Who Killed The Electric Car?

What happened to the electric car? Here is a little trivia on them:

1834 Thomas Davenport invents an electric car but batteries are unrechargeable.
1859 Gaston Plante invents rechargeable lead acid batteries.
1889 Thomas Edison builds an electric car using nickel-alkaline batteries.
1890 William Morris builds an electric car that can run for 13 hours at 14 mph.
1895 The first auto race in America is won by the electric vehicle, Electrobat II.
1896 Andrew Riker Company starts building electric vehicles.
1897 The first power steering is in an electric car.
1899 Camille Janetzy sets the first land speed record is set at 66 mph by two 12 volt motors driving his electric car.
1900 The first distance record is set by an electric car by the BGS Company when it drove for 180 miles on a single charge.
1900 1/3 vehicles are electric, 1/3 are gas, and 1/3 are steam.
1903 The first speeding ticket is issued to an electric car driver.
1903 Krieger manufactures the first hybrid gas/electric car.
1930 Ford introduces the Model T gas car and electric cars are wiped out.

A variety of electric cars popped up over the years here and there. However it wasn’t till California introduced an anti-pollution legislation to combat rising health issues due to smog that brought electric cars back into mainstream production. In 1995 California required by 2003 10% of vehicles sold in their state to be zero emissions. Since gas cars put 19 pounds of CO2 in the air per gallon burned, this was an emergency response to a vast car usage in the state. GM developed an electric car called the EV1 and leased it to consumers to comply with this law while they fight the law. EV1 electric car drivers are very happy and demand becomes high for more by consumers. GM stands to lose countless money on electric cars since they have much fewer parts to go out. Also being in bed with the oil companies there is a major threat to their industry. The oil companies have 12 trillion barrels of oil left in the earth to sell. Press releases are sent out discouraging electric car uses. GM ads for electric cars are bland while gas car ads are sexy and exciting.

Certain fears about electric vehicles are propagated by the industry among:

You will run out of battery and be stranded.
It takes all day to recharge your car.
You have a very limited range to drive.
They are very slow.
They are too expensive.
If one battery goes out, your car is down.
They have no torque power.
Charging the cars will cost more in electricity than gas.

However a company owned by a genius inventor with over 200 patents had developed battery technology that could give an electric car a 100 mile range and drive at 70 mph. Interestingly enough controlling share of his company was bought by GM and he was told to not put out full page ads sharing his technological battery discoveries. Later Mobil oil purchased 60% controlling stock of his company.

Still the demand for electric cars rose. In response that car and oil industry could lose major money the Bush administration setup government funding to research Hydrogen cars. 1.8 billion government dollars were sent to group headed by oil and car companies to develop a technology that is not feasible. This measure simply serves as a distraction from electric cars while lip service can be used to say that we are moving away from foreign oil dependency. When electric cars are forgotten the hydrogen technology will go away too.

Coincidently the president of the California Air Resources Board that passed the zero emissions anti-pollution bill joins Bush’s hydrogen car development group and four months later the zero emissions bill is killed. GM, Toyota and others stop production of electric cars and since electric cars are leased, the leases are not renewed and the cars repossessed and crushed. GM goes into full production of Hummers and tax breaks for Hummers are 25 times greater than tax breaks for electric cars.

There are companies that will make an electric car however hybrids are the big compromise between people wanting to cut emissions down and oil companies. It is only natural for big business to try to halt new technologies that could end their company. I don’t fault the survival move. It is sad that people don’t have the options of electric cars readily available.

The interesting thing is that electric cars with present battery technology can drive for 100 miles on a charge, go up to 100 miles per hour on a standard car, and can charge in just an hour. Just imagine how much better the tech could be if electric vehicles were made in mass production?

Also an engineer has beat most of the top high end sports cars in races with his electric car. There are videos below showing the races between them.

If you have the time and inclination I would recommend renting the movie “Who Killed The Electric Car”. Also available in the website www.pluginamerica.com.


Commonly asked questions and answers on electric cars:

Q: Aren’t fully electric cars impractical?
A: Not at all. EVs with a 150-mile range could be built and sold in quantity at a profit today for $25,000. Ranges exceeding 300 miles on a charge exist today, but with the cost of batteries as high as they are, it is impractical for most cars at this point. Most people, when educated as to the benefits of driving with electricity, will be well served by a car with a range of 100-180 miles. Well over 90% of daily driving is well under 100 miles. Any long distance driving can be done with a second car that is a plug-in hybrid (PHEV), or by renting or borrowing a PHEV.

