The killer of the Electric car...wants a national mandate now!

GM, who famously helped kill the electric car @1990 is now asking for a national mandate to spur the industry! Are you kidding me? GM(and Bush and friends) stomped all over a California mandate that would have put infrastructure in for EV's to become a viable bit of transportation. NOW, the same POS company wants a National Mandate! Way to go GM, imagine the where we would be at now in the world if you hadn't set back the industry 20 years. And these fools got a bailout. Grrrr. This should be in the rant maybe! lol

www.reuters.com...

Original film of "who killed the electric car".

documentaryheaven.com...

Personally, I could back a mandate, BUT I will only purchase a Ford one. GM can get bent.

a reply to: lakenheath24

I don´t know. Most are just uneducated on not ready for it. Just today I read a post from someone here on ATS who wrote that he prefers electric heating because gas produces CO2. *facepalm*

Then there are the ones that say photovoltaik modules will never regain the costs, energy and resources "wasted" into them, which is by far not true (it´s roughly 4-5 years for everything).

The only thing that would change with EVs currently is that the exhaust gases are not produced locally in the city but at the power plant when it burns gas, coal or oil. That´s a plus, sure.

I often wonder about the green people that want to do away nuclear power and have fancy "clean" EVs.. Are they so narrow minded and uneducated that they can´t see the problem here?

I got to drive a tesla through germany. Yeah it´s a nice ride but you consume way to much coffee because what you´re going to do when you have to get it charged all the time.

a reply to: lakenheath24

That's actually quite interesting.

I can't find the article, think it was maybe Forbes, but in it they were stating that all the car companies are struggling to keep ahead of changing trends. They mentioned, as a example, Toyota which is shifting investment focus from their core business, (making cars and light trucks) to advanced electronics and autonomous electric vehicles.

Reason for this problem is the city loving Millenials have no interest in "owning" cars and prefer to Uber/Lyft. So the new game for the automakers is "car sharing" or "ride sharing" autonomous vehicles. The US may well be past "peak auto". As well, the article stated that China is actually ahead of the US in developing and producing electric vehicles.

Of the major 3 US automakers, I'm pretty certain at least one won't be around in 50 years.

a reply to: verschickter

2 years ago I switched my furnace from gas to electric, my water heater too. Bill was cut in half. I also recieved a 10%discount for being all electric and only pay 1 20 dollar delivery charge for electric, use to pay another delivery charge for gas just for having it hooked up. Summer time gas usage was 0 but still 20 dollar charge every month. All electric in homes is the way to go imo. Dont have a clue about it being safer or not.

I want a fully electric 4x4.

It'd make the perfect prepper/SHTF/Apocalypse vehicle.

Take a terrdyne RPV throw on some solar panels like they did in The 100 and throw in a tesla battery pack, and your golden.

Screw Gm though.

Ford or Toyota, or Jeep.

Electric cars are just another case of some other less ecologically sensitive country taking the environmental hit for the U.S.

Seriously? Lol

I would like to see a for real research project on the gains an EV would have on a diesel over a 15 year period. I think battery tech is going to go nuts. Dyson is going all out on a new battery tech. If anyone can do it...its that dude.

a reply to: verschickter

I can see that working in the city and when you don´t own property.

As soon as you have a house and need to fix stuff or get materials, live in the outer suburbs or more urban like me, you actually need a car. Or you pay to get it done and then you still don´t have a car.

I can´t take public transport to the next city because there is barely one. There are two busses a day that go there but only one route goes back to my town. How is anyone supposed to use that to get to work (retired here) and also back?

This type of lifestyle is only for city people who do not need to take care of any property and thus can dissolve their selfes into fashion and hip stuff all their life.

Here in the reality, on the land, I need a truck or 4x4 car with a trailer hitch. I can´t even imagine not being able to transport thing X to location Z or not being able to get there when I want. It´s a kind of freedom that city-dwellers don´t know. At least the big city life types.

I gave read that as well. I would like to see a mini hybrid like the locomotives. They get crazy mileage. Millenials do hate cars but if there was an incentive for cars inside cities to go electric it would at least solve some pollution problems.


a reply to: TonyS

Its not going to be for everbody right here right now. The horse wasnt replaced overnight.

a reply to: verschickter

a reply to: lakenheath24

How is that power for your EV generated? If it´s not any reneweable source, EV´s are bull#. And most of the time, you are not going to use reneweable sources because at the time you need the power to charge your EV, nuclear, coal, oil and gas plants are going to serve the baseload in the grid.

