Who killed the electric car?

[Chris]

I've seen the documentary, it was very informative and more than enough to piss you off if you're not a partisan shill.

I like how some hacks are more than willing to believe that ACORN is powerful enough to rig elections but dismiss the possibility that big oil companies and auto makers might kill an emerging technology that threatens their status quo. Talk about brainwashed sheep.

 

[Chris]

No. I did some consulting work for a hydrogen company a few years ago. I'd love to see economically, environmentally sound alternatives to (largely foreign sourced) oil. But there aren't any right now. They will take decades to develop and phase in.

You have an incredibly naive view of both the energy industries and economics.

Naive? Like Warren Buffett?

Buffett's BYD endorsement sends shares soaring
Joanne Chiu and Alison Leung
HONG KONG
Mon Sep 29, 2008 3:30am EDTStocks

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Warren Buffett's investment in Chinese battery maker BYD (1211.HK) gives the firm capital and credibility to pursue its ambition of making environmentally friendly hybrid cars, and nearly doubled its share price on Monday.

On Saturday, MidAmerican Energy, a unit of investment guru Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N), agreed to buy a 10 percent stake in BYD for $230 million, which investors took as a solid endorsement for the rapidly expanding firm.

Buffett's BYD endorsement sends shares soaring | Reuters

 

[boedicca]

Warren Buffett is an investor who sees how the government pouring billions into Green Energy can benefit him financially. He is practicing Cronyism, not free market capitalism.

It's always easy to profit in the short term by getting DC to shovel taxpayer money into one's ventures.

 

[Chris]

Warren Buffett is an investor who sees how the government pouring billions into Green Energy can benefit him financially. He is practicing Cronyism, not free market capitalism.

It's always easy to profit in the short term by getting DC to shovel taxpayer money into one's ventures.

American taxpayer money is going to a Chinese firm?

Really? That's your answer?

 

[JimH52]

The naysayers will be defending oil companies until everyone else in the world is driving electric cars. Exxon, BP, and Shell shoudn't even have to pay lobbiest. They don't need to They have the Republican Party as their spokesmen!

 

[boedicca]

Warren Buffett is an investor who sees how the government pouring billions into Green Energy can benefit him financially. He is practicing Cronyism, not free market capitalism.

It's always easy to profit in the short term by getting DC to shovel taxpayer money into one's ventures.

American taxpayer money is going to a Chinese firm?

Really? That's your answer?

Heh. If we can use stimulus money for Brazilian oil, then of course it's possible.

Buffet manages a portfolio. He is certainly mindful of the effect of $Bs of U.S. taxpayer money being poured into Green Energy intiatives, and will tap into the supply chain to extract a share.

 

[westwall]

The naysayers will be defending oil companies until everyone else in the world is driving electric cars. Exxon, BP, and Shell shoudn't even have to pay lobbiest. They don't need to They have the Republican Party as their spokesmen!

No, the naysayers won't. The public will. You people think that it is some huge conspiracy to keep the electric cars out of the hands of the people because then the oil companies will lose money. Let me give you a clue...if the industry is there the oil companies will buy them! They're not fools folks. If there is money to be made they will quite happily jump on board and buy it all up.

I am amazed at how you folks think that the world exists in a vacuum.

 

[westwall]

Warren Buffett is an investor who sees how the government pouring billions into Green Energy can benefit him financially. He is practicing Cronyism, not free market capitalism.

It's always easy to profit in the short term by getting DC to shovel taxpayer money into one's ventures.

American taxpayer money is going to a Chinese firm?

Really? That's your answer?

Well since you clearly are so clueless how the green industry works here's a primer from the Huffington Post.

Leo W. Gerard: Gone with the Wind: Blowing U.S. Tax Dollars Off Shore

 

[boedicca]

^^^ Excellent catch!

 

[Immanuel]

God forbid that I actually have to type this, but in this case I have to agree with Chr... Dagnammit! I'm not going to admit it. No frigging way!!!!!

But actually, I believe it is the U.S. Government (the government i.e. both parties not one in particular) and the oil companies combined that have conspired to "kill the electric car". Although "kill" is not necessarily the right word for it. More accurate would be "shelve(d)" the electric car for a time when oil companies can't produce the oil we need.

Electric cars (like any other technologies) could now be produced and improved as time goes on to fit our needs, but it won't happen as long as Big Oil has its hands in the pockets of our politicians.

Damn, now I am starting to sound like Eots! Someone call 9-1-1

Immie

 

[boedicca]

Sorry to hear about your personal problem - hope you get help to deal with it.

