For the life of me, I cannot understand why GM just doesn’t sell the Brazilian GM models in the USA! True, they would need some upgrading (to cope with US standards), but the GM vehicles sold in Brazil are excellent-they compete well with Ford, VW, and the japanese makes. I rode in a cab down there, and the 4 cylinder engine was smooth and powerful. The driver told me it was much better than the Fiat he used to have.
So why does GM waste money on old crap-just use models they already have.
That attitude is exactly the problem. By most consumer satisfaction and reliability indexes, GM is close to Honda and Toyota and even exceeds them in some cases (the Buick division in particular). GM solved their quality issues sometime in the 90’s, but they just haven’t been able to come up with a compelling strategy to get people to get over their deservedly crappy reputation from the 70’s and 80’s. GM being on the fore-front of a new technology, particularly a “green” one, and making it work in a reliable production car is really the antithesis of everything GM was during the malaise era. If they handle the Volt right, it could really change peoples’ attitudes about the company, and that’s what GM needs to do to sell cars.
In the past, I’ve made some of the same arguments I’m making now about the EV-1. The EV-1 came out at a time when gas was less than $1 a gallon in many parts of the country (the cheapest gasoline has ever been, when adjusted for inflation). Obviously that wasn’t really the time for a full-electric car, and GM probably only would have lost money on the thing if they brought it into full production. And yet the EV-1 was a great little car-- the people who had the initial leases loved the things and by most accounts they worked pretty well in the conditions for which they were designed.
So, hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but to get counterfactual for a moment, what if GM had kept the EV-1 project going? Sure GM probably never would have made a dime on the things but the project wasn’t that expensive (again, a trifle compared to the marketing budget) and as they started showing up all over the country, it would show people that GM was interested in new technologies and was capable of making products that were both innovative and reliable. The EV-1 definitely wasn’t for most drivers, but I think it would have made a lot of people more likely to consider some of GM’s good-quality but poor-selling cars of the last decade like the Malibu and the Impala. And, of course, as gas prices did start to spike later in the decade, GM would have been much more able to present itself as a company that could make a good efficient car, instead of being hopelessly dependent on SUV’s.
As it was, they ended up crushing the damn things and burying them in the desert and doing their best to pretend the EV-1 never existed, which ended up doing nothing but reinforcing every bad idea people had about GM. I think they’ve got another chance here with the Volt. For most people, buying a particular car over another is not a rational decision (even as much as we all rationalize it and pretend it is) and the fact is that the image a company presents is at least equally important to the actual qualities of that car.
So using oil and polluting the air, does not have a cost to you? Look at the gulf lately?
The future is not gasoline engines for many reasons.You must have a stake in gas engines, because you refuse to see what damage they cause. The Volt is just the first in a long line of vehicles that will end the gas engine as transportation. Several companies have committed to the electric car.
Performance? Try the Tesla which blows the door off of gas powered vehicles. The range is from commuter car to the race tracks and trucking. Get into the 21st century.
You argue that since it is not a towing vehicle now, it never will be. You need a new crystal ball.
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First, pollution is an entirely different issue. IF you want to stop the increases in pollution, then stop the population increase, end all immigration. Pollution is only a concern if you are overpopulating. If you want to reduce pollution, then stop immigrating and reduce the population. If we cut our population in half, and if everyone still used gasoline powered cars, then we would greatly reduce pollution. On the otherhand, if we double the population and doubled the number of cars, polltution will greatly increase even if we only add 100 million electric cars to our road.
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Secondly, electric cars would cause too much pollution because of the strain they would put on our fossil fuel electric power plants. Electric cars cause too much coal and oil to be burned.
Ha! I was just thinking to myself, if only **Susanann **could work immigration into this argument, then her vehement tirade against this blossoming new technology would be complete.
I understand where you’re trying to go with this but lets be realistic. Technology can double the speed of a computer without adding to the cost. It’s impossible to add an electrical motor and a huge battery back to a “generator” and not increase the cost of the vehicle substantially. At best there is a potential cost savings in the transmission case but a hybrid will always involve additional manufacturing and resources.
