ypsi~dixit

In the movie: 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit", Cloverleaf, which buys up the 'Red Car' public transpotation System in L.A., is actually GM in disguise. Needing an upgrade in the late 40s, GM bought votes on the city council to have the system scrapped instead, so that L.A. could become a 'great big freeway'. Do you know the way to San Jose?

It might also be noted that electric cars have been around for nearly as long as the automobile itself, but they're not popular with the oil companies.

OG: Same thing happened in Baltimore. My dad speaks bitterly of GM scrapping the city's streetcar system in order to replace it with buses.

There was a shot in the movie of another city's streetcar system similarly scrapped, with the empty junked streetcars stacked in the same way the crushed EV1s were.

OG: Yep, the docu (well-researched) expounded on early electric cars, which at the beginning of this century outnumbered gas cars on the road. Phyllis Diller reminisced about one from her young childhood, and how quiet and sleek it had been.

Does the movie present any real evidence that an auto-dependent lifestyle that uses electric cars is significantly lower-energy than one that uses gasoline?

I'm personally very skeptical - having not seen the movie, I fear that it will reinforce the idea that everything is okay with our lifestyle; we just need to encourage the big corporations to tweak a few things on their end, while, for our own parts, we just sit back and wait for the miracle technology to emerge. I recently read Kunstler's _The Long Emergency_, which only served to reinforce my belief that there is no magic/technological energy source which will allow us to motor about forever; while seeking cleaner ways to use the same amount of energy, or pressing for modest improvements in gas mileage are fine and dandy, I find they take away attention from real fixes, like living in non-car-dependent communities or eating locally...

Murph: Yes. And less than hydrogen fuel cell technology by quite a bit, too.

One driver's experience, with lots of photos of the interior and exterior.

from here:

"On my final day, going to work, I see a 4th generation Pontiac
Firebird. Finally, some real competition! I catch a light with him,
and edge forward a couple times, signaling my intent. Light turns
green, the EV1 takes off like a rocket, but the Firebird doesn’t
bite. I slow, get even, gun it. He passively motors along at the same
slow speed. Then I catch him at the next light. He must know by now it is time to pit 275 horsepower powered by exploding dinosaurs against 137 kiloWatts powered by voltaged electrons."

Another tidbit from the same link:

"So what makes the EV1 so fast? It isn’t brute power, as its 137 kW
works out to be 183 crankshaft horsepower for a 3000 pound car. The
EV1 exploits features of electric motors as well as finesse. First,
the EV1 is very efficient. The transmission is just one gear, the
torque does not make any 90 degree turns (like driveshaft to rear
axle), it has low rolling resistance tires, and is very aerodynamic.
It wastes only about 1/2 the energy a regular car does accelerating
hard at 50 mph. That’s nothing to sneeze at, you are getting about 7
free horsepower (due to less drivetrain loss, rolling resistance, and
aero drag).

Another reason is excellent traction control. Traction control on an
electric motor can occur much more quickly than on a gasoline engine

The last reason has to do with the characteristics of electric
motors. You can get full torque at stall. For practical reasons, the
EV1 doesn’t instantly apply this much torque to prevent motor
overheat and to prevent a big jerk when taking off. The EV1 electric
motor has a flat torque curve to about 35 or 40 mph, and then goes
into “constant power” mode from about 40 mph to 80 mph. What this
means is the car now acts like it is at peak torque, but has a
continuously variable transmission. You are always in the “right”
gear for maximum acceleration. This also gets rid of “holes” in the
drive wheels torque curve. When a car shifts gears, it only has about
2/3 the torque at the drive wheels it did in the previous gear. With
the electric motor, these holes are smoothed over, giving you “more
area under the curve” for more acceleration.

The net effect is the EV1, for a moment after the 1-2 shift point for
gas cars, accelerates with its 183 crankshaft horsepower like a 3000
pound car with about 250 horsepower."

Considering that GM is in serious financial trouble and Ford just cut back production by 21 percent for the last quarter of 2006, it would appear the auto companies are hurting because of their inability to get away from gasoline as a fuel. One wonders what it takes for them to see the light and get creative with their problem-solving.

