Who killed The Electric Car?

because humans don't have wheels, airbags, a/c or the ability to run at 90mph for 12 hours straight.

[edit on 6-12-2007 by scientist]

reply to post by cloakndagger

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Lets kill the cancer that killed the original Tesla electric car.

Bankers are in control of all the Tesla energy devices if not burnt
all records. Evil maniacs that cause war for oil and profit and dictate
that Tesla and electrical energy devices not be studied.


Let get the doctors shall we.

Tesla denial will keep oil king.

One of the beauties of an electric car is that it doesn't matter what kind of power source is used to generate electricity, the car can essentially use all of them. If you use a local gas-powered generator at your house, the electricity generated can be stored in the cars batteries. The same is true if you have a wind turbine, solar panels, or a direct tie to the electric grid.

If your utility company uses wind, then your power is essentially non-polluting. Nuclear, solar, geothermal, and hydro generation are also non-polluting.

If you get a little dirtier, your electric company could use natural gas. Then there's coal. But even using a coal-fired power plant as the energy source for cars will end up pumping out far less pollution per mile driven than a car with an internal combustion engine. The reasons are many, but here is a short list:

1) The power plant is physically large. It is therefore possible to equip it with many types of pollution control and emissions regulation devices that physically cannot fit inside the engine compartment of a car. These devices also may be too expensive to install in every automobile on the road. With a power plant, you only have to install them once, and there is plenty of room for the machines.

2) Coal power plants are more efficient than internal combustion engines. A car engine only converts about 15% of the energy in a gallon of gasoline into motion of the car. A coal power plant does much better. Using highly efficient steam turbine engines, and multiple heat-recovery stages, some coal power plants are able to turn as much as 59% (current record) of the energy of the combustion of fossil fuels into electricity.

3) Energy use in an electric car is much more efficient overall. Independent of where you get your electricity from, the electric motor itself converts electricity into motion at between 80% and 95% efficiency. Contrast this with the 15% efficient internal combustion engine.



In regard to all the posts about the power grid not being able to handle the demands of charging up electric cars...

There has been a lot of study of this idea, and it turns out that the power grid could easily handle millions of electric cars on the road. The reason is that power grid demands are not the same throughout the day. During the night, electricity use can be as much as 5 times less than peak hours during the day. This is the perfect time to make use of unused capacity in the electric grid, and charge up your cars.


So, because of the fact that the world mostly shuts down for the night, the power grid has a lot of untapped potential that would require many millions of cars to fully utilize.


Also, the world is not an unchanging place. When electric cars start becoming popular, there will be corresponding changes to the infrastructure to meet any unmet demands as they unfold.


Some other benefits of electric car use:


*Extremely quiet.

*Few moving parts. Lower maintenance.

*Cost. Yes, cost! Once batteries become mass produced, their costs will ultimately become lower than internal combustion engines. Right now a modern assembly-line factory can produce an assembled engine for under $1000. The battery is far simpler, and with fewer parts. It stands to reason that once mass-production efficiencies are factored in, the battery of an electric car will cost less than today's engines.


Overall, this type of vehicle offers solution after solution to the world's transportation and energy problems.



[edit on 6-12-2007 by dionysius9]

reply to post by Bluess

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Just wanted to state that most countries are embracing modern diesels as they burn even cleaner than the four stroke engine in most American vehicles
The addition of computer control allows for a very clean diesel engine which I might add is on track for a big comeback probably even stateside except for California where they are illegal.

Couldn't be all bad if VW is using them in new vehicles also the new Jeep Liberty is available in a diesel

One other note
electric cars were available at the turn of the century people liked them cause you didn't chance breaking your arm crank starting your car however as they were electric powered you had to live in or very near a city to own one
they were eventually pushed out of fashion with a little (tongue in cheek) help from big oil and the fact that Henry Ford started mass producing internal combustion engines..
this link give a brief but thorough history.

inventors.about.com...



Respectfully,
GEO

A look at alt. car systems.....

Hydrogen Cars...
Hydrogen cars are not the way to go. The most common ways to make hydrogen is to "break" water. To do this they run an electrical current through the water which causes the oxygen and hydrogen molecules to separate. The big problem here that it takes more electricity to "break" the water then you can produce burning the hydrogen. This means a net loss of electricity/energy. You would use more electricity making hydrogen then you can ever hope to get out it. The only good thing about hydrogen is once it is produced you store allot of it in a small space. This make it great for the space shuttle and/or the military were you care more a storage and weight then efficiency. For the average person who cares about efficiency then hydrogen is the big dud. Some ideas for making hydrogen more efficient are to use renewable energy sources like wind, solar, etc. to make the hydrogen, however even going this route it would be more efficient to use the energy from whatever source then to store it as hydrogen.