 

[gslack]

I just watched the documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?

I recommend it to everyone.

Who Killed the Electric Car? - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I watched most of that bullshit PR snowjob myself.. it was a good laugh..

Especially the way they depicted the PR workers who were trying to sell it as innocent little idealists trying to save the planet.... LOL priceless...

Loved the bullshit about it being so fast and economical... Give me a break.. It took specialized charging station to make it even remotely feasible. I noticed they left out how long you would be standing their waiting for it to re-charge at a filling station... Yeah almost realistic... Almost...

Oh and then the way they tried to vilify the Oil industry... yeah of course, they killed it, because the fact it was unreliable, was uneconomical, took forever to charge, only had about 80 miles of travel on a full charge at optimum conditions, and the batteries cost more than the car and they only lasted about 3 years at best had nothing to do with it....

Classic leftist PR bullshit... They tell a story and use hollywood actors and characterize professional PR and salesmen as the innocent victims of big Oil... Gimme a break, oil didnt have to kill that POS, it killed itself.. Bullshit con jobs do that to themselves...

 

[westwall]

God forbid that I actually have to type this, but in this case I have to agree with Chr... Dagnammit! I'm not going to admit it. No frigging way!!!!!

But actually, I believe it is the U.S. Government (the government i.e. both parties not one in particular) and the oil companies combined that have conspired to "kill the electric car". Although "kill" is not necessarily the right word for it. More accurate would be "shelve(d)" the electric car for a time when oil companies can't produce the oil we need.

Electric cars (like any other technologies) could now be produced and improved as time goes on to fit our needs, but it won't happen as long as Big Oil has its hands in the pockets of our politicians.

Damn, now I am starting to sound like Eots! Someone call 9-1-1

Immie

And you do realise that that methodology would be incredibly wasteful right? Everybody agrees that electric cars would be a very good thing. However currently they can only go about a third of the distance that an IC vehicle can go....for more cost. Way more cost at the current moment. So if we follow your strategy, instead of actually doing the research to make the technology better, all the money will go to just keeping yourself afloat.

When the IC industry began 100 years ago (actually a little longer) the technology was allready better than the horse it replaced. Significantly better in many respects. So it was economically viable for them to manufacture cars that weren't the best and improve on them because what they were starting with was allready so much better than what was being replaced that it made up for the inefficiencies.

Do you understand the difference?

 

[Immanuel]

God forbid that I actually have to type this, but in this case I have to agree with Chr... Dagnammit! I'm not going to admit it. No frigging way!!!!!

But actually, I believe it is the U.S. Government (the government i.e. both parties not one in particular) and the oil companies combined that have conspired to "kill the electric car". Although "kill" is not necessarily the right word for it. More accurate would be "shelve(d)" the electric car for a time when oil companies can't produce the oil we need.

Electric cars (like any other technologies) could now be produced and improved as time goes on to fit our needs, but it won't happen as long as Big Oil has its hands in the pockets of our politicians.

Damn, now I am starting to sound like Eots! Someone call 9-1-1

Immie

And you do realise that that methodology would be incredibly wasteful right? Everybody agrees that electric cars would be a very good thing. However currently they can only go about a third of the distance that an IC vehicle can go....for more cost. Way more cost at the current moment. So if we follow your strategy, instead of actually doing the research to make the technology better, all the money will go to just keeping yourself afloat.

When the IC industry began 100 years ago (actually a little longer) the technology was allready better than the horse it replaced. Significantly better in many respects. So it was economically viable for them to manufacture cars that weren't the best and improve on them because what they were starting with was allready so much better than what was being replaced that it made up for the inefficiencies.

Do you understand the difference?

The problem is that R & D is being stymied.

My plan? And what is my plan? My plan would be to improve R & D, you seem to be the one that wants to ignore the technology completely, not me.

EC's are not as economical today as what we have now, that doesn't mean that in 5-10 or maybe even 20 years that would not be the case.

Big Oil doesn't want the competition and right now, they don't have to worry about it, because they control the political parties.

It is absolutely irrelevant that the technology is not up to speed with modern automobiles. Inhibiting the R & D will insure that it remains so until it is too late.

If we went with your "plan" we'd all be listening to radio today rather than watching HDTV.
That is if we were even out of the cave.

Immie

 

[westwall]

God forbid that I actually have to type this, but in this case I have to agree with Chr... Dagnammit! I'm not going to admit it. No frigging way!!!!!

