Not true about the only electric car manufactured. The Nissan Altra seems
to be available. Lawrence Rhodes
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce EVangel Parmenter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 11:32 PM
Subject: EVLN(Carmakers scrap EVs)
> 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
> -
>
>
>
>
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> . http://geocities.com/brucedp
> . EV List Editor & RE newswires
> . (originator of the above EV ascci art)
> =====
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