Who Killed the Electric Car?

[Skeptic Ginger]

As an additional point to liability on the part of GM, the Wikipedia article states: "Over 100 people offered to purchase the electric cars and waive liability, but GM refused". Sounds like a conspiracy, unless you look at the fact that GM would not be allowed to be released from liability.

When you look at the facts, it's not at all surprising that GM cancelled the program and destroyed the cars.

Really? What was this liability? One garage fire has been mentioned. That is hardly a big deal unless you show the cars are somehow more of a fire hazard than a combustion engine!

Wiki is only as good as the next editor as far as being factual.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't think this has been posted yet, but GM has a response to the movie that I found interesting. It reiterates many of the points brought up here.

From the link:

The good news for electric car enthusiasts is that although the EV1 program did not continue, both the technology and the GM engineers who developed it did. In fact, the technology is very much alive, has been improved and carried forward into the next generation of low-emission and zero-emission vehicles that are either on the road, in development or just coming off the production line....

This and the majority of the response merely tout their new hybrids. I have no complaint that the technology is moving forward. But with $3/gal gas and a hybrid import market taking off, US car manufacturers developing hybrids is a no brainer. I think the decision to quash the electric car was short sighted and now the reasons it was short sighted are coming home to roost.

That doesn't mean quashing the electric car wasn't corporate politics. The following is the only part of the response that addresses the electric car. The rest is all marketing hype for new models.

* A waiting list of 5,000 only generated 50 people willing to follow through to a lease.
* Because of low demand for the EV1, parts suppliers quit making replacement parts making future repair and safety of the vehicles difficult to nearly impossible.

Reasonable maybe for not continuing the leases. But for not selling the cars:

Could GM have handled its decision to say "no" to offers to buy EV1s upon natural lease expirations better than it did? Sure. In some ways, I personally regret that we could not find a way for the EV1 lessees to keep their cars. We did what we felt was right in discontinuing a vehicle that we could no longer guarantee could be operated safely over the long term or that we would be able to repair.

It isn't all that convincing. "We did what we felt was right" but no explanation for why it was felt to be right is really given.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I would say the idea that there is no market for electric cars was refuted by the fact that there were electric cars before the EV1, and there are electric cars available now.
AC Propulsion sells integrated motor-controller-charger systems. As I understand it, there are custom shops that will convert an ICE car to electric. There is a small used market in these electric cars. The Porsche 914, the GM Sprint, and the Honda Civic seem to be popular chassis for conversion.
All it takes is money. The size of the market speaks for itself.
What there isn't, is a subsidized electric vehicle. The EV1 got front-burner status because California was going to require that 2% of the cars that a company sold in California be electric cars. Under those rules, GM would have had to lower the price of the EV1 to whatever it took to sell the 2%, so that it could sell the remaining 98% ICE cars at a profit. And the price of the remaining ICE cars would probably have gone up, so the rest of the GM car-buying public would have been subsidizing the electric car.
At around the same time, Ford had a slightly lower-profile and lower cost electric truck program. Like GM, the trucks were on leases, and were recovered and scrapped.

Reasonable points. Again though, if one markets the idea electric is inferior, you can manipulate the market quite easily. It comes down to market vs marketing, cause vs effect.

I suspect one cannot kill an idea if the powers promoting it are strong enough. I still think the idea of killing the electric car was convenient at the time. I think oil companies had some influence. I think the wars we are in now and the looming oil competition with China and the rest of the world made killing the electric car fail. Doesn't mean they didn't try. The history of corporate competition tactics indicates there was motive and past business practice models for the effort. The hybrid cars would likely have replaced electric anyway. I'd just prefer people were better informed about how much market manipulation is really going on these days.

 

[pdw709]

Also, there's a electric sports car around that embarrased numerous performance cars on a drag strip. It was only beaten was because the driver of the electric car left the park brake / hand brake on... I'll see if I can find an (internet) reference for that.

Not exactly a fair comparison.........Given that in a race the Gas car would easily win due to its longer range. A more fair comparison would be to race the electric car against a hotrod/dragster

Phil

 

[Pidge]

Also, the fact of the matter is that Toyota and Honda offer many of their vehicles as hybrids, but for the most part, it offers no distinct advantage considering the batteries need to be replaced fairly often, and it is expensive and damaging to the environment to do so.

