Point Reyes Rangers All Revved Up About Electric Cars Marin Independent Journal The latest endangered species to find refuge at the Point Reyes National Seashore feeds on sunlight, is friendly to both humans and the environment and could make a resurgence after being threatened with extinction. Automaker Toyota has told the national park it can keep five RAV4 electric vehicles that rangers have used for the past three years.

New Battery Plant Signals Surge in Electric Cars Financial Times The plant is thought to be the first dedicated exclusively to production of lithium-ion batteries for cars. The €15m ($22m) factory will initially produce 5,000 battery packs a year but be able to scale up if demand increases. The joint venture also plans to produce lithium-ion car batteries at factories elsewhere, including Asia.

Tesla To Make Gas-Electric Car CNET News The San Carlos, Calif.-based company will produce two basic types of its Whitestar sedan, due toward the end of 2009. One will run completely on batteries. The other will be a range-extended vehicle, or REV, CEO Ze'ev Drori said in an interview.

Zap Sells 614 Electric Cars Following Dealer Summit CNN.com ZAP CEO Steve Schneider expects more dealers to join its distribution network over the next few weeks, which now totals 54 locations throughout the United States with a goal to establish 100 dealers by the end of the year. The Santa Rosa, California-based Company will be exhibiting at the industry's largest dealer conference for auto dealers, NADA (http://www.nada.org), February 9-12, 2008 in San Francisco.

Ford sales dropped 4 percent in January The Money Times ...of the Edge climbed 95 percent, the company said. Lincoln MKX sales rose 78 percent, while Focus sales jumped 44 percent. However, total sales, which includes Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo divisions, dropped. "It's not going to get any easier -- at least...

Electric Cars in 1908?

February 07, 2008Anthologies > What Was Learned?

Electric cars are suddenly the cars of choice. Baker Motor Vehicle and Columbia Automobile Company are making some of the most popular models. Oldsmobile and Studebaker start life as successful Electric Vehicle Companies. The first car dealerships are exclusively for EVs.

Of the 4,192 cars produced in the United States, EVs represent about one-third of all cars found on the roads of New York, Boston, and Chicago. And an all-electric taxi fleet has taken to the streets of New York City.

While on the sporting front, a streamlined EV, powered by two 12-volt motors, is capturing worldwide attention with a speed record of 66 MPH.

The year is 1900. William McKinley is president. Yale, at 12 and 0, doesn't need the BCS to tell them they're the NCAA Champions. The novel Sister Carrie causes a minor scandal. And electric cars are everywhere.

In fact, in 1903 an electric car had the proud distinction of getting the first speeding ticket. Twenty seven years later, Clara Ford, Henry's wife, was still tooling around in her prized 1914 Detroit Electric Brougham, visiting chums and making her rounds on the family's Michigan estate.

It's not important that, for various reasons, gas-driven vehicles eventually drove them off the road. What is important is that, like Lazarus, they're rising from the dead.

And this time, it looks like they're here to stay.

For starters, Tesla Motors, a Silicon Valley start-up, is set to roll out in 2008. They claim that their all-electric roadster will go from 0 to 60 mph in just four seconds, travel 250 miles on a single charge (and can recharge simply by plugging into a regular AC outlet), and retail for about $80,000. Tesla's second-generation car, due out in 18 to 24 months, will be somewhat more popularly priced at around $50,000.

Looking further down the road, The Wrightspeed, created by Ian Wright, who formerly worked at Tesla, is another Silicon Valley entrant. It's a high-performance all-electric $120,000 roadster that dusted off a $440,000 Porsche on a test track. And Wright's X1, which is not yet in production, presumably blew the doors off a Ferrari 360 Spider in a drag race.

For the more practical minded, there's the highly maneuverable Tango, offered by Seattle-based Commuter Cars Corp. It seats - you guessed it - two. One behind the other, like on a motorcycle. Don't get too excited yet. According to the company's Web site, "This car has not been designed yet as it will require a team of engineers, tens of millions of dollars, and at least 18 months to meet all of the safety requirements."

Then there's the The Th!nk. Ford originally had it, but sold it to a Norwegian team, who are looking to introduce this nifty vehicle back into the U.S. market.

And still in the concept stage, is a new kind of EV called the Volt. GM, the main culprit in the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car, is now trying to save it with "an innovative rechargeable electric drive system and range-extending power source that can be configured to run on electricity, gasoline, E85 or bio diesel."

No doubt some of these highly charged ideas will drop by the wayside, but, with the technology apparently in place, enough will survive to awaken the ghosts of EV's past. And more of these environmentally and economy friendly EVs will hit the roads.

If we've learned anything from the past, it's that this is all good for us. Already industries shut out of electric markets are exploring biofuels and hydrogen as potential markets they can control. We can see a day soon, no doubt, when the price of gasoline will drop as mysteriously as it went up, and we'll have vehicles that can get more miles to a gallon than anyone thought possible.

