America, land of the free? Well, I do think I still have the freedom of opinion, and all that follows is my opinion.
kit-Car-Collage
I’ve got a page for you that I think is the basis for study and reflection, it gives you a lot of insight into how minds deprived of the most basic understanding of physics (Junior High School Science class is all you need to know better).
I reflect on a person who wrote me years ago about his ‘get rich idea’, he had stumbled upon some ‘facts’ that no one else had seemed to notice over the last 100 years or more, and was ready to exploit it.
He had a 7hp Motor running (no load) off the grid, and being the experimenter he was, he took a moment to measure the voltage at the motor connection box, and then used a clamp on amp meter to measure current. He simply multiplied ExI and was astounded to see that he had a full 7hp of power for near nothing in cost per KWh!
From there is was a simple calculation for him to figure a direct drive to a generator, calculate the typical power production of a 7hp generator, and then his discovery!
Wow, I can make a ton of money filling my garage full of these generators and selling the power back to the power company at a huge profit!
Are you going to believe basic physics, or your own eyes? Soon I realized there was no reasoning with this individual NOT because he was stupid, but because he wanted to believe in his ‘Fairy Dust Dream’ so badly.
For the person who understands that deceiving oneself is a very sad thing, I offer the following website, but just a few things I’ll ask you to look for when you read. Notice the folks who have control over this page allow a number of insane statements to stand. I love the one that says basically an EV is simple having only one moving part. Then there’s the assumption that the production of electricity at night is far different. I can make the leap to see their understanding is as naïve as the boy wonder with the electric motor scheme. For the rest of us, we know that those who sell into the grid MUST meet the demand on the grid, and the night time hours offers producers opportunities to charge reserves to meet peak hours like Power South does, or burn far less fuel, less water through the turbine, etc.
Imagine how little you need to know about business in order to write the tripe found on this page, Is there one person who likes what’s on this page that has ever been responsible to meet a pay roll, or even run a Hot Dog Stand for profit?
Do they really believe that President Obama would stand by and watch his Engineers develop the Chevy Volt and make such an inferior car to their beloved EV1?
It all reminds me of the guy that made cars run on water at the State fair, or the 300 mpg carburetor fitted to the Ford Station Wagon, or countless other stories that people void of any common sense share in the lunch room at work across North America, yes Canadians too 🙂
But there’s so much more on the EV1.ORG page, one I love is the conversation about Californians drive their Toyotas for free, you just tip up solar panels, buy or build chargers, and drive for free.
There’s a direct analogy to driving for free, and that’s living in your house for free. Yes, once you buy that house, it’s all free from there on right? Well.. all except for the house payments, property taxes, special assessments, and all the little things you learn of after you become a home owner. Oh.. you didn’t know you must pay for garbage, sewer, electricity, water, and in some places monthly fees for surface water run off, home owner fees,.. and oh… you never knew that it was you who was paying for those lights on your street to be on whether you like the lights or not.
Reality, is, you need consider the cost of everything from the point of power production, to the rear wheels, and pro rate it all over the miles you drive, and you only know that cost AFTER you sell every piece of equipment you purchased, and include all the related expenses. You also know that your state will not allow you a free ride, somebody has to pay for all those road improvements, and once there’s more than a handful of EVs on the road, the Government will be there to levy a pound or two of flesh to fund all those folks leaning on shovels curb side.
So here’s a site for your enjoyment. Those who maintain these pages are likely the same minds that believe that printing money is exactly the same as creating wealth. We know that God has a plan, but exactly why he created people who refuse to think is not so clear to me.
So you believe the EV1 was a gift from Aliens, that it was far better than the Chevy Volt? Well that’s why we allow comments here, and we welcome your help in educating us. Scroll down and help us understand.
As I close, It’s my opinion that Forrest Gump knows better, but Tom Hanks likely has the EV1.org page in his favorites 🙂
Have a great weekend.
George B.
George,
Being the owner of a home built EV for the past few years I can attest to the cost to drive one. After the initial expense of building the car it is indeed less expensive to drive than a gasoline powered or Hybrid car. Not because electricity is cheap (it is by the way) but because the EV is optimized for efficency. My Pontiac Fiero EV consumes about 300 WH per mile on average when driven between 40 and 60 MPH on fairly flat terrain. My daily commute is 36 to 40 miles round trip and it consumes aproximately 12 KWH of electreicity which costs about $1.20. Cheap by most standards. The draw back is it is like having a car with a very small gas tank. The maximum range without recharge is about 75 miles. So far it has been more reliable than my gas/Diesel powered rigs and requires far less maintance. Only time will tell how long the Lithium batteries will last.
