I still want an EV. A RAV4-EV would be perfect if it was a Jetta sport wagon sized and styled vehicle.

Am tired of waiting. The technology is here now but banks don’t generally like to finance homebuilt EVs so most of us will be waiting (or saving) for the store bought variety.

By saying the tech is here now – I mean a good 100 mile car with some compromises (want max A/C? You’ll get less range). Still a 100 mile range EV would fill the needs of my family and most of the people we know. There are exceptions…

Get them on the road and the tech will evolve quickly. Within a decade we’ll wonder why we drove these polluting fossil fuel powered cars of today. Of course alot of economic shifting will take place. Gone will go most gas stations. There just won’t be a point to most of them anymore. You can charge at home and not buy gas except to power your ICE vehicle for out of town trips.

Gone will go the radiator shops. Much of the FLAPS businesses. Muffler shops. Etcetera.

I am beginning to think the big guys see the big shift coming (decade or two?) to electrics and big oil is trying to get their profits while they can.

I really love our ICE cars but would be just as happy to power them with electricity.

Right on! with a modest engine giving 60-70 hp, this car could have probably gotten 70+ mpg. – heck, a 1991 metro could achieve 60 mpg in a 5 door hatch.

Similarly, you can find people who took the hybrid system out of the insight and put in a type-R motor. Awesome performance plus 50 mpg. (kinda like a modern CRX)

I like how some people around here criticize every single step GM makes — except killing the EV1, which is somehow the single most brilliant thing any corporation has done ever.

No offense taken, and I’m trying to understand your comment. Do you mean that the EV1 was “the single most brilliant thing any corporation has ever done?” If so, I would beg to differ.

First of all, despite my job of writing GM DW’s, I have always had a healthy respect for GM’s technical prowess. The problem has usually been the the last 5%; cutting corners and rushing the latest new thing to market before the bugs were worked out (Corvair, Vega, V8-6-4, X-bodies, diesel, etc., etc.) GM’s bean counters are mostly to blame, and/or ultimately a culture that allowed things like these many mistakes to happen.

The EV-1 was a terrific piece, and I had plenty of respect and enthusiasm for it. But it was flawed: the range really was too short for it to succeed beyond the EV freak market. And it was too expensive.

But do you mean that my comments about the EV-1 absolve GM for killing it prematurely? No way. They should have stuck with it. But that’s easy in hindsight.

Don’t forget (can do no wrong) Toyota and Honda walked away from their CA-mandated EV’s too. So whatever opinion or judgement one has about GM killing the EV1 applies equally to Toyota and Honda. The only difference is that Toyota let a handful of RAV-EV’s stay in the market, while Honda and GM withdrew theirs. In the big picture, that decision, despite all the focus on it, is not the real story.

All three of them abandoned their EV’s because dirt-cheap oil and a changed mandate from CA made them essentially irrelevant. It means nothing for you, me or Rick Wagoner to bemoan the decision now. Times change, and in hindsight the EV1 looks brilliant. Many things do. But it was no technological breakthrough.

It had very old-tech lead-acid batteries, and the only way to get any kind of range and speed out of them was a very aerodynamic body. Nice work, but obvious and not radical. Rumplers and Tatras had similar aerodynamic Cd numbers in the 1930’s.

The key to making EV’s really practical is higher energy-density from batteries. Lithium-ion was still a gleam in the engineers eye when the EV1 (and Toyota/Honda EV’s) was built. THAT’s the real breakthough to usuable range and cost-effectiveness. The EV1 had neither of these, therefore, was flawed.

Time to move (look) forward. Lots of cost-effective EV’s are on the way. Patience!

i would be happy with an electric second car with the range of the EV1. i commute 30 miles total each day, so the low range does work in some cases. EV1 owners loved their cars.

Oh, maybe 150, or 300. Nad you have to live in a specific zip code.

At first.

As production ramps, costs will fall.

But, Honda’s looking at it long term. For instance, if the 35 mpg CAFE standards happened tomorrow (not in 2016 or whenever) guess which automaker would be uniquely ready for it?

And for the record, the EPA lists the Clarity as a 68 mpg vehicle.

I assume, that the clarity, like the EV1 is a feasibility project. Economics will dictate the ‘production’ volume…

once the project budget it spent (be it 500 million, a billion, 2-3 billion, whatever), it will be required to turn a profit to continue, or at least break ‘near-even’

600/month on a 1 million capital cost no where near close to breaking even

$100K?

Big deal. Honda’s Clarity, which will be leasing like hot cakes, is going to cost over a $1 million a unit (at least). And they’re still going to lease them for $600 a month.

And Paul, no huge offense meant, but I’m using you as an example:

I like how some people around here criticize every single step GM makes — except killing the EV1, which is somehow the single most brilliant thing any corporation has done ever.

Talk about politics…

of course, maybe someday… – of course, we could ask the same thing of a lot of things…

No need to wonder, the facts are out there. Toyota built the RAV4-EV all electric vehicle and although the program was wound down in 2003 and some lease returns were scrapped, many are still on the road. Wikipedia has a good overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV

Once California dropped it’s EV mandate, Toyota refocused it’s efforts on the gas/electric hybrid and went on to produce the best selling Prius. One of the reasons given in the Wikipedia entry for the RAV4-EV production wind down is battery availability:

“Chevron had inherited control of the worldwide patent rights for the nigh EV-95 battery when it merged with Texaco, which had purchased them from General Motors. Chevron’s unit won a $30,000,000 settlement from Toyota and Panasonic, and the production line for the large NiMH batteries was closed down and dismantled. Only smaller NiMH batteries, incapable of powering an electric vehicle or plugging in, are currently allowed by Chevron-Texaco.” Conspiracy theories anyone?

“According to GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, the worst decision of his tenure at GM was “axing the EV1 electric-car program and not putting the right resources into hybrids. It didn’t affect profitability, but it did affect image.” According to the March 13, 2007, issue of Newsweek, “GM R&D chief Larry Burns . . . now wishes GM hadn’t killed the plug-in hybrid EV1 prototype his engineers had on the road a decade ago: ‘If we could turn back the hands of time,’ says Burns, ‘we could have had the Chevy Volt 10 years earlier.’”

And this is the problem with GM. The lack of long-term interest, the lack of resources for r&d in the long run. What would Toyota have done?

The super-light structure of the EV-1 was not adaptable to current crash tests.

The Volt is not “based” on the EV-1, but GM accumulated plenty of knowledge of EV technology.

Recently I’ve been looking for a replacement for my STI… I’m not thrilled with paying over $4 gallon for premium.