Who killed the Electric Car?

I

Icewendigo

First time out of the vault
I just saw the trailer for the documentary movie 'Who killed the Electric Car?', have you seen the trailer?

http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/


I hope that if enough people become aware we may have that option, considering the cost of smug on health care, global warming, and the cost of relying on mideast oil (and the cost of rising prices at the pump! :wink: )

Theres also a report on PBS NOW
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/
(I watched the torrent version instead since it had a larger screen)
which is quite interesting.

Is anyone also interested in the movie?


Btw, wasnt the car in Fallout2 using batteries? :D
(although the range in FO2 was more than those in 1998).
 
The electric car was handled like cannabis. They (the oil industry) HATED it, because there are ways to make it more efficient than fuel driven cars... but they (the bad guys) won't get rich.

(they hated cannabis, because you don't need to cut off acres of woods because hemp is more efficient and it regrows every year)

*conspiracy mode ON*

Hate your government. Hate your parents. Love the NMA mods and kiss their latex high-heels.
Sooner or later they'll offer your TEH BREAKTHRU IN ELECTROCAR TEKK-NO-LOGICAL BULLSHIT which was actually invented 50 years ago but they (the evil governments) tried to hide from u.

*conspiracy mode OFF*

The main problem is:

ALL electric cars look GAY! And with gay i mean TOTALY GAY.
 
It was just such a huge change from what people were used to that no one wanted to touch it.
 
I think a futuristic WRoooooooooooooooOARoooooooooooooOOARooooooooooozzzzzoooom is better than a HRFNENENENNFHNFNFFNNNNNBRRRROOOOM!
 
How do you refuel the car?
Click to expand...

You plug in an electric socket from your your garage or home. It recharges in a few hours, so you plug it in each night.

A firend of mine has access to an electric car at work, it is a conversion car so it might be less efficient and powerful in some ways than the EV1, but it works fine for commuting.

Range: 80km
Top Speed: 112 km/h
It takes 3 hours to recharge 100%(80 km) and 1 hour gets you a 40% charge.

Of course its for people that mainly commute to work and travel mostly short distances. If I get a chance I'll buy one, and rent a typical gaz guzzler for the week end should I need to go on a trip or something.
 
If it became a viable choice, I would be all for it. Unfortunately at this time, they are really expensive. Also as you said, at full battery power you can go 80km, this would be very inconvenient for long trips.
 
I believe part of the problem is in how the possession of the electric car was treated in California and America. Instead of being a simply different type of car, it became a much larger statement about your position in the world. To have one was to be a wacky sort of environmentalist, part of a cultish group of people who were so dedicated to a single idea that rationality couldn't touch them. This was not only the case because of the perception of public, but because the wacky environmentalist sort adopted the idea of the electric car so. They doomed it in America by making sure it was associated with them.

A tad ironic really.
 
The technology itself killed the electric car. Yes GM had the EV1; yes a lot of people raved about it and loved it. Unfortunately There were certain un-avoidable problems revolving around electric cars. First of all the range was short: (according to Richard Porter in his book "Crap Cars" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/15...2931/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4799339-8924037?ie=UTF8 ; "If this car's range was any shorter, you may as well have left it plugged in"). That was under ideal conditions; when asked about a situation where you tried to drive in cold weather, and needed the headlights, the wipers, the heater and defroster all at once, a GM engineer stated that the car would have a range of "about 12 miles". There just isn't a large market for the electric car. They take too long to charge and don't drive far enough. They can be sold in no climate where cold weather ever hapens. In spite of that I see a bunch of 'em every day at College and on the military base. They're great for certain tasks but we're just not there yet. There was no big oil company conspiracy or anything that makes a good movie. Nobody is currently putting much into developing them because there are now better options.
 
More money could be spent developing new technologies though, and something has to be holding that money back.
 
The electric car is not the solution. They tried it. It failed. Instead of pouring more money into a failed experiment, they put the money elsewhere (Hybrids, Hydrogen, more efficent engines.); GM has made the V8-6-4 work right, they have a Hybrid, and have made much research into Hydrogen power, as has Honda, who also offers Hybrids, like Toyota has as well. People like the Hybrids because you just have to put gas in them and use no extra equipment. They are thrifty with the gas and people therefor don't have to chage there reutine of "Car stuff". Many of the Hybrids (the Chevy Silverado Hybrid, the Honda Civic Hybrid, and the Lexus Rh SUV Hybrid) offer either eye-opening performance or other compelling features over and above there fuel economy, whereas electic cars offered none of those things but came with numerous disadvantages.
 
Heh...so instead of walking to work, taking transit to work, or riding a bicycle, Americans want to drive their SUV to work.

Kind of like the reason why SUVs were "popular". "Can go everywhere!" Except that most of the people who own them don't live that far from their job, and watching them try to navigate icy city streets is often pretty fucking hilarious as they spin their tires in a parade. While they get spectacularly bad city gas mileage.

The only reason why the electric car "bombed" is because Americans are so lazy, they want to buy something that has higher capacity than they'll ever use. In Europe, electric cars for intra-city travel would be far more feasable, as bicycles aren't that far off, and it would be cheaper than driving anything that runs on gasoline. Long-distance vehicles could be rented if needed, unless the person needs a long-distance vehicle, at which they could be the logical exception, not the rule.
 
The Hybrid car did not bomb because Americans are "Lazy". The Electric car is not feasable. What about a 12-mile range in cold weather is hard to understand? That is an unacceptable range for any vehicle, as is the inability to ever stay anywhere overnight because you are tied to your home charging equipment. There can be no "Filling stations" because it takes several hours to re-charge an electric car. There are simply too many problems with electric cars to successfully implement them on any sort of large scale. They are already used in many paces where they are useful (as I said around my campus and the military base).
SUVs are popular because people like them. Research has stated that public interest in SUVs will not be significantly influence until gas goes above $5.00 a gallon. These people are not wrong; there opinions and values are different from yours; they acknowledge there lower fuel economy in exchange for carrying capacity, safety, ability to drive in poor conditions, etc. I live in New England. There are only two kinds of drivers in snow: The idiot who is scared shitless and drives 2 MPH, and the other idiot who thinks he can drive at 50 all the time and plows into the back of the first guy. I see just as many of them in economy cars as SUVs. Admitedly many people do not know how to drive SUVs but that is a personal problem, not a fault with the vehicle.
 
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