Who Killed the Electric Car? Debate Rages On
At last week’s conference on plug-in electric vehicles and government policy in Washington, D.C., all of the stars from the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? were out. There was the feisty protagonist Chelsea Sexton, celebrity EV1 owners like Peter Horton and unexpected plug-in allies like former CIA director Jim Woolsey on hand. Also present was Toyota’s national manager of its advanced technology group, Bill Reinert, a strange “villain” of the movie. Within minutes of the exhibition hall’s opening Reinert was surrounded by members of Sexton’s advocacy group, Plug In America, rehashing the same discussion from the 2006 documentary.
GM suffered the brunt of the film’s ire for crushing the EV1 program, but the Plug In America reps took Reinert to task for the similar way Toyota went about disassembling its RAV4 EV program. Standing next to a converted plug-in Prius (Reinert is in the brown jacket), rough language and impassioned rhetoric was exchanged, with neither side conceding anything. Much of the argument boiled down to the perceived demand for fully electric vehicles: Reinert and Toyota contend that there isn’t a viable market; Plug In America says quite the opposite.
Reinert is a strange figure in the auto world. Known for speaking his mind, Reinert ticked off the limitations of plug-in electric cars during a panel discussion at the conference. Similarly, when Reinert appeared in Who Killed the Electric Car? he enumerated the limitations and feasibility issues that continue to plague fuel cell technology, which Toyota and many other car makers decided to pursue instead of fully electric cars. As head of Toyota’s advanced technology group, you’d hope he would have been more excited to talk about the potential of their “advanced technologies” rather than its shortcomings.
Still, the debate between Reinert and the plug-in advocates, some of whom still drive their RAV4 EVs, was far less productive than one would have hoped. While all the big automakers are now making moves toward manufacturing more fuel-efficient cars, we worry that the execs at the top, who drove us through the SUV boom, still don’t get it.
Nobody needed to kill the crappy battery-only electrics that appeared with the EV-1 – as Angus MacKenzie pointed out, the EV was DOA. No one is today proposing or threatening to build an EV anything like the EV-1 or Toyota Rav4, despite the many designs in the works.That alone should convince everyone that those 1990’s EVs were doomed then and are still obsolete and not viable technologies. Those who shill for them avoid mention of the critical economics of battery costs and battery lifespans. They instead narrowly brag about how cheap electricity is. There, in a word, total frauds.
I love a good conspiracy as much as the next guy. However, I tend to see the 1990’s EV simply as an idea ahead of its time. Gas was cheap (relatively speaking), Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” was not around, there was no Iraq war, etc. While I am sure there were “forces” out to kill the program, the demand of the people simply was not enough to overcome these forces. Today is different. As we are seeing, top execs cannot ignore the demand.
Bo Bennett, host
EVcast.com
Allan Lloyd (CARB) killed the electric car. Even if the program had been left in its tiny scale (a few hundred cars in California) we’d be in so much better shape with this technology than we are now. Heck, if the car companies complained so much, then the gov’t should have paid the $20 million or so a year to keep the technology active and evolving. A bit cheaper than spending a trillion dollars in Iraq, don’t you think?
I’m no scientist nor a mechanic, but would it be possible to implement a dual battery system into an EV? While one battery is in use, the other battery could be charging via something similar to an alternator? Sorry guys just a random curious thought.
You could, but it would be less efficient than using one larger battery.
With the two batteries, you would be using one to charge the other. Since we have no 100% efficient process of generating energy (hence no perpetual energy machines) this would loose energy due to mechanical inefficiencies in the alternator and chemical inefficiencies in the battery.
There would be no situation where you would be better served having one battery charging another one, rather than having just a larger battery that is able to do more work.
And…there, their, and they’re are all different words.
As one of the people involved in the “discussion” with Bill Reinert, I can assure you that the writer’s description is accurate.
And ask one of the owners of the Toyota RAV4 EV, I can assure Tom Gray that his take on EVs is completely off base. We saved some 1,000 of the production EVs from destruction and virtually all of them continue to drive oil-free and pollution-free today. Many of the RAVs have exceeded 100,000 miles without the need for repairs or maintenance. Battery degradation is just stating to appear in the vehicles with the most mileage, but considering how far they’ve gone, we’re quite pleased. Even with a little degradation, they are still viable commuting cars. And that’s with batteries designed over ten years ago.
The newer LiIon batteries will prove to be even better. Once you’ve had the opportunity to drive an EV, you’ll never want to go back to gas.
Don’t worry about the critics that’s all they are and will always be. Once we have the electric powered cars on the road with a little bit more time a power pack that will be suitable for all needs will be in play. Just push thought the first step by getting electric cars on the road, despite the vested interests. All I can say is the first car company that gets it out will be the WINNER!
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