Pat Sweeney
Pat, I always appreciate your input, my point here is these nuts think the EV1 had the secret Fairy Dust under the hood!
I have a four seat Ford Think Neighbor, I bought it and found out the university here in Washington State had neglected to have the motor replaced (upgraded) and a few other things that most of the Ford think community got done under warranty. The car is in excellent condition, seats are perfect, body good, glass good, etc. The batteries are the original gel cells (dead) and I’m just not interested in investing. The Ford Think Neighbor on the other hand is a very good excercise in light weight construction with few exceptions. If you know anyone who is interested in repowering this thing.. (motor is good but not powerful) OR you know of a reasonable package of motor, controller, charger, battery, I’d love to hear about it.
I don’t think the EV1.org page represents the EV hobbyists at all..
Pat, we need recognize that in many areas of the country, people owuld rather go hungry than live wihtotu air conditioning on some days, we have the other end of the stick, with temps well below zero, EVs are best deployed in areas flat as a table, and in moderate temperatures. so I think.
One of the many standouts was the bit about there being a waiting list of suckers wanting to pay $500 a month and 50cents a mile lease and THEN paying for the power to charge the thing. Cheaper to catch a cab!
I don’t understand the disconnect with physics. I’ve tried to explain it to people and they just don’t get it. There is a lot of dishonest people out there who have these amazing over unity power systems. Notice how they only sell the plans but say that you could make a million after you build it. Why don’t they make the millions?
As for electric cars, I agree with others in the thread that they are good for short distances and in warm climates because the heater or the air conditioner would eat the power in the batteries. Live in the city and only drive 50 or 60 miles a day they might work. I just don’t know the cost of such a product.
Unlike the site you linked to that says electric cars don’t pollute, where do they get their electricity? Duh.
If one wants good gas mileage it needs to be a small car with less then 100 hp and it would get great mileage. Some people think one can have an SUV and get 50 mpg.
Last but not least. We have made laws in this county to reduce pollution and that taxes the companies trying to make a product. Then we buy all our goods overseas where those laws don’t exist and destroy companies here by doing that. Then why make the laws? Do people think that pollution stays in other countries. If people think that we need to clean up our act, then require it of the things we buy and then we could make our products at the same cost here in America. Wake up America. Sorry for the rant but this last paragraph is what I don’t understand! If I’m wrong please explain it to me. Someone
Great point you make about destroying our business here. Many are proud of their efforts to destroy American Business..
Thanks for the food for thought folks.
Opinions vary, they always will, but I think market driven processes and private investment sort out the winners and losers with far less waste, and at a time when we know we are short on capital as a nation, we should give this a lot of thought.
My first computer was a toy, I knew it was a toy, and people attempted to get me to justify the money I had spent. I looked them in the eye, and told them it was a toy, and I planned to play with it 🙂 Hundreds of hours spent building it, and thousands of dollars, and you didn’t pay a dime towards my hobby. Pat S. gets a free pass from me, even if his car never moved out of the drive way. It’s all learning, and possibly more.
Back to the Volt, it’s good that we compare the Volt to the EV1 project. The EV1 project had no production goals, the effort was all about studying the feasibility of the car, and some will argue that the car was tested in the more ideal markets, mild weather, ground as flat as a table as compared to others, and more.
Some might tell you that GM became very concerned about liability, having put people in a research vehicle makes guinea pigs out of them, or at least that’s what an attorney could argue in court. Some say the car had structural defects, they couldn’t keep windshields in the car because of the stresses and more. As we know, when you put 1300 pounds plus of batteries in a car, that’s a lot of energy you need dissipate in a collision, just how safe was that car, and how would a jury see it in a court room if there were casualties, especially children? Even if the person signing the lease agreed he was a guinea pig, the attorney pleading for an award of 50 million or more would simply say, my client is as dumb as a box of rocks when it comes to basic physics, he couldn’t have comprehended the dangers, and GM knew that!
That’s why the EV1s went to the crushers, their law department warned that GM was taking a huge risk. Here’s one bit of reality. Cars that are damaged in transport from the manufacturer to the Dealer are normally destroyed. The risk of fixing them when the damage is more than superficial is just too great.
I have friends who raced factory built cars, and they targeted some of these damaged cars for race parts, the biggest hurdles were the legal ones. You could discuss this fact with. the nut(s) that maintain the EV1.org page, but you know they’d reject the argument.
