- Jun 23, 2001
- 27,730
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Not a bad documentary, though I'm almost certain it was slanted to favor the electric car. It did raise a lot of interesting questions though. Such as why would GM and other automakers destroy cars that people wanted to buy and drive? The film blamed corporate greed, both on the oil companies and the automakers, though they also targeted today's uninformed consumer.
Just out of curiousity, how many people here would buy a fully electric car? For sake of argument, lets say it has a maximum range of 100mi per charge, has a top speed of 85mph, can be charged from home, and requires roughly 8hr of charge time to get a full charge. With modern technology, and even older technology, a lot of these specs could be substantially increased. The film made note of a battery technology that could increase the range of the EV1 to 300mi per charge, however GM purchased majority control of the company and sat on it, later selling it to Texaco, who shelved it.
Another thing that film pointed out that really irked me was how GM marketed the EV1. You couldn't buy the car, only lease it. Their ad campaign was atrocious. Since when does a narrator that sounds like grandma talking over words etched in black sidewalk chalk on asphalt next to the shadow of a car sell a car? Sex appeal and demonstrations of power and abilities sell cars. Yet, not in any of GMs ads was there an attractive female, or male.
Furthermore, their leasing agreements seemed designed to fail. The film alleged that the leasing agreement was incredibly detailed, prying into the personal lives of the potential leasers. There also also a short commentary about the waiting list lease an EV1. One of the designers of the EV1 claimed their waiting list was huge and that they couldn't build cars fast enough to satisfy demand. GM reps claimed that the list had roughly 4000 names on it of people who 'raised their hands and said they'd buy and EV1'. However, the very next sentence from his mouth, and I quote 'After we sat down and went over the limitations of the car, that list shrank to about 50.' Why in the world would would you demean a product that you're trying to get me to buy? Thats like the salesman at Costco trying to talk you out of buying that 60in HDTV its requires a certain sized room for optimal viewing.
Finally, lets say the models run on a price range of 23k to 35k, depending on the packages and configurations.
Assuming these general specs and limitations though, would you purchase and electric car?
Here's my stance:
At the moment, I drive a 2000 Corolla Cheap Edition (CE). Its been a reliable, dependable vehicle, with the exception of the tires regularly going soft. That may be caused by my buying cheap tires though. My Corolla gets pretty solid gas mileage compared to other vehicles on the road and serves its purpose very well. For my purposes, I drive the car to and from work, which is roughly 6mi each way with a total trip of a little over 12mi. Typically, thats at least 5 days per week, but it can go to 7 days per week on occasion. I also drive to and from school. I haven't jogged to school yet, so I don't have an exact distance taken from my Garmin Forerunner, but I know its less than the distance to work. Lets say its roughly 4mi one way, 8mi total. The days per week vary, at least 1, as high as 4, depending on the semester. We'll go with 4 days per week for school and 5 days a week for work, which should present a fairly typical driving week. 5 days a week, 12 miles covered, comes to 60 miles driven. 4 days a week to school, 8 miles per trip, comes to 32 miles covered in a week. Thats only 92 miles covered in a week.
There's also the odd trips to the Walmart, Best Buy, movie theaters, etc. However, those are unpredictable and I don't have exact mileage for those distances. I think its safe to say that I drive between 115 miles and 150 miles per week.
Now, every time I fill up my gas tank, I write down the price of gas at the pump, my current odometer mileage, and the total price of the fill-up. I don't have the log in front of me at the moment, but given that I fill up roughly every 12 days or so, these per week estimates seems to be fairly realistic.
If our hypothetical electric car can only go 100 miles on a charge, obviously its not going to last to the end of the week. However, as with the EV1 and other EVs, we can plug this vehicle in at home to charge it. Given this, I shouldn't ever run out of the 'fuel' for the car so long as I remember to 1)Plug it in overnight and 2)Pay the electric bill.
As I was watching the film, they spoke at length about hydrogen fuel cells and their viability. Bare in mind that I fully support R&D into many different alternative fuels, but I'm starting to think that the fully electric vehicle is a more viable solution, at least for the couple of decades. What the film pointed out is that making hydrogen requires more electricity than simply using batteries. With the battery, your electricity comes straight from the city grid through your charger to your EV. With hydrogen, the power from the city grid converts water into hydrogen which your HFCV converts back to electricity to make the car go. Whether this is true, I don't know. Technology does improve all the time, but both batteries and fuel cell technology will continue to evolve and grow.
Now, I'll actually answer my original question.
Yes, I would be interested in an electric car, and likely would purchase one if they were available. My initial concerns would be the initial cost of the car and its maintenance costs. From what the film suggested, maintenance on the EV1 was a cake walk because it didn't require fuel filters, oil changes, etc. They also pointed out that the engine was very clean, clean meaning the mechanic's hands didn't come away black after working on it.
I hope to get a few more years out of my Corolla. With my current payment schedule, it should be paid off entirely in Aug 08. After that, I intend to take the car payment money and stash it in a savings account for a while. With my 300 USD per month car payment, thats roughly 3600 per year, no counting interest. Provided I can get a few more years of life from my Corolla, it shouldn't take more than a couple of years to purchase a shiny new hybrid eventually. Well, I know its kinda foolish to plan a purchase 4 years down the line of an object thats always changing due to technology advancement, I can stock pile the money for the purchase of a new vehicle in that time frame. Not a bad plan at all.
Cliffs:
- You shouldn't be lazy, read the post.