Can you please define "fairly often"? As far as I know, the Toyota Prius (Gen III) NiMH battery pack can provide at least 180,000 miles (290,000 km) of driving life (see http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/page/prius-battery-pack). I wouldn't class that as "fairly often". I would hope that when the battery packs are replaced, the metals are recycled, as there is a large chunk of "readily" accessible nickel in there.

Yes, the URL is for a almost certainly biased source, however if you have evidence pointing to wide-spread failure to meet those figures, that would be useful.

 

[Pidge]

Not exactly a fair comparison.........Given that in a race the Gas car would easily win due to its longer range. A more fair comparison would be to race the electric car against a hotrod/dragster

Phil

( I'll bite ;-) )

I understand the tzero is intended as a road-going car. Therefore, a drag race with other road-going cars is a fair comparison of performance.

And have you seen how fast race cars go through fuel? Race cars run up near the rev limiters, around 5000-7000rpm band for race tuned cars, and aren't exactly running a stochiometric Fuel/Air mix (14:1), more like 12:1, and lots of full throttle acceleration followed by heavy braking. An electric car might be able to keep up with its regenerative breaking. The team would just need to swap the battery packs during the pitstops, instead of refueling.

 

[pdw709]

( I'll bite ;-) )

I understand the tzero is intended as a road-going car. Therefore, a drag race with other road-going cars is a fair comparison of performance.

And have you seen how fast race cars go through fuel? Race cars run up near the rev limiters, around 5000-7000rpm band for race tuned cars, and aren't exactly running a stochiometric Fuel/Air mix (14:1), more like 12:1, and lots of full throttle acceleration followed by heavy braking. An electric car might be able to keep up with its regenerative breaking. The team would just need to swap the battery packs during the pitstops, instead of refueling.

All i'm saying is that its quite easy to build a light weight 2 seater sports car that has fast acceleration. I have one myself - a lotus7 type car with a motorbike engine. These thing can easily do 0-60mph in under 4 seconds and are more than a match for any production car, PLUS they have a large range which only depends on how big a fuel tank you want to fit. The best bit is that you can get build one for less than $10,000, or else buy one for a bit more.

So a lightweight 2 seater vs a Ferrari is not really a valid comparison.

Phil

 

[fsol]

You need 216Wh to accelerate a 1400kg mass to 120kmph. That's 2kg of Li-Ion batteries by your own figures. (m = 1400kg, v = 120kmph = 33.333m/s, E=1/2 mV², E = 777777J or ( 777777J / 3600s/h ) = 216Wh). There's air resistance to overcome to get to that speed, so call it 300Wh, and that would take a 8kW fuel cell 2.25 minutes to recharge.

These are all back-of-the-envelope calculations, btw. Feel free to refine. I'm just showing the feasibility. If it wasn't feasible, you would not be hearing the people complaining about having their leased electric cars taken off them almost by force, and hybrids would not be being made.

This seems dubious to me. Whilst the energy required to accelerate a mass is independant of acceleration the power required is not.

If I want to accelerate your car to 120kmh in 10 secs I need about 78 kW if we ignore drag, or 52 kW if we use 15 secs as the target time.

Can 2kgs of 150 Wh/kg batteries supply that? If they can, how long can they supply it for?

Also, why pick a 8kW fuel cell stack, why not a bigger one? And does your recharge time take into account the characteristics of the battery?

 

[Ripley Twenty-Nine]

Can you please define "fairly often"? As far as I know, the Toyota Prius (Gen III) NiMH battery pack can provide at least 180,000 miles (290,000 km) of driving life (see http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/page/prius-battery-pack). I wouldn't class that as "fairly often". I would hope that when the battery packs are replaced, the metals are recycled, as there is a large chunk of "readily" accessible nickel in there.

Yes, the URL is for a almost certainly biased source, however if you have evidence pointing to wide-spread failure to meet those figures, that would be useful.

I apologize. After looking into it further, it appears that the newer NiMH battery packs DO usually last the lifetime of the car, and do not often have to be replaced; And NiMH batteries do appear to be largely recyclable, so I was wrong on that one too.

