When General Motors' EV1 rolled out in 1996, there was no infrastructure for it, gas was about ten cents a gallon, and cars were turning into military vehicles. And I still wanted one. But then it was gone.
Flash forward to President Obama saying we'll have a million electric cars on the road by 2015. Pundits expressed immediate doubts about this number, but today we have two big reasons to believe we can get there.
First, we have to look beyond the options we have today. They're expensive, and charging stations are more a novelty than a fixture.
Sadly, if the future were left to Detroit, I too would call the electric car a heartbreaking but undeniable fad. Detroit reminds me of a guy who trashes therapy, makes fun of people in therapy, and then goes to see a therapist when his entire life falls apart. It turns out therapy's not so bad, but it's nothing he'll brag about on Superbowl Sunday, which had six car advertisers (not all domestic) and not one mention of plugging in.
And the primping, pumped-up free market would rather Detroit guy block his symptoms than really face his issues, so no help there with a longterm solution.
In other countries, however...well, it's way different. Every car company is working on an electric car. Volvo's R&D means we'll see a safe car with fast-warming seats. Volkswagen wants to be an EV leader, which means we'll have innovation with a hypnotic, persuasive soundtrack. And perhaps a flower in a symbolic tailpipe.
And then, worst of all, there's Hyundai. Worst for us, because Hyundai will take an electric car and make it as normal and inexpensive as that Ford sedan you scrape up to afford after college. With a third the fuel costs.
And what about those charging stations? Who will cover that? For starters, hotels, colleges, and Starbucks. Also, just a thought -- Whole Foods can offer free grid-tied solar charging stations to lure back the thousands of people who boycotted them after John Mackey wrote that health care editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
So that's the car and the charger. They will change, with or without Michigan.
And what about us? Will we change? The truth is, we already have. That's the second reason this EV revolution will take.
The United States has an impressive yellow brick road on which to roll out the electric car: the Main Streets of its small cities.
I'm not talking about big cities like New York, where they're already foregoing cars or driving little things that look like children's sneakers.
In smaller cities, people might not want a car that looks like a Sketcher, but they still drive only thirty miles a day.
In the early nineties, these cities reminded me of carefully hollowed out Easter eggs we made as kids. It was as if someone had plinked a small hole at either end of Main Street and blown the contents out. I saw boarded up windows, dusty pawn shops and confused people shopping at big box stores before the term "big box" had even been coined.
By the late nineties, I saw a full-tilt small urban turnaround. Main Streets from Rockland, Maine to Oakland, California revived old theaters with music, dance and classic movies, general stores came back again (with a few extra frills), and old brick buildings became exposed brick cafes. Small businesses opened upstairs from music stores. And I saw gardens, fountains, footpaths and rail trails that increased daily multi-generational traffic. Some pedestrian boulevards have been gentrified, pure and simple, but generally, these walking (and walker)-friendly city streets were and are a populist renaissance.
So we've got the car, the charger, the demographic, and now the math to show why this matters so much:
According to the National Renewable Energy Lab, if we plugged in during off-peak hours to cover our daily commutes (30-40 miles), over 70% of our energy needs would be met without building another power plant.
Yes, that means an abrupt cut-off of oil and emissions with 70% of the energy supply already spoken for. Overgeneralization? I'm sure. But if it were only half true, it would still be a revolution.
This is an environmental game changer, and this time it's not going away. Of course I'm hoping that Detroit can release its bottled emotions, feel its feelings, write in a journal, and create the world's leading EVs and hybrid EVs with just a little nudge from the world's competition, but the new car is coming no matter what. Meanwhile, this country's cities are growing and greening from the inside out, and I hope they'll see their farmers market, local coffee glow in the mirror and know it's time for a plug-in car.
Your right about the coal power plants, but unlike a gas car which gets dirtier over time, an electric car is the only vehicle that gets cleaner as we move towards more renewable energy. In regards to your comment about maintenance transmissions usually outlast the car, the main costs are oil changes and services for the engine (about 75%). Your correct that the Volt is expensive but the Nissan Leaf cost about $12,00 less and in California there are substantial rebates available, making the Leaf competitive with a Toyota Prius.
It is difficult to read through all their mistakes. Fine products of public education I guess.
10 cents a gallon gas in 1996, how'd I miss that?
The muddled thoughts are hardly worth the effort to work through the mistakes.
Governor in Fl. put kibash on high speed rail boondoggle from Tampa to Orlando. Thank you Governor Scott. Finally the debt thingy is being taken seriously.
That's the problem with Libs. They haven't learned the lesson of "Unintended Consequences." Like, what do you do with all those Prius batteries when they die out. Bury them at Wounded Knee?"
We need to find a better way, and all options should be explored.
Kennedy put a man on the moon in ten years. How long would it take the US to find a suitable alternative to petrochemicals?
It's not going to come from the private sector, because the financial outlay is too great for any company to invest.
The solution is out there. We just need the resolve and the confidence to find it.
PEVs are not operationally cost competitive with internal combustion vehicles until you get gas prices in at least the $6-7 per gallon range. Even then, they are not as convenient as regular cars because they are slow to charge and have a relatively limited range (no car trips).