Q: You may not spend as much money at the gas pump, but wouldn’t the electricity bill go through the roof?
A: Your energy bill will be less overall by driving with electricity. EVs are so efficient that the cost, per mile driven, is significantly less. For instance, a 2002 Toyota RAV4 will travel 100 miles on 4 gallons of gasoline. At $2.50/gallon, this is $10.00. A 2002 Toyota RAV4 EV will travel 100 miles on 30 kWh of electricity. At 10 cents per kWh, this is $3.00.

Q: Are plug-in vehicles dependable?
A: Battery Electric Vehicles are the most dependable vehicles made. Well made production EVs have the potential to last as long or longer than gasoline automobiles, with less regular maintenance. There are many fewer moving parts in an EV, and therefore less ongoing preventative maintenance. Brake life is significantly extended since the motor is used to slow the car, recapturing the kinetic energy and storing it back in the battery. While replacement batteries may be required during the life of an EV, newer battery chemistries are demonstrating very long lives.

Q: How long does it take to fully charge a plug-in hybrid or electric car?
A: It would depend on the amperage of the charging system. From an ordinary 120V socket, you would need overnight to charge a battery EV fully. With a fast charger, you could fully charge in 5-10 minutes. A plug-in hybrid could fully charge in 6-9 hours from an ordinary outlet.

Q: How often do you have to replace the batteries?
A: Nickel Metal Hydride batteries (NiMH) are proving to be very long lived. Several cars with over 130,000 miles have been reported with virtually no range degradation. Estimates of 150,000 – 200,000 miles are predicted. Lithium Ion (LiIon) is thought by most experts to be the chemistry that will supplant NiMH. The testing of battery life is continuing, but it’s too early to tell how long LiIon will last.

Q: Aren’t all those batteries full of toxic chemicals and precious metals that will just end up in a landfill?
A: Not at all. Every car in the world has a lead-acid battery, the most toxic metal used for batteries. Even with its low value as scrap, the recycling rate for lead-acid batteries is about 98% in the U.S. EVs will use newer chemistries such as NiMH and LiIon. Both of these metals are inherently more valuable than lead, and since the batteries are quite large, the value of the spent battery packs will be such that the recycling rate will approach 100%. It is illegal to dispose of these batteries in a landfill and their value will ensure that is not their fate. Nickel, while mildly toxic, will be reclaimed during the recycling process. Lithium is even less toxic and more valuable than nickel.

Q: Isn’t hydrogen the solution?
A: No. Hydrogen fuel cell cars are 4X less eff cient than battery EVs if the hydrogen is produced from electricity. It’s 1.4X less efficient if made from natural gas. Where and how will the hydrogen be stored? Who will pay the billions required for this new infrastructure? (Hint - us taxpayers.) With plug-in cars, the infrastructure is already in place - the electric grid.

Q: How viable are hydrogen cars? Many seem to think they are the "cars of the future.”
A: There are two types of hydrogen cars. Fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) are EVs, but instead of getting their electricity from batteries charged from the grid, they get their power from fuels cells using hydrogen as the energy carrier. FCVs use four times as much electricity on a per mile basis as a battery EV if the hydrogen is obtained through the process called electrolysis. So you would need four times the number of solar panels to go the same distance as you would in a battery EV. Hydrogen obtained through reformation of hydrocarbon fuels releases massive quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere, and even that dirty process uses more energy than merely charging a battery. FCVs have many seriously difficult and expensive engineering challenges to solve before they will ever be widely available, and even then, the energy required per mile will probably still be substantially higher than with battery EVs.

Internal combustion engines (ICE) can be made to burn hydrogen instead of gasoline. Even these fairly simple conversions are expensive, and the energy required is again, much higher per mile than with EVs. In addition, ICE burning hydrogen (H2) cars still have some emissions albeit low but they cannot be considered ZEVs, not even taking into consideration how one gets the hydrogen.

The bottom line is that there is no advantage to using FCVs or H2 ICE technologies over battery EVs.