I was witness to a department head being asked if he could do the impossible, they (the officers) asked him up front, can you do this? If you can’t we’ll get someone who can. Being months away from retirement, he told them what they wanted to hear.
The volt project is little different from the EV1 project, it’s an R&D project and just like the EV1, there are buyers! The difference is, people external to GM have leaned on the company to turn what should be an R&D vehicle into a production vehicle.
There is more than one Marketing Researcher that worked for GM who is now in a rubber room! There is no market for this car at this price range, and most of us are certain that the car costs at least several times the selling price to make. The market for this car is likely at $26K to $28K, but reality says GM needs to make a profit at that price, so just how many years is it ahead of being ready for production?
There’s other risks no one is talking about, the price of rare earth materials, the need for at least a doubling of power density in the batteries, and more.
A123 Batteries is an interesting study, the company in my opinion was powered by politicians wanting to turn the public’s forced investment into political capital. The recent production problems suggest the company has not embraced the same level of QC practices as other companies forced to operate without politicians dumping public wealth into their laps. They were forced to grow faster than they could develop a process or understand the consequences.. (my opinion of course).
It appears that someone in A123 made adjustments to a robot welder, if A123 was operating with typical QC practices, the process would have been certified, and the changes would have been seen in reports all the way to the department head level. Who made these changes, and who all bought into them? The estimated 55 million to replace the batteries in EVs, and elsewhere may be the tip of the iceberg, what damage did they do to the companies depending on a quality product? Is there any recourse for Fisker and others? Could an attorney claim A123 didn’t follow the processes defined in a contract, and could our public investment forced upon us by this administration become a total loss? Are we last in line for any spoils in bankruptcy court?
Until Chevy can sell the volt for a profit, the Volt is no more than an R&D project that the current Administration has forced into production in the hopes of generating political capital. Since the believers don’t care about the difference between creating wealth and printing money, why would they care if the volt cost six times a much to make as it sold for?
Oh.. that department head guy I mentioned.. the one who said he’d do the required impossible.. he was in a national commercial, a wonder boy.. a leading computer company pointed out that this miracle worker promoted their products as part of his solution! The project of course was a disaster, but our Department head made it to his retirement date just as he planned!
Word to the wise, never tell a man you’ll fire him unless he agrees to deliver the impossible.. he’ll likely tell you he can.
As I end this long comment, I say we need to trial that Nissan Leaf in Atlanta in late July, and in Northern Main in December. We have the technology, why not mount a web camera in the car, and we can all enjoy watching the pure EV at work. No doubt it’ll be practical one day, but will you bet what’s left of your 401K on it being any time soon? EVs will sell, the market will likely be small, and areas where the car will be more popular will be flat as a table, and the weather moderate. We need more power density, and that could come.. but when?
And.. where’s those new nukes, we need them!!
Here’s a page worth viewing, read the comments..
http://gm-volt.com/2008/05/11/the-ev-1-wasnt-killed-it-was-dead-on-arrival/
Catch the part about California forcing companies to make 2% zero emissions cars..
Why does this article say zero emission cars because the power for making them and using them has to be made!
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The Failing School System. You can’t just point the finger at the school system. There are 40 % something percent of parents who think that the world is 6000 years old and that scientists don’t know what they are talking about. Getting your kids to think that science text books are full of shit is a big part of the problem a large part of the problem.
Science is based on experiments and they are fact. If someone says it’s wrong then they have the burden of proving them wrong. Not cherry picking peer review paper but actually coming out with their own papers and the proof that it is wrong. There are people who way that the theory of relativity is wrong every once in a while they don’t just say it they take the time to do research and so far in the end they find out they are wrong. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing one must prove their point. Raising children that think everything is wrong doesn’t help the education system.
We can argue all you want. Less PC bull shit, and just a bit more basic science in school could help a bunch.. watch Jay Leno’s on the street interviews. Skeptical is normally better than Gullible. EV1.org allows insanity to remain on their pages. I love the mention of solar panels built into EVs as being the answer to driving for free. It’s a great example, and don’t we all know those who say things like this would have no idea what to do with a pencil if they dared pick it up off the table. those who pay the bills, (likely their parents) would have a sense of cost per mile, and understand the basics of calculating the cost per mile.
What we Realists understand is that there is no one on the planet so powerful as to suppress technology that would bring us a practical EV, energy density is key. We also know that some who buy EVs do so because they have the ideal environment to operate such a car, or they just want to play with it. We DIYers have learned we need not justify our hobbies. Imagine attempting to justify an $80,000 high performance Bass boat by pro rating the cost of bass caught (Dollars/per pound.)