I should refine my statement, and say that hybrids offer no financial advantage over regular cars, which would still put off Joe Sixpack when deciding to purchase a new car. I had heard a few years ago that Toyota was retooling their production lines to roll out more hybrids, which would allow the cost of a hybrid to be the same as the fully gas-powered model. Anyone know what happened to this?

 

[Bindamel]

I spent about eight years in research and development of lithium ion batteries, four of which was with a company that was working in the US Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC). USABC was a joint effort by the U.S. Department of Energy and the "Big Three" automakers. I saw first hand all the problems with lithium-ion batteries, and why they never came to fruition in an electric car.

Lithium-ion batteries have a number of behind-the-scenes deficiencies, and typically the overcoming of one ends up exacerbating another. Among the difficulties I worked on were:

first cycle irreversible discharge. Graphite based anodes (as opposed to coke, which were the anodes of the li-ion batteries of the early 90's, but have a much lower energy density than graphite) chewed up a lot of the available lithium in the first discharge cycle, reducing the actual available energy beginning at cycle two.

high temperature storage. Charged lithium-ion batteries, stored at 60 C (140 F), exhibited a massive, permanent, energy loss in most formulations.

cycling. Expectations were generally 500 to 1000 charge discharge cycles to 80% capacity. Many formulations failed here.

Low temperature performance. One of the best electrolyte components for Li-ion cells is ethylene carbonate, which is a solid at room temperature. When you need to operate at -40 (C or F), you need to have a lot more of a less ideal electrolyte mixed in.

I'm now six years removed from any of that research, but the one thing that stays with me is that the biggest problem we had was intellectual dishonesty driven by greed. Because of those looming California requirements, large corporations and the U.S. government were throwing money at people who claimed to have something, so people were carefully reporting their work in such a way as to hide its deficiencies. Bellcore licensed its technology to several companies, and I don't recall a single one that was able to produce anything commercially.

 

[jimlintott]

( I'll bite ;-) )

I understand the tzero is intended as a road-going car. Therefore, a drag race with other road-going cars is a fair comparison of performance.

And have you seen how fast race cars go through fuel? Race cars run up near the rev limiters, around 5000-7000rpm band for race tuned cars, and aren't exactly running a stochiometric Fuel/Air mix (14:1), more like 12:1, and lots of full throttle acceleration followed by heavy braking. An electric car might be able to keep up with its regenerative breaking. The team would just need to swap the battery packs during the pitstops, instead of refueling.

It was a fair comparison. It's the nature of electric motors. If you replaced a 400hp Ferrari gas motor with a 400hp electric motor it would accelerate faster. From what I understand electrics produce more torque right from the bottom of the RPM range.

Here are some interesting items. F1 cars with their 2.4L normally aspirated motors are seeing 20,000 RPM on Aviation Gas (I don't know their economy). A NASCAR 358ci push rod V8 can rev to 8,000 or so RPM make about 750hp and get less than 3mpg. A top fuel dragster will burn over 15 gallons of fuel in a quarter mile but cover that distance (from a standing start) in 4.5 seconds (I believe the record is 4.2). From an 8L V8 they produce over 6,000hp. Race cars are fuel efficient for what they do.

A diesel powered Audi won the 24hrs of LeMans this year. It got some of the best fuel economy ever seen at the race. It would be cool to see an electric vehicle at LeMans but probably a long way off.

I'm actually a perfect candidate for electric because of my driving habits and pragmatic attitude to driving. I would be worried about how well it would work after being left outside at -45C for eight hours.

 

[Ziggurat]

The people who leased the electric cars in question which were then taken back by the motor vehicle company did not want to give them back and were very happy with them. The idea there was no market is refuted by these users. Whether an electric car meets everyone's needs is not relevant. I did not suggest the conspiracy first, Alan Alda's script included it in the program I mentioned.

I didn't say "no market". I said "niche market". And that's all those owners represent: they are the ultimate in a self-selected group, and their love for the car they chose says absolutely zero about how many other people would be willing to make a similar choice. A niche market is not enough for a vehicle that costs a billion dollars to develop. A niche market will not make a significant impact on infrastructure or oil consumption. A niche market cannot support more than a niche product, which means development costs, efficiencies of scale, and service infrastructure can never compete with the alternative (fuel-based cars).

