While the Dymaxion Car did have some problems at speed (though Bucky was able to make a habit of collecting speeding tickets while behind the wheel of it [Many of them at speeds in excess of 100 MPH]), the problems with the geodesic domes are either not as you describe or have been corrected. Geodesic domes used in places such as Africa have no need of air conditioning as the domes have a natural chilling effect when the topmost and lowermost sections are used as vents. The leaks aren’t a problem when modern sealants are used.
Henry Ford’s hempbodied car never caught on for some reason.
According to the reading I’ve done, some people do want them. The demand may be somewhat limited but what % would it take for it to have a pretty positive effect on the environment?
I’m repeating an assertion made by the movie. I’m glad to get other input.
They don’t sell many snow tires in the south but there’s still a big enough market for them. When I lived in Maine we used to put a pump in the cooling system that kept it warmer in cold weather. It started easier and warmed up quicker. There are ways around the cold issue.
The range was definitely an issue but we had working cars that the owners seemed happy with. {check links below} The market was limited. So is the market for snowmobiles and yet they remain popular. Lots of people are put off by the limited range but when they actually realize how little they drive every day they realize that it works. We also have lots of two car families in this country.
You seem to be saying the northeast would be the most likely consumer? I don’t see how you arrived at that. California is where a lot of the movie takes place because of a law they passed that a certain % of cars sold had to be zero emission. Once they repealed the law most of the cars were reclaimed and destroyed even though the people driving them still wanted them.
here is a link by a current owner. All those problems exist but if the cars were allowed to continue the technology would improve as it has with everything else on the market. The film talks about several breakthroughs in battery technology and this owner says
and
In the film they noted that tax breaks for Hummers were much larger than for the EVs. Tell me how that makes sense.
I disagree. There are many two car families that could have an EV for in town and a another vehicle for longer trips. I accept they have a limited market but many cars on the road today do. Not everyone can afford a hummer or a Lexus but they still make and sell them.
What really puzzles me is why the manufacturers, who invested huge money in making them, would take 4000 perfectly good working vehicles out to the desert and crush them. Why not sell them or continue to lease them to reclaim as much of their investment as possible.
here is an article by the executive producer of the film and here is an interesting article by someone who owns and drives a Ford ranger EV. The questions about the pros and cons at the end are the best part.
this from the cons about batteries
Billions has been poured into hydrogen cell research which is still years away. Why not put money into other clean technologies? To me one big reason is profit, or rather a lot less profit for oil companies and car manufacturers. A lot less profit in maintenance for the manufacturer.
Why do you say that?
That’s true, although the money saved in that five years would probably cover it.
Some articles have said the batteries could be much more expensive than that but battery technology has and can continue to get better *if *the vehicles are on the market. The question is why was a viable working technology discarded.
Yes, but according to your own figures there were approximately 4000 EV vehicles sold/leased by GM, in the whole run of the vehicle’s production. According to this snowmobile industry site: they sold almost 80,000 new snowmobiles in the US in 2007. (I suspect that may have been a typo on their part, and they mean 2006, but it may be a model year artifact, too. I don’t know.) That kind of scale of difference in sales is what can take a marginally profitable (On an individual basis) product and make it profitable as a product line. Let’s also not forget that the snowmobile is effectively a mature technology, with no perceived need for improved performance to get consumers interested in the product, where even your own quotes were saying that there was a perceived need for EV manufacturers to improve the range issues.
No. What I said was that there is a large demographic of people in the Northeast who profess to be environmentally conscious, and would - if the EV were seen to be a viable car for the conditions they encounter - have been be receptive to the idea of purchasing/leasing the EV. I’m not talking economics, here - I’m talking the attitudes of the people.
The law you mention is important to note, too: It seems to support the notion that the EV was being made to satisfy a single market: California. When the legal requirement to provide a fraction of the fleet of vehicles being sold to California consumers as emisison free went away, the marginal rewards the companies making the EVs were accruing from the product became far less than the liabilities - they pulled out.
I’m not going to say that I think you’re wrong to believe this. I will point out that counting on technological improvements to make a currently marginal product profitable eventually, is often a road to bankruptcy. R&D is important, don’t get me wrong. But the moment a company starts to expect R&D to provide a solution that requires more than simply tweaking current engineering practices to make a product profitable enough to continue in light of liability concerns, that company is taking huge risks with its continued health.
