Since 2009, the Obama administration has awarded more than $1 billion to American companies to make advanced batteries for electric vehicles. Halfway to a six-year goal of producing one million electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, automakers are barely at 50,000 cars.The money funded nine battery plants -- scattered across the US from Michigan to Pennsylvania and Florida -- that have few customers, operate well below capacity and, so far, have created less than a third of the jobs promised by 2015. Customers including start-up Fisker Automotive Inc. and auto makers like General Motors that urged the funding have struggled to produce and sell battery-powered cars, though they insist a market is coming.
h/t Kevin
Look what G M (government motors) is doing.
Have a look at this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Lvl5Gan69Wo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Steamer
Why not invest in these next? At least it's a proven technology.
This whole "movement" has been one massive boondoggle that has seen billions of taxpayers dollars go to a favoured few for a net result of almost nothing.
And we still have NO viable alternative to the gasoline powered car.
Electric cars are a subsidy for the rich. Limited range and price makes them at best a 2nd or 3rd vehicle for some rich person to show off their green cred. Then idiot municipal pols will decide to give them preferred parking and free recharges. Liberals want the poor to pay for rich peoples fuel and subsidize the cost of their toys. Liberals get more stupid with each passing year.
Crony capitalism is alive and well. They know these taxpayer funded projects will fail. They don't care if the projects collapse. They got theirs, which is the whole point of doing it. The vehicle they use to foist this on the unsuspecting taxpayer is irrelevant. If not for Green planet saving energy they will use some other issue. The chosen ones get millions of dollars directly into their bank accounts, and then they kick back a portion of it, into the re-election bank accounts of the same politicians who voted for the scam in the first place. Democrats and Republicans both do it, which is why the Tea Party represents a danger to the establishment of both parties, and Ron Paul continues to grow his base.
"The money funded nine battery plants -- scattered across the US from Michigan to Pennsylvania and Florida..."
All three swing states that went Obama in 2008.
Not a co inky dink.
I'll beat my drum again, electric cars make sense if there's upstream nuclear power. If not, why bother!
An Israeli inventor had a neat idea - switching out batteries at battery swap stations (kinda like service stations for fuel, drive in, switch, drive out).
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/37982/
However, that concept would work well in a small well-populated area with good weather, not so much in Canada with a large geography combined with a (historically at least) dispersed population
what is needed is an amendment to the laws to make golf carts street legal for residential areas. I make a lot of trips inside my neighborhood to the local store and pub and a golf cart would do just fine (in the summer only). What is ludicrous is trying to pretend that electricity can run a "normal" vehicle.
This would really work well if the impaired laws did not apply to cart use!!
re:
An Israeli inventor had a neat idea - switching out batteries at battery swap stations (kinda like service stations for fuel, drive in, switch, drive out).
Posted by: Erik Larsen at June 1, 2012 3:05 PM
I've always thought that would be a great thing...pull into a service station, slide a battery pack out and slip a fresh one in...elapsedturnaround, less than it takes to fill a tank...or a 'cartridge' of compressed gas..hydrogen, natural gas, propane, whatever...
but then I realize that each auto company would, of course, have to have 'their' battery packs or gas cartridges, non-interchangeable with any other make or model..and people would be swapping about-to-fail batteries for new ones or getting a partially charged or about-to-fail, or 'lifetime expired' one in exchange for their 'brand-new' one that came with the car and sue because they didn't get a full charge or got stuck on the side of the road...
in a perfect world, populated by reasonable people, it's a great idea...in practice, however, doomed to failure...ever try to change a rusty propane tank that the last clerk at the same store assured you would be 'no problem changing again' ? or one that the hydrostatic test date was expired on ?
and it's all a scam anyway...everything gorebull warming was based on is collapsing like a house of cards in a hurricane...funny about that.
New paper contradicts a tenet of global warming theory
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/new-paper-contradicts-tenet-of-global.html
A paper published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/3791/2012/acp-12-3791-2012.html finds that clouds located in the stratosphere over the poles act to cool the stratosphere by adiabatic cooling, which is the cooling of air parcels as they rise and expand, rather than by 'trapping heat' below the clouds resulting in 'radiative cooling' of the stratosphere above. This finding contradicts a tenet of AGW theory, which predicts that infrared radiation from greenhouse gases will 'trap heat' to create a 'hot spot' in the troposphere and cooling of the stratosphere. This study finds that cooling of the stratosphere is instead due to rising air parcels rather than a decrease in radiation due to heat 'trapped by greenhouse gases'.
Batteries...
Prior to 1915, electric runabouts were popular enough that several companies made them (think Granny in the Tweety-Sylvester cartoons), mostly for in-city use. They usually had about the same 100-mile range as the ones produced today, and could be recharged (via a cheap converter) from standard electric outlets. I do not know why makers dropped out over the ten or fifteen or so years after that.
I sort-of like James' "make golf carts street legal" or perhaps make street-legal golf carts.
For people like me, who seldom travel more than twenty non-highway miles at a time, such a thing - with low pricing - would make sense. OTOH, not so much for people like a niece of mine who drives more than sixty miles each way to work daily.
I sure hope battery powered cars take off, although I have never really thought they would unless oil prices went up enough to justify it. I bought stock in a lithium mining company just in case. So far that investment has paid off like my investment in a buggy whip maker.
I again refer people to IBM's 'breathing' lithium battery which, while not likely to appear in your homes anytime soon, offers an energy density on par with that of gasoline. An electric car with a 200 mile range would fit the needs of many, many people (not all, of course). And if you need a car with a 500 mile range for your vacation trip to Disneyworld? There's a company called Hertz to help you, and you can easily pay for the rental with what you've saved on gasoline with your electric.
My wife has the longest commute of anyone I know - from Richmond Hill to the foot of the CN Tower, about 44 km each way - and an electric with 200 km range would easily meet her needs. Not everyone in Canada lives in rural areas, although I suspect many here do, so I suggest that we don't project our needs on each other. I don't need a car with 300 mile/day range but I suppose there are people who do. Obviously, electrics don't work for them. But, just because an e-car doesn't work for those people, doesn't it mean it wouldn't work for others. To suggest that is just stupid.
As soon as China manufactures sturdy gasoline guzzling half tons, the USA is going to lose a profitable market in Western Canada. Trade oil for trucks. I'll buy.
"obama"..Def:platitudinous husk.
If they build it right , the consumer will come. Unfortunately what they have built is overpriced and inefficient. Perhaps some day the technology will be there, but they still have a way to go. If I spend that much on a car I want more than a urban commuter. I want something that will take me on vacation or where ever the road leads. Even when it's 40 below. Amazing how you get a appreciation for heat at those temperatures. And for air conditioning at the other extreme. Still way too many bugs in EV's to make them a logical purchase.
With Car makers VW/Mazda both making vehicles that are sharp looking, well built using ultra high strength to weight ratio materials, get 50+ miles to the gallon and are had for under 30K, you can forget about electrics even making it a contest.
Interesting to note, but I do believe that neither offers a Hybrid either.?
KevinB, living in Toronto I'll ask the question, how much time does it take for your wife to do her commute? Driving by the apply named Don Valley PARKWAY where all day long cars stop and creep slowly along.
Think of all the times we travel now and how rarely we see an actual car that is broken down. Imagine EV cars stalling as their batteries die or will our world be just a tangle of extension cords.
It's very easy to find out any topic on net as compared to books, as I found this post at this site.