Wow, the oil companies are not going to like this one. Maybe they will kill it the way they killed GM's first electric car, the EV1, that came out a decade ago in California and Arizona. That's right, GM had 100% electric cars for lease way back in 1997. They killed the vehicle under suspicious reasons. (see the movie/documentary Who Killed The Electric Car?)
Anyhow, this car shown runs on water. Any type of water. Go to the beach with a jug and you've got "fuel" for you car. Amazing!
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13 minutes ago
7 comments:
Who killed the electric car?
According to the movie, no one was blameless. Consumers, oil company or manufacturers.
I think it has to do with energy potential or energy storage. You can store energy in gas, batteries or in water. How you extract that energy is one challenge and how much energy you can store is another challenge. Good on them for thinking outside the box!! There has to be a better way that theinternal combustion engine - with all that energy lost to heat.
I can't imagine that consumers would be to blame when they weren't even allowed to purchase the car. It was strictly lease with no option to buy...and many of them in fact wanted to buy and keep the cars after the leases were up. So much so they were willing to sign away any right to a warranty and any service.
I think GM was losing money on the deal and saw the potential $$$$ to be made in the budding SUV market in the late 90's. Not to mention I'm sure the oil companies had lobbyists up the yin-yang trying to keep GM from recieving any subsidies to further develop the car.
Such short-sightedness is still evident today in the fact that they built one of their first hybrids out of a gas-guzzling SUV while Honda and Toyota can't sell enough of their hybrid passenger cars (Civic, Prius and Camry).
When the American auto industry is in bed with the oil companies, you get dolled up F-150's masquerading as luxury Navigators getting 12 MPG netting both Ford and Big Oil massive profits. Now Big Oil is still laughing while Ford is scrambling to reduce shifts at their SUV plants to keep inventory from overcrowding dealer lots.
Even Chrysler is not immune. First they merge...whoops, I mean they got taken over by Mercedes and while they were drooling over access to Mercedes rear-wheel drivetrains for their HEMI-powered big cars, their small cars went to crap and they didn't get access to any new Mercedes technology....before they were sold off like an afterthought.
I have no sympathy for the Big 3 and the position they put themselves in.
I also think a big part has to do with money. Toyota and Honda hybrid technology was subsidized by their government and that's why they have a huge headstart. The Big 3 didn't have any foresight to lobby the government for similar funding (not that it would have made any difference with Bush in the White House). Now they are scrambling to simply catch up with Toyota and Honda.
Sorry for the rant. LOL
Ford GM and Chrysler will only sell what they see as profit. The electric car was a car that no one wanted. An expensive, low range, slow, 2 seater would have been a sales disaster. The business model for selling that electric car is a loser. Auto manufacturers won't keep cars on the road that they are not confident in. Lawsuit friendly courts could sink a manufacturer for a battery related injury caused by old, failed electrical parts. As a side note, I remember the Whitby Fire department was very interested in the Insight because they were not sure how the jaws of life would react with all that voltage.
The EV1 was an experiment and there were a few well heeled people willing to buy the cars, wave the warranty etc.- emphasis on well heeled. Honda's first Hybrids were sold for 25,000.00 CDN - at a loss. That car was impractical, and grass grew under it in the showrooms. Honda turned the car into a marketing device and it was successful for that. Honda's technology for hybrids has changed very little since the inception of the Insight.
IMO, no one has fully developed a practical alternative to the internal combustion engine. Smaller auto manufacturers wait to see what technology will be the safest, most practical and - yes - most profitable. Will it be a direct injection diesel? Will it be a diesel electric? Will it be Hydrogen? Will it be a gas/electric hybrid? If manufacturer "A" goes and throws billions in research into hydrogen technology and the electric car becomes the status quo with infastructure and other supporting industries, then what? Ask the HD-DVD company about that.
But look at where Honda is now? They can't keep the Civic hybrid on the floors. So although Honda took a hit with the Insight, they are reaping the benefits of the R&D that went into creating the car and hybrid technology today. Toyota as well. The problem with the Big 3 is that they lack the insight (pardon the pun) to forecast where the market is/was heading. While they were racking up profits on all those SUV's, they should have been investing some of those profits into newer techonology. GM could have been so far ahead of the game right now....a whole decades worth. If a full-on electric car was not profitable at the time with existing technology, nobody didn't have the idea to go hybrid at that point?
Add to that they didn't have the insight to lobby the government either for any subsidizing like Honda and Toyota got from the Japanese government. That's what happens when bean counters and marketing run a car company with not enough input from design and engineering....and a directive from the CEO to pursue innovation and technology. How is it that there are American cars still with push-rod drivetrain and the Japanese and Germans have embraced DOHC's and variable valve timing? The Big 3 try to milk every last dollar out of their old technology rather then investing for the future. To the point where Chrysler had to rely on Mercedes to develop their RWD cars.