But actually, I believe it is the U.S. Government (the government i.e. both parties not one in particular) and the oil companies combined that have conspired to "kill the electric car". Although "kill" is not necessarily the right word for it. More accurate would be "shelve(d)" the electric car for a time when oil companies can't produce the oil we need.

Electric cars (like any other technologies) could now be produced and improved as time goes on to fit our needs, but it won't happen as long as Big Oil has its hands in the pockets of our politicians.

Damn, now I am starting to sound like Eots! Someone call 9-1-1

Immie

And you do realise that that methodology would be incredibly wasteful right? Everybody agrees that electric cars would be a very good thing. However currently they can only go about a third of the distance that an IC vehicle can go....for more cost. Way more cost at the current moment. So if we follow your strategy, instead of actually doing the research to make the technology better, all the money will go to just keeping yourself afloat.

When the IC industry began 100 years ago (actually a little longer) the technology was allready better than the horse it replaced. Significantly better in many respects. So it was economically viable for them to manufacture cars that weren't the best and improve on them because what they were starting with was allready so much better than what was being replaced that it made up for the inefficiencies.

Do you understand the difference?

The problem is that R & D is being stymied.

My plan? And what is my plan? My plan would be to improve R & D, you seem to be the one that wants to ignore the technology completely, not me.

EC's are not as economical today as what we have now, that doesn't mean that in 5-10 or maybe even 20 years that would not be the case.

Big Oil doesn't want the competition and right now, they don't have to worry about it, because they control the political parties.

It is absolutely irrelevant that the technology is not up to speed with modern automobiles. Inhibiting the R & D will insure that it remains so until it is too late.

If we went with your "plan" we'd all be listening to radio today rather than watching HDTV.
That is if we were even out of the cave.

Immie

The only reason R&D is being stymied is because the money is being stolen by the likes of Al Gore and his cronies. Take all the money that has been stolen from the American taxpayer and given to frauds like Phil Jones (26.5 million dollars at last count paid for fake information) and give it instead to people who are doing the research and you would be where we all wish to be. The last estimate for the green waste that I have seen pegged it over 100 BILLION dollars of US tax money. That would have paid for a lot of R&D don't you think? Instead it has been used to give Gore and company a very nice lifestyle.

And you are completely wrong about my views on technology buster. I am a technologist through and through. But every green policy that has ever benn passed has SLOWED technological inovation. The green movement is filled with luddites who think that technology should stop. We should all go back to the wonderful pre electric days of yore. Ed Begley thinks the only thing that should be done in Africa is give the "natives" solar panels on their huts instead of bringing them into the level ofthe First World which would make everything better...for the whole planet.

 

[boedicca]

Or $465M to Tesla to make toys for Silicon Valley multi-millionaires.

 

[Immanuel]

And you do realise that that methodology would be incredibly wasteful right? Everybody agrees that electric cars would be a very good thing. However currently they can only go about a third of the distance that an IC vehicle can go....for more cost. Way more cost at the current moment. So if we follow your strategy, instead of actually doing the research to make the technology better, all the money will go to just keeping yourself afloat.

When the IC industry began 100 years ago (actually a little longer) the technology was allready better than the horse it replaced. Significantly better in many respects. So it was economically viable for them to manufacture cars that weren't the best and improve on them because what they were starting with was allready so much better than what was being replaced that it made up for the inefficiencies.

Do you understand the difference?

The problem is that R & D is being stymied.

My plan? And what is my plan? My plan would be to improve R & D, you seem to be the one that wants to ignore the technology completely, not me.

EC's are not as economical today as what we have now, that doesn't mean that in 5-10 or maybe even 20 years that would not be the case.

Big Oil doesn't want the competition and right now, they don't have to worry about it, because they control the political parties.

It is absolutely irrelevant that the technology is not up to speed with modern automobiles. Inhibiting the R & D will insure that it remains so until it is too late.

If we went with your "plan" we'd all be listening to radio today rather than watching HDTV.
That is if we were even out of the cave.

Immie

The only reason R&D is being stymied is because the money is being stolen by the likes of Al Gore and his cronies. Take all the money that has been stolen from the American taxpayer and given to frauds like Phil Jones (26.5 million dollars at last count paid for fake information) and give it instead to people who are doing the research and you would be where we all wish to be. The last estimate for the green waste that I have seen pegged it over 100 BILLION dollars of US tax money. That would have paid for a lot of R&D don't you think? Instead it has been used to give Gore and company a very nice lifestyle.

Now with that I have to disagree with you.

Do you by any chance have a link to back up your claims?

