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Hybrid Vehicles Electric Vehicles Which Automaker will have the first EV in the USA?
28 messages, Last post on Nov 06, 2008 at 8:39 PM
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.... that a company called Baker made and sold electric cars more than 100 years ago. Jay Leno owns one, and drives it occasionally. Any company that presents an electric car today as "new" or "innovative" is just a century behind the curve. Now, I could credibly argue that if automakers chose to develop electric motors 100 years ago instead of gas/diesel engines, we'd STILL be no better of today than we are with OPEC. Some other cartel would have developed to restrict the supply of electricity. The government would still tax it several times between the producer and the consumer, just like oil and gasoline. And we'd still face an occasional "crisis" during which politicians would seek higher taxes and new powers for themselves. But maybe the air would be a bit cleaner.
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Replying to: 1stpik (Aug 07, 2008 4:36 am) I think practical means different things to different people. A practical all around EV may still be 20 years in the future. A practical commuter car less than a year. Just as a CNG car is good for commuting, they are not practical to head cross country with. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Aug 07, 2008 4:09 am) Yeah. I ran the numbers a few years ago for building my own electric car, and the cost to replace the battery pack every 3-5 years (a bigger pack would last longer but cost more up front) was something like 3x the cost of fuel and maintenance on a gas car in that timeframe. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Aug 06, 2008 4:02 pm)
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Replying to: tpe (Aug 08, 2008 2:39 pm) I agree. I think Honda has done its thing with gas-electric hybrids (they were one of the first), and they don't want to dump a bunch of R&D and money into more stepping-stone vehicles. They want to leap ahead to the ultimate clean car, that runs on the most plentiful resource in the universe. I think they're going to drive fuel cell development full speed ahead until it works for enough people that they can sell 'em. Honda wants to be the first company to take the last step in alternative fuel vehicles.
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Replying to: 1stpik (Aug 08, 2008 6:42 pm) They better get to work. That is a big mountain to climb. That and Nissan has just passed Honda in fuel cell development. I still would not count on them being mainstream for 20 years. Despite their unsettling X-Trail Fuel Cell Vehicle Nürburgring record run recently, Nissan is making serious developments with a new fuel cell stack with double the power density of the previous generation stack. Additionally, the stack uses half the amount of platinum, a key material, resulting in 35% cost savings. Nissan test prototypes carrying the improved fuel cell stacks will be operational by the end of this year. August 6, 2008 5:00 PM by Brian Potter |
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....beat everybody to the punch! 
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Replying to: lemko (Aug 12, 2008 4:25 am) Between 1832 and 1839 (the exact year is uncertain), Robert Anderson of Scotland invented the first crude electric carriage. A small-scale electric car was designed by Professor Stratingh of Groningen, Holland, and built by his assistant Christopher Becker in 1835. Practical and more successful electric road vehicles were invented by both American Thomas Davenport and Scotsmen Robert Davidson around 1842. Both inventors were the first to use non-rechargeable electric cells. Frenchmen Gaston Plante invented a better storage battery in 1865 and his fellow countrymen Camille Faure improved the storage battery in 1881. This improved-capacity storage battery paved the way for electric vehicles to flourish. France and Great Britain were the first nations to support the widespread development of electric vehicles in the late 1800s. In 1899, a Belgian built electric racing car called "La Jamais Contente" set a world record for land speed - 68 mph - designed by Camille Jénatzy http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarselectrica.htm |
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Replying to: gagrice (Aug 07, 2008 4:09 am) So I think Toyota has already won this competition. Used RAV4-EVs regularly sell on eBay for more than their MSRP. The one I drove had about 75,000 miles on the original set of batteries, no problems so far. As far as I can tell, this "old" EV would outperform the Volt and just about anything else on the road other than the Tesla. And it's a full size truck, too. Looks exactly like a regular RAV-4. Well it IS a regular RAV-4, but not AWD of course.
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Aug 13, 2008 8:13 pm) Well, the only one on ebay right now is a completed listing. It got only one bid of $45,000 which did not make the reserve.  Somehow I think the seller might have worked something out with the bidder after the auction ended.  2002 Toyota RAV4 EV
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