Electric cars are a pipe dream

Hybrids are a natural in-between technology until (if ever) we have strong enough batteries. But I am not sure a carmaker is really interested in making just EVs.

As I stated earlier, much of their profit comes from services and parts. Hell, just changing the oil cost more at the brand service than at Jiffy Lube.
Now let's suppose a an auto CEO would honestly answer the question, do you really think he would say yes, I want to make purely electric cars? The ones that don't need no service for 5 + years??? Where is the money in that?

There is profit and there is profit. You tell me why Toyota killed the RAV4 when it was a huge success? Not to mention they SHREDDED most of them when the leases were begging for the option of letting them buy it.

The same happened to GM's EV1. They literally destroyed the fleet, leaving a few for museums and such.

There is competition and there is dirty competition. Not car example but read how Microsoft usually destroys its competitors (a la Netscape)

The carmakers are eventually in a lose-lose situation. Peak oil means that they HAVE TO switch no matter how they don't want to, the question is just
how soon and how fast. Thus we have hybrids for probably 2 decades....

 

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The car makers are likely to be Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, etc.

Less wedded to the IC engine, even for hybrids.

 

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They will be.

They will just have to switch to extended payment plans, which makes since considering the battery prices.

Good questions maybe you should ask Tesla, Zap and the such about their strategy.

Same reason for the EV1, not wanting to retool and pay for upscaling, market demand at the time for SUV, a then belief the interest in EV was viable for larger market.

I have nothing against Hybrids for the time being, but EV will be gaining larger market share at rapid rates every year from now on. When they will be a majority share I don't know, but a pipe dream is not a product with growing market share.

 

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Reading up on batteries. Lithium as a commodity will be a huge issue for US carmakers, since the raw material can be found in Latin America and China. Also the computer market is sucking up a very decent % of the aviable lithium, so I don't see the price of the material dropping or being wildly aviable in the future.

Now here is an improvement for lead-acid batteries for hybrids:

"(CSIRO) has developed a hybrid car battery that costs 70 percent less all while charging faster, providing 50 percent more power and recharging more times, increasing the life of battery by 300 percent. CSIRO's so called UltraBattery combines technologies of the capacitor and a regular lead-acid battery to make a better battery."

"The batteries have undergone testing in a Honda Insight for the last year in the UK and just passed 100,000 miles. "...."it is 17kg heavier and that creates a fuel consumption penalty of 2.8 percent. But it is about one quarter of the cost, so you save around $2000 on the cost of building the car."

http://green.autoblog.com/2008/01/20/csiros-ultrabattery-to-cut-cost-of-hybrid-battery-by-2-000-in/

A 2K cost savings for giving up a bit on fuel economy is pretty good...

This link is a good intro for recent improvement and issues with Li-ion batteries:

http://www.energyinvestmentstrategies.com/2008/11/13/battery-economics-and-history/

 

I just love when you throw out unsupported opinions about the future. So why and when they are going to be interested in making EVs?

Sure. But gaining even a 1000 times gain from 0.001% is still really nothing in absolute numbers or overall marketshare...

 

Cars are a pipe dream in the future. Only the rich will still have them, forget how they are powered, probably by vegetable oil. And the roads will fall into disrepair.

The American public is being confronted with the bad news that their addiction will soon come to an end. It's like finding out you have cancer. We have gone through denial and anger, now we are in the bargaining phase, (how can we run our unsustainable way of life on something other than oil?). Next will come depression and finally acceptance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kübler-Ross_model

 

Nah- we've always liked going places, often in coping with the (partially self-correcting) problem of overpopulation, and we always will. All that needs be depressed is human birthrates. Further declining procreation will make for a much happier and energy-abundant home planet, and we'll still use fossil resources in all the ways more valuable and lasting than as fuel.

 

We will use trains.

 

-and the longer trains will carry and quick-charge our electric cars, scooters, small flying machines and such.

But yes, I am looking forward to more public and social transportation, in the cities and countryside. I don't see it as an either-or dilemma, especially as the rolling smokers go the way of the dinosaur.

Aside: Lange is already building a few of my flying dreams now. There are many of us who rejoice so much in personal freedom of mobility, and I trust there will always be ever more exciting experiences of that kind. I hope to have a personal aircraft powered by its own (solar) hangar someday.

 

Oh so I didn't quote A senior head of GM just a few posts ago?

