GM's EV1
I just watched the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car on Discovery’s Planet Green channel. General Motors’ EV1 electric car was revolutionary and it’s real sad that they took them all back and destroyed them. Though many say that a pure electric car is not the future, what is the future? We can’t rely on Oil and fossil fuels forever. Our planet wouldn’t survive. What is the purpose of not letting people who love their electric cars keep them? It makes no sense. If GM was only looking at their upfront bottom line they have a win here with their EV1 cars, but I think it has more to do with an other group… Big Oil. We need to get ourselves off or foreign oil as soon as we can. We are slaves to the gas pumps.
Now in the documentary they made some going points. One was that it’s not all the auto industry’s fault for the death of the electric car. Consumers didn’t know about it (though that was partly because of the lack of advertising by the auto makers) and even if consumers knew about it the barrier to entry, both knowledge and willingness would take sometime. When my wife and I first started to try and go “greener” we bought reusable shopping bags. We then thought about getting the energy efficient light bulbs. With the latter the barrier to entry, the price, made it harder to to do. Eventually we did and we’re glad we did. Are there things we still need to do be more green? Yes.
Another example of a cost barrier to entry is hybrid cars. Sadly they cost more than their almost identical gas-driven versions. But one has to think also about the gas savings once you buy a hybrid as well. Because of this, our next car will probably be a hybrid.
Telsa Motors is making some pretty amazing looking electric cars but they are mainly for the upper-crust of the American populous who can afford them. But by continuing building electric high-performance cars, Telsa is keeping the idea of an electric car in the minds of Americans.
In the end we need to figure out how to become sustainable. That’s all there is to it. I recommend watching the documentary, there are only losers, like in a Shakespearean tragedy, but the conclusion hasn’t been written yet we can still make a difference.
Here is a BBC TopGear episode about Hydrogen Electric cars it features Jay Leno.
