| Chapter
Two
The EV1 is my all time
favorite car.
Francis Ford Coppola,
Film Director
Why did one of the most successful
directors from Hollywood refuse to give up his zero
emissions electric car, the EV1, when General Motors
wanted it back in 2003?
Francis Ford Coppola, an avid automobile
fan all of his life, called the EV1 his all-time favorite
car because it was quick, maneuverable, fun to drive
and good for the planet. He filled the car up every
night by plugging it into an outlet in his garage before
he went to sleep.
General Motors only leased the cars and
required everyone to return them when the company decided
to terminate the electric car program for the public.
But Coppola refused.
In a secret, negotiated compromise following
a months-long standoff, GM released a non-drivable EV1
for Coppola's public museum at his winery in Napa ,
Calif. The coveted car was placed next to his Tucker
automobile and across the hall from his memorabilia
from the movies The Godfather, Patton, Tucker
and Apocalypse Now .
Robin Williams, Jack Nicholson, Mel Gibson,
William Shatner, Barry Manilow, Suzanne Somers, Michael
Eisner and Bill Nye, the Science Guy on PBS, were among
hundreds of other enthusiasts in the entertainment community
who either leased or drove the EV1.
Even President George H.W. Bush enjoyed
the acceleration and performance of the EV1 when he
test drove it at the White House in 1990. And top executives
and CEOs of leading technology companies, such as John
Chambers of Cisco Systems, Steven Kirsch of Infoseek,
Dennis Tito, the first civilian astronaut in space,
Burt Rutan, designer of the first around the world flight
aircraft and the first civilian spacecraft, and hundreds
of others including leading government officials were
shouting their approval for this fast, smooth, silent-running
car.
What appealed to all these celebrities
was an aerodynamic, futuristic two-seat sports car that
accelerated from zero to 30 mph in a little over two
seconds and to 60 mph in 7.6 seconds. Using advanced
battery technology and space age electronics, the car
had a range of 75-150 miles before needing a recharge.
The efficiency was the highest ever achieved for a production
automobile: the equivalent of more than 120 miles per
gallon!
General Motors showcased a four-seat version
at the Detroit Auto Show in 1998, but it never was put
into production. The company decided to continue its
focus on producing high-profit SUVs and killed the EV1
program in 2000 after producing only 1,200 electric
cars.
GM's next generation electric vehicle
with zero emissions would have been the four-seat “EV2”
in various models, such as sedan, mini-SUV and delivery
van. This version could replace 25-50 percent of the
vehicles on the road today. Produced in volumes of 100,000
or more vehicles a year, the EV2 would cost less than
a conventional automobile.
An electric motor is 85 percent efficient
compared to the maximum efficiency of an internal combustion
engine (ICE) of only about 25-30 percent. An electric
vehicle has only 10 - 20 percent the fuel costs of an
ICE and requires almost no maintenance; there is no
oil to change, no engine to tune. To drive 1,000 miles
costs about $20 for the electricity.
Electric vehicles have zero emissions
at the tailpipe and are more than 10 - 30 times cleaner
than an ICE, depending on the source of electricity.
Sometimes the question is asked: If the
EV1 was so good, why didn't it succeed as planned? The
answer: It did.
The EV1 was built along the lines of a
Corvette performance vehicle. The electronics that went
into the 1996 EV1 debut were Generation 1 technology
and what was under the hood essentially filled up a
large suitcase. Since then, GM's advanced technology
electronics design group has produced Generation 5 electronics,
about the size of a laptop computer.
The major challenge drivers had with the
EV1 and other electric cars was getting used to the
range. People had to learn that this vehicle was like
a horse that drank water every day. It was not a camel
that drank once a week. When you drove 60 miles in the
EV1, you watched the fuel gauge drop from full down
to one-half. Most drivers needed about a month to get
used to this, but once they learned they had plenty
of range to run errands and get home, they became comfortable.
Most drivers became as happy as Coppola and didn't want
to give up their cars when their leases ended.
GM designed and demonstrated a speedy
system that charged the vehicle to 90 percent capacity
in 10 minutes. Similar systems exist at airports and
other locations for battery-driven tractors such as
those that pull planes into taxi areas. GM also showed
that fast-charging systems for electric vehicles easily
could be located at malls, parking garages and other
locations.
The EV1 was the first, modern electric
automobile using state of the art design, engineering
and construction techniques, including a safe, lightweight
chassis and seven computer systems. Models built by
other manufacturers used existing heavy 4-passenger
vehicles and just converted them to electric drive systems,
which limited their range and usefulness. However, the
EV1 proved that advanced, lightweight technology could
produce efficient, zero-emission customer pleasing transportation.
More than half the 600 million vehicles
in the world travel less than 60 miles a day, which
is about half the range of an EV2. Therefore, clean
electric vehicles could be used for commuting, deliveries,
taxis and soccer moms taking kids to games.
In the U.S. a tax-credit program could
encourage every two-car family to conserve energy and
lower pollution by replacing one of its gas-driven cars
with an electric one over the next 10 years. This could
save 25 - 50 percent of the gasoline used every day
and reduce pollution and greenhouse gases by a similar
amount.