From what little I've seen it looks like electric vehicles could have some advantages, but there are also a lot of tradeoffs. So there are lots of practical reasons why the internal combustion engine still dominates the car market in the US and elsewhere.

Making that 10-mile commute in 20 minutes, and with something large enough to carry a couple passangers and some large cargo, is always going to require a whole bunch of energy. Fancy new technology isn't going to do more than shave a few percent off that energy cost.

If you're looking for a technological magic bullet, the best I know of us based on technology I know of is already widely available from your local bike shop--extremely efficient, cheap, reliable, runs entirely on stuff you can grow in your backyard....

But that's also a technology with tradeoffs. In particular, it's not going to do that typical 10-15 mile commute as fast as a car. Nothing's ever going to make it "free" to live that far from work, shopping, friends, etc.

If the thing wasn't so subjectively ugly and gas wasn't $1 at the time of introduction, GM might have had a 2 seater gold mine on their hands.

Now people are modding their Prii to be electric-only "plug ins". Japan wins again (with technology Americans poineered at Ford I believe).

On the drag racing effort of the EV: A New Corvette is one of the fastest cars on the road, yet it can get 26mpg...

but probably not while halving the EV-1's 0-60 times.

Leighton: Well, tastes vary, I suppose; I find it cute, in a buglike way. Stylish and sleek. It is incredibly aerodynamic. The docu showed a brief shot of the smoke-beam gliding smoothly over it with no interruption, in the wind tunnel during a test. It's like a wing edge moving through space.

GM-always the bad guy. So why aren't the streets loaded with electric cars from other manufacturers? The battery is,as always,the big problem. It has to be charged up,and that electricity to do so is not free.is there really much of a saving? and when the battery eventually will not hold a charge,it must be replaced. I seem to recall that a replacement battery for these cars was somewhere around $20,000. The lighter,smaller,and more high-output a battery is,the more expensive it is-go check out what a replacement battery for a Lithium-ion cordless drill driver is,and scale that up to car size.
The hilos at our work use batteries-big,heavy,lead-acid ones that must be changed with a hoist. Some people have converted their vehicles to electric with banks of batteries essentially like golf carts-it's a simple thing,really. The idea of possibly being covered with battery acid in an accident doesn't appeal to me,though. With everything energy-related,you can't get more out than was put in. I think the fact that no one else has fielded fleets of electic vehicles has shown that they are really not very practical for general use yet.

I actually sat in an EV-1. It was cute in its uniqueness (like the Honda Insight / Incite). But it was pretty ugly in person / real life,... like a Saturn of the same year ('98?). The hump in the middle of the passenger compartment was amazingly huge (battery compartment?).

I use a Fiero as a daily driver, so I know something about unpractical interiors in "ugly" GM cars that innovated (was the first to use plastic body panels / mid engine design). Ironically, it's a popular car chassis for electric conversion.

The proposed V8 version of the Fiero was seen as a serious threat to its then-anemic Chevy cousin: Corvette. So the Fiero was scrapped before the redesign. There are piles of 2nd generation prototype Fieros on GM trash heaps, similarly mourned as the EV-1.

Kate, I beg to differ on your "GM in serious financial trouble" statement. They are, in fact loaded. Ford's cleaned up their act in the 70s when they almost went belly up. GM has never had cash flow problems anywhere close to what Fords faced then or now.

We had a GM electric S10-size pickup of that era at work (I believe the purchase was mandated by the government) and we sometimes could not go 20 miles on a fully charged battery (and I definitely wouldn't have trusted it on a trip of 30 miles). A vehicle that won't go 20 miles is not very practical or trustworthy, but it was fun to drive!

People (which includes shareholders & executives) don't change until not doing so really, really hurts. Why is that?! I want to change NOW, towards sustainability. Passing giant wastebins filled with plastic one-use cups at the Heritage Festival yesterday just ...pained me. On black days, when I contemplate the destruction of public transit or the EV1, it seems to come down to the sad realization that “Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.”

Murph, Kunstler's book really said it all. Hope you come to the Thursday night discussion and contribute to ideas for Post-Apocalyptic Ypsi...

Jennifer: That was one of the things I learned from the docu: battery technology is growing by leaps and bounds and will probably be the key to making these electric vehicles practical in the near future.