Electric Cars....
A good concept but many technological challenges to overcome. Batteries have the exact opposite problem of hydrogen they are efficient however they takes up allot of space and they're heavy. Which means there weight is added to cars making it harder for motors to push the car down the road. The best electric cars are stuck about 100 miles between recharges, and again that the best ones. Compound that with long charge times and cost of the cars and you have problems. If only a few times a years you have to travel more then 50 miles from you home (100 miles round trip) your going to need another car. So people wanting an electrical car would have to buy and expensive electrical car plus another car for the longer trips. Anybody with electrical car has got limitations to the use of the car, you might not be able to go were you want to go when you want to go there. There is some work going into getting rid of the batteries altogether and use a capacitor based system. I forget the name, but there is a company out there working on capacitors which can hold a large amount of current (Normal capacitors can't hold much current at all). These capacitors would be much smaller then batteries and would charge in minuets not hours, but they're not there yet. If and when the capacitors are profited the electric cars just might be the best alternative. Till such time it's not practical for the everyday Joe.


Gas Electric - Hybrid...
The problems of gas car plus the added cost of an electric cars. Yet, if you are rich and you buy a hybrid its one of the better system out there right now, and can't say too much bad about it. I just hope it doesn't break down on you. I don't want the car note or the mechanic bill.


Flex Fuel Cars (same applies for bio-diesel)....
Flex fuel is a tricky can of worms. The cars aren't the problem they are cheap and as of today are best alternative system you can buy. It's the fuel itself has the presentational to be the problem, or could be the best thing sense gas. It's debatable if enough ethanol can be produced to maintain the status quo that gas has. Also there is no infostructure for ethanol and would have to be built. This becomes a big big big gamble as to building it or not. What if some company started build plants, is there enough material to make allot of ethanol? What's the gas companies going to do, drop there prices and put ethanol out of business? What's the electric car going to do? Are they going to be the preferred car in the future, if so what return can I expect by building an expensive infostructure? No company in right mind would take these risk right now, but would wait it out a little longer to see what's going to happen. As of now the flex fuel cars are cheap enough that it wouldn't hurt to buy one, and fill up with ethanol once a year when you run across a pump. On the other hand the electric car may not come for some time, in which case ethanol would be the preferred fuel for the near future. If I were to have to place a bet I would say it's not worth the time and money to build ethanol plants, because I think the electric car will come to pass.


Conclusions...
Gas, coal, wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, and etc. whichever is going to be the dominate source of energy only one of the above systems can handle them all. The electric car is the only system that going to last, making electricity is the common ground for all sources of energy. No matter which fuel wins out, or combination of fuels wins it can be turned to electricity easily. If it were my money and my call I would spend my dime on overcoming the technological challenges of electric cars and there batteries. No other system offers the flexablity the electric car has...or could have if the up front money was spent on them. So the electric car not dead, it's just resting right-now waiting for it's time to shine.







[edit on 6-12-2007 by ebe51]

The movie's conclusions:

Consumers — Guilty
Batteries — Not Guilty
Oil companies — Guilty
Car companies — Guilty
Government — Guilty
California Air Resources Board — Guilty
Hydrogen fuel cell — Guilty

The film has been criticized for some of its suggestions.

From Edmunds.com
Karl Brauer, editor-in-chief of Edmunds com, a popular auto market web site, wrote his own criticism of the movie[2], contrasting the interpretations in the movie with his own in a rumor/fact format. For example, regarding how GM negatively marketed the car, he said:

Rumor: There were 5,000 people who wanted an EV1, but GM wouldn't let them buy it.
Fact: There were 5,000 people who expressed interest in an EV1, but when GM called them back and explained that the car cost $299-plus a month to lease, went between 60 and 80 miles on a full charge, and took between 45 minutes and 15 hours to re-charge, very few would commit to leasing one (not too surprising, is it?). The film likes to quote a figure of 29 miles as the average American's daily driving needs, but that is a national figure and the EV1 was only sold in California and Arizona, primarily in Los Angeles. Anyone wanna guess what the average L.A. resident's daily driving need is? I'm betting it's higher than that national average....

Any thoughts

My family is the Studebaker's, long ago we set out with an invention for the electric car. I don't have time to go into a lot of detail right now, but you know how it all ended. Did you know according to that technology we should have been flying Hover Craft by now? Oh yes its true...

reply to post by antar

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Thanks for the input, yeah the hay day of electricity was when Tesla was
showing things off. Yet it is believed that some knew his techniques as well.

