# Who killed the Electric Car, and similar examples. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 9, 2007, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004 "2007-08-09T13:21:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/21 "2007-08-10T08:43:13Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] Most of Buckminster Fuller’s inventions were crap, or at least, were designed without proper consideration to many factors like control, stability, and ergnomics. Consider the Dymaxion car, which became unstable at highway speeds, or the geodesic dome house, which essentially acts like a large sound reflector, has poor natural ventiliation unless you leave it completely open, and because of the pitch angle of the upper flanges and the enormous number of angled joints tends to leak under heavy rain or snow. Some of his concepts were very useful in engineering and science, but his actual inventions were frequently unworkable, at least in the form that he imagined them. Stranger [/QUOTE] 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.](http://youtube.com/watch?v=bxlj6fgQ-ZU) ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/22 "2007-08-10T11:25:59Z")
[QUOTE=Leaffan] Consumers killed the electric car. We didn’t want them, not at that price and performance anyway. The same can be said for a lot of items in a capitalistic society; the market chooses the products. [/QUOTE] 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? ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/23 "2007-08-10T12:35:07Z")
[QUOTE=OtakuLoki] **cosmosdan** , I’m going to disagree, respectfully, with your assertion that the electric car was _good_ product killed by the company making it. [/QUOTE] I’m repeating an assertion made by the movie. I’m glad to get other input. > [@](#): > > Even the most ardent supporters of the electric car admit that the current technology for batteries is very vulnerable to below freezing temperatures. I don’t mean that they break by being frozen, nor even that they’ll freeze in normal sub-zero conditions. But their performance is severely degraded by cold weather. 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. > [@](#): > > Similarly, the nominal range of an electric car is degraded a lot, if the area it’s being used in is especially hilly. 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. > [@](#): > > These two facts about the electric car mean, to me, that for current technology, the electric car had only a limited market area within the US. Which excludes the entire Northeast - a traditional home for many of the people who would have been most likely consumers for the product. 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. > [@](#): > > When one adds the legitimate concerns about environmental liability from the batteries - manufacturing, accident disposal, life-time obsolescence disposal, and remanufacturing, and the fact that the cars AIUI never seemed to sell enough, even with the huge tax breaks associated with them, to be profitable for the company making them - I’m not surprised it died. [here](http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/25/paul.commentary/index.html) 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 > [@](#): > > My current electric vehicle, a Toyota RAV4 EV, also was discontinued a few years ago. This car costs me the equivalent of 60 cents a gallon to run. I never need to get a tune-up, change spark plugs or add water to the batteries or oil to the motor. The only maintenance for the first 150,000 miles is to rotate my tires. This car is quiet, fast and emission free. I plug it in every night at home, and it charges on off-peak energy. and > [@](#): > > When I have to get new batteries, which I expect I’ll will be when my car is 10 years old, the old ones will be over 90 percent recyclable. In the film they noted that tax breaks for Hummers were much larger than for the EVs. Tell me how that makes sense. > [@](#): > > Additionally, I think that while most people will admit that they do 90-95% of all their driving within the 70 mile nominal range of an electric car - most people cannot afford to have one car for local use, only, and one for longer travel. The obvious solution would be to rent a vehicle for the rare long distance trip, but I think that most US drivers would find that a huge hassle - esp. when they already own a car. 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](http://movies.about.com/od/documentaries/a/electriccr06266.htm) is an article by the executive producer of the film and [here](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5524892) 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 > [@](#): > > The EV industry was working on longer-range batteries and quicker chargers when the whole technology was dumped. Recall how big cell phone and laptop batteries were just six years ago? Had proper research and development continued on EVs, who knows what we may have had today? 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. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/24 "2007-08-10T12:36:12Z")
[QUOTE=Rick] Your Chevy Sprint would not meet current safety or emission standards. However there are several high mileage cars that are out there on the market. Prius, Yaris, Fit to name three. [/QUOTE] Why do you say that? ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/25 "2007-08-10T12:47:34Z")
[QUOTE=Diceman] Another problem with electrics was battery life. Rechargeable batteries will eventually wear out, and they are very expensive to replace. People who bought the EV1 (instead of just leasing it) would have been screaming mad if their car got to be 5 years old, and suddenly they had to spend $1000 or more to replace the batteries. [/QUOTE] 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. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/26 "2007-08-10T14:10:24Z")
[QUOTE=cosmosdan] 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. [/quote] 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](http://www.snowmobile.org/pr_snowfacts.asp) 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. > [@](#): > > 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. 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. > [@](#): > > [here](http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/25/paul.commentary/index.html) 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. 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. > [@](#): > > In the film they noted that tax breaks for Hummers were much larger than for the EVs. Tell me how that makes sense. Why? I’m not trying to claim that everything the California State Government has ever done is wise, smart, or even logical. > [@](#): > > 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. 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. > [@](#): > > 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. One word: Liability. > [@](#): > > 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. 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](http://www.abb.com/cawp/seapr035/3248a14c44024270412567f200411fe2.aspx) 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](http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/). 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. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/27 "2007-08-10T14:33:36Z")
[QUOTE=cosmosdan] 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. [/QUOTE] 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 ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/28 "2007-08-10T14:59:16Z")