3% of the market by 2015 is some rapid growth!

 

The cost of installing that much rail verse just staying with roads and more efficent and electric cars is in the latters favor, but certainly high speed rail between major cities does have an advantages.

 

High speed rail is an expensive fantasy. Existing right of ways cannot accomodate high speeds, but they do exist and can easily be updated for passenger service. We used to have an excellent rail system in the US, with lines going to even small towns. Those lines still exist.

Why not roads? They require constant maintenance with asphalt, an oil based product. We will not be able to afford to continue maintaining roads for cars that people cannot afford to drive. The use of the auto has also warped our communities into unliveable sprawl, a way of life that cannot be sustained and was perhaps the worst investment in history.

 

Your wishes and hopes are running into the brick wall of reality, also called peak oil. What's wrong with the bicycle?

 

Those lines are now too busy moving freight to move people in a timely manner, the only way trains for passengers will take off is if they are faster then cars, as in Europe and Japan passanger lines and cargo lines are strictly separated.

Or pyrolysis biomass and other bio-products, thus making a carbon sink.

And you think steel tracks are cheaper, easier to maintain and more energy efficient?

 

Nope, the problem is that Americans are in love with cars. I'm suggesting we capitalize on our existing rail lines to create an infrastructure as good as Europe. Or at least as good as we had in the 1920's. It wouldn't take that much investment, everything is pretty much there already.

LOL. As if we have the luxury to grow crops only to drive on them.

It's a proven fact.

 

I don't remember, did you??? He could have said it for the PR... Actions are better than words...

You said EV, hybrids are not EV and there won't be anything like 3% probably not even by 2020...

 

I am in love with cars. It takes me EVERYWHERE, whenever I want, I don't have to schedule it or share it with other people. It is also called convenience...

You have to pry the steering wheel out of my cold dead hands...

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Yeah that why he turned the Chevy Volt from concept car to production car, production began in march, and should be on the sale lots by the end of this year.
This is inherently different from the false start of the late 90's early 2000's of the EV1 and REV4. They defeated the regulatory pressure to produce EVs then, this time they are producing EV due to primarily market demand. GM more so does not have the money to create a false line of cars as they did before in fact GM is now gambling its future on the Volt.

Plug in hybrids and range extended EV represent a gray area as they are EVs only with generators for extended range operation beyond the limitations of todays high price batteries. As mentioned before as battery performance increases and prices decrease the battery capacity in these cars is increasing from hybirds to plug-in hybirds to EREV to EV while at the same time high end EVs are working there way down the market, these market strategies are observable today and have garnered a be it tiny but existing section of the market, thus not a pipedream, Fusion is a pipedream, not EVs.

I just love when you throw out unsupported opinions about the future.

 

I like my bicycle- it's a nice ride to the airport. But my bike doesn't fly well. I love my airplanes because I can get to the ocean, and another country in an hour, and at the hour of my choosing. I can survey my home ground, and know each and every field and glen below me, and marvel as the recognition of familiar and lovely home grows outward beyond the horizon melting into astounding varieties of terrain. On a bike I can't carve a big barrel roll around the moon, wheeling through a starry-night sky, because my bike doesn't have a playful ET in its basket. Nor does my car have flubber under the bonnet. But I have all sorts of real fantastic fun in airplanes, far exceeding mere echoes of wonder in words or pictures or movies.

On summer days I've slipped down into fresh-mowed fields far from my own nest. I've tucked under the wing for a nap, feeling as at home anywhere beneath the freewheeling sky as any free-traveling bird. In winter I draw gigantic

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eace: symbols on the perfect blank canvas of snow-covered Adirondack lakes, using my airplane's skis as stylus, and knowing that some traveler cooped up in an airliner, or an astronaut, a satellite-image analysts, and other googlers of earth may glimpse what I've had to say with my airplane. I've switched on the "smoke" (would prefer non-petroleum smoke) to draw a big heart in the summer sky. When it hangs there long enough that I climb away to admire my great ridiculous skymoticon, I've torn back down through the middle to draw an arrow for anybody or nobody watching. A bike is nice, but you just can't do these fabulous things on a bike. I could never trade a decent flying machine for a bicycle, nor could I trade these privileges for a seat on a lumbering train or airliner. I will never concede that the limits of human exuberance and expression (or mobility, or gratitude, compassion and responsibility) are being overwhelmed or restricted by any "energy crisis". On the contrary:

