Lawrence Rhodes via EV wrote: From: Larry Gales <[email protected]>
The smaller you make a gas vehicle, the uglier, noisier, dirtier, they become . In addition, they are proportionally less efficient.
Indeed, that has been the general pattern. Small vehicles are cheap vehicles, and the emission standards have been written to allow them to pollute proportionately more (i.e. "gram per mile"). So manufacturers don't produce, and customers won't buy low-pollution small vehicles because they would cost more. This problem applies to *all* small engines; motorbikes, lawn mowers, etc. But there are examples of "clean" small engines. Some use fuel injection, catalytic converters, and other known techniques to reduce pollution. There are also indoor vehicles, like forklifts and floor scrubbers, that run on propane or natural gas to reduce pollution.
But electric vehicles downsize beautifully: they are always quiet, clean, and very efficient. Given that 75% of all trips we make in cars today are within 10 miles, and the average number of people in a car is 1.7, very small electric vehicles could make a major difference in our cities.
They certainly can be! But I suspect manufacturers are hard at work to find ways to make full-size EVs that are every bit as big, heavy, complicated, expensive, and hard to repair as regular ICE vehicles. That's what it will take to maintain their business model!
Right now, the only type of micro electric vehicle that is surging in a major way, is the electric bike. But I believe that NEVs should also become a major part of the mix.
That seems to be the case in many other parts of the world. But in the US, EVs of any type are pretty rare. I doubt that electric bikes and NEVs have much less than 1% of the market.
It's not an engineering problem; it's a marketing problem. Right now, most "good 'ol boys" wouldn't be caught dead in a micro-car. Someone has to find a way to make small vehicles (and especially EVs) "fashionable".
For example: I have observed that golf cars often come in fancy versions, with elaborate styling and luxury features. They have air conditioning, satellite radio, leather seats, and just about anything else you'd find on a luxury car. You can buy ones that look like a Rolls Royce, Ferrari, HummVee, '57 Thunderbird, and all sorts of exotica. The people buying and driving them don't seem to care if they're EVs or not; they just want the "looks" styling to impress others!
Lee Hart -- We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. -- Albert Einstein -- Lee Hart, 814 8th Ave N, Sartell MN 56377, www.sunrise-ev.com -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Address messages to [email protected] No other addresses in TO and CC fields UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/ LIST INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
