My take: Who Killed The Electric Car?
My Clean Break column today references the new documentary Who Killed The Electric Car? for a discussion of the renaissance in battery-powered vehicles, whether hybrid-electric plug-ins or pure EVs. Could this latest interest in electric-powered vehicles be the real deal, or will we be hearing about it in the sequal Who Killed The Electric Car II?
BTW: Happy Birthday Nikola Tesla… the man credited for starting the revolution in alternating current electricity would have been 150 years old today. I wrote in the Toronto Star today about his life, his battles with Thomas Edison, and how some have continued to pursue Tesla’s elusive dream of wireless power transmission.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
July 12th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
Electric Cars are Alive and Well at ZAP http://www.zapworld.com ZP (NYSE). A California based company, who has been importing, retrofitting and distributing the Smart car for the last year, is the only car company who is selling a Chinese manufactured car in the US the 100% electric Xebra city car. It can reach speeds of up to 40 mph, has a range of up to 40 miles and takes 6-8 hours to fully recharge. And charges with your standard 110V outlet.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Batteries (actually, shortcomings thereof) killed the electric car. Batteries with the the requisite energy density, power density, cycle lifetime, environmental operating parameters, and safety are only now becoming available. When the cost of such batteries drops by a factor of about 4 (anticipated with increased volume), there will be little need for liquid fuels in automobiles.
August 8th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
Zebra Batteries (MES-DEA) had been tested and shown to be capable of over one-hundred miles of travel for automobiles before EV1 was taken from the market and perhaps before it was even put on the market. There is a Zebra Battery powered bus in Santa Barbara CA that can go 120 miles on a charge and run up hills faster than a diesel bus. GM Killed the electric car by: First using their own lead acid batteries while better ones were known for more than one hundred years and invented by Edison. Second GM invested into ovonics NICKEL METAL HYDRIDE battery manufacturing knowing that they took a lot of expensive nickel and rare earth elements that may be more toxic than lead. Third GM ignored the already, electric automobile proven, Zebra Battery and wasted their money building an OVONICS plant and selling it to an oil company, one of their partners in defeating ZERO EMISSION STANDARDS, when they could have bought all of the Zebra Technology for less money, as MES-DEA did. Fourth GM did not develop an optional, buillt in, gasoline powered micro-charger, that could be used in cars in other states than California and give the car a 400 mile range with ten gallons of gas.
With the automobile company conspiracy against them, the only reason ZEBRA BATERIES are being built is that ROLLS-ROYCE, having abandoned their car business for jets and military, recommends them for use in submarines, as being far less weight, far less maintenance and far more reliable than than any other battery on the market.
For stationary uses, where weight is not as important such as power load shifting, iron can be substituted for most of the nickel in Zebra Batteries with a slight loss of performance but lower material cost; even though, Zebra Batteries use less than one fifth the nickel that nickel-metal-hydrid batteries use and have several times the cycle life.
If the GM management and engineers for EV1 did not know the above, the INTERNET has failed and the GM employees were incompetent….
August 8th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
Zebra Batteries (MES-DEA) had been tested and shown to be capable of over one-hundred miles of travel for automobiles before EV1 was taken from the market and perhaps before it was even put on the market. There is a Zebra Battery powered bus in Santa Barbara CA that can go 120 miles on a charge and run up hills faster than a diesel bus. GM Killed the electric car by: First using their own lead acid batteries while better ones were known for more than one hundred years and invented by Edison. Second GM invested into ovonics NICKEL METAL HYDRIDE battery manufacturing knowing that they took a lot of expensive nickel and rare earth elements that may be more toxic than lead. Third GM ignored the already, electric automobile proven, Zebra Battery and wasted their money building an OVONICS plant and selling it to an oil company, one of their partners in defeating ZERO EMISSION STANDARDS, when they could have bought all of the Zebra Technology for less money, as MES-DEA did. Fourth GM did not develop an optional, buillt in, gasoline powered micro-charger, that could be used in cars in other states than California and give the car a 400 mile range with ten gallons of gas.
With the automobile company conspiracy against them, the only reason ZEBRABATERIES are being built is that ROLLS-ROYCE, having abandoned their car business for jets and military, recommends them for use in submarines, as being far less weight, far less maintenance and far more reliable than than any other battery on the market.
For stationary uses, where weight is not as important such as power load shifting, iron can be substituted for most of the nickel in Zebra Batteries with a slight loss of performance but lower material cost; even though, Zebra Batteries use less than one fifth the nickel that nickel-metal-hydrid batteries use and have several times the cycle life….
If the GM management and engineers for EV1 did not know the above, the INTERNET has failed and the GM employees were incompetent….