Why? I’m not trying to claim that everything the California State Government has ever done is wise, smart, or even logical.
It wasn’t my intention to claim that no one would be willing to make the choice. I simply meant to point out that it’s another factor that would limit the marketability of the electric car.
One word: Liability.
Which is what I’ve been saying all along: There wasn’t enough profit in manufacturing the cars for the companies to continue making them. Which wasn’t the result of any kind of conspiracy against the EV - your own link about the legal environment that supported the EV in California makes it clear that if there had been a conspiracy involving the EV, it was one that was trying to make the EV a reality - just that consumers, in general, do not want electric cars, as the technology exists, now.
FTM, AIUI electric vehicles are still being made and manufactured - local delivery trucks do very well within the limits we’ve agreed upon as defining a current technology electric vehicles. All that was “killed” to date was the push to bring an EV to the general driving public. R&D is continuing. The popularity of gasoline-electric hybrids is doing as much, I believe, to push battery technology as the EV. The EV will likely be back. But I don’t think it will happen until they can be marketed, from the showroom, as being able to deal with cold weather and the range has gone up to at least 100 miles. I grant that the range number is completely arbitrary, but there’s something about 100 that simply feels less limiting than 70 miles. Which gut feeling on my part seems to be shared by the manufacturer of the Phoenix truck.
ETA, I think it’s worth noting that Phoenix is concentrating on sales to one state, even now, though: California. Which implies that it’s still the local regulatory environment that’s making electric vehicles attractive to consumers. Which will continue to limit marketability of the product.
You continue to assert that the EV1 was a “viable working technology” but aside from a (biased) documentary film the facts don’t support this. GM had several problems witht he EV1 and anticipated several more; they couldn’t “reclaim as much of their investment as possible” if they’re shelling out thousands of dollars a year in refit and recall expenses. The EV1 was rushed to market in order to give some amount of credence to GM’s claim to attempt to adhere to emissions restrictions. By all accounts it was not a profitable product for them, and indeed didn’t even show enough viability that they could spin it off into its own company or sell off the line to private investors.
Regarding batteries: you seem to be implying that high levels of battery production would make them cheaper and stimulate technological advances. It’s true that manufacturing a product in high volumes reduces per unit cost by making better use of fixed capital expenses and more efficient use of labor and overhead costs, but at some point your marginal benefit tops out. Batteries are already a high volume consumer product, and it’s unlikely you’re going to get order of magnitude reductions in cost through larger volume. Similarly, research in increasing battery capacity and efficiency is already pushing along, incrementally improving the technology at what is probably the fastest rate. The impetus for this is, of course, not automobiles but portable electronic technology, in which there is a very high demand for light weight and long duration energy storage.
I’d like to see a viable electric-powered automobile for a number of reasons, particularly the ability to make broader use of energy sources and the ability to switch from one root energy source to another without having to redesign the infrastructure for delivering energy, and thus freeing, or at least relaxing, the dependence on foreign petroleum sources. The environmental impact–not just emissions, but noise abatement and reduction in pollutants from spilled and vaporized fuel, and the hazard of volatile liquid fuel distribution–would also be beneficial. But the EV1 wasn’t this godsend miracle product, or even a particularly good one. The Electric Car killed itself by being, like most of the “Saturday Night Live” players, not ready for prime time. And like most of those, it had a brief, showy career and faded off into obscurity.
Stranger
Because it’s true. Since the Sprint was built, both safety regulations and emissions regulations have changed. Heck, even the way we calculate fuel economy has changed. You could build a car that met both and got about the same mileage (possibly even get better if it were a diesel), but who would buy it? There’s a Geo Metro convertable (which is similar in size) a couple of doors down from me, and my 1981 Honda Prelude dwarfs that car, I’d hate to be in one of those things on the interstate, with a semi breathing down my neck.
As for the “practicality” of the electric car, I’m going to quote a rather detailed discussion on another board I frequent when the subject came up.
I’ll add to that you’re going to have to have some kind of automated system for hooking the cable up. You know, a robotic umbilical cord. They’ve tried something similar with gasolene stations and it doesn’t seem to have caught on. (Knowing the haphazard way many gas station owners maintain I can guess why.) I can’t see that happening.