In 1892, 400 years after America was discovered, Tesla demonstrated his one wire light bulbs to the British greats of electrical science, theory, practice, physics and engineering.
This means an air conduction medium. Also seen as lightning from the
coils made by Tesla coil hobby enthusiasts.
Tesla lab burn down before 1900 and critical patents were placed in Europe
the very next day. This indicates a spy network operated around Tesla.
Many document and working models may have been stolen.
An all electric generator built after a Tesla design was stolen and perhaps became the Nazi Electric sub power plant.
Was it a matter of patent infringement that sent it packing to Europe?
These are some tasty points uncovered in the research of Mr. WR Lyne,
who had notoriety for the big 'cold fusion' phenomena.


A friend has some Studis in his back yard and went the Indiana
one summer to buy parts.

In the previous post I talked about how crappy the battery for an electric car was and that someone was working a capacitor based system. I found the link to a story about this...

www.boston.com...

This is neat, only when something like this becomes practical can the electric car become practical.

reply to post by ebe51

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Capacitors are as dangerous as batteries or more due to low internal
resistance the current surge is great. But are needed to hold charge.

Work with coils that hold current and won't discharge dangerous currents.
A very high multiple pole engine seems best. But this is on the working end.

A battery is needed for starting and field coils on alternators unless permanent magnets are used.
If a low power high frequency power source
can be found it can be geared down to travel speeds.

A recycle gas (noble gas) sparked with battery power might be hot enough
to power generators. Don't be surprised if the next generation of power
devices come from the exotic car headlight companies. Say what 20 years.

Then that capacitor might come in handy.

Yes capacitors are dangerous, yet coils are very heavy and weigh is an issue if being placed in cars. One solution for capacitors is to not make a big capacitor but make many small capacitors and use current limiting circuits in series with the discharging of the capacitors, and design the capacitors in such a way to minimize any damages if one blows. Also keep in mind this would not the normal capacitors we are use to seeing, but a new bread which would have issues that will need to be worked out.

Regardless of what type of battery, capacitor, or unknown method is used I still think car companies should put the bulk of the dollars into solving these problems and start making electric cars more practical. As stated in a previous post it's the system that with will handle any type of fuel source. All major fuels can be converted to electricity easily.

I remember as a kid in Long Beach California,all the trolleys were electric,at one time we had the best mass transit system in the world also had the red car,Think the oil companys greased a few politions and such was it's demise

Electric cars were on the scene first and disappeared from the scene mainly because oil was exceedingly plentiful and gasoline little more than a 'waste' product at the time. That coupled with Henry's investment in mass producing internal combustion engines and the absence of governmental pressure or incentive to invest in electric technology ( to mention nothing of the suppression of vacuum energy type's of technology as in Tesla's case) ensured that electric/battery cars were going to disappear from the scene for a long time.

Stellar



[edit on 17-12-2007 by StellarX]

As do the absolutely majority of films that have something accurate to say about this world.





So that's just a lie and he should know it. The 5000 was a 'short list' from a MUCH larger list that somehow goes unmentioned by GM...





Which then does not explain why ALL the cars they produced were leased to or used by someone while they had the capacity to produce ten times as many cars in the same period. Why the disparity between supposed demand and supposed production capacity? It is not normally implied that there is a large demand when all your product has been sold or leased?





So it had more range than suggested by the commentator and they refused to sell the car to those who wanted it. As to the cost :



So why would anyone in their right mind by a EV-1 one when it's so very easy to set up 'legal' small business and receive such a massive tax refund? Where is the governmental incentive to encourage electric/battery car usage?



I have presumed that the above statement is still part of the original author's comments.



So clearly the capacity for longer range EV1's were there and being used and implemented.



You tell me!

Stellar

[edit on 17-12-2007 by StellarX]

[edit on 17-12-2007 by StellarX]

who killed the electric car? we probably did it ourselves to a certain extent.

in the late 70's we started to pig out on very cheap oil, and in doing so abandoned a lot of research into solar, wind and other sources which is why they havent progressed as far as they could have.

now theres less oil and the prices are skyrocketing we are addicted to oil as an energy source and pay ridiculous prices, and other countries are addicted to the profits made from high $ oil.
its like a drug dealer/user scenario.

if we didnt turn back onto cheap oil we would have made much further inroads to better solar, wind and electric sources but we took the easy way out and got lazy, comfortable and complacent.

we all know america uses 25% of the worlds oil, yet it has 5% of the worlds population. when more people (and industries) realise that as population and demand increases the price will skyrocket and supply will decrease, then we might be forced into more research and progress into alternative energy sources.