The battery technology on the immediate horizon will allow for faster charges but that only helps if there is infrastructure in place to recharge them. And it’s going to take a substantial breakthrough to reduce the cost of the battery pack. This is a major extra cost when compared to a hollow metal tank used to store liquid fuels.
Electric motors are not going down substantially in price. They are the most common industrial commodity in society today so there is a definite floor to their cost. There will be economies of scale associated with the Volt’s motor but it will always be a fairly expensive chunk of hardware in addition to the batteries.
Compare this to diesel engines. We don’t have to invent squat to bring them into this country. With a wave of a politician’s magic NOx wand they can be in dealerships tomorrow (figuratively) and there is already a distribution system for the fuel in place.
It’s all about making the most changes with the least amount of money. We can easily double fleet mileage without loss of utility to existing cars and without investing in any new technology. DONE. It didn’t cost us a dime. Millions of real cars that real people can afford. It’s nothing but a retool by our domestic automakers to build the cars they already sell to everybody else on the planet who have a lick of common sense.
The tax money wasted is now is free to accelerate bio-diesel fuel technology to reduce the current cost of approx $8/gallon to a more agreeable number. This makes us energy independent and further reduces CO2 by scrubbing existing coal plants for plant food to feed the algae. If we can stabilize the cost of fuel to $3 then all the associated costs of wildly fluctuating fuel costs vanish.
It’s the difference between smothering a fire with stacks of money or using an existing bucket to throw a little water at the problem.
Do you really believe electric car technology has peaked with the Volt?
It will improve and eventually, hopefully, replace the gas engine. The technology has improved while they were developing it. It changes rapidly and all aspects of it will improve.
Batteries will get smaller ,more powerful and will give more range as time goes on.
The best argument against buying one is that it is new and will be obsolete in a short time. I don’t believe in buying a new car the first yers. there is a lot of debugging to do. There are problems which will show as they get a lot of hard use.
Having worked on a fair number of GM cars I would disagree that they’ve solved their quality issues. Engines like the quad 4 was a miracle of science wrapped up in the failure of quality. The Volt represents major **individual **technologies all wrapped up in a sexy bow. Everything is new and it is all one of a kind right down to the LED headlights. Imagine the public impression of reliability when something like the glass-cockpit computer dies. It won’t matter if the CEO show’s up with a busload of mechanics to personal fix each car.
She has to be 80 years old and a hater of new technology.
We are slowly moving toward solar panels. it would not take much to cut the coal plants out of the equation. Buying a Volt might encourage a person to go solar. It becomes a win/win.
One of the future generation cars will integrate solar panels in the roof. It was considered for this one but put back.
My old company (International Rectifier) had a 1911 Baker Electric car, with the roof covered by IR solar cells.
The car had a range of about 35 miles on a charge-of course, top speed was something like 30 MPH!
At best it will power a little fan to keep it cool in the sun but not much else. The car probably needs it because air condition will suck the life out of the battery. Another expensive option for the car.
You mean at worst. At best it will recharge the battery while you drive.
They plan charging stations . they will be 100 percent solar. They will not use the coal powered electricity. SUSANANN is wrong again.
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YOu are lying again.
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I love new technology, but give me something that works. Give me a solar cell that provides as much energy as a nuclear power plant or a coal power plant, even when the sun does not shine because of clouds. Give me a wind turbine that provides the same amount of electric as a nuclear or coal power plant even when the wind is not blowing.
The fact of the matter, is, that you dont cannot provide any electric at all on a cloudy windless day with your “new technology”.
On the other hand, coal and nuclear plants, as well as gasoline cars, are not dependent on only sunny windy days.
Originally Posted by Susanann View Post
IF you want to stop the increases in pollution, then stop the population increase, end all immigration. Pollution is only a concern if you are overpopulating. If you want to reduce pollution, then stop immigrating and reduce the population.
If you double or triple the population, if you double or triple the number of cars on the road then you are going to get more pollution.
If you cut the population in half, you will reduce pollution.
Significantly increasing (or reducing) the population/number of cars on the road(as well as heat, air conditioning, home electricity usage) has a more direct effect on pollution levels than arguing whether to use coal versus gasoline to propel cars.