As the world's oil supply dwindles, I'm sure cars will be constructed to use less oil. I'm not sure if that means we'll have PEVs, more hybrids, or something else entirely. No matter what, I'm confident that without a massive government spending program, we won't be seeing many PEVs during the next 15 years.
The answer actually is yes. A friend of mine just test drove a Nissan Leaf and seems to have been quite impressed with it. In Denmark and Israel electric cars are already showing up and in Denmark the electricity is generated by wind turbines asa they have a nice supply of wind coming in off of the ocean. And the cost per mile of driving an electric is way lower than a gasoline powered vehicle.
As regards charge time, that too is changing. Please do try to keep up with current technical trends.
GM had only sold 647 Chevy Volts as of the end of January (and those cars are heavily subsidized). You may want to try to keep up with the trends as well.
Entirely unnecessary. The future is PLUG-IN HYBRIDS which are a different kettle of fish than hybrids. Plug-in hybrids already have the recharging infrastructure in place so the cost is ZERO...and that recharging infrastructure is your home and an extension cord (okay, a little bit of an exhaggeration; a special adaptor will be needed). Plug-in hybrids have the advantage of being able to be driven OVER the range of however much charge you can put on its battery overnight because once the charging limit is reached, the driver can easily, at the flick of a switch, go over to gasoline-propelled drive, something that cannot be done with 100% electric. Except for the teeny-tiny demographic (about 1%) of drivers who will go EV, no one will buy all-electric even if it's only 2 or 3 trips a year where they'll go over the charging limit. No one wants to be stranded.
Plug-In Hybrids are the future. There's a reason Warren Buffet put $250 million of his fund's money into them and NOT EV's.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea. But you still have to build the baseline power from traditional sources that will power those 1,000,000 cars when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.
We need to build 200 nuclear power stations for the dream of electric cars to come alive.
This is the only solution.
I heard a startling statistic about catalytic converters. A new car running at highway speed produces less pollution than a pre-1979 car does parked with the engine off. Yikes.
Chevy has the Volt. And the parent company GM has an investment in Tesla.
Ford is going to roll out a fully-electric version of the Focus in the next year or so, along with a hybrid versions. They already have a hybrid Fusion, which they can modify for plug-in easily enough.
The Big Three (well, maybe not all so big, but you get the idea) all have a significant presence in China, which is pushing hard on the green/electric front. As if the Scooters here (I'm in Fuyang) weren't dangerous enough, you have to keep an eye out for the silent electric ones now. Also, while these companies compete, they also invest in and makes deals with each other.
I'm not saying Detroit couldn't do more, or isn't doing enough. But they are doing something. And we should encourage that.
How, pray tell, can the overloaded electrical system that just blacked out Texas when it snowed, recharge millions of multikilowatthour electric cars, EVERY NIGHT, without blacking out the country?
Thankfully, the prices for these idiotic cars is so high they'll never become viable outside the toys of the ultrarich. (The electric Smart car is over $US42,000.)
AS the electrical load increases remarkably, the PRICE of power in the USA will increase MARKEDLY to pay for the increased generating capacity that will be required. YOU, the electrical consumer, will be paying double, triple, or more just to light your bathroom....subsidizing your neighbor charging his stupid electric car at YOUR expense.
Are we that stupid??
Plug-in hybrids (THEY are the future, not 100% electric) will, for the most part, be charged during off-peak hours, during the night.
coal?
nukes?
can we bury the waste in your backyard?
Coal....nuclear....solar....wind. If we actually had our own sovereign nation and government, we could be making sure RIGHT NOW that all these new wind farms and solar arrays going up were owned by AMERICAN interests rather than allowing these Chinese and European outfits to build them, err...I mean "invest" (wink. wink.) in them. Also, there would be incentives of some sort for people who wished to fit their homes with solar panels MADE IN AMERICA or local clean energy co-ops. The cost of solar is still artificially high making it practically impossible for most people to be SELF-RELIANT instead of being at the mercy of an energy company.
It takes energy to make energy. The cleanest way to do that is nuclear power. Are we ready to do that?
Look at Europe like most of us here always do. France relies on nuclear power far more than we do. Ready?
To answer your question, yes I am ready to commit to nuclear. We also have to commit to re-processing to get rid of spent fuel. There are some very good ideas out there. Check out Hyperion Power for small plants that require minimal oversight.
EV1 was determined during its test period to need very little repairs and zero oil changes! Dealer's screamed bloody murder and GM responded by burying the cars in the crusher...to the test people's dismay.
As observed and filmed in the movie "Who killed the electric car?", dealers and GM would manufacture and sell cars that ran on horse sh*t if it sold.
The EV1 had two problems: (1) liability issues for Detroit (that's why they had to crush them); and (2) not many consumers were going to buy them because the battery charge was very little and there is no infrastructure in place for 100% electric.
Plug-in Hybrids are the future (and if you get the DVD version of "Who killed the electric car?" you get the distinct impression from the end of the movie and the extras that that is precisely the conclusion the film-maker comes to).
Battery technology is hugely improved now and there are many relatively affordable options around. I most like the idea of the VOLT where running out of juice in the battery is not a problem. I hope the price comes down to where I can afford it.