Who killed the electric car?
 

Anyone seen this movie?

http://media.monstersandcritics.com/...twhokilled.jpg

Yeah, I started a post on it a few weeks back. Interesting movie.

The people on this forum are behind on everything.

I have just seen it last week. The fact that this actually happened IN CALIFORNIA makes me pretty sad.

I saw it last year. Quite eye-opening. And every other year since, GM has the balls to say "we have a new electric car in concept almost ready for production!" What a crock.

Ford's truck and SUV sales fell 18% in April versus a year ago, while GM and Chrysler posted declines of 27% and 25%, respectively. The comments from Ford on Thursday indicate that the decline is more severe in May.

Ford shares fell 8.2% Thursday to close at $7.16, while GM shares tumbled 3.6% to $18.43. Chrysler, which was acquired last year by Cerberus Capital Management, isn't publicly traded

culled from: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/...3_FORTUNE5.htm

lol When the movie first came out, gas prices were not the issue that they are now and big back then was still beautiful...

Saw it awhile back....damn good documentary

Seems to me the electric car isn't ready for prime time yet. If I can't drive 400 miles on one charge then it's worthless because from time to time I drive down to SoCal.

On top of that, if I have to drop $6k on new batteries every five years, well, then it's not going to be worth it for most of us.

My mother has an Escape Hybrid, and I must admit it's interesting to drive at slower speeds when the motor is off.

Very good Doc.... Still waiting on the 9/11 scandal

"Quietly Shocking" sums it up quite well lol

great documentary

makes me salivate over this

http://www.carforums.net/reviews/mak...a-roadster.jpg

All electric and 0-60 in 3.9 seconds :thumbsup

old but still actual.

arguarbly now more actual than ever, as the gas prices on the artwork on the movie promo bears witness...

thought it was very good

sounds lame

Amen bro :thumbsup

Maybe to you, but you know other people do exist .... and some don't need 400 miles autonomy ....

I myself rarely drive more then 50-60 miles .., and if I needed to, I could rent a car , a van or whatever for that occasion ...

As for batteries, technology would respond to the demand ...

I remember my first cell phone in 1988 , the phone was huge and heavy, the battery lasted about 12 hours on standby, 1-2 hours talk time ... Today, we know how it is .. So if a guy like you would have said at the time :

"I don't need a phone that can't give me a few days of autonomy, I have a paget and I will use payphone when needed .. "

Amazing how right wing people are against progress....

I rented it awhile back. Was sad to see. I guess I'm surprised how car companies don't put more effort into this stuff. You'd think the first guys that can do it well would be rolling in dough. Instead, car companies continue to go down the shitter because they're run by old execs who are out of touch with society.

very good point

Not just that, but I believe the idea was that gas stations would offer "plugs" so people could recharge their batteries for a small fee on longer trips. Rest stops would have power stations. Basically society would shift to electricity.

As the market shifted, technology would advance faster as you said. We'd have batteries lasting longer, charging faster, and so on. Just looking at the advancement of batteries in laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices would be a sign of what we could expect in the car industry. They'd be constantly battling to build a car that could go farther, charge faster, etc. Great for consumers and technology.

actually batteries have not got much better in the last 10 years we just have phones that use less power :2 cents::2 cents:

Electric cars are getting quite reasonable, 10k-30k, and they run up to 120 miles on a charge which is perfect for any cross-town commuter.

Beside the point and 1988 is 20 years ago, not 10 :2 cents:

And maybe they could produce cars that use less power !

point taken im sure in the 5th model of the same car will use less power :)

Toyota did the same thing as GM
http://www.toyota.com/vehicles/rav4ev/

66% of the world's electrical power, and 95% of the world's total energy demands (including heating, transport, electricity generation and other uses).

Are powered by fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas)

So just because it is electricity doesn't mean it would be that much cheaper then Gasoline. Odds are if cars were run on electricity then the cost would go up since power demand would sky rocket.