- Watched 'Who Killed the Electric Car'
- Ran a rough estimate of my driving habits
- Used simple specs of EVs to gauge interest at ATOT
- Gave my opinion
*Waits for the grammar nazis to critique my long post*
Just out of curiousity, how many people here would buy a fully electric car? For sake of argument, lets say it has a maximum range of 100mi per charge, has a top speed of 85mph, can be charged from home, and requires roughly 8hr of charge time to get a full charge. With modern technology, and even older technology, a lot of these specs could be substantially increased. The film made note of a battery technology that could increase the range of the EV1 to 300mi per charge, however GM purchased majority control of the company and sat on it, later selling it to Texaco, who shelved it.
Another thing that film pointed out that really irked me was how GM marketed the EV1. You couldn't buy the car, only lease it. Their ad campaign was atrocious. Since when does a narrator that sounds like grandma talking over words etched in black sidewalk chalk on asphalt next to the shadow of a car sell a car? Sex appeal and demonstrations of power and abilities sell cars. Yet, not in any of GMs ads was there an attractive female, or male.
Furthermore, their leasing agreements seemed designed to fail. The film alleged that the leasing agreement was incredibly detailed, prying into the personal lives of the potential leasers. There also also a short commentary about the waiting list lease an EV1. One of the designers of the EV1 claimed their waiting list was huge and that they couldn't build cars fast enough to satisfy demand. GM reps claimed that the list had roughly 4000 names on it of people who 'raised their hands and said they'd buy and EV1'. However, the very next sentence from his mouth, and I quote 'After we sat down and went over the limitations of the car, that list shrank to about 50.' Why in the world would would you demean a product that you're trying to get me to buy? Thats like the salesman at Costco trying to talk you out of buying that 60in HDTV its requires a certain sized room for optimal viewing.
Finally, lets say the models run on a price range of 23k to 35k, depending on the packages and configurations.
Assuming these general specs and limitations though, would you purchase and electric car?
Here's my stance:
At the moment, I drive a 2000 Corolla Cheap Edition (CE). Its been a reliable, dependable vehicle, with the exception of the tires regularly going soft. That may be caused by my buying cheap tires though. My Corolla gets pretty solid gas mileage compared to other vehicles on the road and serves its purpose very well. For my purposes, I drive the car to and from work, which is roughly 6mi each way with a total trip of a little over 12mi. Typically, thats at least 5 days per week, but it can go to 7 days per week on occasion. I also drive to and from school. I haven't jogged to school yet, so I don't have an exact distance taken from my Garmin Forerunner, but I know its less than the distance to work. Lets say its roughly 4mi one way, 8mi total. The days per week vary, at least 1, as high as 4, depending on the semester. We'll go with 4 days per week for school and 5 days a week for work, which should present a fairly typical driving week. 5 days a week, 12 miles covered, comes to 60 miles driven. 4 days a week to school, 8 miles per trip, comes to 32 miles covered in a week. Thats only 92 miles covered in a week.
There's also the odd trips to the Walmart, Best Buy, movie theaters, etc. However, those are unpredictable and I don't have exact mileage for those distances. I think its safe to say that I drive between 115 miles and 150 miles per week.
Now, every time I fill up my gas tank, I write down the price of gas at the pump, my current odometer mileage, and the total price of the fill-up. I don't have the log in front of me at the moment, but given that I fill up roughly every 12 days or so, these per week estimates seems to be fairly realistic.
If our hypothetical electric car can only go 100 miles on a charge, obviously its not going to last to the end of the week. However, as with the EV1 and other EVs, we can plug this vehicle in at home to charge it. Given this, I shouldn't ever run out of the 'fuel' for the car so long as I remember to 1)Plug it in overnight and 2)Pay the electric bill.
As I was watching the film, they spoke at length about hydrogen fuel cells and their viability. Bare in mind that I fully support R&D into many different alternative fuels, but I'm starting to think that the fully electric vehicle is a more viable solution, at least for the couple of decades. What the film pointed out is that making hydrogen requires more electricity than simply using batteries. With the battery, your electricity comes straight from the city grid through your charger to your EV. With hydrogen, the power from the city grid converts water into hydrogen which your HFCV converts back to electricity to make the car go. Whether this is true, I don't know. Technology does improve all the time, but both batteries and fuel cell technology will continue to evolve and grow.
Now, I'll actually answer my original question.
Yes, I would be interested in an electric car, and likely would purchase one if they were available. My initial concerns would be the initial cost of the car and its maintenance costs. From what the film suggested, maintenance on the EV1 was a cake walk because it didn't require fuel filters, oil changes, etc. They also pointed out that the engine was very clean, clean meaning the mechanic's hands didn't come away black after working on it.
I hope to get a few more years out of my Corolla. With my current payment schedule, it should be paid off entirely in Aug 08. After that, I intend to take the car payment money and stash it in a savings account for a while. With my 300 USD per month car payment, thats roughly 3600 per year, no counting interest. Provided I can get a few more years of life from my Corolla, it shouldn't take more than a couple of years to purchase a shiny new hybrid eventually. Well, I know its kinda foolish to plan a purchase 4 years down the line of an object thats always changing due to technology advancement, I can stock pile the money for the purchase of a new vehicle in that time frame. Not a bad plan at all.
Cliffs:
- You shouldn't be lazy, read the post.
- Watched 'Who Killed the Electric Car'
- Ran a rough estimate of my driving habits
- Used simple specs of EVs to gauge interest at ATOT
- Gave my opinion
*Waits for the grammar nazis to critique my long post*
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