Posted on 02/22/2019 8:10:01 PM PST by Olog-hai
As their company was swirling around the financial drain in the early 2000s, General Motors executives came up with an idea to counter its gas-guzzling image and point the way to transportation of the future: an electric car with a gas-engine backup that could travel anywhere. […]
… On Tuesday, the last (Chevrolet) Volt was built with little ceremony at a Detroit factory that’s now slated to close. Sales averaged less than 20,000 per year, not enough to sustain the costly undertaking.
The Volt wasn’t the first electric car, but it was the first to conquer anxiety over range at a reasonable cost. GM’s limited-range EV1 came out in the 1990s, and Tesla put out its 200-plus-mile Roadster in 2008 for more than $100,000.
The Volt was among the first plug-in hybrids, many of which can go only 20 or so miles on electricity and haven’t gained much popularity among consumers. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
I saw one in a parking lot with dealers plates on it. Asked the driver if it was one of them new coal powered cars. Guy said ,”no, it’s electric”. I then asked him where the electricity came from. He got mad and walked away.
CC
He promised to buy one. Never did
“An electric 4WD pickup is coming out next year with a 400 mile range and O-60 in 3.5 seconds. Embrace the technology.”
If you want to duplicate the EV experience for a lot less: carry an additional 1000 pounds of weight on the floor of the car (to simulate the battery weight), and reduce the gas tank to 6 gallons.
I want steampunk cars and trucks!
Got lots of trees, pallets,and burnable garbage that i can mulch into presto type of lohgs or pellets.
Or best yet.....
Build my own nuclear fusion heat source, in time everyone will have a Mr.Fusion.
How much are the taxpayers subsidizing each electric car sold?
Don’t forget our coal power plants that produce power from steam!
Dad’s Army did something similar with the butcher’s truck?
A power plant must be on-board or find a new way to get electricity from generation to user.
A lot of folks don't consider that fact. We could create "Star Trek" tech like a warp core and we'd use it to turn an armature.
Substitute kerosene for gasoline, and you'd be a bit closer. Some used gasoline to warm up the engine before the kerosene kicked in.
Actually steam power is a lot more practical than electric powered cars. But, I would not want to be in a collision in one. Steam is very dangerous in a wreck.
And remember, electric cars have very heavy batteries and they are full of acid. Another hazard.
That is my issue.
I think electric cars are great, I think they are indeed the future. They are simpler in many ways, but until they can do the following, I would not buy one except as a novelty:
1.) Be manufactured and sold at competitive prices without a taxpayer subsidy of any kind.
2.) Have performance that is on par with vehicles in a similar class of internal combustion engine cars and still meet the following requirements.
3.) Have a range on a charge that is on par with typical internal combustion engines.
4.) Achieve that same range with a heater or air conditioner running the entire time.
5.) Achieve a battery life on par with the current average lifetime of a car before it is junked (not sold)
6.) Achieve a fast charge capability of a half hour or less, or alternatively, implement a system of fast swap of uniformly designed depleted battery packs with charged packs using a system so reliable and easy even a young child or old person could do it.
If these are met, I will buy one.
I will buy it because it makes personal and economic sense to me. If it cannot meet these standards, I am not buying it to fulfill the wishes of some Leftist jackhammer because they want to save Gaia, and I am most certainly not buying it to put money in the pocket of someone who took my money that I paid in taxes to the government in the first place.
“Coal powered cars? I don’t want one.”
Check out Ustus on Mountian Men. He has a Wood powered 1-1/2 ton Truck running on burning wood chips.
Yeah, the volt did as it was intended, it got Obama’s EPA and Treasury Department to back-off when they were facing bankruptcy and a new round of average fleet mileage limits.
Steam cars that used flash boilers were far less dangerous. No high volume of water to heat up, so no big pressure vessel to haul around.
They keep calling it an electric car when it is a poorly designed and implemented hybrid.
Meanwhile, the plug-in Prius came out right afterwards (probably researched for far longer) and most likely easily trounced the Volt, never mind being more “groundbreaking” than these propagandists are trying to make the Volt sound.
The volt was always a propaganda design, the Prius (owned most often by smug pious types) was actually engineered with a thought towards the tech.
Still wouldn’t own either because I deal with snow and traffic here that makes it moot.
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