Who Killed The Electric Car?

[Bruzilla]

I have to be a little vague here or the black helicopters will be over my house tonight. We recently purchased the physical assets of a near bankrupt company that was contracted to build, let's say 100, "electric urban small package delivery vehicles" through a Government/corporate program. (in THAT order.) They got about 90 of them done and discovered that they wouldn't perform the necessary function originally intended. End of program.

Before the asset purchase, A group of us walked the facilities and the complex to assess to value and there were 8 of these vehicles parked along one of the back fences. after finding out what they were, (odd looking things) I went out and checked them out. Sure enough, "electric powered small package delivery units."

So Fast forward; deal closes, we take possession of the the property, I go back to start laying out the new facility and ALL of the equipment is gone along with the package cars. I later asked the CEO of our parent company what happened to the "electric trucks"... They were all recalled and destroyed". "not salvaged, destroyed". "Why"? "The government didn't want the liability for the battery set-up".

My antidotal story...

It's funny you mention those. When I was at NAS Bermuda in the 1980s, we had a some of these electric vans that we were supposed to use for duty vehicles. They looked like a VW van, but about half the size. They worked great for occasional driving on the island since the top national speed limit was only 25 MPH, but we never did occasional driving. Sometimes that van would be driven two or three times in a 24-hour period and it would be fine, but other times we needed to make dozens of trips in that same period and there we would be... holding up flights waiting to get enough of a charge on the van to get us through one trip and hopefully make it back. The other problem was the vehicle had to be light, and we lost doors several times when guys opened them in a strong wind. If the winds were gusting, you had to park the bus into the wind or there was a chance the door would get ripped right out of your hand and off the hinges. We put up with the damn thing for a couple of years, and I guess the government got tired of paying for new doors and gave us a GM truck. End of problem.

But as to destruction of stuff like that, I saw that a lot especially with prototype stuff. I used to watch truckloads of really cool stuff that we had tried out on our aircraft get taken to disposal sites even though it was hardly used and destroyed because the government didn't need it anymore, and neither the vendor or government wanted to pay to ship it somewhere or accept the liability for leaving it in place or selling it to a third party, so the stuff got crushed (de-milled in the business) and sold as scrap.

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Gm, Goodyear, Firestone, oil companies, steel, etc, etc, invest a lot of money into each other, regardless of safety, they won't produce anything that could potentially dent their pocketbook, and I'm not talking immediately, but long term down the road, you can bet there were bean counters telling them not no but hell no when it came to producing them, the same bean counters and investors that determine whether a lawsuit or a recall is the better route when they have vehicle issues, only as of late they've been forced to deal with safety issues in lieu of letting them go and dealing with the lawsuit, thanks mostly to the new technological age of all the media bringing problems more into light, before, you'd be lucky to hear about anything needing recalled if it didn't make the news. Always boils down to money or the future perception of it.

And that was the broader argument the producers of the show were working hard to make. That is was all about money, either GM wanting to save it, or Big Oil wanting more of it, or government wanting to waste it, or someone wanting to do something with it. But I think all of their allegations and contentions get disproved pretty effectively by the success of the hybrid cars.

Going back to "what is" and "what if", the biggest what if with electric cars is what happens if the consumer has to drive more miles than the car can handle on a single charge. That was the real killer of the electric car because there was no way to get around the fact that there would be times you needed to drive beyond the range of a single charge, which means you would always need to have a second, gasoline-powered, vehicle. Not a problem for a famous actor or executive, but what about a struggling actor or apprentice worker who can only afford one car? Do you spend your money on a car that'll meet your needs most of the time but require you to have access to a second vehicle for when it doesn't, or do you buy a car that'll meet your needs 100% of the time and doesn't require a backup? The what is's like how you were paying much less per mile to drive, or making less pollution, or saving the World couldn't overcome that one what if.

Then along come hybrids, and their biggest distinction from electric cars is they satisfied that big what if. If you need to go beyond the mileage of a charge, the gas motor kicks in and saves the day! The auto maker goals haven't changed, the interests of Big Oil haven't changed, and the government's ability to waste money damn sure hasn't changed, yet sales of hybrids took off immediately and have been a great success across the board, which means since all the conditions that were in place during the electric vehicle rage episode are still in place, and yet hybrids have been a huge success, I find it impossible to assess the blame on the factors the producers tried to focus it on.

 

[YY1]

For me personally, my experience with battery drills killed any possibility of owning an electric car, and caused me to question their viability for decades.

During the latter part of the 1980's, I was an electrician's apprentice.

Although relatively new technology, battery drills were almost a mandatory tool for that job.
7.2 and 9.6 volt units were the order of the day (remember the turquoise Makita's?), and 12v if you could afford it.
I had a 9.6v Milwaukee, which cost a pretty penny at the time (about $120, or nearly a week's pay IIRC).
Almost a year to the day, the battery died. The price for replacement- $90!!.
For $30 more, I could get a shiny new drill and a new battery plus a new charger and new case.
Kind of a no-brianer. The second time it happened, a replacement battery was almost impossible to find, since the model was discontinued.
Add an hour drive (and close to two hours on the phone) to the nearly $90 cost.
But this time a new 12v model was actually less than the cost of just the replacement 9.6v battery.

The reason (IMO) the cordless drill was accepted, and car not accepted are:

With the drill, you carry your charger with you.
It still sucks waiting for a charge, and you will charge for only 10 min to get that last screw in.
...but the portability of the drill far outweighs the negatives, including the ridiculously disproportionate battery replacement cost, since we're only talking plus or minus $100, and not thousands like a car battery pack.

120V standard plugin cars are interesting, but I have a hard time believing the claims of only using $20 of electricity to charge them fully, and you'd still have to beg a stranger, or shop owner to plug in away from home.

*side note, after changing jobs several times, and after going down the battery drill path one more time for personal rather than livelihood use, I've completely sworn off battery drills, and haven't had one in over 15 years.
I have a swap meet $20 DeWalt 1/2" key-less VSR corded model and that might be the last drill I ever buy.

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** the "throw-away" aspect of the battery replacement/new drill decision also caused me to question why none of the "green" arguments ever took that into consideration. Only now do you even hear a small mention of that...occasionally.

 

[old_skool]

I didn't see this show but I really don't think anyone killed electric cars I think its a situation where technology has not advanced enough !! Battery tech has to advance a hell of a lot further then just lithium !!:3gears:

I'm probably going to sound like one of those conspiracy theorist after this but... I'll bet battery technology has already surpassed what's available and has been for some time, just as vehicle fuel mileage really hasn't advanced in the last 30 years worth mentioning, especially with all the advancement in fuel delivery and computer controls, puuuulease, I got 31 city and 42 highway with a 77 carbureted Honda Accord no matter how I beat on it, that's high compared to most cars today, granted small light car, but still it was carbureted, with minimal emission controls using good ole fossil fuels. Cars today should be getting 80+ mpg without the advent of electricity, and I understand there is a limit to what gasoline can be expected to do, but do you really believe the industries aforementioned would allow their fuel profits to be reduce by 2/3 of what it is today???

Today, the auto manufacturers want you to concentrate on the safety engineered into their vehicles first, mileage somewhere further down the line, we've become a nation of "let's protect the helmet wearing window lickers" society, add a thousand pounds of wiring and safety gadgets to the vehicle and mileage will never go up.