I can see smaller car companies wanting to wait to embrace new technology. But we're talking about multi-billion dollar companies like the Big 3 and Honda, Toyota, Nissan, VW, BMW, Mercedes, etc. There's just no excuse for the technology gap between the Japanese/Germans and the American Big 3. And the cost of their lack of innovation and short-sightedness? Double digit sales decline for the big 3 while Honda posted a 20% sales increase for their passenger cars and 1% overall.
I think that Hybird technology is not the right thing to do. It is not that much better than a good diesel engine. Hybrids - especially Honda's - are kind of gimmicky and not that much better on fuel. The electric motor in the Honda hybrids are performance enhancers. So, Honda can put a very small engine in a civic and not lose any performance. Honda tried that with an Accord but did not reduce the size of the engine, they used the electric motor assist to make the car faster. That Accord is dead. Honds offers very little control of the car and it will decide when the electic motor "assist" kicks in. Is that a real gas saving comprimise? People have been complaining that their hybrid mileage is not all that good. The Prius can operate on Electric or gas or both. The Prius is better because it uses the electric motor to move (if there is a sufficient charge) and then uses the gas motors to keep the car moving at higher speeds. Fine. The EPA (or NRC) rates these cars and all other cars based on some theory and some magic and ideal perfect conditions. They run the cars that they have availble to them on a treadmill at 77km/h and do some starts and some stops and see how much fuel the car used. For models with 4wd, they use an average based on weight etc. Hybrids get great fuel economy indoors but real world mileage is up for questioning. Granted, if the test is done to all cars, then relatively, Hybrids do better. Is that true though? Does the hybrid with an electric motor outperform the ICE at higher speeds like those found in North America? A portly 2006 Golf TDI outperforms the 2008 Civic hybrid on the highway. Imagine TDI put into a lightweight little car!!
The point here is that maybe slapping a hybrid sticker on a civic will get you "green" points with consumers who would like to sleep better at night knowing that they supported a responsible car company. Honda is by its very nature opposed to diesel engines. Soichiro Honda used to call the "oil burners" and the company - until very very recently - has not entertained that avenue.
To be honest, the Chevy Volt is probably the best set of production ready gas saving technology I have seen to date. Good for them for thinking outside the box!!
I hear your point about Honda's hybrid technology not making as big an impact as it should. There's a guy here at work who gets 42 mpg on the highway in his 1996 Honda Civic 5-speed. I think it has as much to do with Honda's efficient engines that they start off with as with their hybrid application. But in Toyota's case, you can't discount a large car like the new Camry getting 33 in the city. (That's an even better rating then the Scion Xb, which has a 103hp 1.5L engine and weighs about 2500lbs.) Or a 7-seat Toyota Highlander Hybrid getting 27 in the city when most SUV's struggle to break into the 20's....on the highway no less.
Hybrids don't help highway mpg's because they are designed to work in stop & go traffic and have little effect on the highway. So a hybrid will rarely match a diesel on the highway. I can't see Honda throwing tons of R&D money into establishing a diesel line when their gas cars almost match diesel's in mpg anyway. They don't have a major history of diesel technology the same way the Big 3 don't. The German's on the other hand have been perfecting diesel's for decades so they stand to benefit from all that history.
Which brings me back to GM and it's killing of the EV1. GM could have had a 10 year history of R&D of EV technolgy. As it stands the Volt is still 2 years away and will have a projected cost near $40,000. There's also reports of VW working on a plug-in hybrid diesel so GM is truly not ahead of anybody in plug-in development.
But I think hybrids are a natural progression of where electric powertrains are going. Next up is plug-in hybrids and then full electric. Honda is taking a gamble with their hydrogen fuel cell technology and view battery development as a better strategy then plug-ins for small hyrbid cars. But at least they are leading and not following.
I guess my main gripe is that the Big 3 are not leaders when it comes to researching new alternative drivetrains. They were too busy sucking up profits in big gas-guzzling SUV's and are now paying the price for such lack of innovation. Toyota, Honda and the Germans are so much better positioned to lead the automotive industry in the years to come. And they are pulling in profits with their line-ups today as well.
Very true @ Camry hybrid. Gas guzzling SUVs are being made because they sell. If not for drug users, drug dealers would be out of business. Gas guzzlers are legal and are/were in demand so as long as there is amarket for them, why not produce them? Car companies are in the business of making money. Governments should be doing something about it but there is too much money and lobbying power - as you mentioned before - from the car companies and oil companies. We must all sell our cars that have over 2.0litres and over 4 cylinders. Are we willing to do that? Are we willing to get into a slow, small hatchback? Are we willing to give up the space, comfort and luxury? As North Americans, are we willing to forego the status symbol on wheels for *gulp* an econobox? Maybe some of us are but the market says (or said) otherwise. The market dictates the products - not the other way around.
I guess we will have to wait and see....
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