In other words, **200 million people driving 200 million gasoline cars will produce much LESS pollution… than 500 million people driving 200 gasoline cars plus another 300 million electric cars. **
Adding an **additional **300 million cars on the road is going to increase pollution levels, it doesnt matter what kind of cars the additional 300 million extra cars are .
a $600 48" x 14" panel will produce 125 watts. I suppose if they add a $10,000 fold out array it might provide 3 miles of travel charging all day at work.
Wrong about what? That the car is a flaming waste of money? Who is paying for this level of retardation? It takes 10 Kwh to charge a single car. It would take a $90,000 array to recharge ONE CAR.
One, a small motor used to run a generate electricity at constant RPMs is a different beast than an engine that directly provides all the motive power. Two, the vehicle does not need to be cheaper to purchase; it needs to be at a small enough purchase premium that the additional cost is more than offset by the savings of running the vehicle during the period of ownership. We have determined that such is not now the case: gas is not expensive enough and the premium is too large. But if the Volt’s current price is indeed predicated upon an initial battery price of $1000/kWh (as many experts had opined) and the price comes down to $250/kWh, then the vehicle can cost $12K less. That can go a long way to making it cost competitive, especially if gas prices do go back up over the next several years.
The battery technology to allow faster charges is here, the distributed infrastructure is not. But again, the advantage of the Volt model is that it doesn’t need it. And as for pure BEVs, the first uses of the class of vehicles will not be for those using the cars to travel across country, but for those who know that their needs are met with a car that has a 60 mile or 100 mile or whathaveyou range, and for fleet operators who will have central fast charge points for their fleet use over routes that are planned in advance, and for whom the extra battery cost (and charge point cost) is more than offset by fuel savings, the relative price predictability, and the lower vehicle maintenance costs, given the over 100K miles such vehicles can put on each year. (Buses, garbage trucks, delivery trucks, etc.)
I suspect that you are right that they won’t go down much, but I do not know how expensive they actually are. But if the Volt’s battery pack is responsible for $16K of the $41K pre-tax credit price, then the rest of the car, including the generator and the electric motor, and everything else, costs $25K, and with the battery down to $4K the car is down to $29K without tax incentive and with no additional economy of scale savings. Still something like $8-9K more than it’s reasonable competition, cars like the Accord, and almost the same as a well equipped 2011 Prius. And in each case much more likely to pay for any differntial in a reasonable period of time.
Well, I am not going get into a debate about whether or not the NOx rules are needed or not, but in any case, they are a law of the land that is unlikely to change. And despite predictions that many models would be released stateside by now, and tax credits that almost completely cover their additional cost (“while the diesel models will cost $500 to $2,000 more, much or all of that additional cost can be offset by a federal tax credit of up to $1,300 that is available on certain diesel vehicles. The credit applies to vehicles purchased before the end of 2010.”) they have not taken off. The technology is a mature technology. It’s just not one that solves as many problems as EVs would or that many Americans seem to desire.
Double? Nah. Not even close. “Diesel engines typically increase gas mileage by 30-35% over gasoline engines” And maybe bio-diesel will be able to be made on a large scale at a great price, but it isn’t like the industry isn’t getting government support.
The batteries cost $8,000 to replace, not $16,000 so your savings can’t be $12,000 if the price comes down. Even if there is a 75% reduction in the cost of the batteries it still represents a substantial cost in addition to the electrical motor and the batteries need to be replaced before the full duty cycle of the car is realized so it needs to be added back into cost of the car.
The technology may be here but it’s not in the Volt. 4 hrs with the optional (expensive) 240 volt charger is not a fast charge.
All it takes are politicians who are not acting in an ideologue mode. Setting realistic goals and going after them should be the function of government. Do we really want to reduce emissions and eliminate dependency on foreign energy or do we continue with Jimmy Carter political stunts and install overpriced and under-performing solar cells that drain tax dollars from reaching attainable results? It’s all about the efficient use of money.
The Ford Focus diesel gets 74 mpg. The gas engine gets 35 mpg. The Ford Escape Hybrid gets 32 mpg combined and the 4 cyl gets 23 combined. I’d say the diesel does more with less and is capable of doubling fuel mileage.