You are assuming no market based on your personal preference.

Personal preferences? I doubt that those are just my personal preferences. And I already pointed out that I'm not claiming no market, I'm claiming only a niche market.

Can you site a market study that contradicts the S.A. Frontier's evaluation of the actual users in the test market?

I can't watch their program (no video from the current computer I'm at), so I have no way of evaluating their study. I do not care enough to search extensively for studies of my own - I plead laziness.

How big is the market for electric cars? How does the disseminated information that the cars are impractical and the lack of an advertising campaign touting the benefits impact that market size?

What do you mean, disseminating the information that the cars are impractical? They ARE impractical if you want to go long distances, and a LOT of consumers want the ability to go long distances. Are you advocating tricking customers into believing something to the contrary?

Do you think the disseminated information was based on market research or intended to direct the market? In the case of the Red Car Line, Firestone was convicted of purposefully dismantling it.

Red Car Line was a competitor. Why would GM dismantle their own car if they thought they could make money off it? It simply doesn't make sense as a conspiracy. And if there IS a conspiracy, chances are it will come out, just like the campaign against Red Line Car was uncovered. But accusations of crushing electric cars have been around for a VERY long time, and yet nothing substantive ever comes out. Why is that? Maybe because there really isn't a conspiracy, the technology simply cannot compete.

 

[Ziggurat]

I'm now six years removed from any of that research, but the one thing that stays with me is that the biggest problem we had was intellectual dishonesty driven by greed. Because of those looming California requirements, large corporations and the U.S. government were throwing money at people who claimed to have something, so people were carefully reporting their work in such a way as to hide its deficiencies.

Very interesting, but unfortunately not terribly surprising. And it also unfortunately feeds into the perception that technology is being squelched: if researchers are promising more than they can deliver in order to get (non-refundable) research grants, and people look at the kind of claims being made and take them at face value, then they'll think the technology is much better than it really is. So when it fails to appear on the market, the conclusion is that there's a conspiracy, rather than a realization that the claims exceeded the reality.

 

[Peskanov]

For those interested, here is another newcomer to the EV bussines:

http://www.teslamotors.com/

Ziggurat,

it's the battery. No amount of engineering can make an electric car commercially feasible with current battery technology, and no battery technology on the horizon is going to change that soon.

Are you sure about that? Some interesting ideas seems to come from nanotechnology, which is growing right now.

For example, recently I read an history about new ultracapacitors using nanotubes. The surface of the plates is enhanced hugely thanks to the aplication of nanotubes, obtaining a 100x capacity grow.

(Edited to add a link for this tech)
http://www.gizmag.co.uk/go/5192/

 

[Bikewer]

It does seem from the arguments above that the plug-in type hybrid adresses many of these issues. Electric power only for short-haul trips or commuting, while the gasoline or diesel engine is available for longer distances.
As I understand it (I have not driven one myself) the two switch back and forth rather seamlessly.
I would think that the design involving an internal combustion engine dedicated to charging the batteries would work as well.

The big problem, as pointed out, is the battery. Even in efficient designs, the best have rather short lifespans and must be replaced regularly. The newer designs like nickle-metal-hydride and lithium may be somewhat better, but still do not offer long life.
Conventional lead-acid batteries can be reconditioned fairly cheaply; firms have been selling rebuilt automotive batteries for a long time. Perhaps some sort of regular exchange system, with the battery design optimized for re-cycling?

Slightly OT, but I recall seeing a design in Popular Science or some similar rag wherin the fixed-speed internal combustion engine was used to power a high-intensity lamp, which was surrounded by photovoltaic cells. The resultant electricity powered the car. Sounded kind of complex...

 

[jimlintott]

I didn't say "no market". I said "niche market". And that's all those owners represent: they are the ultimate in a self-selected group, and their love for the car they chose says absolutely zero about how many other people would be willing to make a similar choice. A niche market is not enough for a vehicle that costs a billion dollars to develop. A niche market will not make a significant impact on infrastructure or oil consumption. A niche market cannot support more than a niche product, which means development costs, efficiencies of scale, and service infrastructure can never compete with the alternative (fuel-based cars).

