Madhu writes: > The idea may not be far from catching on- but only if "they" let us!! > Right? > > I say this because just a little while ago, while driving to campus > in my gas-guzzler minivan, I happened to be listening to Democracy > Now (http://www.democracynow.org/), Amy Goodman's great show carried > on the local Pacifica station here, and caught the last part of a > segment on the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?", (which has > now moved up to the top of my Netflix list) about how a potential > alternative (the EV1) was actively crushed (literally - nearly all > EV1 vehicles, most of which were on lease, were rounded up by GM and > crushed!) by the very company that made them. And this was over 10 > years ago! You can watch/listen to the Democracy Now interview with > the film's director and a former GM employee here: > > http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/13/1421243 > > As individuals, we can only choose from a range of available options > - so I wonder how much impact individual life-style choices can have > if that domain (of choices in the marketplace) itself remains > unchanged and out of our control?
One of the easier things to imagine is a conspiracy. Paranoia seems to be the most basic human emotion, but things are rarely that simple. No one's actually killed the electric car. In fact, by 2030-2050, it will probably be the dominant form of transportation, but like all engineering developments, things just take time. But if nothing else, you have to be impressed watching the film at how enthusiastic its users were about its capabilities, and that too bodes well for its future. I mentioned about a year or so ago in this list that someone ought to invite Paul MacCready to be a keynote or plenary speaker at the annual ESA meeting. I've spoken to Paul about it and he was more than agreeable at the time. Paul's approx. 82 now, so if it is ever to be done, it should be done soon. Paul is the designer of the Gossamer Albatross and Gossamer Condor, the first human-powered aircraft capable of flying a figure eight and the first human-powered aircraft to cross the English Channel. These are extraordinary achievements for their mechanical and aeronautical efficiencies. But more relevant to the present discussion, Dr. MacCready also designed the Sunraycer, the first wholly solar-powered car to win a 4000 mile race across Australia in 1987, under contract from General Motors and their Hughes Aircraft Division. It not only managed to do run the course at an average speed of 46 mph with no repairs necessary, it beat the next best entry by 2-1/2 days. This is what Wikipedia writes about the race: "The Sunracyer project started with a request from GM's Australian division to GM Headquarters to participate in the upcoming Solar Challenge. This race, to be held in Australia in late 1987 would feature purely solar powered cars. Roger Smith, the CEO of GM, was immediately interested in the idea and he agreed to fund a study to see if a solar powered car could be built within 10 months. Smith hired AeroVironment to do the study. A month later, AeroVironment engineers concluded that a highly competitive car could be built within the time available. AeroVironment, led by their famous owner/engineer Paul MacCready was given the contract to build what would be called the Sunraycer." I have included some slides from one of Paul's presentations: http://67.41.4.238/niac05-maccready010.jpg http://67.41.4.238/niac05-maccready011.jpg http://67.41.4.238/niac05-maccready012.jpg http://67.41.4.238/niac05-maccready017.jpg The first image is of the Sunraycer, taken at GM's test facility in Arizona. The second is the first full-scale, all-electric car that MacCready's organization, AeroVironment, designed, the GM Impact. This project was begun as a direct result of Roger Smith's (the CEO of GM) enthusiasm for electric vehicles hew saw in the Australian race. This car, with a little redesing, almost immediately became the EV-1 that the movie, "Who Killed the Electric Car?", talks about. The third slide is of the solar-powered Helios aircraft that was built under NASA contract, and is shown flying over Hawaii. The purpose of the aircraft was to build a platform that could fly at high altitude indefinitely, never requiring landing to be refueled. There are $2 million worth of solar cells on the wings of the aircraft, which has since crashed, thus it wasn't cheap. The fourth slide gives a very quick summary of the primary point that Paul wants to make in his talk: there is an enormous amount of efficiency that is yet to captured in automobile design. Dylan writes: >Correction Wirt. There are indeed hydrogen-hybrid plug-in vehicles. >http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070407/AUTO01/704070338/114 8 Yes, my apologies. Its development was not only obvious but expected. I just didn't know that anyone had yet done it. There is a nice, short video of the car at: http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/automotive_news/4214707.html?series=16 Ernie writes: > Electric cars and plug-in hybrids are only marginally better than ordinary > hybrids in terms of energy consumption and CO2 emissions. They only appear > to be better because most of the energy waste and CO2 happens "outside > the box," back at the power plant. > > The best car today in terms of CO2 emissions is a diesel car using > biodiesel fuel. It's important to understand that electricity is not a fuel but rather is simply an energy transmission mechanism, no different in effect than a mechanical driveshaft. But there are an enormous number of ways to generate that electricity, many of which have no CO2 emissions at all: nuclear, solar, hydro, wind, tidal, fuel cells, etc. In the past, and for the near-term future, we have used fossil fuels because of their ready plentitude and inexpensiveness, but given the three prongs of the problems that they now present: increasing depletion, regional wars and global warming, their use is obviously coming to an end. We are not short of energy on this planet; we're just going to have to transition to something else, and plug-in, hydrogen-powered fuel cell hybrids seem like the best bet for the long-term future, even though they still have significant technical problems at the moment. For the time being, a plug-in, flex-fuel internal comustion hybrid seems likely to the car that will first come to market in a big way. They're not carbon free, but they're much better than what we're using at the moment. Joseph writes: > Even if a miracle > technology suddenly appears (which hydrogen-fueled > cars certainly are not), we are already 20 years late > in starting a complete conversion to a new way of > doing things There is a Chinese proverb that says, "The best time to plant a tree is one hundred years ago. The next best time is today." Wirt Atmar