I´m not saying EVs will never happen or be feasable. I´m an electronics engineer and my opinion is, 20 years ago, the tech was not there to do it in a way that is more resource friendly. Today you have relative efficient PV and wind power plants that make it more doable.

Today with different energy storage methods gaining more and more reliablility, it´s still not doable but give it another 10-20 years and we will see.

That´s not to say we should not research or do pilot projects. Here in Germany along the A7, you can charge your Tesla, no problem. The problem starts when I need to get somewhere reliable in time and planable.

Huh? How so?

I think alternate power production is going to be big someday. I have read where sidewalks have been modified to produce electric just by the foot traffic. I will look for that.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Reasoning, why now?

Should have replaced fossil fuels long ago, but no thanks to GM. There's a reason somewhere and it's probably profit related

The point is not to go turn in your m5 tomorrow. Its about building a reliable power network to support EV'S. Replacing public transport for example. a reply to: verschickter

originally posted by: cognizant420
a reply to: verschickter

2 years ago I switched my furnace from gas to electric, my water heater too. Bill was cut in half. I also recieved a 10%discount for being all electric and only pay 1 20 dollar delivery charge for electric, use to pay another delivery charge for gas just for having it hooked up. Summer time gas usage was 0 but still 20 dollar charge every month. All electric in homes is the way to go imo. Dont have a clue about it being safer or not.

Electric is great as long as the price per kilowatt is low.
Wait till all the green policies kick in,,,,
It's coming soon

Why electric vehicles? Why not a compressed air rotary engine and you can refill your tank with...an electric air compressor powered by a rechargeable battery?

originally posted by: lakenheath24
Huh? How so?

Mining lithium and cobalt, essential for high-efficiency batteries used in cars and elsewhere, just decimates local environments and is linked to a high percentage of birth defects in the local populations.

a reply to: lakenheath24

Yea, solve pollution problems, but as well, I'd guess that adopting smaller EV's for use in the cities could go a long way to reducing congestion. Moving people is, after all, a logistics thing and it seems the "planners" are envisioning the use several different types of vehicles to move people around. Buses or electric trains from the burbs to hubs with ride share options and Uber or Lyft and then scooters of shared bikes for what they call that "last mile".

Frankly, it sounds like a whole lot of bother to me and all just to get people from where they sleep to their wretched cubicle at work. Why bother if a person could as easily work from home? Video conferencing, telecommuting via the computer. Let them work from home! How much face time with the worker drones do supervisors really need? And maybe that raises the question "Supervisors" don't want addressed! With telecommuting, maybe there's need for far FEWER Supervisors!

a reply to: lakenheath24

Actually I believe GM was right in 1990. This is now and it's quite different.

Electric vehicles have only recently become affordable or logical.

As was mentioned in the text below the documentary, electric vehicles had a short range and were too expensive. A mandate then would have made zero sense at all. It barely makes sense now.

Just running errands for work around town here would require recharging too often to make it economically feasible and that's just doing stuff inside this medium sized city.

They are appropriate now for people who never travel and drive very few miles or can afford to have two vehicles, one electric one gas or diesel.

Any mandates need to take into consideration how many charging stations are available when needed, how fast they can be charged and also take into account people in rural area's, for whom electric is just not doable yet as they are now.

Nobody killed the electric car, it killed itself due to battery limitations and cost.

a reply to: lakenheath24

Yeah, for that, especially true for the USA, you need more localized power generation. I hope you know how your power grid is strung together, it´s not that networked like european grids.

Don´t get me wrong, we´re talking about a vastly more space to cover in the USA so no blame here. I don´t know if you believe me when I tell you that electronic technician teachers in German schools tell you just that, how not to build a grid.

Not that our own grid is much better, it´s not about the quality, it´s about the layout. More internetworking means more stability. But the EV problem is not solved with this.

Do the math, calculate for you mains connection, how long it would take to charge your daily EV ride. And what else you could draw from that mains while not overloading your fuses/cable/transformer.

Power grids are not built to be capable of every household drawing their maximum current on every phase. You´d need to rebuild transformer stations and by that, lay new HV lines to get losses down. That means either expensive earth digging or free standing HV traverses.

I think you are smart enough to do the math above, so proof it to yourself. Personal EV is bs, public transport EV, I can agree, because infrastructure is there and the public transport can utilize the unused roof spaces for energy production.