[lbo-talk] Who killed the electric car?

Gar Lipow the.typo.boy at gmail.com
Tue Sep 5 19:09:52 PDT 2006


On 9/5/06, Andy F <andy274 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, Gar Lipow <the.typo.boy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A four passenger electric sedan (running at the equivalent of above
> > 200 mpg if the electricity had come from wind, water or other
> > non-combustion sources)
>
> That's a big "if". How many cars could be supported using renewable
> sources? Or does "non-combustion" mean nuclear, too?
>
> --
> Andy
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

Wind in the Great Plains alone could supply several times the electricity we currently consume. Offshore wind resources alone could supply many times the electricity we currently consume. So not all that much of an if. And the cars already have batteries - so the intermittent nature of the power is not as big a problem. BTW even if supplied with our current grid you are still looking at the equivalent of our 90 mpg - a whole lot more than hybrids currently get. More even that Lovin's never built hypercar.


>I was especially irked by listening to people who got sweetheart
deals, leasing the EV1 for literally 1/4 of it's actual market value, bitching when that deal ended. Who the hell wouldn't want to lease a $65,000 car you never put gas in for only $300 a month? Since this absolutely could not be implemented on a large scale it came across as a bunch of privileged people whining when they had their wonderful but ultimately unsustainable privilege removed.

Yeah but people were not just asking to continue the same deal. They were asking to buy the cars at market price. Incidentally the $65,000 price was based on what was basically a prototype. Mass production would have brought that cost down. But even at $65,000 there were plenty of rich people who wanted to buy them for the bragging rights of owing a cool electric car.


>Ni-MH batteries. Those batteries are toxic as hell.... replaced at
~50,000 miles .

Given how expensive the batteries are it would not be a big deal to require manufacturers take back the batteries and recycle all toxic components. And it has now been pretty widel demonstrated that Ni-MH batteries can still run at 50% capacity after 500 cycles - which with the Sunrise I mentioned would be more like 100,000 miles. At even at 100,000 miles the car would be a junker (with only a 100 mile range - but quite drivable). It could still be used as the way junkers are often used - for around town and short distance driving - which might get you another 50,000 miles out of it.

The key here is that none of these would be provided by a "free market" economy. But since there is no such thing as a "free market" that is not the same things as "would not work" or "are not ready". What I don't like about the film is that it is too heavy on implying a coordinated conspiracy - where everything it documents is pretty easily explained by an attempt to force a technology on a powerful industry that it did not want to adapt. No coordination was needed; you can pretty much count on every major car company from GM to Toyota acting the same way.

-- Please note: Personal messages should be sent to [garlpublic] followed by the [at] sign with isp of [comcast], then [dot] and then an extension of net



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