[edit on 18/12/07 by Obliv_au]

To keep him warm, comfortable and safe, to do the same for his 60kg wife and 40kg kids, not to mention hauling around the 40kg of gas in the tank and the 20kg of junk in the trunk.

In theory, the automobile companies could make a very lightweight, minimalist car that gets very good gas mileage, but not many people would buy it, because we’d deem it impractical — you could “transport an 80kg human” in it and that’s about it.

You can already see it happening with the Smart car.

Yes! he ran demos for a week at Bonneville, very fast speeds in that day. A report pissed him off at the end of the trials and he unhooked his box and went home vowing the world would never have it.

The MEG generator is very similar, and tesla used the 6 volt car battery that was under the hood and the generator along with his device.

We have discovered free energy and are producing prototypes now that we can use to actually produce more energy from less in effect producing free energy... Install one of these devices in your garage and use it to charge your car, problem solved as far as I'm concerned...

YouTube Link

Free Energy Video

Tesla invented free power a long time ago... The only reason it wasn't produced is because the greedy people you see talked about realized there was no way to monitor the energy... So there would be no way to monitor usage and therefor it would have to be free... So they canned Tesla and his ideas... Tesla had a vehicle that ran off the free energy his tower produced... The corporate greeds along with the NWO and most likely they are part of the NWO want to control the world... They want to charge for and sell everything and anything... Only nature will push them to change their greed to a new source... Gee I wonder why they are pushing Hydrogen so much... hmmm... Cuz it's controllable? Cuz they can charge you for it? Id's say that is the reason they won't allow for the release of free energy and/or electric cars...

YouTube Link

This video is about Tesla and his ideas, inventions and other conspiracies that surrounded him...

YouTube Link

This video is 1 in 4 about Tesla and his inventions...

Think of this...

Imagine if you had a free energy device in your car... One that charged the batteries and gave you enough power to run on while moving on the road.... You would never have to charge the car, unless you ran it dead of course and it could travel more or less till the wheels fell off without having to stop for fuel... A small portable charger for emergencies could be provided that could be a free energy cell with the use of solar panels so you'd never have to plug it in... The vehicle would run completely free of fuel, would not pollute and would probably last 100 years with minor tune ups... It would be a free vehicle... It would also be something the NWO couldn't charge you for... Could not control... They would lose money because they are not vested in this type of technology... In my opinion too bad... If they had vested when the technology was available 100 years ago we would all have free energy or electric cars today...

Watching the film it's obvious the "powers that be" control our travel by controlling our fuel... They control our lives by controlling our power... Free ourselves from the fuel and use free energy sources and we free ourselves from the system... Free energy house, free energy vehicles, home grown food's and all of sudden they can't control you at all and you will need to be destroyed... just kidding, however probable...

[edit on 11-3-2008 by jcbrownman]

Right up until your injectors wear...then Rudolph's baby is the dirtiest engine this side of a two-stroke.



'Cause you've got to grow it somewhere and that somewhere is either pre-existing farmland, which means less food, or cleared forest, which means less oxygen and more CO2.




Right. Until you take the filter off, which represents 100% emission in search of disposal.



Yes, but an electric car has 0% carbon emission because it has zero emission (that's back at the power station).



Now try living in a country where diesel costs upward of US$1.00 to US$1.20 per litre...does a refill still come in at under $10?



You're kidding, right? I mean, is this what you call rich...



Then Australia must be filled with the filthy rich, 'cause car loans aren't seen as "extreme debt".

Toyota Camry: FROM AU$28, 490
Holden Commodore: FROM AU$34,790
Ford Mondeo: FROM AU$29,990




And most automotive mechanics are not diesel mechanics and not qualified to repair the injection systems of diesel engines. On the other hand, automotive electricians are fairly common tradesmen because



And people need to be able to repair this stuff. So if they can repair the wiring in your internal combustion car, why couldn't they repair your electric status symbol?



Yes. This is official called "compression ignition". However, even diesels need glow plugs when they are cold. Guess what powers the glow plugs.



Just to nit-pick a little, but pushing a diesel isn't "jump-starting" it. "Jump-starting" requires jumper leads and batteries. Which are for electrically-fired engines, ie petrol. Because a diesel doesn't use spark plugs you don't "jump" diesels. You "roll-start" them. However, you can only do that if it's a manual. If there is no clutch to drop then you need another vehicle to push you, because roll-starting an auto-go-magic requires around 30kph and dumping the damn thing into "D". Very hard on the box.



There is nothing "alternative" about diesels. They are carbon-emitting internal-combustion engines that get their fuel from the oil industry.