Who killed the electric guitar ??

We could have solar panels at our house to charge these easily.

I saw this about a year ago. It was very good and pissed me off.

I had one of these for 2+ years did about 36,000 miles drove about 40 miles a day to and from my business on flat roads doing 65-70 mph most of the time. Averaged 24 mpg and it cost me $8,800 more than the standard non hybrid Escape. The batteries are supposed to last for 10 years. I had a faulty ignition switch which would not let me turn the engine off so i drove it to a Ford dealer who took 4 hours to locate how to switch off the batteries and 5 days to replace the switch.
If this is Hybrid technology you can keep it :321GFY:321GFY

The current hybrids suck right now to be honest. They have some cool stuff coming though if they actually make enough to sell to the people that want it. I'm still amazed at how these car companies cry about losing money but have massive waiting lists for their hybrid vehicles.

BINGO

Glad to see others realize this.

Israel electric car project aims to wipe out oil

Israel has announced backing for Project Better Place, intended to switch motor transportation from oil to electric.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01...c_car_project/

havent heard of that film before..!?

the stone cutters killed the electric car

No one ever talks about the amount your electric bill goes up at home if you have to plug a car in. How much is it? Do you just leave it plugged up all the time or do you have to 'manage' it ?

Never heard of it but sounds interesting for sure

Just imagine a world that doesn't need " BIG OIL" anymore. All those big Texas morons and the middle east will just get flushed down and out.

What significance will the OIL producing countries have after OIL? They will be our best friends because of all the money we will be giving them for assistance. The world will turn.

Texas will be given back to Mexico and we will make it mandatory that they take G W Bush with Texas.

NOT TRUE! My "Space Invaders" thread was the first I've ever seen on this board! I'm WAAAAYYY ahead!

Here's the trailer...https://youtube.com/watch?v=MSBykAngDpY

:1orglaugh ohhh baby :1orglaugh
Right in the balls.

I miss Xpics :1orglaugh but all you of know that by now !

The same can be said about ethanol... which is already being seen.

Perpetual motion...

thats put together by those oil company interest parties... everyone should start buying these.... http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=830741

The Chevy Volt doesn't look like a crock to me, they have laid a lot of money and staff on the project already and it will come to production rather soon and they are talking about at minimum 10's of thousands per year and quite likely over a hundred thousand a year being made. As much as I personally would love to get off oil, and think the Government and industry should be doing more to get off oil, the first EVs were destined to fail, and I don't think you can really blame GM for not dumping their money into something that was ahead of it's time. Battery technology just now is starting to become viable, and reality it is still around 5-10 years off being truly viable to power the average car.

Almost all the major car companies now have EVs in the works though, or REEV (Range Extended EVs) which generally travel something like 40-50 miles on battery power alone and than have a traditional engine kick in and take over if you need to drive further after that. Volvo (Ford), GM, Honda, Nissan, I believe BMW as well, things are just now starting to seriously move. In 5 years you will be looking at REEVs being produced and sold in the hundreds of thousands or millions (like the Prius), and in 10 years you will see pure EVs being sold in the hundreds of thousands or millions per year. I'd say it will be 12-15 years before pure EVs are really economically viable, and thus produced in large enough numbers to really get us off oil. But it's coming.

For information sake, the battery pack on that Tesla travels 220-240 miles on a charge, costs $20,000 (at present) to make and lasts something like 100,000 miles or 5 years before it needs replacing. They are saying both the capacity/range and cost of batteries are improving at a rate of about 8-10% per year. So in 10 years you'll get your 400-500 miles per charge, and by the time the battery needs replacing on the Tesla (in 5 years) it will cost you something like $12,000, and 5 years on from that (can't be fucked doing the math), but something like $6000-7000. In addition to that they have experimental charging stations in the work (at Tesla and elsewhere) that can charge these things in around 30 minutes, but obviously not from a home connection. That's when EV's will hit their prime.