I understand the fervency of the contributors to this page, but it needs to adhere to a neutral point of view. The biggest problem is the section about EVs and the auto industry. I think there just needs to be an alternative point of view added in that and other areas. Johnnyb82 03:34, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with the NPOV concern of Johnnyb82. WP should remain nuetral on such items as to whether the auto companies do or don't support EVs for political/institutional reasons. This is particularly true for a lead topic article such as Electric Vehicles. While the actions of the auto companies with respect to promotion or non-promotion of EV technology might be worthy of a separate article, such non-NPOV material should not be detailed in the main topic article. (And I say this as a long-time EV owner of nearly 20 years and a general supporter of EV technology when it is economically justified.) N2e 22:25, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, if the NPOV claim is about EVs and AI, lets work out where the problems are:

Most major automakers have attempted to postpone or prevent mass production of electric cars.

Needs some proof I guess.

This stems from their being heavily financially invested in today's dominant power technology, the internal combustion engine.

Believable, but not proven. An alternative claim would be that EVs are constantly being considered, but simply aren't justifiable on theoretical grounds. Toyota's massive prius sales might illustrate this, or disprove it.

At one time during emissions reductions regulations GM produced over 1,100 of their EV1 models, 800 of which were made available through 3-year leases.

fact, easily verified.

Upon the expiration of EV1 leases, GM crushed them.

fact.

The reason for the crushing is not clear, but has variously been attributed to (1) the auto industry's successful challenge to California law requiring zero emission vehicles or (2) a federal regulation requiring GM to produce and maintain spare parts for the few thousands EV1s.

Speculation. Herein lies the problem. Let's say everyone knew they did it for evil reasons, but they wouldn't admit it. How could we write an encyclopedic statement that stated this with NPOV? We do know that they took Cal to court and won, but that doesn't explain why they crushed the existing machines. Do we know which federal reg required spares? Can we get an estimate of the cost of this, compared to crushing the cars outright? (for example, what constitutes a spare?)

--njh 00:42, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The strange thing is there was NO federal request or requirement for them to be crushed, they simply were, at GM, Ford, Honda's request. There has been and still remains no evidence that this was done for any viable business reason except to eliminate evidence that the cars exist. Otherwise, why would they even DISABLE AND CRIPPLE all of the cars in museums and universities and require the smithsonian to guarntee in writing to never allow theirs (The last remaining intact EV1) never to be driven again!rxdxt 16:39, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds terrible! Do you have any evidence of this though? --njh 01:06, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lack of evidence to the contrary is evidence in itself.

The two reasons I heard of are:

1. Liability and safety concerns
2. Concern for having to maintain the vehicles. (Sounds like a poor excuse.)

Daniel.Cardenas 19:33, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, as much as I believe companies are evil etc, assuming that they did something for reasons other sound financial reasons is not reasonable in an encyclopedia. Liability and Safety sounds like a perfectly reasonable excuse to me. Lack of evidence to the contrary does not make hearsay true. I could equally say that I have no evidence that you aren't a bad person and that I've heard you jump on children's sandcastles.

Rxdxt claimed that a) no federal request (ok, easily testable), b) rather, crushed by GM etc (testable). c) purpose in crushing cars was to make people not know about them (this is where it gets shakey). Rxdxt then went on to ask a rhetorical question saying that they could think of no other reason why the cars might have been disabled than for an evil conspiracy. Well lets come up with a few:

The battery is known to become highly explosive after a certain number of years, and will explode if used after that point; The Chassis was damaged in transportation of the museum car making it unsafe; driving it may damage it, and being the last drivable model, this would be an act of historical vandalism.

I think that my next point disproves this, but I think that you make a good point. we should elminate any reference to reasons why and simply state what occured, Cars were taken, often against the leasee's will, cars were crushed, no demonstrable reason was ever given for this decision there is only one, now it's gone.rxdxt 05:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You see, we lept off the grounds of testable/verifiable fact and into the clouds of supposition. Assigning motivations to other people is always risky. --njh 23:23, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I say prove to me that flying apes don't exist. Oh what you don't have any evidence? Then it must be true.

