EVLN(Carmakers scrap EVs)
[The Internet Electric Vehicle List News. For Public EV
informational purposes. Contact publication for reprint rights.]
--- {EVangel}
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/10/10/BA163801.DTL
Pulling the plug
Carmakers scrap electric vehicles
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
Thursday, October 10, 2002
It used to be the car of the future. Then it became a
has-been. Now it's a cause.
So it goes in the start-stop-start-stop world of the all-
electric, charge- and-go, battery-operated car -- the first
Edsel of the new millennium.
Nearly all the big carmakers, including Ford, GM and Honda,
are scrapping their "EV" programs, saying there's just no
market for cars that come with a leash.
Now, the few people who have actually tried out the cars are
staging protests to press their claim that these cars aren't
the dogs their manufacturers say they are.
Today, EV fanciers plan what may be San Francisco's first
all-electric drive-in rally: protesters expect to climb out
of a mini-flotilla of Ford Thinks, GM EV1s and Honda
EV-Pluses to declare their love for vehicles nobody
supposedly wants.
"There are waiting lists for this car, and the reason is
it's really a great car," said Marc Geller, 48, a freelance
photographer who gets around in a Think. "It's maddening,
it's absolutely maddening. Obviously, people want the damn
car, and Ford keeps saying people don't want it. I could
sell 5,000 of them myself in this city alone."
A successful introduction of the electric car might have
helped pave the way for wider acceptance of all sorts of
low- or zero-emission vehicles. But to clean- car advocates,
it seems the automakers have other goals in mind.
Aficionados blame the electric car's failure not on any
inherent problems with the technology or designs, or on any
lack of enthusiasm among potential buyers. They blame it on
a lack of enthusiasm among carmakers in love with the big
profits they make on those honking big SUVs.
Kenneth Adelman, a computer programmer in Silicon Valley who
has a couple of different electric models, calls it a case
of "reverse marketing" by the big carmakers.
"They've managed to pull off a huge marketing coup by
convincing soccer moms to drive SUVs," Adelman said, and are
now out "convincing the public they don't want electric
vehicles. But the fact is, for every person who has one,
three of four friends want one."
If so, most of those friends probably already have an SUV
and plenty of disposable income, and just want an electric
vehicle as an environmentally friendly, low- maintenance
second car to tool about town.
Electric cars, with their limited range and high price tags,
clearly aren't for everybody. Now, it's starting to look as
if they aren't for anybody.
While continuing to battle California's clean-car goals,
carmakers say the legitimate market demand for low- emission
cars will be met with gas-electric hybrids and, eventually,
hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles. Only Toyota still
offers an all-electric car, the RAV4- EV, to U.S. consumers
-- and expects to sell only 200 or 300 this year.
All told, no more than about 5,000 electric cars are on the
road in California, according to the California Air
Resources Board, despite buyer incentives. One factor:
long-awaited improvements in battery technology, needed to
make the cars go farther and recharge faster, have failed to
materialize.
Typically, electric cars will go no more than 60-120 miles,
depending on driving style, speed and terrain, before they
need recharging. And although off-peak overnight charging
can cut the cost down to a few pennies per mile, it can take
four to six hours for a full recharge.
"Certainly battery technology has not advanced the way we
had hoped," said Jerry Martin, an air resources board
spokesman in Sacramento.
And yet, tech-savvy electric-car drivers insist that
charge-and-go vehicles deserve a much better consumer buzz
than the carmakers have been able to generate.
Honda's EVplus, canceled two years ago, is "fantastic," said
Steve Braunstein, who plays bassoon and contrabassoon with
the San Francisco Symphony and, with his wife, has happily
driven one of Honda's electrics for five years.
He and his wife also have a gas-burning car, reserving the
EVplus for "general around-town activities." For that, he
said, "it's perfect."
General Motors, the nation's biggest car manufacturer, may
be drawing the most heat for its decision to kill the EV1,
considered America's pace- setting battery-powered car.
GM plans to take the cars back once current leases run out,
turning most of them over to its engineers tinkering on
other advanced-car projects. A few will be sent to
universities and museums. One is bound for the Smithsonian.
"The auto industry, and that includes GM, sees no future in
battery-powered cars," said Donn Walker, a GM spokesman in
Thousand Oaks. "The reasons are not technical. The reasons
are economic. It's that simple. There's no market for these
vehicles."
Even so, some people like them.
"It's got gobs of torque," said Steve Oddo, a software
systems engineer at Dolby Labs in San Francisco, passing
everything else on Howard Street during a noontime joyride
to Ocean Beach.
A car like this, he said, "gives you hope for the future of
the planet, and a hell of a ride."
On the dash, though, a digital readout needled him about the
car's limited range -- only 54 miles -- before it would need
to be recharged, although the actual range turns out to be
much longer because some power is recouped when braking.
It works for Oddo, 39, because he and his wife also own a
conventional Subaru station wagon to take for family outings
and longer trips. He usually can charge up the EV1
overnight, when rates are low, and he can take his portable
charger on the road to plug in wherever he can find a
heavy-appliance outlet.
He spends about the same on electricity as he used to spend
on gas. He needs no oil or tuneups. The monthly lease, which
includes all routine service,
runs a stiff $484 with taxes. Still, the EV1 has proven to
be "a perfect fit" in Oddo's household, he said, and "it's a
blast to drive."
"You hit the accelerator, and it goes," he said.
It goes back to GM in December. And that comes as no
surprise to those who have studied the car and its
prospects.
"EV1 drivers are fanatics," said Andy Frank, an engineering
professor and clean-car innovator at UC Davis. "The trouble
is there aren't more than 10,000 of them out there" in a
state that soaks up 1.5 million new vehicles a year.
The EV1's main appeal, he noted, is to well-off,
environmentally conscious folks who happen to have a taste
for high performance and sports-car styling, and can afford
a second car if they need to go more than 60 or 70 miles a
day.
"You ask the common person if they would buy such a car, and
the fact is they don't want it," Frank said. "There is a
market, but the market is very limited."
The EV1 is still listed under "Innovations" on GM's
slow-changing Web site, "an exceptional car" offering "a
different driving experience."
But GM doesn't buy its own amped-up product propaganda --
certainly not at today's prices.
"Battery-powered cars are a technology whose time has come
and gone," Walker said, estimating the car cost his company
"north of $1 billion" to develop and would cost each driver
more than $120,000 if the leases reflected "the true cost of
manufacture."
And that, he said, doesn't even count the substantial R&D
expenses it took to create GM's latest trailblazing relic.
E-mail Carl T. Hall at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
�2002 San Francisco Chronicle. Page A - 17
===
[image captions]
Pulling the plug / Carmakers scrap electric vehicles
An AC Propulsion tzero electric car (front) makes its way
down Ninth Street, side-by-side with a Toyota Rav4 EV, the
only electric vehicle still being manufactured by a major
automaker.
Karen Star of San Francisco sits in a GM EV1 electric car at
Dolby Labs.
At S.F.'s Dolby Labs, an electric car is charged.
Aficionados blame the cars' failure on automakers who'd
rather make money on SUVs.
[Chronicle photos by Darryl Bush]
===
[Think_EV protest POSTs]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/think_ev/message/1569
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/think_ev/message/1571
-
=====
' ____
~/__|o\__
'@----- @'---(=
. http://geocities.com/brucedp
. EV List Editor & RE newswires
. (originator of the above EV ascci art)
=====
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com