Electric vehicles are practical for cold-weather
driving. There were 100 EV1s on the road in the Northeast
in 2005 being driven by GM employees at one of the world's
most advanced vehicle fuel cell facilities in Honeoye
Falls , N.Y. and at a GM parts facility just outside
of Boston . This demonstration program lasted 3 years.
As GM showed with its concept vehicle
called the Autonomy, it is possible to change body styles
using the same chassis and power train. Designed to
use the same electric motor, braking system, axles,
controllers and computers and to upgrade each of these
components when necessary, a mini-SUV body can be removed
and replaced by a sedan, convertible or pickup truck
body on the same chassis.
Customers could own the chassis and rent
or change the body. A family could check available options
on their computer and choose a body style, color, interior,
stereo, etc. In essence, they'd have a new car every
five years. The chassis, computers and other internal
parts could last for 20 - 30 years and be upgraded at
any time.
Concerns about the cost of replacing the
batteries in an electric vehicle interest major utilities,
such as Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas &
Electric. They could purchase and lease batteries to
the customers, who don't want to be stuck with a bill
for $5,000 for a replacement pack of batteries every
5-10 years.
The utilities could reuse the returned
batteries for five years at railroad crossings, which
now are powered by a conventional car battery that has
to be replaced every year. Then there's a potential
third usage in underdeveloped countries: Photovoltaic
cells, that produce power in the daytime, can store
electricity in these more advanced batteries for nighttime
use. Also, the materials in these batteries are recyclable.
Another exciting benefit from electric
cars is the possibility of selling some of the energy
back to utilities during times when they need it the
most. The car can be charged at night with inexpensive
electricity and the owner can sell unneeded power back
to the utility during the afternoon. This will eliminate
the need for building many of the power plants currently
planned for peak-period power production. In addition,
this will save on pollution because a power plant produces
the most pollution at start-up and shut-down. The most
efficient and least polluting way to operate one of
these plants is to let it run steadily all the time
just like a car's engine. There is enough existing capacity
in California alone to charge millions of electric vehicles
every night.
Because power plants release pollution
while producing the energy for electric cars, some people
think that what gas-driven cars emit is no worse. This
is not true.
In California , electric vehicles are
more than 30 times cleaner because much of the state's
electricity comes from hydroelectric plants and other
clean sources. In states where electricity comes from
dirty, high-sulfur coal, an electric car is still at
least 10 times cleaner comparing it to a gas-burning
car.
To understand the pollution comparison,
it is necessary to look at the complete fuel lifecycle,
called well-to-wheels.
For gasoline, this includes drilling the
well for the oil, pumping it, transporting it, refining
it, transporting it to a gas station, spilling some
of it while filling your tank and then emitting unburned
hydrocarbons and other exhaust gasses and particles
while driving.
For electricity, this includes mining
coal, transporting it, and burning it or natural gas.
Hydro, nuclear, wind, geothermal, and solar are other
methods used to produce electricity. This comparison
includes electrical transmission losses.
Finally, it is much cheaper and far more
efficient to put a single “scrubber” on a power plant's
large smokestack to capture the pollution than to inspect
and fix 100,000 vehicle emission systems at the tailpipes
of gas engine cars every couple of years. Also, it now
possible to capture the main greenhouse gas, CO2, with
a smokestack system.
The current popular clean car is the hybrid,
a partial electric vehicle that generates the electricity
on board using an ICE that still produces emissions
and greenhouse gases. There also are a few highly touted
demonstration fuel cell vehicles that cost a quarter
of a million dollars or more to build and last only
a few thousand hours of driving. In addition to sky-high
vehicle costs, for fuel cells to be competitive the
hydrogen fuel infrastructure must still be developed,
which could take more than 20 years and cost many hundreds
of billions of dollars.
When the Toyota Prius hybrid was introduced,
many people put their money down on a supposedly clean
vehicle that was very clean, but still emitted greenhouse
gases and other emissions. However, it did have a range
of 400 miles, about three to four times as much as electric
vehicles, and made people feel good. That was the beginning
of the end of the truly zero emissions electric vehicle
market in the United States . The end came when GM decided
it was cheaper to sue the State of California to roll
back clean vehicle regulations than it was to build
electric vehicles. GM believed the price of oil would
remain low and people would always want SUVs. That has
turned out to be a costly mistake.
One additional clean, efficient alternative
is a plug-in electric hybrid that switches to an efficient
internal combustion engine only when the electricity
is used up. This would allow 20 – 50 miles of zero emissions
electric motor driving with an overall range of 300
miles or more. It could be charged up at night and would
provide an overall efficiency of 50 – 100 mpg. It has
been demonstrated in several different programs.
For those of us deeply involved behind
the scenes for many years in advanced technology vehicles,
the overwhelming opinion is that the only real-world,
practical solution for the next several decades is electric
vehicles. This technology doesn't have to be developed.
It exists today. It is the most efficient, delivers
the greatest fuel savings and is by far the cleanest
for emissions.
By combining the Pulsing Traffic and EV2
systems, we could save at least 25 - 50 percent of all
the gasoline used in the United States . This would
make the US more than independent from OPEC and Middle
East oil. Both systems could be implemented around the
world with Pulsing Traffic in place in a year and the
electric vehicle systems in three to five years on a
massive scale. And hundreds of millions of electric
vehicles could be put into service within 10 to 20 years.
This would produce great energy efficiency
for the USA and the world and substantially help with
pollution and global climate change.
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