That is why I say lack of evidence (no flying apes) is evidence in itself. Daniel.Cardenas 00:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, saying it makes it neither true nor false. That was my point. Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence, but nor is Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence. However, Evidence of Absence and Evidence of Existance are valid. And that is what you need to show. (and are humans not flying apes? - Evidently, you've made the same mistake again.) --njh 01:29, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree on assigning motivations, would prefer we leave the facts. The cars were removed, sometimes before the end of their lease, against their owners will in almost all cases (90% of owners signed petitions asking GM to allow them to keep them) the cars were shipped to the AZ desert where they were crushed (fact) except a few which were rendered non-working and given to Museum and universities (10 or so). With one exception, which was given to the Smithsonian Institute which INSISTED on getting a fully functional/working one. This car was in the museum in an exhibit sponsored by GM until last week. Wash Post 6/20 rxdxt 05:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree it does sound rather fishy. (Though what they hoped to achieve by this isn't clear either, as by seeming fishy it gives more weight to the 'conspiracy' theory and makes more people interested!) In any case, the reality is that the EV1 wasn't the final say in the development of the electric vehicle, and the recent emergence and market success of the hybrids may mean that we are closer now to 'electric vehicles' as private transport than ever before.

Let's focus and try to find an agreeable solution. I moved the NPOV tag to the Automotive Industry part of the article, since that is the focus of this controversy. If there are other possible NPOV statements, let's move them there. The dispute about "Who Killed the Electric Car" is now subject of the film, noteworthy enough for inclusion, so I suggest that we plan to include here a description of the film's allegations. (I'll bet someone will do that on WP). Castellanet 19:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved the old content from Electric vehicles in Battery Electric Vehicles as there was far too much detail and not enough general picture. Electric vehicles has been rewriten mostly from scratch and needs references. njh 13:21, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This page needs a section on all the early electric cars. They were once more popular than gas cars! Rmhermen 15:18 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'd be more than willing to add that, but the history of the EV is so long that it deserves another page unto itself. I'm a bit busy right now, but I will get around to it, and eventually, I will move all the info in this article to a new topic entitled "Battery Electric Vehicle", or BEV so I can eventually go in-depth on BEVs without leaving out NEVs, FCEVs, NHEVs, ect. without making everything appear cluttered and what not. I will also get around to covering as many highway capable full-size electric vehicles as possible on these articles. I believe that they deserve a few looks given that the technology for them is here and we should be driving around in them right now. I want to above all, dispell the common EV myths with these articles, and I figured this site gets lots of visitors, so what better way to expose what these cars are capable of than getting the information into a comprehensive set of articles here, and for free at that? I eventually hope to add a lot to this site, as I have a lot of things to add, and the links/ documentation to back the info up. ~terrorist420x

Please add more. But at least a mention of the old cars needs to be here if you put them in another article. Rmhermen 16:34, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)

D0li0, I don't think Inductrack is completely without energy use, otherwise it would continue to levitate when the vehicle stops. Without looking closely I would guess that the levitation is provided by the diamagnetic repulsion due to eddy currents in the aluminium loops, which obviously get warmed by the current and lose their energy. I'm leaving the line in there because it is very interesting, but perhaps it should make more the point that the propulsion could be provided by something else (say a jet engine). Thanks for your input! njh 08:29, 24 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Humm, it is my impression that it is less lossy than tire rolling resistance, perhaps not so clearly when compaired to traditional rail and wheels low losses? It would be great to have more clarification of the levitation force energy requirements of all three common methods! Till then I feel it's safe to say the the vast majority of power is consumed in overcomming inertia and wind resistance, I'de hate to bring something like a jet engine into the idea for the sake of seperation, we've already got enough gas in our mental veins. Granted the wording could probably be enhanced by removing the word "Free" as it tends to get tied up with "Over-Unity" and such, and we don't want to go there untill the laws of the universe change. --D0li0 11:55, 24 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Honda leased EVs in California, just like GM. Curious, why didn't Honda offer these cars in Germany, the UK, or Japan, countries with high gasoline prices.?

California had a law requiring a small number of non-polluting cars be sold. Rmhermen 19:56, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the film Who Killed The Electric Car they show footage previousy aired on PBS proving that Honda had these cars shredded. rxdxtrxdxt 16:36, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am curious if anyone has seen any estimates of just how much electricity it would take to run every car currently on the road. I did a quick estimate by finding the annual gasoline consumption for 2003 171 billion (gasoline equvilent) gallons. Multiply that by 135 million jouls per gallon, get 2,751,000,000,000,000,000 jouls. Divide by three due to the thermal eficiency of gasoline engines, then divide by the number of seconds in a year to convert to average watts. I get roughly 244 Gigawatts. Annual average wattage of all US powerplants is only 433 for year 2000. This is a very significant amount of energy, wich would require a great number of power plants to be built and transmision capacity to be increased. I have no idea if this is right, in fact I'd be surprised if it was so I didn't include it in the article. But I would love to see a real number because this is an important issue if we ever do convert en-masse to electric vehicles. Another issue is where this electricity will come from. If it comes from coal, electric cars become even worse than gasoline cars, but if it comes from wind (or even nuclear, but thats a whole 'nother topic), its very clean.