Do you have any reason to believe that if this accusation you have just laid out were true AND that if it had not been the case a single dime of that money would have gone to American Automobile Manufacturers for R & D of electrical vehicles?

Do you think our government (Republican or Democratic Administrations) give a shit about how much money they spend? If as you say, Gore et al are stealing from the American Taxpayer, do you think that would stop the government from promoting the technology if they so wanted? Let me throw two words out to jog your memory--Stimulus Package.

Money is no object to our government. If they wanted to promote the development of this technology we'd have it by now.

Immie

 

[xsited1]

Who killed the electric car?

I did. Sorry about that, but it pissed me off.

 

[Immanuel]

By the way, Westwall, if you can find some way to convince me that I do not agree with Chr... (damn almost said it again!) I will forever be in your debt... um, well, for a week or so anyway.

Immie

 

[Old Rocks]

It couldn't possibly be that after using the car for about eight to ten years that you would have to replace the batteries at a cost of 30 thousand bucks again....

You show me a battery that has that kind of longevity and I'll put them in my fishing boat for the trolling motors.

Poor ol' ignorant Doodeee....., still in the last century.

Toyota RAV4 EV - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The RAV4 EV was an all-electric version of the popular RAV4 SUV produced by Toyota. It was sold from 1997 to 2003.

The first fleet version of the RAV4 EV became available on a limited basis in 1997. In 2001 it was possible for businesses, cities or utilities to lease one or two of these cars. Toyota then actually sold or leased 328 RAV4 EVs to the general public in 2003, at which time the program was terminated despite waiting lists of prospective customers.

The RAV4 EV closely resembles the regular internal combustion engine (ICE) version - without a tailpipe - and has a governed top speed of 78 mph (~126 km/h) with a range of 100 to 120 miles (160 to 190 km). The 95 amp-hour NiMH battery pack has a capacity of 27 kWh, charges inductively and has proven to be surprisingly durable. Some RAV4 EVs have achieved over 150,000 miles (240,000 km) on the original battery pack. It was also one of the few vehicles with a single speed automatic transmission at that time


The RAV4 EV has a governed top speed of 78 miles per hour (126 km/h), a tested 0-60 time of around 18 seconds (depending on state-of-charge on the batteries) and a range of 80 to 120 miles (130 to 190 km). Mileage depends on the same factors as a traditional gasoline-powered vehicle, mainly rolling resistance and average speed (aerodynamic drag).

The RAV4 EV has 24 12-volt 95Ah NiMH batteries capable of storing 27.4 kWh of energy.

[edit] Charging
The RAV4 EV's batteries can be recharged from being fully depleted to fully charged in about 5 hours, and are monitored with a passive battery balancing system. Electricity is supplied via a Magne Charge inductive charging paddle[1] from a wall-mounted 6000-Watt charging unit on a 220 volt, 30 amp, North American "clothes dryer"-type plug.

[edit] Mileage costs
As of May 2006, charging an RAV4 EV from full-dead to full-charge, at a rate of USD 0.09 per kilowatt-hour, costs around USD 2.70. As of May 2008, based on a gasoline price-per-gallon cost of USD 3.80 and up and the non-EV 2003 RAV4 2-wheel-drive gasoline fuel efficiency of 27 mpg-US (8.7 L/100 km; 32 mpg-imp), the RAV4 EV costs approximately 25% as much to fully charge, and makes mileage in the RAV4 EV the cost equivalent to a 111.1 mpg-US (2.117 L/100 km; 133.4 mpg-imp) small SUV.

In addition, the RAV4 EV has a charge timer built into the dashboard that enables the vehicle to start charging at a specific time. As the RAV4 EV easily becomes the main cost of electricity in an average-sized home, this enables the owner to use a Time-Of-Day Meter to reduce electricity costs. This configuration is a standard practice with RAV4 EV owners. The price of electricity at night depends on the carrier, but is usually in the range of 60% of the normal rate. In the use of charging the RAV4 EV, this equates to a cheaper cost-per-mile, roughly equivalent to a vehicle capable of 166.6 mpg-US (1.412 L/100 km; 200.1 mpg-imp), based on a price of USD 3.00 per gallon.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency listed mileage ratings for the RAV4 EV in its yearly Fuel Economy Guide from 2000 through 2003. The 2003 model recorded city mileage equivalent to 125 mpg-US (1.88 L/100 km; 150 mpg-imp), and 100 mpg-US (2.4 L/100 km; 120 mpg-imp) on the highway. Estimated combined mileage was 112 mpg-US (2.10 L/100 km; 135 mpg-imp).