WHERE IS MY ELECTRIC CAR?
They had good EVs [Electric Vehicles] on the roads in 1990, proving that the technology works, even back then [and they have made a lot of advancements since].
They took those ones back, despite the pleading of their owners to let them keep the cars [because they worked so well and were such a joy to drive, esp. past gas stations!!]
THEN, finally, almost 20 years later, the automakers said "by the end of 2010" there would be EVs on the market. Well, it is the end of 2010, and I am not seeing EVs anywhere.
Some reports say one was delivered here or there, or a Volt was won in a raffle for charity... but there are no EVs on the sales lots yet.
The Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf are ready to roll, they are producing them by the "6000s" now, and soon will ramp up to 20,000 or even 50,000 units produced per year. They just are not being sold to anyone, not yet.
In Canada, the Nissan Leaf looks like the most promising EV to get our hands on. It is a pure EV too, not the silly Volt thing with an gas engine.
The Leaf has done a coast to coast USA road trip; The first Volt rolled off the line Nov 1st, 2010.
Maybe they will scrap these ones too?
I am just sayin' LETS KEEP THE PRESSURE ON - keep asking:
"WHERE THE %$@& IS MY ELECTRIC CAR?"
Batteries are still the drawback - incredibly expensive as well as heavy.
ps: screw the electric car; I want a FLYING CAR like I was promised in the 1950s!
They still will burn fossil fuels to charge those cars.
Electric usually means "coal-fired," depending on where you live. We need a better way of generating electicity before electric cars become an improvement on protecting the environment.
For you, Boom Boom.
Ha. The Jetsons were whom I was thinking of when I made that post. Saw part of their movie a few days ago.
Just wanted to point out there are no restraint systems in the event of a crash... naughty Jetsons!
Um, heLLO? Magic anti-gravity air suspension bubbles to be invented?
In the future they think of everything.
More importantly, that dog looks just like Scooby Doo. WTF is up with that?
Oh well, this could have been a good thread.
Certainly not in most of Canada.
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Electric%20Cars%20and%20CO2.html
However, since a good proportion of the emissions come from the manufacture of the car itself, fewer cars in general is essential and conversion from gasoline propulsion is a possibility.
It must also be remembered that a gallon of gas takes a lot of electricity to produce. i have heard estimates that the electricity required to process a gallon of gas is enough to power an electric car 12 to 40 miles. Even at the low end the additional load on the electrical grid is not a major factor compared to the reduction in immersions.
At the risk of drawing fire, i'd like to point out that we can - many of us, anyway - generate our own electricity without coal, and very cheaply, once we've set up the solar panel roof and little, single-dwelling windmill. The biggest problem is still the storage, and i'm sure it's not insurmountable, if the very bright people working on it have funding and lab-space.
Here are some rough but useful rules of thumb:
Electricity sourced from coal fired plants nets the GHG effect of driving an electric vehicle to about zero.
Since most power generation is not that bad, you might think that electric vehicle use is generally speaking a net positive. But you have to think of where that specific incremental power generation for charging the batteries came from. In favour for that- most battery charging can be off peak.
Here and now there is a huge difference between having enough electric vehicles that it in impacting the electrical system, and where we will be for some years yet: working out the bugs of just using and charging the things. Big picture wise: time and effort and commitment have to be put into that end.
Electria vehicles are inherently neither good or bad for how they impact the power generation system. They can be a tool for decentralizing the production end of the system. But if we just follow laissez faire, they will probably exacerbate the failures of the existing system. So the problem is with letting laissez faire unfold, not the effects of the electric vehicles themselves.
There is also something to be said for how we got to a point where conventional vehicles can even rival EVs for overall GHG effects. Because powering a car with an electric motor is HUGELY more efficient.
That is made up for because the consumption of fuel in a vehicle has been radically altered to reduce emmissions. That came from and enormous and government required investment of resources. If investment on that scale also went into the generation and distribution of electricity, we would be looking at a different scenario.
City planning improvements that allow for alternative transportation would probably do more for our air quality and fuel-use reduction than any gizmo right now.
And maximizing conservation will do more than anything else we could do, with the least use of resources of any kind.
Which says nothing about what else should be done.
Do them both.
You wont draw fire from me for saying that!! I just LOVE the idea of a solar panel charging an EV. A spare battery pack at home could be charging while you are at work, and be ready to go for tomorrow. That way, by alternating them, the battery packs would last twice as long that way, so it wouldn't really have to be much of an extra expense.
Boom got us off on a tangent here, but as others have pointed out there are much less emissions even if using coal-fired electricity in an EV as compared to a gas engine vehicle. It is silly to have all these small gas engines running instead of an efficient central power source to supply the energy needs for our transportation.
The EV is viable. We want them - every Leaf and Volt that will be produced has 100 customers wanting them, there a big long waiting list for EVs. Imagine any other product with so much demand, but having a restricted supply... someone doesn't want EVs on the sales lots, man.
EVs arent going to be kept off the lots.
Nissan-Renault is very committed. They have positioned themselves hands down to be the early leaders. That alone is sufficient to drive the rest of the industry.
But even for Nissan-Renault... there is no money to be made on EVs in the short term. They really cant go rushing in.
And its just not true that EVs are better no matter where the electricity comes from. If it is coal fired electricity, then there is no net gain in emissions. And on top of that: any incremental increases in demand tend strongly to translate into effective demand for dirty power.
That said, looking over the long term, electrification of transportation is part of the overall solution. It wont help if the system of power production just adds giant wind farms... but regardless of the future poer demand of EVs, we need to change that anyway and have the technology available.