If the real cost of the chevy volt is around $250,000 a car, then GM needs to lower production costs by a factor of 10 to find buyers who do consider cost per mile. So.. just how far away from selling volumes typical of a production car are they, and how responsible is GM? Their stock holders got screwed once, perhaps they should be prepared to get screwed again?
This bit of public school excellence was on wral.com today. Almost 32 charging/parking spaces were used 96 times in a year. 3 uses per spot per year and they claim that offset 19 tons of co2! This is the hard to park downtown area. How much co2 did 32 empty parking spots generate because people sharked the lots for space?
Let’s say all 96 charges were from people driving in from 15 miles. Why you would want to drive 15 miles to get to downtown Raleigh I don’t know but whatever. That’s under 3000 miles worth of charging. How does saving 3000 miles worth of gas save anyone 19 tons of co2. So if I drive across the us I’m adding 38,000 pounds of co2?
Raleigh, N.C. — If you can’t plug in your car, stay out of the nearly three dozen electric charging stations around the capital city.
The Raleigh City Council on Tuesday approved a measure that would impose $50 fines on anyone who uses a public parking space reserved for electric and hybrid vehicles but doesn’t drive one.
Raleigh is one of the first cities in the United States to install public car-charging stations.
The city says the public stations were used 96 times last year, but they offset more than 19 tons of carbon dioxide in vehicle exhaust.
This year, the usage is expected to go up.
The city spent $125,000 for the charging stations. State and federal grants, as well as manufacturers’ donations, helped offset the rest of the costs.
I bet $125K didn’t pay for the permits! Same thing is happening in this state, and as I reported, the stations WILL be a large liability.
Never seen an EV in the one near me, at $3.50 an hour for use of level 2 charger… at 120VAC, you’d buy how many BTUs for that price?
The EPA
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/f00013.htm
Says it takes 11450 pounds of co2 to drive the average American can for 12000 miles. So it would take 39,000 miles to exhaust 38,000 pounds of co2. For the 96 times those chargers were used each car would have to get 414 miles per charge. Pretty long round trip for a car that does not exist. Not even the tesla roadster could go 414 on a charge. The EPA and other progressives love co2 numbers even though they can’t do math. They like them because they are so large. They don’t know why. But I do. Most of the weight of the molecule comes from the air, not the fuel. It would make more sense and be less sensational to use carbon emitted instead.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/co2.shtml
Look at the math error on this doe outreach web site.
They demonstrate how 1 gallon of gas produces 20 pounds of co2 and this figure is one I’ve seen. It is based on a simple algebraic mistake. Look at the ratio of 3.7 they calculate. It’s a math error. They take the weight of co2/carbon. 44/12. It should be weigh of o2/carbon. 32/12. Their number is 5.5 pounds of carbon multiplied by 44/12 = 20 pounds of co2. But that does not satisfy the ratio of carbon to oxygen that they also stated and is correct at 12:32. But if they multiplied 5.5 by 32/12 it would give the correct number of 14.67 pounds of co2. I have to wonder if this error makes its way into policy. Maybe they just skip math entirely for policy. But look at what these ratios do to the co2 per mile that I linked on the EPA site a few comments up. They said 12000 miles gives 11450 pounds of co2 with the average USA car mpg of 21. 12000 miles/21 mpg * 32/12 = 1524 pounds of co2 per 12,000 miles drive. Of course green progressives love to talk about external costs because they are unknowable and can be pulled out of their ass. So it’s 1524 pounds and the rest of the 11450 must come from that which can’t be traced. Btw even if their math error of 44/12 were used it would still come up to only 2095 pounds. Considering the article about the metered spaces was throwing 38,000 pounds it is clear they were off by a huge amount. My guess at a 30 mile round trip to raleigh is generous. 30 miles * 21 mpg * 96 charges * 32/12 = 365 pounds of co2 emitted. Their claim was 38,000 pounds. They were off by 104 times, or to green it up 10,400 percent.
Oops. My bad public school math now. Should have said 30 miles per trip x 96 trips / 21 mpg x 5.5 pounds carbon x 32/12 = 2011 pounds co2. Still, compared to 38,000 pounds claimed they are off by 18.9 x.
Since I wrote this article, the EV loving State of Washington has imposed a tax on EVs. It’s the camel’s nose under the tent. So now.. if you bought that EV, and it never moves out of your drive, you effectively still pay road taxes. But… don’t expect them to stop here.
And ask again, who was it that killed the electric car?