Re: "Who Killed the Electric Car?" opens July 14th


In article <52l192ddpdqj84m7ln78h8otc73q6rc53d@xxxxxxx>,
Michael Benveniste <mhb-offer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Quoting: Another lesson learned was that most consumers will not
buy a vehicle that doesn't closely match most of their needs
and lifestyles, no matter how advanced and environmentally
sensitive it may be.

People who commuted in an urban/suburban environment found it
matched most of their needs.

Your sources, Paul?

The claim that there was a long waiting list comes from the people
selling (well, leasing) the cars. These people were interviewed
in the documentary.

Some of the inability to place cars was no doubt due to the limited
number of qualified dealers (35 or so) and limited geographic area in
which the car was offered. The car had performance problems in even
moderately cold weather.

In southern California, which I believe was the limited geographic
area in question, that is not an issue.

Or perhaps it was due to the fact that
even with the subsidies, you could get larger, more luxurious, and
better performing cars for the same money, even taking into account
fuel cost savings of the EV1.

People going for performance and luxury wouldn't go near the EV1.
There are enough idealistic screwballs in southern California to
lease as many of the cars as GM would lease, with many more on
the waiting list.

Even CARB, which had established a mandate in 1990 for a 10% minimum
sales of zero-emissions vehicles by 2003, admitted defeat. After
advancing the deadlines several times, CARB dropped the ZEV requirement
in 2003.

After being sued by GM and other automakers.

Of course, calling the EV1 a zero-emissions vehicle is also inaccurate,
since the majority of the electricity in California (and the US as
a whole) is generated from fossil fuels:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/html/energysources.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
From a societal standpoint, those fuel savings costs are also a bit
suspect, as the pricing and tax structures of electricity are quite
different from that of gasoline.

According to CARB, an electric car produces 67% less greenhouse
gasses than a gasoline powered car in California. Other emissions
are even more tightly controlled for power plants than for vehicles.
You have several factors operating here: A good chunk of the power
comes from non-fossil-fuel sources. Of what does come from fossil
fuels, part of that is from natural gas, which produces less CO2
than coal for the same amount of energy. Even the coal fired power
plants can be designed to run more efficiently than a variable load,
variable speed, frequently idling internal combustion engine.
The electric motors and drive electronics are over 90% efficient
at converting electricity into mechanical work, according to
Wally Rippel, one of the engineers who worked on their development.

Of course we could reduce the percentage of electricity coming from
fossil fuels to zero by building enough nukes, but we're not sane
enough to do that.

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