Recent Comments:
EPA vs the Chevy Volt: Hybrid or electric car? 48mpg or 100mpg? {Autoblog Green}
Sep 7th 2008 12:03AM Confirmation that the EPA is manned by brainless morons.
Their own commuter trip stats clearly prove a car like the Volt would achieve over 250 MPG while commuting, which accounts for fully half our gas usage. And that's not allowing
for any workplace recharging, which is totally absurd. My estimate is tha the Volt will achive at least 250 MPG overall and that it could easily top 400 MPG with a few reasonable assumptions. This isn't rocket science, EPA folks. Look at you own statisitcs and stop trying to apply inappropriate mileage test loop results - they are totally meaningless when dealing with plug-in hybirds. Jeeez!!!! That's our tax dollars in action.
How much it will cost to run your electric car {Autoblog Green}
Sep 6th 2008 2:19PM One big fraud all these EV proponents commit is in calling these cars "cheap to drive," beginning wiht that long stream of silly lies in that silly film "Who Killed.." Fortunately for the film, there were no EVs for sale at the time, and the film's viewing audience didn't know squat about electric cars and why there hadn't been any for the past 100 years, else 99% of the film would have been justly characterized as BS. Well, now it's going to be different. Mitsubishi is promising a "pure" electric next year at the same price as the Chevy Volt, around $40,000. Battery price : $20,000 with a lifespan of around 5 years. That's roughly 60,0000 miles. That means you're paying over 30 cents per mile for batteries. That sounds more like a rate charged by Taxis. The Mits will travel 100 miles at best, which means that you can count on perhaps getting there and back to destinations 35 to 40 miles away after a few years of wear and tear and non-optimal driving conditions. This means you MUST own at least two cars if one is pure electric, and the other CAN'T be pure electric. Sounds like a very restricted niche market for all these pure EV owners.
Rumormill: Mazda testing Chevy Volt competitor {Autoblog}
Aug 28th 2008 5:14PM A WANKEL range extender engine? That makes zero sense, except for the fact that it, like the Volt range extender, the engine's biggest problem is how to stop gasoline in the tank from going stale.
GM's Volt: More ice-breaker than game-changer in electric car tech {BloggingStocks}
Aug 26th 2008 5:36PM The biggest error I see being made these days is when people evaluate the Chevy Volt, or any electrically propelled vehicle, on the basis of cost. You folks are missing the point completely. If it were simply a matter of cost, $4 gasoline
is far cheaper than any electric car. And to believe that the Volt needs to be a muscle car is about as dopey a statement as I've yet heard. GM already has two more variants in the pipeline - probably from Cadillac (to hide the cost more easily) and either Pontiac (performance oriented version) or Saturn (going for the environmentally ultra-conscious).
GM dropping Volt's range from 600 to 360 miles {Engadget}
Jul 9th 2008 12:46PM THis article would have been news 4 months ago, when the decision was made to only use one of the two small 6 gallon gas tanks. The reason was obvious to those who understand the Volt, not to those around here, apparently. Sour gasoline. It's quite probable that many Volt drivers will NEVER use 12 gallons of gasoline before it goes sour (I estimate it would require 18 months for me to use 12 gallons driving a Volt). The
new tank system holds wnough for 360 miles of gas powered driving after the 40 miles of battery powered juice runs out.
General Motors (GM): Electro-Shock Therapy {BloggingStocks}
Jul 2nd 2008 5:34PM The Chevy Volt is defined by GM as an electric car with a range extender, in this case a small gas or ethanol powered engine. The claim that it's being rushed to market without the normal evaluation is totally absurd. Evaluation is a function of the amount of testing performed, not simply calendar time, which has no significance, per se. In the case of the Volt, there are far more engineers testing this vehicle than any that GM has ever built. Rainey has penned some articles that make me doubt his competence to have an opinion about this technology. Calling this a moon shot is rather
silly - the only unknown here was the behavior and lifespan of the battery pack and we now know that BOTH of the candidate battery packs have passed all tests with flying colors. It obviously coming down mostly to a matter of costs as to which company wins the contract. As for Chapter 11, I feel that this is long overdue for the automakers. It's become abundently clear that the unions have destroyed the market share over the past 40 years and , despite accounting for only a small portion of the work these days, are still fixing labor rates and are as non-competitive as ever.
GM needs to go bankrupot and shed the union albatross on their shoulders. Of course, the unionized media won't report it that way.
Tesla's Elon Musk promises sub-$30k all-electric car in less than four years {Engadget}
Jul 1st 2008 10:54AM If Musk makes any more wild assed promises, someone please put a bullet in his thick skull. Talk about an unreliable, incompetent company. What happened to the first sedan they promised? Then they promised a copy of the Chevy Volt serial hybrid. Then they sued Fisker, claiming that Tesla was, more or less, totally incompetent at even hiring auto
designer. Now they are being sued by Fisker , they are years behind in their delivery of a pretty simple sports car, yet are now announcing another example of what only the most gullible would claim not to be pure vaporware. Why doesn't this company simply fold up ther tents and admit that they are nothing more than amateur automakers who have to hire outside to do EVERYTHING, from designing their cars to telling them how to meet Federal regulations?
A $30K Tesla is the utmost in utter nonsense. I notice he said
4 years, which is long after most estimates of when Tesla will have to declare Chapter 11.
The battery pack for their existing vehicle weighs almost that much, it used commercially mass produced cells (8671 of them!!!) which are actually rising in price, not dropping, and they have no connection with any third geenration li ion technology, being stuck with 1st generation crap, yet are claiming a car whose total cost is less than the cost of its battery pack. Tesla is getting to be a humorous subject for the electric propulsion crowd these days. It's run exactly the way you would expect a car company would be, if the execs came from disciplines far removed from automaking. It seems to be operated with a gullible Hollywood public in mind, who have more money than brains, or talent.
Subaru features STELLA electric car at G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit {Engadget}
Jun 29th 2008 11:09AM A 50 mile driving range equals a driving radius of less than 25 miles. Is this car some sort of joke that Suburu is playing? Do these people
realize the utter stupidity of a car that can only get to destinations within a 25 mile radius? My golf cart can go further than this car.
Dyson looking to motor into the electric car arena? {Engadget}
Jun 25th 2008 10:48AM When someone claims they can improve an electric car andoesn't sayy anything about better batteries, they are one of two things; a total fraud, or a total idiot. I wonder which one Dyson is?
Would you give up your electric car's radio for longer range? {Green Daily}
Jun 13th 2008 5:03PM Do you realize just how little electricity a stereo consumes? A heat pump running to cool or heat the car will use electricity that can be measured - a radio cannot. I guess the first thing this younger generation will have to learn is exactly what electricity is.