I look forward to continuing and further exploring such freedom without fossil fuels, and I don't think it's an unrealistic expectation. The notion that personal mobility needs to be reduced for us to find our sustainable place as a species is to me a form of hopelessness and dangerous resignation. Throughout the petroleum era we've been harnessing energy in dirty ways, consuming it wastefully. Like at the frazzled end of any out-of-control party, it's time to clean up, and since the damage has been ginormous, now it's obviously time for us to figure out how to have our fun more responsibly. But it certainly doesn't mean our fun is done, or that we've had more than our share of it. We're just doing it wrong, that's all.

Some people want for all of us to reduce our expectations. I think that's bullshit, and a vestige of superstitions about what the fates will allow. We were fated to be born and to die, but everything in between is entirely up to us. So I refuse to forsake the freedom to move about the planet in very personal ways. I insist on earning and developing my means, privileges, and skills of mobility with ever more dedication and exuberance for as long as I physically and mentally can. I have confidence in human abilities to adapt- clean up, and thrive, and not only from an emotional standpoint:

We are genetically programmed to adapt and thrive, and that is the self-reinforcing theme of the miracle of living, struggling, failing, adapting, laughing, and advancing intelligence and consciousness. We will continue to develop more resilience and balance as we develop our technologies and our mentalities and there is no point in allowing ourselves to be stunted by regressive notions like Luddism. The ecological and financial challenges before us are no more insurmountable than the threats to our existence that we have struggled mightily against since before we were even self-aware. Our destiny is not to become the befouler of nature, and snuff ourselves out in our own filth. Our destiny is to join with nature in a far-distant Big Bang of supreme consciousness, and if we succeed as Humans, we'll magnificently represent our home and ancestry at the very end of time.

We're not going to get there on bicycles. Is petroleum power sustainable? No. Is unrestricted human population growth sustainable? No. Are there alternatives? Yes. Is human progress, in living happier and more fulfilling lives in the future sustainable? Call me a dreamer, but this I believe is not only possible, but already written in our DNA.

Syzygys loves cars, and will no doubt enjoy some very cool EVs in the future, as will I. It's because humans just really love to "go", just like dolphins leaping for joy riding our bow-waves, or dogs eagerly probing the wind outside the window of a speeding car or airplane (KoKo my lab-mutt companion prefers 60 knots or less for putting her face into the slipstream, and she barks exultantly at the echoing barks from below, experimenting in her dog way with sonar altimetry when I shut off the engine to glide). With my dog and other flying students, I've met hawks and eagles soaring high above their hunting altitudes, where it's obvious that these beings soar for the fun of it, too. When & if dogs, dolphins, and eagles ever evolve the technology to experience even more freedom and joy of motion than they already do, I know from looking into their laughing eyes that they certainly won't pass up the chance. Neither will we.

Years from now, I hope to still promote and maintain a particular "upward" mobility, with more success than ever- that is, to watch landscapes scrolling underneath, while leaving few traces of passage behind- maybe a soft wake and some water vapor. Sharing in exuberant cross-country adventures by air, we'll leave less evidence of our passage than on bicycle or car. Flying fuel-cell powered airplanes, we'll swim confidently and in good con-science in our great ocean of air. As more dream-machines become reality, we'll travel the surface, and under the seas as balanced beings who belong to this playground planet and to the stars out beyond.

Good times aren't really over for us. We're reaching a stage in our development when we'll stop behaving like selfish, messy, even maladjusted and destructive teenagers. We'll clean up our stupendous mess, because like responsible grown-ups we're learning that it's what we must do. We'll do what is necessary to ensure ourselves, ensure our companion beings, and ensure our environment the maximum of sustainable fun and fulfillment imaginable, and we're bound to exceed the best expectations of those among us who are presently suffering the worst effects of a sickening petroleum-party hangover.

Deep breath. Take in a future ride; feel it; be in it, and look all around. We can make all this happen. The answer is (has always been) at our System's center. Here comes the sun, always pouring out abundant energy in perfect form for life bountiful. Under its sustaining light we really can shape our real gifts by our own real hands, and take to the road, to the sky, and to the undiscovered universes beyond, just like we always really wanted: Free. (really)

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What is that thing?