First problem is, that You assume a much to high efficiency for the gasoline engine. Driving in the city with constant 35mph halfs the top efficiency. Standing at a traffic light with running engine, the efficiency drops even to 0. So it's more realistic to assume that only 6 kWh mechanic energy is produced by one gallon gasoline. This brings down the calculation from 244 to 117 GW.

The next problem is the air resistance. Todays cars look like aerodynamic, but only as long as You do not look at the cooler standing like a wall in the wind or under the car. Electric cars can have a much lower cw because of this. The Toyota Prius+, a Prius enhanced with 9kWh Lithium battery, uses around 15kWh for 100km.

With such a Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle maybe 75% or 15000km per year in electric mode. That's 2250 kWh per year or 15 squaremeter good photovoltaic, more in the north, less in the south. A caclulation based on 150 million cars like this, the figure is reduced to 37 GW, but 25% remaining to drive with gasoline.

--Pege.founder 11:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Infrastucture concerns do need to be considered in all alternatives to our current vehicle energy sources, however, all alternatives face similar difficulties. A hydrogen source of energy would face the same issue. How would the logistics and system costs for all the necessary hydrogen generation, transportation and storage be worked out?

What is needed is grid-intertied photovoltaic roofing, and we need to get with putting it in place ahead of demand. In otherwords, phase-in the supply of energy as we evolve the vehicle fleet to include a growing, and eventually significant, number of vehicles that recharge while parked for at least part of their energy supply.

For additional information on the viability and economics of vehicles and their energy sources, see the May/April 2006 Mother Earth News (#215). The articles are Drive an EV and Never Buy Gas Again (pg. 32) and The True Costs of Nuclear Power (pg. 146). Of the many problems with generating electricity with nuclear reactors, one problem is generally ignored. Electricity from nuclear reactors is substantially more expensive than electricity generated from other current technologies. Keep in mind that our government has provided federal subsidies of over $150 billion over the past 60 years (30 times more than renewables have received) and electricity from nuclear still costs far more than any other method we use. (Claims otherwise convienently ignore the construction and decommissioning costs of the plants.) This trend contines. The Energy bill of 2005 contains $14 billion in research, development, construction subsidies and tax-breaks as well as guarantees for unlimited taxpayer-backed loans and insurance protection for new reactors.

The main nuclear plant point to note is: "nowhere in the world do market-driven utilities buy, or private investors finance, new nuclear plants, and that it is only continued massive government intervention that keeps the nuclear option alive."

But, maybe it's also our desire for a energy silver bullet. It's too bad we came to buy the claims after WWII that nuclear promised a wealth of energy in our future. The scientists who made these claims were apparently saddly mistaken.

--Mark Walker 2006.05.27.1941

Shouldn't this article cover possible future devlopment of flywheel based vehicles? I don't think there is currently any effort to create these, but shouldn't the ever-increasing capacity be mentioned? BioTube 01:34, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose to make a seperate page about fairs, events and exhibitions covering electric cars and plug-in hybrid cars.

It's difficult to find real good fairs about this theme.

I for my own visited the EVER Monaco, a real great show about electric vehicles. I received some advertising from the Hannover fair hall 13, where I expected a very similar show. But EVER Monaco and Hannover had been like day and night.

On the EVER Monaco I test drived several different vehicles, discussed about prices and market situation with the exhibitors. Completely differend in Hannover. No prices, no disscussions, no near market vehicles, only hydrogen fuel cells. No arguments how to compete against electric vehicles with new lithium battery technology.

I hope and I can not imagine that the EVER Monaco is world wide the one and only exhibition about this. So please make a new page and list all good fairs, events and exhibitions. --Pege.founder 11:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to mention the premier world event about electrically propelled vehicles, check out the Electric Vehicle Symposium (EVS). This years EVS-22 will take place in Japan. EVS22 website LHOON 18:13, 28 May 2006 (UTC) Thanks for correcting the URL, sorry was wrong with it! LHOON 18:10, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I rearranged and added some images. The EV1 is not really an appropriate lead since it is completely defunct (litterally a museum piece), while electric busses and streetcars are seen in many major cities. - Leonard G. 17:25, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]