There’s also going to be a severe risk of electrocution, so all the connectors on the service stations are going to have to be well maintained, as well as the ones on the cars.
Without room temperature superconductors, I don’t think it’ll happen.
Why do you need to instantaneously charge the battery? Instead have a common battery for all cars. At the charge station, instead of charging your battery right away, they swap it for a pre-charged battery and start charging yours to give to somebody else in an hour or so.
Because the skills required to safely rig out a 1300 pound battery (which would have to be even heavier to be an interchageble part - WAG here, add 50-100% mass to that figure to make it reasonably foolproof and durable.) in a reasonable amount of time would be even higher than those required to run and maintain the charging station Tuckerfan described with his post.
Having been around electric forklifts for a number of years, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Plus, how many do you keep on hand? I’ve worked in gas stations that have had over 1,000 customers in an eight hour shift, those were fairly small stations that generally only had one person working per shift. You’d have to add at least one or two more employees to handle the battery swaps, larger stations would need even more. What happens if you accidentally give someone a partially charged battery by mistake? If a battery goes bad, who pays for the replacement? If the clerk blows up a battery who pays for it and the damage to the car?
I would love to own an electric car - but at this time I simply cannot believe that it would start faithfully, every morning, when it’s -50 with the windchill - winters in Maine just can’t compete, sorry.
Y’all may get more snow, but for bitter cold we have you beat.
Re: the EV1: GM didn not destroy all of them-I saw one the other day (Watertown, MA): how did some escape destruction? And, did the EV1 use lead-acid batteries?
Speaking of cold weather, here’s something nobody talks about w/ regard to electric cars:
The heater.
How does the heater & defroster work on an electric car? An *electric * heater, perhaps? 
And, um, how much energy will the heater drain from the battery? 
The original flight of EV1s used lead-acid batteries. These worked okay, but GM had a recall involving the charging port, and of course lead-acid batteries suffer from breakdown problems if completely cycled regularly. The second flight of EV1s used NiMH batteries that are theoretically more robust and higher density, but they had a number of problems getting them to charge properly. Frankly, the vehicles were roaded before the design was really production-worthy, and some of the problems could have been addressed with a longer test and development cycle, but it also had a number of fundamental problems, such as being restricted to warm climates and being a two-seater with limited cargo capacity, that would have rendered it a niche product anyway.
Stranger
Pit thread on the film from about a year ago. It rehashes some of the same things mentioned in this one and gets sidetracked to other areas, but combined with what’s been mentioned in this thread, it really should put torest the idea that electric cars are viable for the majority of the population.
So even with a limited market there’s a great potential for sales? Snowmoblies are strictly recreational and they perceive enough potential market to make 80,000.
I don’t think that argues against my point.
Okay. Yet the cold issues are also a fairly easy problem to overcome as I have pointed out. For cars designed for cold climates you include some simple heating unit that keeps the batteries from getting to cold for too long.
Well yes, that’s the question. How marginal were the profits, or how might they have been if the companies hadn’t taken most of them back?
I never mentioned anything about relying on tech improvements to make it profitable.
Yes, and it’s an invalid point. Plenty of cars are profitable with a limited market.
Well that’s a real nifty word but by itself it doesn’t explain anything.
How much profit is enough? Was it or could it be reasonably profitable? That’s the question the film is asking. Was it a lack of reasonable profit , poor technology, or just a little greed on the part of auto manufacturers who wanted to make cars that required more repairs?
Or until the auto companies are forced to manufacture and sell a certain % of 0 emission vehicles in more states. The fact that people are still selling them also seems to support their viability. If they are marketed as a short range commuter vehicle even limited sales on some kind of multi-state basis could be a pretty positive thing for the environment.
I’ll admit the film is biased. I don’t recall it giving much time to problems with the EVs I say viable because they had 4000 working vehicles in the road, plus the other manufacturers models. The fact that after 2 or 3 years of leasing the many owners wanted to keep them means quite a few were working okay. I don’t assume that the film was 100% correct.
and …this is relevant how? The film covers a couple of significant improvements in battery technology.
That may be interesting but not relevant. EVs can be promoted as limited range urban commuter vehicles as they are. A limited beginner market might help certain problems be resolved gradually.
I don’t see any posters promoting that idea