"Who Killed the Electric Car?"

[rwork]

Anyone who has seen the movie, just wondering, GM had a great electric that they leased out for a few years and that people loved.
Then pulled the leases and crushed them.

Why don't they use the same plans and put them back in production?

Who is going to buy a $36,000 to $50,000 Chevy Volt?

[orleans]

1. yes. i saw the movie. i cried. n/t

[jaksavage]

2. GM fought against it

and won.

My LTTE from yesterday.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=7902600&mesg_id=7902600

[ramapo]

3. It made me sick

I was screaming at the TV. The decision to kill this car was just unfathomable. I'm sure the vehicle was very expensive and the leases were at a huge loss but it was a great start. I think GM threw away a chance to be an industry leader.

[Sal Minella]

4. "EV-1" wasn't it? Beautiful little car, plug it in, unplug it, drive.

The mechanic said working on it amounted to "You put it up on the hoist, rotate the tires, and put it back on the road." The one in the museum has been eviscerated so it won't start or run. This car terrified Detroit, clearly.

It's time we're allowed to have them.

[Initech]

13. Detroit is in such bad shape economically that reviving the EV-1 could do it.

[KT2000]

5. Yes I saw it

and it made clear just how powerful the huge corporations are in defining how our society functions - for corporate profit above all else.

In exchange for any kind of bailout of GM - the taxpayers should be given the plans for the EV1, take possession of existing facilities, then, it could be put into production without interference from other car manufacturers and the oil industry.

Taxpayers need to start fighting back.

[spinbaby]

6. Why do they keep claiming they don't have a good battery?

Clearly they HAD a good battery.

[Johonny]

10. in mild defense

long term battery testing is always behind battery technology. For obvious reasons. Toyota gambled on it's batteries and life time testing later proved it was a good gamble. American companies didn't.

[RubyDuby in GA]

7. I saw it.

It made me hate GM that much more.

[TheKentuckian]

8. I wish we had shook down big oil for their battery tech patents

when we bailed them out last.

I don't know about GM's batteries but I'm pretty sure all of the potential heavy duty stuff is in Oil's pocket.

[Turborama]

9. Here it is on Google Video... K&R

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5871495968130273402&ei=6CEnSbraM4iCwgPh68n4BQ&q=who+killed+the+electric+car%3F+video&dur=3


:kick:

[Catherine Vincent]

12. ...

Will view later. Thanks.

[Liberal In Texas]

15. If you rent it, you can see the Special Features, which are just as good as the feature. n/t

[KittyWampus]

16. I just watched the whole thing. Thanks

[Phred42]

11. They had it 95% solved iby the late 90's

:grr:

Why aren't these bastards in jail?

[TreasonousBastard]

14. They should shred all copies of that movie...

because it's a damn lie. Would anybody whining about that thing REALLY want to buy that glorified golf cart and use it as your only car?

NOBODY wanted that POS back then except a few nutcases who never went more than 50 feet from the beach. The best it was was a second, or third, car for getting around locally.

If you had hills, had to run the windshield wipers or heater, or even run the lights too much you reduce the mileage down to the next block or so. Who wants a car that might stop 20 or 30 miles down the road and you have to find an outlet? Sure ain't gonna ride that sucker to Mom's house for Thanksgiving.

Batteries? Aside from the Tesla (which costs $110,000 btw, largely because it's one bigass battery made of thousands of laptop batteries) NO car company is happy with the batteries they have now. And we've got much better batteries now than we had back then.

(And Tesla is going broke, too, begging for some bailout cash because it turns out they can't use those batteries in the cheaper sedan model.)

[jmowreader]

18. A couple of days ago Bartcop had a comment about the EV-1

Said something to the effect that you couldn't go from Seattle to LA on batteries, but you could go from Seattle to Tacoma on them.

Dude, I got news for you: an EV-1, if they sold it to people, would probably have cost $50,000. For fifty bills I don't want to go from Seattle to Tacoma, I at least want to go from Seattle to Spokane. It's only about 300 miles. There are two ways you're getting from Seattle to Spokane in an EV-1--put it on a rollback, or spend a week going from outlet to outlet. By way of contrast, the Redmond Cycle Club sponsors the annual S2S bicycle ride--Seattle to Spokane. The record is less than 15 hours. Most people couldn't do it in fifteen hours, because of the Cascades, but if they were in decent shape they could probably make it in five days (on edit: when one is talking about riding a bicycle over the Cascade Mountain Range, one might want to mention that it takes a week because they go straight up...oops). You can pick up a really nice bike for $2000, or one-25th of the cost of an EV-1 that takes just as long to make the trip.

Who killed the electric car? Who was running Exide at the time? Let's go after his ass.

[defendandprotect]

17. Yep...and keep talking about it -- everyone needs to see it --

Capitalism kills--!!