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You can see the full movie here:

http://wagons.autoblog.com/2006/10/15/n ... ctric-car/

Downloading from google now, but they usually cut me off after a while and my line is never maxed out by their servers. Makes me wonder why they even offer a download at all.

Yes, ...apparently someone also killed the 'Who killed the electric car?' video.



Conspiracy Theorists Unite !

That was a short life span

Shame, perhaps it's just temporarily overloaded. It was pretty interesting, I especially liked GM's enthusiasm in marketing the car, it was something like a 6 months waiting period and you had to send them documents about who you were, what you do, etc....

...dug out another link: Not the full version, ...a quick 2 min clip preview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsJAlrYjGz8

Well as expected google (just aquired youtube ) didn't play nicely with me and so the download failed


So without having seen it and simply based on the trailer i wonder if certain things are looked at in this movie.

• Is pushing electricity through cables more efficient than transporting fuel to gas stations.
• Is buring fuel in powerplants greener than burning it in on the street.
• What materials are involved in building an electric car?

I do not know the answer btw, just wondering about those.

For now it would just transfer the problems out of sight as most electricity is still produced by coal, oil and nuclear power (with a few exceptions like e.g. norway).

Well I've been reading up on it quite a lot, and for example in the US, only 2% of electricity is generated from oil. Nationally, around half is produced by burning coal. The rest is hydro, wind, nuclear, solar.

One very important thing to keep in mind though is that there is less resulting pollution by burning coal for producing electricity in a power plant at 60% efficiency, than burning gasoline in an internal combustion engine. Plus you remove the smog from the cities. So even if all the electricity produced was made by burning coal, we would have less pollution driving electric. But electricity can be produced from a number of sources, many clean, so you have a much bigger advantage.

Is pushing electricity through cables more efficient than transporting fuel to gas stations.

You may see comparisons of efficiency between say burning coal>electricity>cables>your car, with efficiency of an internal combustion engine. First of all, this comparison is flawed because it doesn't take into account the energy needed to drill>extract>refine>ship by sea>ship again to gas stations. But even doing this flawed comparison, an electric vehicle comes out on top with much better efficiency.

You will also see these flawed comparisons with hydrogen, they assume the hydrogen will magically appear in your car.

What materials are involved in building an electric car?

Most of the materials in Li-Ion batteries can be recycled, and newer types of Li-Ion batteries are safer than the exploding ones. But even considering the older ones, I'd say they are a lot safer than carrying around 60 liters of highly flammable liquid around in your car.

Lots of interesting info on the Tesla Motors blog:
http://teslamotors.com/blog1/index.php?js_enabled=1

One really eye opening example in this blog:
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/index. ... _enabled=1

There's an image there showing how much land area is required to offset 50% of miles driven in the US. Comparing photo voltaic, cellulosic ethanol, and corn based ethanol.

What I find particularly dumb is the push towards hydrogen fuel cells for cars, when they haven't even figured out how to store it properly. Not to mention if you take into account the energy needed to produce the hydrogen, an electric vehicle is much more efficient. Plus you would need to convert all gas stations to hydrogen stations....all this would take at least 20 years, while we already have perfectly fine electric cars, which you can charge at home. So much government money wasted on hydrogen, and even the European Fuel Cell Forum has a report saying that fuel cells is not a good idea for transportation use:

http://www.efcf.com/reports/E17.pdf

Check especially page 11.

I like nuculer energy best.

JDHill wrote:I like nuculer energy best.

Slim Kim Jong agrees too


Forgot to mention, plugin hybrids (half electric, half internal combustion engine) is a pretty dumb idea too. You're basically dragging around with you an entire ICE, with all the mechanical crap needed for it. Going fully electric is the only sensible solution. I think in less than 10 years battery tech will have evolved enough that we can drive at least 700km on a single charge.

If people want to drive more than that in a single day, take a damn plane

Whatever happened to solar-powered 'one man' transport pods?
I was told I'd be driving one twenty years ago.......I'm still stuck in a vauxhall.

I definitely like driving and since long time I'd like to buy a motorcross bike. But since I am bad saving money for it, and for what it worth, I am seriously thinking buying an electric scooter for the everyday life: it apparently costs as the gasoline powered, it has enough endurance to go around daily in the city (40km per charge), it uses 0.2 eur every 40km (electric power cost) and it's extremely noiseless, and it is tax-free of course.

I only fear the day I have to choose whether to run the pc or the car.

btw, I swear electric car won't be an option in california...

Mihai wrote:You can see the full movie here:

http://wagons.autoblog.com/2006/10/15/n ... ctric-car/

Are you getting the Dr.Mercola newsletter ?

Who? Never heard of him that guy.

Mihai wrote:Who? Never heard of him that guy.

http://www.mercola.com/blog/2006/oct/16 ... ectric_car

(I subscribed to his newslaeter some time ago (darn this guy is so prolific) ... and got this article today in my mailbox about the same time you posted your topic here. Spooky !

Oh, I see. No, I am in no way affiliated with Dr. Mercola

Too bad the video has been pulled, I thought they had permission to post it, but I guess not...