EVs: get them while they're hot!

[JanGeo]

We have a few offices in the state and they were trying to cut back and close all but one in Pawtucket about an hours drive from Newport - typical wait is an hour - pick a number and wait. Imagine a single DMV for the entire state! And the million they save having the one office would be spent on people paying for the gas and the time to drive to Pawtucket - it didn't happen but it was the Govenor's idea.

[Silveredwings]

Originally Posted by Compaq888

who said anything about selling. All you have to do is have a homey at the DMV to give you a completly new registration for the car and you can drive it around.

DISCLAIMER: I don't know anybody in the dmv and I hate their long lines.

The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicle's (RMV's) ability to lose your title is legendary. Where do you think all those 'lost' titles end up? Very corrupt.

On the other hand, whoever setup the RMV's system & web site did a decent job of making it useful. If you can't take care of your business online, you can look at the wait times at each location before you even head over there. Not too bad.

[The Toecutter]

I hope car makers notice that some people are fully willing to put their money where their mouth is.

Car makers did notice. And it scared them.

EVs cost about $.005-.01/mile in maintenance, mostly stuff like windshield wipers, and tires. Electric motors have one moving part. No oil changes, tune ups, servicing, engine parts that go bad... Electric motors last over 500,000 miles routinely. A typical gas powered car requires about $.05/mile in maintenance and lasts 150,000 miles.

So if people drove EVs, they'd cost 1/5 as much to maintain and last more than 3 times as long.

Aftermarket parts and services account for roughly half of profit margins pulled in by the major auto companies.

So an EV is a threat to their bottom line. The automakers do not wish to see people driving around in cars that are cheap to maintain and last 3 or more times as long. This will threaten their bottom line in the long term, and thus shareholders and execs cry foul at the idea. The auto industry wants us driving around in high maintenance gas guzzlers with lots of useless crap added to fatten profit margins and increase maintenance costs, and thus that is what they market most agressively.

This is also why the automakers aren't making highway capable EVs for the general public. It's about maximizing profit, and nothing else.


The Ovonic NiMH battery, if mass produced, qwould be $150/kWh, according to ECD chairman Robert Stemple. Or a pack for the RAV4, if mass produced and if the battery were Ovonic, would cost about $5,000 per pack. It is hypoethesized these battery packs will last over 250,000 miles. Already, the oldest RAV4 EVs in use have battery packs approaching 150,000 miles with no decrease in usable range yet.

Chevron Texaco bought the Ovonic NiMH battery patent, sold the patent by GM who didn't want EVs to take hold. Chevron-Texaco are so protective of the patent they sued Toyota for having and using a similar battery design, and won. Guess what they charge for this battery?

Up to $1,500/kWh! In fact, this oil company is responsible for half of the price premium on tody's hybrids because of that.


EV technology is here. It works. But we will never see them on dealership lots if we continue our current economic business as usual. We have already seen that the big auto companies will not sell to Americans a viable highway capable EV unless it is mandated. Small businesses are shut out by regulations the big players lobbied for. And the stupid rednecks in this country can't stop blaming Nader, when it is truly industry itself that got us where we are today...

[Silveredwings]

Originally Posted by The Toecutter

Car makers did notice. And it scared them.

...

So an EV is a threat to their bottom line. The automakers do not wish to see people driving around in cars that are cheap to maintain and last 3 or more times as long.

Yes, I totally agree. They will continue to do this until there is an equal threat that some company will finally mass market EVs, and thereby expose the emperor's new clothes. So long as they can give us unnecessary complexity (e.g. Hybrids), they will maintain the status quo. GM successfuly lobbied to crush the railroads so that we could all drive cars. Detroit used to expect consumers to replace their clunkers every year. Then the Japanese companies came along in the 1970s and put themselves on the map by providing what no other company would: quality. But they provided it incrementally, meaning only enough to keep ahead of the competition but not enough to create a revolution. That's what the EV is, a revolutionary quantum leap in the industry. Their perceived risk is that they will put themselves out of business. As long as nobody threatens to raise the bar that high, none of them are willing to rock that boat.

You're right, the big guys won't do it, and the barriers to entry for little guys are too high...but we all know it's inevitable.

[The Toecutter]

Whether it is inevitable depends on how peak oil plays out. If we have a crisis scenario(likely) AND we weren't in the beginning stages of mass market EV adoption by that time, you'll very likely be walking, provided the scenario isn't so severe that you're either starving to death or in some 3rd world country dying in an oil war...

EVs by no means are a solution in themselves, but they are a very essential component of one if we are to keep something resembling our living standard without strip-mining the entire planet or killing off most of the world's population.

But the oil industry, the government, the auto industry, banking establishment, and defense industry all have a conflict of interest with the public. They want growth, and they'll surpress every advancement they can and perpetuate every problem they can if it will keep people working and spending as much as humanly possible to maintain their living standards...

Big business wants to get bigger and so too does big government. The EV is just one of those advancements that threaten to shrink both, in the form of reduced taxes, reduced subsidies, and reduced oil wars on part of the government, and reduced consumer spending and reduced monopoly control on part of industry.

[philmcneal]

excellent read on the subjects to why Plug in hybrids won't make it into our hands until at least 5 more years or so. May I ask where did you get most of your reading from?

[The Toecutter]

Only I'm not talking about plug in hybrids. I'm talking about full fledged battery electric cars with comparable range to today's gas guzzlers.

Here's an article I wrote on supression of the EV. Every last claim is cited and documented.

http://www.visforvoltage.com/forums/...168f68a71ea929

Check the sources. I got my information from all sorts of places.

[JanGeo]

Hey Toecutter do you know Remy?

[The Toecutter]

Who's Remy?

[JanGeo]

www.thebox66.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ETList/messages

Currently on the road somewhere beteen Chicago and LA