Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Pligganease]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

Just curious if anyone else has seen this...

Anyone care to discuss it?

[The Grumpy Senator]

Wasn't it the Stonecutters? Then they made Steve Guttenberg a star.

[postfundie]

I believe GM killed it. Got a student and he talked with his regional head about this and the guy said that California and other states just can't supply enough electricity for people to drive the car. oh well at least the technology is there......

[OneWayTraffic]

Well when the current cutting edge batteries (never mind those available earlier) supply about 1% of the total energy density of gasoline, then I guess it would be sensible to say that economics killed the electric car.

As soon as we have a electricity storage technology that can even get anywhere close to gasoline in energy density then the age of the internal combustion engine is done.

Plug in hybrids will take over in the meantime. They're simply a superior technology, and as soon as people realise it, they will do to regular gas burners what DVDs did to VCRs.

[Czarjorge]

Watch the movie, for most people an electric car is all you need.

I could absolutely use one of the cars introduced in California. I drive from home to work to run errands. If forty minutes charge is all they could do then, and it accomodated people in commute central California, then the tech is viable.

My favorite part is people pulling over for five minutes to charge their car. My cellphone takes longer than that.

[Pligganease]

[kabrams]

[supernick]

Zenn electric cars cleared for Canada
By David Ehrlich
Published November 5, 2007 - 7:45am
Toronto, Ontario's Zenn Motor (TSX: ZNN) has been selling its electric low speed vehicles since late 2006, but it's had to go south of the border to do so.

That's about to change, as the company just received approval from Transport Canada.

"It frees the way to sales in Canada, but now we have to deal with each province. It's not a cakewalk by any means," Ian Clifford, CEO of Zenn Motor, told Cleantech.com while on business in Texas.

Clifford is in the Lone Star State to meet with secretive energy storage developer EEStor, based in an Austin suburb. Zenn holds 3.8 percent of EEStor after investing $2.5 million in the supercapacitor company in April.

Zenn's car now meets Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, but it's left up to the individual provinces to decide whether to approve the use of the car on public roads, and British Columbia is currently the only province that allows the use of low speed vehicles, or LSVs.

LSVs are limited to operating on roads with speed limits of up to 35 miles per hour, and the cars can't have a top speed of more than 25 mph.

The Zenn, or zero emission, no noise, vehicle is a three door hatchback with a range of up to 35 miles and an 80 percent recharge time of 4 hours.

Take a look at a couple of the cars here >>

The company makes five or six cars a day at its factory in St. Jerome, Quebec, but Clifford said they've got the capacity for "thousands and thousands" of vehicles at the plant.

Dynasty Electric Cars, a Delta, British Columbia-based electric LSV maker, recently decided to move its operations overseas, leaving Zenn Motor as the only company building electric LSVs in the country.

Clifford said he has no plans to move, but he had almost given up on selling to the Canadian market.

"They were insisting that we had to basically certify that we would not offer our vehicles for sale on mixed use roadways, which is completely contrary to the way the legislation is written," said Clifford.

Transport Canada issued its approval for Zenn's use of a National Safety Mark even though Zenn plans to market the car for use on local roads. But the agency said it plans to inform the provinces that it does not believe that LSVs should mix with regular vehicles, citing safety issues.

"They're not certified to meet any safety standard that other cars are certified to meet, the crash-worthiness and component testing," said Transport Canada spokeswoman Jessie Chauhan.

She said the reason the Zenn was not previously approved was because the company's micro-car platform, imported from France, did not meet Canadian safety standards.

"We sent the company a letter on April 11, 2007, indicating which items the micro-car platform had to be stripped of," said Chauhan. She said the agency received written confirmation from the company last week that it would comply with the platform safety concerns.

The Zenn is already used on local roads in the U.S., where LSVs are approved for use on low speed public roads in 43 states, including New York, Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts, Washington and California.

"Everything from somebody living in a controlled, gated community, to somebody living in a downtown, urban core, to someone living in a town, to someone living on an island using the vehicles," said Clifford.

He said the company expects to start selling its cars in Mexico in early 2008, and that it's in talks about the possibility of European sales.

Zenn also plans to offer vehicle conversions, swapping out combustion engines for electric, as part of its licensing deal with EEStor.

Zenn holds worldwide exclusive licenses for EEStor's supercapacitor for used car conversions as well as for new small and medium-sized low speed and highway capable vehicles.

The EEStor supercapacitor cells are said to use barium titanate coated with aluminum oxide and glass to achieve a level of energy capacitance claimed to be much higher than what is currently available in the market.

If the technology works as suggested, about $9 of electricity�delivered by trickle charge at home, or in five minutes by specialized equipment�could give the capacitor sufficient energy to drive a small car like the Zenn 500 miles, or 800 kilometers.

"The Achilles' heel of the electric vehicle industry is clearly about energy storage. It's not about drive systems, it's not about vehicles, it's about the ability to store adequate amounts of energy safely and cost effectively in a vehicle platform," said Clifford.

Zenn has an option to put up to an additional $5 million into EEStor if it meets testing milestones, which are to measure how much energy can be stored in the EEStor production materials.

[mindmetoo]

I thought some of the claims of that movie were disingenuous. The movie made a big deal about how GM released some battery powered test cars, on lease, and after its experiment was over it recalled all the cars. Some people didn't want to give them up and wanted to buy them but GM refused. SO VAST CONSPIRACY!

But the answer seems less ominous. Consumer protection laws. Car makers are not allowed to sell cars unless they can stock parts for a decade after the model is discontinued. Without this law, a car maker could release a car, discontinue it after 4 years, and then remove the parts from the market. Your car breaks down, you need to buy a new car. Oh well.

To wit, GM might simply have been afraid by selling the car would then open them up to liability.

Electric cars sound great, but given even now a large % of our electricity is from coal and given if a large % of people started plugging in cars, we'd have to burn more coal, well, we're not creating battery powered cars, we're creating coal burning cars. But your pollutions are just created in someone else's backyard.

I find this a compelling argument however I think it's also a problem the market will solve. If people start switching over to battery powered cars, they're also not going to want the acid rain. Consumers will also demand cleaner power. And then we can get the nuclear industry restarted.

[OneWayTraffic]

[yawarakaijin]

Hmmmm, was it video that killed the electric car?

[Pluto]

Check this out

Chevy Volt.

[Czarjorge]

Oneway, have you ever heard of car coops? In some large cities, I think it started in San Francisco but I saw them in Chicago, groups of people essentially pay part of a car's payment for an amount of time to use the car. Electric cars are perfect for this, as those cars are specifically intended for short term trips to run errands or go to and from work.

I agree with your hybrid argument in terms of long distance travel. The electric cars that might need a charge every hour aren't feasible for long journeys, even if the infrastructure for them was expanded to all interstates it would still be too limiting. But it seems like a combination of the various options is the best bet.

And we haven't even started talking about hydrogen fueled vehicles or bio diesel.

[dogshed]

[OneWayTraffic]