In fact, speaking of just the technoolgy, we are further away from being able to use EVs as more than a novelty. Though, because its capitalism we are talking about.... development on the use of EVs will get investment across the board. [Lots of big bucks in the batteries end.] While investment in changing the nature of electrical power distribution is a novelty for specialty R&D firms.
In fact, the next generation of electric vehicles should produce their own fuel, with their own solar collectors, so the battery is only for backup. Of course, this means, they have to be built differently from the cars we have now: they'll have to be light, agile, probably slower and more fragile - airbags, yes, accordion-front-end, no. They may be made of recycled plastic and paper and look more like golf carts: low and flat, very stable in turns, but not good at impact, so we'll simply have to become more careful, law-abiding drivers. (The police have no problem cracking down on political dissent - why not put some of that abused power toward preventling highway carnage?)
All of our new gadgets should be self-powering. Like the summer hat wherein the solar panel outside drives the little fan inside. And our homes will need to be earth-sheltered styrofoam block with their garden on the sides and generator on the roof and furnace in the sub-sub-sub basement. Nearly every town in Canada was built on a river and could have its own little hgydro plant where the original mill was (and it can be a grist-mill again, as well).
The biggest problem in designing something new is to stop thinking in terms of the old.
ETA No, i mean stop thinking in terms of the present - thinking about what worked in the past is good. We have the entire recorded ingenuity of our species to choose ideas from, to compare and adapt, as well as emergent technology.
Meanwhile, until those desired EV vehicles are made affordable, convenient, comfortable, and reliable with a decent resale value - North Americans will continue on with internal combustion engines - especially with cleaner combustion and higher mileage. If you read the car mags, we're a long way from converting the majority of North Americans from their beloved internal combustion monsters.* There's one extreme right wing comic (Dennis Miller) that says, "hell, we'll drive cars and trucks as they are until all the oil is used up - what, 100 years from now?"
*the car mags are in fact reviewing EV vehicles and the best low-polluting internal combustion engines - because they can see what the future holds. Dennis Miller doesn't get much support, if any, from these mags.
Attitudes have to change (are changing!), too, and there are a lot of climate change denialists in the world. It'll be interesting to see how Detroit and other automakers react to the new stringent EPA mileage mandates coming out in a few years.
excerpt:
DOT and EPA Propose New Fuel Efficiency and GHG Emission Program for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles, MYs 2014-2018
In response to the President's direction to NHTSA and EPA in his May 21, 2010, memo, the agencies are proposing the first-ever National Program to regulate fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions for MYs 2014-2018 medium- and heavy-duty trucks, covering vehicles from ¾ ton pickups and vans to delivery and utility trucks to big-rig combination tractors.
excerpt:
New Fuel Efficiency Program Announced
At the direction of President Obama on May 21, 2010, NHTSA and EPA are taking the next steps to improve fuel efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from mobile sources.
To take a turn on another comedian (some guy from Texas I saw on "Just for Laughs"), it isn't the type of cars we drive, it's that we drive cars.
That must have been Lewis Black - the smartest comedian performing these days. I never miss him on JFL and his own specials.
Nope.
Lewis Black is from New York, I think. He was in Saskatoon a couple of years ago. I didn't find him as funny (he tried making Winnipeg jokes) live as he is on TV.
The guy I'm thinking about smokes, and drinks what may or may not be bourbon on stage, and speaks with a soft Texan drawl. His closing joke was something about Texas having an express line on death row.
OK, now I'm causing thread drift.
Okay, I think I know who you mean - he was in a movie a few years ago. Can't remember his name, either. But it was Lewis Black who uttered that line - I distinctly remember it. It's a staple of his show.
The comedian was talking about hurricanes. He said, "It isn't that the wind is blowing, it's what the wind is blowing."
Hmm, wind power....a segue to the thread topic, perhaps?
They may not have a choice much longer. Between trashing their economy and failing to reign in legal crime, North Americans probably won't be able to buy gas for the old cars, and fewer and fewer will be able to buy new cars, or even used cars (... or disposable diapers, or cell phones, or lawn jockeys)
Add the weather doing what it's been predicted (for four decades that i've been aware of) to do, travel over long distances is growing more difficult and chancy, as well as more expensive. Those lucky enough to live in a relatively safe and fertile place won't wander too far - will grow all their food and produce most of their necessities within a few kilometers (... well, all that's in the best-case scenario, without climate wars or mass migration)
In medium-term planning and design, i'd be inclined to think of vehicles with a smaller range, lower speed, and greater adaptability to various functions and terrains: they'll have to go on unrepaired roads, through axle-deep water, in snow, sand and mud; they'll have to carry trade goods to market, materials to cottage industry, harvest in from fields, children to school and first aid to neighbourhood emergencies.
I agree we'll see drastic changes in the future, maybe not in my lifetime, but certainly with the next generation. Speaking of which, my nephews and one niece - all under 14 - just got new iPads (whatever they are) for Christmas. I remember my first electric pocket calculator (Texas Instruments) which was a very big deal at the start of the 1970s or so - and the first truly scientific pocket calculator a few years later('75). Now kids younger than I was when I got my first calculator all have laptop computers, iPads, iTunes, hi-def TVs and sophisicated video games and God knows what. I saw downtown Tokyo on the tube a couple of days ago, all lit up like some nightmarish scenario from the far future. How much longer can keep pushing the limits of our greed for the newest and latest most sophisicated junk???
ETA: My biggest regret so far is that I have not yet experienced time travel. Maybe someone from the future will return for a visit and change all that - if the physics that prevent time travel ever are overcome. I wonder what regulations governments will put in place if time travel ever becomes routine? Any change in the time-space continuum will seriously f*ck things up, no?
ETA: If anyone from the future is reading this, send me a PM, okay? We need to talk.
Ron White, one of the Blue Collar Comedy guys