Electric or gasoline? Or ethanol? Or any number of fuel alternatives? Or...?

Won't it be nice to have a choice?

J. Peterman

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9 Members’ Opinions

February 07, 2008 1:44 AM

ExPat said...

Variety is the spice of life.

A variety of fuel systems would provide more choices for car ownership. I wonder if effective alternative fuel systems will be available for large SUV's, pick-ups used in construction, and big rigs?

Is there any research on alternative fuels for small or large aircraft?

February 07, 2008 10:41 AM
Calliq said...

More choices will happen. While the big, entrenched auto manufacturers spend time and money lobbying in D.C. to keep mpg standards low, other, more nimble companies will find inventive ways to design, build, and distribute all kinds (gas, biofuel, electric, etc) of fuel-efficient autos.

Happened with IBM in PC market -- Dell swooped in. Happening to Microsoft right now in software -- Google and low-overhead startups provide "slim," low-overhead, low-cost alternatives that do the job. No reason it can't happen in auto industry.

Whenever I hear auto execs whine about how tough it is to build a fleet of 30 mpg cars, it's frustrating -- my first new car, which I got in 1984, was a Honda CRX. It was big enough to seat two comfortably, pack a ton of stuff in the hatchback, and it looked great. MPG? 55-60.

February 07, 2008 10:51 AM
Whig1776 said...

These conspiracy thoeries are nice, but I'm suspicious.

One of the reasons the free market works is that it is driven by millions of individual decisions a day. For instance, we often blame OPEC or Bush or someone else for the rise in oil prices. Millions -- if not billions -- of decisions a day set the price of oil. And, they're not always rational decisions.

For instance, it's believed that 30% of the price of oil is based upon guesses of what the future will bring -- better fuel mileage, war with Iran or Chavez, etc. Those are merely guesses.

It's the same with foreign currencies. The smart economists will tell you that there is no such thing as an overvalued or undervalued currency. The value is what it is, based upon the decisions of thousands of traders and investors.

As for electric cars: Maybe the simple answer is that they're just not perfected yet. When they're competitive with gas cars, both in terms of reliability, cost and a variety of other factors, then the market will adopt them.

February 07, 2008 12:29 PM
Boswell said...

I heard that United Parcel Service (UPS) rolled out a delivery service in California specifically for small parcels with a 100% EV fleet recently. They bought 42 electric cars and trucks (ZAP Xebra) from the well-known EV manufacturer ZAP.

ZAP CEO Stever Schneider, who must be thrilled, said that “This is the missing link for small package deliveries in congested areas. Packages go from the airplanes, to the tractor trailers, to the delivery vans, then to the drop-off nodes. From there the ZAP trucks make the final delivery to the consumer in a zero-emission vehicle that costs less to operate. It’s a perfect example of how green technology can help corporate America’s bottom line.”

Electric Cars for the rest of us, is another thing. One of the biggest problems is the amount of time it takes to recharge. Anywhere from 2 hours to 12+ hours on various models have been mentioned. Filling stations have become more fascinating, but that’s a long time to hang around.

But now I hear Altair Nanotechnologies is designing a battery with high-surface-area nano-patterned electrodes and an unusually stable lithium chemistry, which means it can now be safely charged to full capacity in about 10 minutes.

But again, there’s that little problem. While the technology is a brilliant break-through, in order to be able to accomplish a “10-minute-fill” you’d need about 250 kilowatts of power— five times more than an average office building uses at its peak.

I don’t know what the final answer will be. It may eventually take an Einstein.

February 07, 2008 1:16 PM

greeneclover73 said...

http://www.greencarcongress.com/

February 07, 2008 1:40 PM
Calliq said...

Whig1776,

What conspiracy theories are you referring to?

The fact is that big, multinational corporations have an enormous impact on what products are *available* to consumers, because they have lots of influence in government, with other businesses, and so on. There need not be a conspiracy for similar, large corporations (Ford, GM, Daimler-Chrysler, etc.) to act in very similar ways that reflect similar self-interests.

"Smart economists," as any really smart economist will tell you, is an oxymoron. Economists, even "smart" ones, often have widely divergent views on what's happening (check out the theories on the subprime debacle, for example), and are often pathetically mistaken on what will happen next ("Dow 30,000"? Right. "The Great Depression of the 1990s"? That happened. Just two bestsellers from the past 20 years. By "smart" economists.)

Finally--while some markets move because of millions of individual decisions a day, others move because a few very big players make decisions. Witness the recent stock market plunge. Why did it happen? Because big financial houses dumped stock to take advantage of skittish small investors. They were (and are) able to make the market move, in big ways. Is there a connection to the subprime mess? I've heard it said, many times. But for the life of me, I can't figure out why the market would dive when corporate profits continue to consistently rise, year after year (including, most likely, in 2008). A conspiracy? Well... no, but the desire of a very few wealthy folks to get filthy rich by taking advantage of a bad situation.