Who Killed The Electric Car

Just watched it again tonight, still a good documentary. It left me wanting an EV1 again. Does anyone know of any articles done back in the day on them and their performance because they seemed like a fun little car.

I'd recommend reading "the car the could" if you're interested in the prequel to that movie.

http://www.amazon.com/Car-That-Could-Revolutionary-Electric/dp/067942105X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240825510&sr=8-1

Still a biased documentary too. Should be viewed with skepticism. My latest issue of Autoweek had interviews with several of the people who worked on that project (if you want it I can send it to you) and one of the head guys stopped working with the producers of the film because he didn't like the direction they were taking it.

After watching that movie i went out and bought "Build your own Electric Vehicle" by Leitman Brant... suffice to say there was enough detail to remind me why i dropped out of the engineering program. Still good food for thought though.

If you produce a product that you need to sell 100 of to turn even a small profit, and you only find buyers for 50 or even 75.....who "kills" the product? Has Honda "killed" the hydrogen powered car (the Clarity) because you don't see any in showrooms? The EV-1 was like the "original" Insight, not the 2010 model, in that it got great mileage on it's unusual drivetrain, but was a bit difficult to live with day to day with only seats for a driver and 1 passenger.

That said, I wish I had bought a 2001 Insight.

Here's a cool article on the EV1, by an electric car developer and racer:

http://www.portev.org/commentary/living_in_the_past.htm

I agree it does seem to be more on the side of the car but I felt it was wait when dealing out the blame as to why it was killed off.

But yea i remember the ford guy saying, it was a car that did less so people wanted to pay less, If people could get past the fact that it was different and didn't have to be everything and GM stuck it out if only for the pr rep as being eco friendly things would be a lot farther along.

I'm really hoping the CRZ takes over where this left off as a sporty, fun electric car. Is it going to be a plug in eventually or just a bumped up insight drive train? That would be one wicked commuter car.

I thought "Documentaries" were to report the true history without bias? AM I wrong? Otherwise it's just another Michael Moore wannabe trash film. I think Blair Witch Project may have had more unbiased facts....

Meh. I didn't think it was horribly biased...certainly not as much as I expected it to be. In the end, everyone involved got a little share of the blame. Seeing all those things hauled to the squisher left me sad and confused.

I have never watched it, I guess I will one day. The whole thing which bugs me deeply is that GM was advised NOT to sell those vehicles due to supply chain problems (it seems that there was a mandate to supply parts for 'customer vehicles' for 15 years and they got around that with the lease, since GM still owned the cars) and liability concerns, i.e. some damn PI lawyer would have a field day with GM representing someone injured by such untested technology.

Who killed em? NADER!!! just kidding

Its a sad commentary. I don't know about its truth value, but GM isn't the only car maker to take a beating in it, either. Its worth watching if you haven't seen it.

It was the Stonecutters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ-KZyniB4c

Who killed the electric car?

My answer is; The Market.

It's the same thing that may still kill Tesla Motors. A very limited-range, impractical car that costs over $100,000 (as the EV1 should have). Now if the market changes drastically and quickly, maybe these cars would somehow become popular enough to be feasible.

The difference between Tesla surviving and the EV1 surviving is that now the market has more of a desire for an electric car (though not very much more).

I haven't watched the movie (nor any other Michael Moore sewer-pickle), but I don't see how anyone could expect GM or our government can be held responsible for the failure of the EV1. Nor how either of these entities could generate the success.

There is no rule that says documentaries have to be unbiased. Everything you see has some amount of bias in it, some things more than others.

Its funny how American automakers try to survive by making whatever the trend of the day seems to be then they end up shooting themselves in the foot. Meanwhile the Asians just make good cars, they are not trendy or fashionable just good cars, and win at it!

The Asians MADE good cars..... MADE. That's PAST tense. Meaning before now. Now they're falling into the same footsteps of the domestic automakers just 10 years before them. Make crap, sell it on their name and expect people to not notice.... it'll bite them in the butt to.

Kramer wrote: I haven't watched the movie ...

Yes, this much was clear for your post and a few others in here. Watch the movie, you might be surprised, or you might have some actual ground to stand on when you do talk trash about it afterwards. I have no idea what Michael Moore has to do with anything...

Bryce

because the prius isn't trendy or fashionable or anything

i worked with a guy in Austin that bought one because he thought it would get him laid.

matt wrote: my personal opinion on the problem with electric cars is that even with the advancement of battery technology such as high capacity lipo batterys wich are much more efficient wich means less wasted energy they still arent up to the task of what is needed in an automobile such as long life. the high output very efficient brushless motors of today can survive awhile but the batterys can not. there maximum efficiency starts to fall off after 100 cycles. true they might last 7 years but there effeciency wich is power and run time starts to diminish after 100 cycles. soo, untill the battery technology exists thats long life like 10 years and super effecient and light weight and also is easy to make that doesnt require many trips back and forth over seas to make we wont see electric cars for the masses imo. just my two cents on electrics. sorry for the longness of this

And you're basing this on?

Bring back the Citicar!

(shiver) When I worked for a forklift place, I had a girl come through who owned one of those. A Citicar was really nothing more than an all weather golf cart with a few forklift parts thrown in, it had a whole mess of 6V lead acid batteries. Anyway, it turned out she was really bad about trying to drive it when the batteries were low, this jacks the amp draw out of sight. She had MELTED the main low speed contactor bar in two; this is a 1" x 4" x 1/4" piece of solid copper with two silver 'buttons' soldered to it. She convinced me to get it going again and two weeks later she did it AGAIN. Only now she wanted me to fix it for free. Nope. She did not like me very much after that.

One of my friends has a citicar awaiting restoration.

Matt...you're totally contradicting yourself, you reference the EV1, Tesla roadster, etc. yet in the same post are saying battery technology doesn't exist to make those cars a reality. Um...but...those cars do exist, so obviously the technology exists. For the masses? I suppose that depends on your perspective, IMO an all electric car will never be the end-all-be-all, but it will work for a lot of people.

Once upon a time, only rich people could afford horseless carriages and they were troublesome that a horse was still considered more practical.

Bryce

its all about two things imo, and always has been... range, and price. put out a ev that has a 250 mile range , for under 20k, with a 100k minimum lifespan, and they'll sell faster than you can build em... Id buy one in a heartbeat, and use the money id of otherwise spent on gas to make the monthly payments. in effect, the car would pay for itself, and quickly, especially for us high miles commuters.

a "turbo" button that bumps the battery output (but also decreases the range) would be icing on the cake for us performance minded people. electrics are all torque, they can be great fun, and there are allot of people who want to be better on the environment as well, but until it costs the same or less as petrol based car, and has reasonably equivalent performance, its not really in the cards for the masses. not just yet anyhow...

With current battery technology, the storage density is the problem. The motor life etc problems can be addressed with cooling systems etc, but that pesky storage density... not so easy. Basically, that's how much electricity is stored per pound of battery. The energy contained in a pound of battery is nowhere near the energy contained in a pound of gasoline or alcohol.

During the '90's, Ford was experimenting with a very promising 'hot sulfur' (sodium-sulfur) battery which held the possibility of much greater storage density than lead/acid, NiCd or NiMH stuff but was considered unsafe.

http://www.greencar.com/articles/fords-hot-ecostar-electric-car.php