This is so true. The amount of support required for any new tech that will be sold market wide is huge. Wasn't the EV1 leased into a small market area? If it was made available to all GM customers throughout the U.S. then all GM service departments have to be up to speed on it. As a GM customer you would expect your GM product to be serviced at any GM dealer, Technicians have to be trained. Repair and parts information made available. They are still in the business to make money and without enough vehicles hitting the road it doesn't make sense.

If you look at the big three Ford, GM, Chrysler are all having trouble selling small econo boxes. Ford doesn't offer a model smaller than Focus. Chrysler the Neon and GM rebadges Toyota Yaris as the Aveo. Their best sellers are full size pick up trucks. I don't know how well the hybrids are selling. I hope it's positive though.

In North America the penises are still too small for little electric cars.

 

[Ziggurat]

Are you sure about that? Some interesting ideas seems to come from nanotechnology, which is growing right now.

For example, recently I read an history about new ultracapacitors using nanotubes. The surface of the plates is enhanced hugely thanks to the aplication of nanotubes, obtaining a 100x capacity grow.

(Edited to add a link for this tech)
http://www.gizmag.co.uk/go/5192/

That is indeed interesting, and very much worth researching. But note that what this is really an advance in capacitors (which currently have much lower energy densities than batteries) and NOT batteries themselves. According to the article, "This configuration has the potential to maintain and even improve the high performance characteristics of ultracapacitors while providing energy storage densities comparable to batteries".
Such a capacitor has a number of very significant advantages, but the energy density limit would still exist. Plus, manufacturing such a capacitor large enough to power a car for long distances would likely be fantanstically expensive for a long time to come. We've made some pretty darned impressive advances in nanotech research, but what we do NOT have yet (and probably won't for a good number of years) is anything approaching efficient manufacturing of something like carbon nanotube devices. That's what I mean by not being on the horizon: the prospects aren't good enough or near enough to justify large investment by car manufacturers.

 

[tkingdoll]

I keep reading this thread title to the tune of the 'Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence' jingle from Ren and Stimpy.

That is all. Carry on.

 

[fsol]

That is indeed interesting, and very much worth researching. But note that what this is really an advance in capacitors (which currently have much lower energy densities than batteries) and NOT batteries themselves. According to the article, "This configuration has the potential to maintain and even improve the high performance characteristics of ultracapacitors while providing energy storage densities comparable to batteries".
Such a capacitor has a number of very significant advantages, but the energy density limit would still exist. Plus, manufacturing such a capacitor large enough to power a car for long distances would likely be fantanstically expensive for a long time to come. We've made some pretty darned impressive advances in nanotech research, but what we do NOT have yet (and probably won't for a good number of years) is anything approaching efficient manufacturing of something like carbon nanotube devices. That's what I mean by not being on the horizon: the prospects aren't good enough or near enough to justify large investment by car manufacturers.

*Once* they get them scaled up they will probably aim to use the capacitors in Fuel Cell hybrids to help cover transient loads.

Speaking of nanotubes...a few years ago some people, I forget who, announced that they had found a super efficent way of storing hydrogen at very high density using carbon nanotubes. As far as I know the results haven't been replicated independently but research is ongoing...you can store hydrogen in this way but no one has managed to replicate the figures from the original research.

 

[Ziggurat]

Speaking of nanotubes...a few years ago some people, I forget who, announced that they had found a super efficent way of storing hydrogen at very high density using carbon nanotubes. As far as I know the results haven't been replicated independently but research is ongoing...you can store hydrogen in this way but no one has managed to replicate the figures from the original research.

There's lots of funky methods being researched for hydrogen storage. Carbon nanotubes are indeed one avenue of research, another is a whole class of materials known as metal-organic frameworks (MOF's), which create cage-like structures that hydrogen molecules can penetrate and bind to. Here's a site with some info on MOF's, as well as "decorated" nanocarbons, as potential hydrogen storage:
http://www.ncnr.nist.gov/staff/taner/h2/
The "decorated" nanocarbon ideas (where transition metal ions are bonded to the surface of nanotubes or buckeyballs) look very promising from a theoretical point of view, but we don't know how to really make them yet.