Who Killed the Electric Car?

But it ISN'T ! It's wind power that's generally popular here.

The Germans do and that's totally crazy given their latitude and consequent low insolation. It's a huge waste of resources.

Graham

Yes, so a heavy battery will reduce thne car's acceleration making its overal performance less acceptable.

And DO NOT forget rolling resistance which is affected by weight too.

The large battery will also mean you take longer to climb those hills.

Only for those who can afford it and indeed for those who have suitable parking space. This effectively rules out 'pure' EVs as a practical option for a large percentage of the population.

That's utterly ridiculous. Trailers have to be speed-limited for safety reasons and that's the last thing you want on a long trip. Never mind that most people haven't a clue how to drive properly with a trailer !

This is classic 'grabbing at straws'.

How do you propose to deal with the common situation where there is no off-road parking ?

GM currently has the best looking offerings (Volt and Flextreme). Due to be available in full-scale production in about 2 years. I think you mean poor Ford and Chrysler.

None of whom have any car manufacturing experience. Futhermore, there's alimited demand for 2 seaters.

GM's AHEAD ! You're clearly not aware of what they're doing.

Graham

Sounds like you guys need to form your own co-operatives to supply your own power.

Graham

Since when is that range a fixed requirement ?

I've 'commuted' as little as 20-25 miles daily and as far as 100 miles. I don't really want to have to buy a new car every time I find a new client!

Just WTF do you have against (P)HEVs ? It's clear that they fix ALL the arguments against EVs in a trice (except for not being able to hear them) and provide just as much benefit.

Graham

No. Lots of people simply do not have that option for financial or other practical reasons (lack of parking space etc).

Graham

My home doesn't have a garage with power point or otherwise. To recharge an EV I'd have to trail a power lead across the footpath which is clearly ridiculous. That's if I can park directly in front of my own house which I usually can't.

Here's one for sale in my road for nearly $1 mill that doesn't have one either.

There is LESS THAN ONE car parking space per house (each house is about 13 feet wide).

You need to consider that not everyone lives in the USA where you have many acres per person of land space. The same problem also occurs in some US cities too.

Graham

Car?:

Probably true.

However I'm utterly amazed that so many people posting here are unaware that GM looks to be the future market leader with several really promising (PH)EV products being planned and built in both the USA and Europe.

Specifically the GM Volt and Opel Flextreme. And unlike the useless EV1 these are proper 4 seater cars with a 400 mi range.

Graham

Typical 'green' daydreaming. It's one reason I no longer support greenpeace despite sending them a few quid every month for years. They're on the planet Zog these days and utterly out of touch with reality.

Graham

You have to be NUTS to compare Cuba to N Korea.

Heck, I have some friends who just holidayed in Cuba and they loved it. Things are changing there now with Fidel's fall from everyday control. Mind you they seriously started changing many years back anyway,

Graham

I just interviewed for a position as a network engineer for a hospital group. They were telling me about the regulations regarding 802.11 gear, it's enough to make your head spin.

The certification process is in a word, ridiculous.

Rhode Island or Republic of Ireland ?

Graham

Too bad for you and the other sardines. I have a 30' * 40' four car garage, with its own 100 A 240 VAC service. There is a 18' * 28' shop building, and a 12' * 24' guesthouse behind the three bedroom house. There are two 12' * 12' buildings as well. One is the laundry building, and the other a small workshop. A 6' * 10' potting shed is on the far end of the guest house, and a 10' * 10' dog kennel behind the guesthouse and shop buildings. It's on a half acre, with the Florida Greenbelt behind (Western side), and on the north side. Places like this can still be bought for under $100K in some areas of Florida.

You could have the same for a reasonable price, if you lived in a civilized country.

