Too bad they didn't work out. Had the right idea but maybe they needed a little more styling. Just my .02.
[ 01. February 2004, 05:28 AM: Message edited by: ss_rs_z ]
Posted by Mike Bonte (Member # 1892) on :
I never understood the point of electric vehicles.
The don't produce any less pollution, they just move it somewhere else.
Posted by TimeLord (Member # 1389) on :
Bureaucrats and politicians,that is the only reason why !!!
They can't catch on in California for lack of range,try running these in winter in New York with the heater blasting,range 5 miles!!!
Posted by MM (Member # 1247) on :
quote:Originally posted by ss_rs_z: Too bad they didn't work out. Had the right idea but maybe they needed a little more styling. Just my .02.
They didn't need styling... they had the lowest cof. of drag of any production car ever produced! They did that to maxmize the range of the car.... they may have been a little to far ahead of their time....
Posted by MM (Member # 1247) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mike Bonte: I never understood the point of electric vehicles.
The don't produce any less pollution, they just move it somewhere else.
Yeah but tell the politcians who mandated a certain % of electric cars on the road.... they made that leglistaltion in the early 90's and have since gone back as it wasn't feasible....
Electic cars are cool though.... 100% instant torque form a dead stop!
Posted by BrostalSS (Member # 1830) on :
Gotta love politicians.
Why do you think the F-car was killed?
Politician wanted higher side-impact standards.
The f-car didn't meet 2004 standards. Bye Bye F-car.
Then of course GM didn't want to fork out the money to re-tool, they had the SSR to build Posted by ss_rs_z (Member # 1888) on :
quote:Originally posted by MM:
quote:Originally posted by ss_rs_z: Too bad they didn't work out. Had the right idea but maybe they needed a little more styling. Just my .02.
They didn't need styling... they had the lowest cof. of drag of any production car ever produced! They did that to maxmize the range of the car.... they may have been a little to far ahead of their time....
Could very well have been. Not an Engineer here so I had no idea they had the lowest coeffiecient of drag on them. I learned something new.
[ 01. February 2004, 01:10 PM: Message edited by: ss_rs_z ]
Posted by MM (Member # 1247) on :
quote:Originally posted by BrostalSS: Gotta love politicians.
Why do you think the F-car was killed?
Politician wanted higher side-impact standards.
The f-car didn't meet 2004 standards. Bye Bye F-car.
Then of course GM didn't want to fork out the money to re-tool, they had the SSR to build
Trust me there was more to it then that.... but that was one of many reasons....
Posted by MM (Member # 1247) on :
quote:Originally posted by ss_rs_z:
quote:Originally posted by MM:
quote:Originally posted by ss_rs_z: Too bad they didn't work out. Had the right idea but maybe they needed a little more styling. Just my .02.
They didn't need styling... they had the lowest cof. of drag of any production car ever produced! They did that to maxmize the range of the car.... they may have been a little to far ahead of their time....
Could very well have been. Not an Engineer here so I had no idea they had the lowest coeffiecient of drag on them. I learned something new.
Thats what were here for..... Posted by ss_rs_z (Member # 1888) on :
And I really appreciate it. I Love To Learn new things. What a great place and people we have. Posted by FireChicken (Member # 2067) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mike Bonte: I never understood the point of electric vehicles.
The don't produce any less pollution, they just move it somewhere else.
Bingo! We have a winner. Actually, electric cars produce far more pollution than comparable combustion-engine vehicles. The reason? You have to generate enormous amounts of electricty to push it at such high voltages through so many miles of lines and transformers. The loss of energy due to heat is enormous, and so the power requirements are insanely high. Of course, you will create more pollutants generating the electricty than you will burning gas in a car engine. Also look at general efficiency. A gas generator at your house is significantly more efficient than power from the power company, just because you dont have miles of lines to travel through. The increase of pollution is one major reason why electric cars havent really been pushed by people in the know, other than political-appearance experiments. That, and the fact that speed/range for battery pack size is not linear. There reaches an optimum point, beyond which the addition of battery packs becomes cost prohibitive when looking at dollars spent per range increase. And the optimum point makes these cars great for innter-city commuter vehicles, but you cant carry cargo or many people, and you cant go out of town.
I for one am glad to see electric cars being canned.
[ 02. February 2004, 11:06 AM: Message edited by: FireChicken ]
Posted by KurtK (Member # 1779) on :
quote:Originally posted by FireChicken:
quote:Originally posted by Mike Bonte: I never understood the point of electric vehicles.
The don't produce any less pollution, they just move it somewhere else.
Bingo! We have a winner. Actually, electric cars produce far more pollution than comparable combustion-engine vehicles. The reason? You have to generate enormous amounts of electricty to push it at such high voltages through so many miles of lines and transformers. The loss of energy due to heat is enormous, and so the power requirements are insanely high. Of course, you will create more pollutants generating the electricty than you will burning gas in a car engine. Also look at general efficiency. A gas generator at your house is significantly more efficient than power from the power company, just because you dont have miles of lines to travel through. The increase of pollution is one major reason why electric cars havent really been pushed by people in the know, other than political-appearance experiments. That, and the fact that speed/range for battery pack size is not linear. There reaches an optimum point, beyond which the addition of battery packs becomes cost prohibitive when looking at dollars spent per range increase. And the optimum point makes these cars great for innter-city commuter vehicles, but you cant carry cargo or many people, and you cant go out of town.
I for one am glad to see electric cars being canned.
FC- Thank you for your post!
I wish some of these idiots proposing zero tailpipe emissions vehicles would wake up.
The EV1 was heavily subsidized by GM- and where did GM get the $$'s? From their customers- so we all helped with this grand experiment.
Posted by Bill Mason (Member # 1807) on :
Besides the problems with quite limited range and the "total cost of power" to run those things there is the batteries themselves. They are expensive to buy (part of the initial cost), are heavy which adds to the power consumption and plays havoc with the handling and braking, are bulky which cuts into the useable space, and relatively short life with ongoing cost to replace. Then, there is the whole issue and cost to dispose of all toxic chemicals and materials in the wasted battery packs.
Kind of make you wonder about the competence of the law makers who mandated these types of programs in the first place.
Anyone remember when MacDonalds started using recyclable foam containers and they got dumped on by the Green Peace types.
Turns out MacDonalds had doen its home work while Grren Peace did not. The pressure was so great that MacDonalds eventually abandoned the program but in so doing it noted that returning to paper wrappers resulted in more fill in the dumps as none of the waste was recyclable and it cost more energy to produce the paper wrappers than the foam ones. Green Peace looked pretty stupid...and IMHO deservedly so.
Sure hope, GM at least kept a couple of them for historical purposes. Still makes an interesting footnote in the history of automobiles.
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
![[Mad]](mad.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