[QUOTE=cosmosdan] Why do you say that? [/QUOTE] 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. > [@](#): > > If you could stop at a filling station and plug in for 1 minute to get an 80% charge, now that’s something. So, now, is it practical to build a filling station attachment that can charge a car in 1 minute? What kind of current would be involved? > > Well, let’s do some back of the envelope calculations. > > Let’s figure out how much energy we need to store in a battery to get a decent range, say, 300 miles. > > The Toyota Prius is a good baseline gasoline powered car, as it uses hybrid technology including regenerative braking, which presumably any decent electric vehicle would also use. The Prius gets somewhere around 50 mpg, so it burns 6 gallons of gas to get our baseline range. Let’s be generous and say that the Prius’ internal combustion engine is 40% efficient ([handwavy link](http://ecen.com/content/eee7/motoref.htm)). That means that to go 300 miles, the Prius uses all the energy present in 2.4 gallons of gasoline. According to [this guy](http://65.69.77.33/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12194&highlight=Electric), gasoline contains 8.76 kWh of energy per liter. So, 2.4 gallons \* 3.8 liters/gallon \* 8.76 kWh/liter gives us 80kWh of energy required to go 300 miles. > > So how much energy does that mean we need to store in a battery to drive an electric car? Well, [it appears](http://www.psnh.com/Business/SmallBusiness/Motor.asp) that an electric motor is somewhere around 90-95% efficient, so we need to store about 88 kWh of electricity in our batteries. This is VERY generous as it does not take into account drivetrain or other losses. > > According to [these guys](http://www.afrlhorizons.com/Briefs/Feb04/PR0306.html) the best batteries available have an energy density of 150 Wh/kg. This means we need about 600 kg or 1300 lbs worth of batteries. That’s a large amount, but not completely unreasonable. > > So now that we know we want to shove 88kWh of electric energy into our car in 1 minute, how could we do that? Well, that means we’ve got to be pushing energy at a rate of 88 kWh/min, which is 5200 kW of power. That’s also known as 5.2 megaWatts. What’d I say? 5.2 megaWatts! Great Scott! > > That’s enough power drain that you wouldn’t want the filling station to just be plugging into PG&E and drawing that much whenever someone came to fill their car. So, you might want a bank of capacitors that are charging slowly but steadily, and when someone comes into the filling station they pull up to a full capacitor bank and zap all that juice into their car. That capacitor bank could then recharge from the power company over the next hour or two. An alternative to capactors would be giant flywheels attached to motor/generators, the flywheels slow down as you charge up your car, and gradually speed up again under charge from the power company. > > But can you wire up a simple connection between an electricity “pump” and a car that can handle 5.2 megawatts? If you had a 500 Volt supply, it would require 10,000 Amps. That’s a pretty big fat wiring harness. According to [these guys](http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm), you can shove about 400 Amps through a single wire that is almost half an inch in diameter. So, you’d need 25 of these wires to run that much current, and if these wires are in a bundle, you’d need them to be cooled somehow to prevent overload. That’s a bundle of wires about 4 inches thick with some kind of water cooling system. 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. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/29 "2007-08-10T15:14:23Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/30 "2007-08-10T15:17:41Z")
[QUOTE=Rysto] 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. [/QUOTE] 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. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/31 "2007-08-10T15:21:18Z")
[QUOTE=Rysto] 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. [/QUOTE] 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? ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/32 "2007-08-10T15:25:55Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/33 "2007-08-10T16:57:34Z")
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? ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/34 "2007-08-10T23:06:18Z")
[QUOTE=OtakuLoki] technology for batteries is very vulnerable to below freezing temperatures. I don’t mean that they break by being frozen, nor even that they’ll freeze in normal sub-zero conditions. But their performance is severely degraded by cold weather. [/QUOTE] 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? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2007, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/35 "2007-08-10T23:46:59Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] And, did the EV1 use lead-acid batteries? [/QUOTE] 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 ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2007, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/36 "2007-08-11T00:12:24Z")
[Pit thread on the film from about a year ago.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=377122) 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. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2007, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/37 "2007-08-11T02:44:16Z")
[QUOTE=OtakuLoki] 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](http://www.snowmobile.org/pr_snowfacts.asp) 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. [/QUOTE] 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. > [@](#): > > 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. 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. > [@](#): > > 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. 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’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. I never mentioned anything about relying on tech improvements to make it profitable. > [@](#): > > 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. Yes, and it’s an invalid point. Plenty of cars are profitable with a limited market. > [@](#): > > One word: Liability. Well that’s a real nifty word but by itself it doesn’t explain anything. > [@](#): > > 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.** 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? > [@](#): > > FTM, AIUI electric vehicles are still being made and manufactured - [local delivery](http://www.abb.com/cawp/seapr035/3248a14c44024270412567f200411fe2.aspx) 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](http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/). 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. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2007, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/38 "2007-08-11T03:03:34Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] 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. [/QUOTE] 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. > [@](#): > > 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. and …this is relevant how? The film covers a couple of significant improvements in battery technology. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2007, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/39 "2007-08-11T03:11:27Z")
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan] 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. [/QUOTE] 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. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2007, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004/40 "2007-08-11T03:12:35Z")
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan] [Pit thread on the film from about a year ago.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=377122) 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. [/QUOTE] I don’t see any posters promoting that idea [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-the-electric-car-and-similar-examples/415004.md?page=3)