Most people in the US DON'T have acres of land, idiot. More of your vast ignorance of the US is showing.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Then tell us why we still see makeshift boats full of Cubans trying to make landfall in Florida? Another group was intercepted a few weeks ago. If what you say is true, they must despise having to live in paradise.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Which isn't all that impressive by European or Japanese standards of fuel efficiency. A BMW 3 series deisel saloon will manage that. eg

Urban 39.8 Motorway 64.2 mpg to save you following the link.

(and it will turn in that sort of excellent fuel efficiency at speeds well above the UK national speed limit of 70mph)

Factor in the energy costs of making and disposal of the Prius batteries and the deisel BMW almost certainly wins on lifetime costs.

BTW: How long do Prius batteries last?

Regards, Martin Brown

** Posted from **

I have Excel. "An unknown error occurred", the usual meaningful MS error message :-(

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

Worker's paradise:

John

Sure, but so far most European Diesels weren't able to pass emissions in California. And wasn't there that company in Germany that made soot filters that turned out not to work and they knew it? Read something like that in the papers.

No idea. AFAIK they keep them between 50% and 80% charge to make them last. So far none of the neighbors here has needed replacement and most of them use the Prius for lengthy daily commutes, including a grade you have to tackle to get up here.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

In about 1993, before HIPAA, I was working with a large medical office management group. The problem was that office space on the hospital campus was expensive, so they moved across the freeway to a cheaper location. The problem was that the cost of a T1 was rather. We were looking into wireless. All that was available in 1993 was Wavelan

802.11 at 2Mbits/sec (half that in thruput) and some 900MHz stuff from OCT. Good enough to replace a T1. I submitted my proposal to the hospital bureaucracy which was immediately rejected by the safety committee. Safety? Yep. They didn't want their patients "irradiated" by all that evil wireless. I eventually threw together an IR system, that actually worked, but only to about 100Kbits/sec. It also had the irritating habit of losing focus twice a day as the thermal inversion layer hit the beam over the freeway.

A few years later, Wi-Fi became the high fashion buzzword, where everything from heart monitors to crash carts were being deployed in the hospital. They even have a Cingular cell site on the roof of the the cardiology unit:

So, in 2003, someone figured it was safe to resurrect the idea of the wireless link across the freeway. They submitted roughly the same plans, and were again rejected on the grounds of RF safety. In addition, HIPAA requirements had just become manditor, and nobody had a clue whether wireless was acceptable. That decision was in the hands of the attorneys, who supplied the tranditional judgement, that wireless was a potential problem and should be avoided. Never mind that in 2003 there were already a dozen wireless access points scattered around the hospital (not counting those installed by the doctors for their own use).

Incidentally, I proposed and tested delivering Wi-Fi to the hospital rooms via the HVAC ducting used as waveguide, which sorta worked, but was also deemed a potential can of worms.

The local hospital is owned by Catholic Healthcare West. I have to restrain myself not to call the process the "blessing" of the hardware. Also, I've had to survive an insurance company audit of the medical offices equipment and procedures, which makes HIPAA wireless certification look trivial by comparison. (I haven't done any of that since 1996, which explains why I'm still sane).

Actually, it's apparently becoming somewhat easier these days. Some wi-fi vendors are including regulatory and certification compliance reports in their security packages. For example:

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

The document is an incomprehensible tangle of special exceptions, rules, ambiguous and incomplete, with footnotes. IOW, exactly what you'd expect from a publicly regulated, legislated anything. Stay tuned for public healthcare.

The upshot for most people is _energy_ charges (i.e., excluding significant other charges) as follows:

Minimum charge of $0.15 per day, $0.116 / kWh for usage up to "baseline", $0.131 / kWh for usage up to 130% of "baseline", $0.226 / kWh for usage up to 200% of "baseline", increasing to $0.36 / kWh for users going over 300% of "baseline".

Estimated actual, average energy rate paid by a typical customer = $0.167/kWh

"baseline" isn't specified; the user is referred to another raft of god-awful charts, tariff rules, spreadsheets, and calculators, varying per region.

HTH, James Arthur