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Gaurav verma

Friday, September 22, 2006

Who killed the Electric Car ?

Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 documentary film that explores the birth, limited commercialization, and subsequent death of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the 1990s. The film explores the roles of automobile makers, the oil industry, the US government, batteries, hydrogen vehicles, and consumers in limiting the development and adoption of this technology.

About General Motors EV :

The EV1 was the first production quality battery electric vehicle produced by General Motors in the United States and, at the time, was the only electric vehicle in the history of the company to bear the "General Motors" badge.

GM leased over 800 EV1 cars out of about 1100 manufactured with the provision that after the three-year leases were up, the cars reverted to the company. They were available in California and Arizona and could be serviced at designated Saturn dealers.


In late 2003, GM cancelled the EV1 program.Despite unfulfilled waiting lists and positive feedback from the lessees, GM stated that it could not sell enough of the cars to make the EV1 profitable.GM also cited a lack of demand.

The price for the car used to compute lease payments was $33,995 to $43,995, which made for lease payments of $299 to over $574 per month. One industry official said that each EV1 cost the company about $80,000, including research and development costs.The vehicle's lease prices also depended on available state rebates. Without government subsidies each of the 1100 cars produced would have cost the company in excess of $900,000 , about half the lifetime earnings of the average American worker . At that time, the cost for the electricity used to power the car was computed to be 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of the equivalent amount of gasoline, and since that time increases in gas prices have made electricity relatively even less expensive.

The suspects

The last half hour of the movie is organized around the following hypothesized culprits in the downfall of the electric car:

Consumers
Lots of ambivalence to new technology, unwillingness to compromise for the environment.
Batteries
Somewhat limited range and reliability in the first EV-1s to ship, but better later.
Oil companies
Fearful of losing business to a competing technology, they supported efforts to kill the ZEV mandate. They have also bought patents to prevent modern batteries from being used in US electric cars.
Car companies
Negative marketing, sabotaging their own product program, failure to produce cars to meet existing demand, unfair business practices with regards to leasing versus sales.
Government
The federal government joined in the auto industry suit against California and has failed to act in the public interest to limit pollution and force increased fuel economy.
California Air Resources Board
The CARB, headed by Alan Lloyd, caved to industry pressure and repealed the ZEV mandate. Lloyd was given the directorship of the new fuel cell institute, so had an inherent conflict of interest. Footage shot in the meetings showed how he shut down the ZEV proponents while giving the car makers all the time they wanted to make their points.
Hydrogen fuel cell
The hydrogen fuel cell was raised as an alternative that distracted attention from what was presently possible to what might some day be possible.

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
GM's Response :

The film EV Confidential: Who Killed the Electric Car? showcased the intense passion for GM’s out-of-production EV1 electric vehicle. I understand why. It was great technology for its day, a great concept and a great car. GM was and is proud to have brought the electric vehicle concept as far as it did and further than any other electric vehicle project attempted by any other automaker around the globe. Sadly, despite the substantial investment of money and the enthusiastic fervor of a relatively small number of EV1 drivers — including the filmmaker — the EV1 proved far from a viable commercial success.

But the story for GM does not end with the final credits on the movie. I’ve been the person who has spent the last few years answering the questions of why GM discontinued the program. Although I have not seen the movie or received an advanced DVD as others have from the film’s producers, I can tell you that based on what I have heard there may be some information that the movie did not tell its viewers. The good news for electric car enthusiasts is that although the EV1 program did not continue, both the technology and the GM engineers who developed it did. In fact, the technology is very much alive, has been improved and carried forward into the next generation of low-emission and zero-emission vehicles that are either on the road, in development or just coming off the production line. For example:

  • GM’s two-mode hybrid system designed for transit busses have been placed in more than 35 cities across the U.S. and Canada. Perhaps many have seen these cleaner-burning diesel-electric mass transit vehicles. The buses use technology developed for the EV1, such as the regenerative braking system.
  • The Saturn Vue Green Line, which will hit showrooms later this summer, incorporates a new, more affordable gas-electric technology. The Saturn Vue Green Line will be priced at less than $23,000 and offer the highest highway fuel economy at 32 mpg of any SUV, hybrid or otherwise.
  • GM is co-developing with DaimlerChrysler and BMW Group a new two-mode hybrid system for passenger vehicles. This new two-mode hybrid technology will debut next year in a Chevrolet Tahoe full-size SUV, which will offer a 25 percent improvement in combined city and highway fuel economy when joined with other GM fuel-saving technologies. Technology born in the EV1 is incorporated into this new two-mode hybrid system.
  • GM’s fourth-generation hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, which enhances the technology found in today’s HydroGen3 fuel cell vehicle, (currently in demonstration fleets around the world), will be introduced later this year and will represent a leap forward toward a production ready version of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. For the longer term, GM sees hydrogen and fuel cells as the best combination of energy carrier and power source to achieve truly sustainable transportation. A fuel cell energized by hydrogen emits just pure water, produces no greenhouse gasses, and is twice as efficient as an internal combustion engine. Although hydrogen fuel cell technology was cast as a pie-in-the-sky technology by the moviemakers, GM is making great progress in fuel cell research and development and is on track to achieving its goal to validate and design a fuel cell propulsion system by 2010 that is competitive with current combustion systems on durability and performance, and that ultimately can be built at scale, affordably.

Add to all this GM’s leadership in flex-fuel vehicles that run on clean-burning bio fuels such as corn-based ethanol and our new “active fuel management” system that shuts down half the engine’s pistons at highway speeds to improve fuel economy, and we feel we are doing more than any other automaker to address the issues of oil dependence, fuel economy, and emissions from vehicles. And we are committed to do more.

Lastly, because the movie made some harsh criticisms of GM for discontinuing the EV1, let me set the record straight:

  • GM spent more than $1 billion developing the EV1 including significant sums on marketing and incentives to develop a mass market for it.
  • Only 800 vehicles were leased during a four-year period.
  • No other major automotive manufacturer is producing a pure electric vehicle for use on public roads and highways.
  • A waiting list of 5,000 only generated 50 people willing to follow through to a lease.
  • Because of low demand for the EV1, parts suppliers quit making replacement parts making future repair and safety of the vehicles difficult to nearly impossible.

Could GM have handled its decision to say “no” to offers to buy EV1s upon natural lease expirations better than it did? Sure. In some ways, I personally regret that we could not find a way for the EV1 lessees to keep their cars. We did what we felt was right in discontinuing a vehicle that we could no longer guarantee could be operated safely over the long term or that we would be able to repair.

In turn, GM engineers used EV1s for cold-weather testing to continue the technology transfer to hybrids and fuel cells. We also donated them to universities and museums. In fact, we donated an EV1 to the Smithsonian and are now being wrongly accused of a conspiracy with the museum because they removed the car for renovation of the National Museum of American History. I can assure you that this is nothing more than unfortunate timing.

So as right and as good as our intentions were, we understand that the moviemakers see them as wrong. We’ll accept that criticism, but don’t punish GM for doing a good deed. Rather, work with us and give us credit for taking a necessary first step in developing technologies that hold the potential to change the face of automobile transportation. That’s what GM engineers are doing everyday.


So,who really killed Electric cars ? this also puts forward the major question whether environmentalistic issues and politics should be mixed,..why can't people think about sustainable devlopment and ways to implement it.Why despite boasting of all the technological advancements we still produce so much of the greenhouse gases ? I think this is the matter we all should think about comng out of the boundries we surround ourselves in like countries,religion,geographical and others.

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