lay the scene for the story.
What is a hybrid vehicle?
-a “plug-in hybrid” means the vehicle can be charged from a standard electric socket
Types (A list of Current Available Hybrids on the market)
-Toyota PRIUS
-Toyota Highlander
-Toyota Camry
-Mercury Mariner
-Lexus RX 400 (luxury)
-Ford Escape
Timeline of the life of the HYBRID vehicles.
1899 – first produced hybrid vehicle made by Lohner-Porsche
1969 – Popular Science (magazine) features an article on a GM XP -883 which was a plug-in hybrid, you could plug this into a standard 110 Volt AC outlet to re-charge
2003 – Renault began selling the Elect’Road, a plug-in model of the popular Kangoo
-had 150 km range
-fuel tank capacity was 10 litres
-was discontinued after selling 500 for approximately 25, 000 euros each
Sept. 2004 – California Cars Initiative converted a 2004 Toyota PRIUS into a prototype-> PRIUS+
-added lead acid batteries
-doubled gas mileage
-could make trips of 15 km (10 miles) on solely electric power
July 16, 2006 – Toyota announces they are to develop a vehicle that runs on batteries before switching to gas engine for longer drives
-next major update = lithium batteries
-PRIUS gets up to 40 km/litre
Nov. 29, 2006 – GM plans to introduce a plug-in version of Saturn’s Greenline Vue SUV in 2009
-has an all electric range of 10 miles (15 kms)
Jan. 2007 – GM reveals the Chevrolet Volt
-plug-in capable, battery dominant series hybrid architecture called E-Flex
-future E-Flex vehicles may us gas diesel, or Hydrogen to supplement the battery
-can achieve fuel economy of 50 mpg
Feb. 28, 2007 – US Department of Energy draft a plan to increase the development and deployment of plug-in vehicle technologies
-areas of concern are lithium-ion batteries, power electronics, and electric motors
May 22, 2007 – 5 research projects receive US $19 mill. to further the development of plug-ins technologies such as electric motor power inverters
Potential Advantages
-improved fuel efficiency
-reduced greenhouse gas emissions
-reduced operating costs
-Vehicle-to-grid electricity features
Potential DisAdvantages
-additional weight
-cost of larger battery pack
-possible increase in local net sulfur dioxide and mercury emissions in certain areas
-battery disposal
As you can see this is a minimal amount of data regarding the hybrid breed of cars. Most of the information was gathered from Wikipedia, a semi reputable site. The types I had to do a little bit of searching on, but I went to various car sites etc. to find them. Now I want to talk about the information that was provided in the Who Killed the Electric Car? documentary.
-GM created the EV1, which was a solely electric vehicle
-the EV1 was available for lease in Southern California
-California Air Resources Board passed the ZEV mandate in 1990
-the purpose of the mandate was to help with control of air pollution, assist with environmentalism, avoid Middle East politics, and lower global warming
-President Bush’s members such as Dick Cheney, Condolezza Rice, and Andrew Card are all former executives and board members of various oil and auto companies
-GM tried to show there was no demand for vehicles such as the EV1
-GM collected all available EV1 cars and had them crushed and shredded for particular reasons only few know, many assume but don’t know for sure
-some EV1’s still exist in universities and museums but are disabled
-EV drivers gathered together to form a coalition against the destruction of their beloved EV’s
-EV drivers offered GM $1.9 mill. US for cars that were awaiting their doom
-GM never responded to their offer
-the movie brought up the fact that the oil companies were afraid that if EV’s became popular they would lose potentially trillions of dollars in profits
-GM said it was consumers who caused the demise of the EV’s because they were disappointed with the max range of 80-100 miles per charge and that the cost of the vehicles was quite high
-the film has interview with celebrities who owned and operated EV’s
-Stan and Iris Ovshinsky created a better battery for the car but GM bought their patent and then Texaco bought the patent from GM
-Joseph J. Romm (author of the Hype About Hydrogen) stated 4 reasons why Hydrogen vehicles would not be effective
1. cost – too expensive, $1 mill. per car
2. emission of CO2 gases still effects the greenhouse
3. internal combustion engines continue to improve in efficiency
4. have to spend money to create stations that are capable of storing Hydrogen fuel
-the most promising technologies currently are hybrid cars.
In conclusion, who are we as individuals to point the finger at for the non-progression of such an environmentally friendly vehicle? In my opinion it is to each person’s own decision, but the statistics have shown the following:
1. Consumers
2. Oil Companies
3. Car Companies
4. Government
5. California Air Resources Board
6. Hydrogen Fuel production
Given, that all the data that has been provided in this post is American, I do believe that since the Canadian government has close ties, the situation is somewhat similar. In the end it all comes down to GREED. Who wants to drive a car that looks weird or different? What companies are going to want to lose out on bucket loads of money, just to help the environment? With a government that is so closely linked to such companies, does the environment really stand a chance? With the Hydrogen Fuel production being a project ongoing for 20 years and still no completion, what are the other alternatives or is this project just a waste of time and money? These questions all come to my mind when I look at the above list of the guilty parties who have not assisted in the production of a vehicle that is efficient in more than one way. It’s unfortunate that greed runs the world, because greed will get us only so far, and when there’s no planet left, what are we to do then?
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2 comments:
Very wonderful write-up, informative. I didn’t know most of it until now. I noticed that they keep on studying about hydrogen fuel and environment friendly vehicles. But, I didn’t actually see that they had a great progress with their plans. But, it’s good to know that there’s some trying. As with the Saturn, haven’t heard of their hybrid lately might be because it’s not making an improvement in the market. So now, they are just focusing on with fuel economy and improving parts performance with even the Saturn fuel tank cap. GM actually made so many innovations lately and people are getting even more impressed.
Dear CarExpert,
Thank you for takign the time to review my blog posting on environmentally friendly vehicles. There was a mention of the Saturn type of hybrid in the Saturday Star, you may be able to look it up on the website. www.thestar.com and do a search relating to the Saturn Vue. Glad that you were able to learn something from my blog. I wish people would comment more often but there's nothing i can do about. With your remarks to the saturn gas cap...I don't know much about the subject do you mind explaining for me? As far as i am concerned GM needs to make more progress they are a huge company and competitor in the market. They should want to help with the environment since cars are the biggest polluters. Anyhow, thanks again for the comment and incite!
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