Also the GEM golf cart cars can go 50mph.
If that's there top speed they would almost certainly take a lot longer to reach 50mph than normal cars (unless they have the power to go faster but have limiters, but I doubt it, if they had the power to go faster they would probably make the limit high enough for the vehicle to be used on highways).
Even if I never drove faster than 50mph, I wouldn't consider a car with a 50mph top speed.
GMs own elusive electric technology of the 90's worked out just fine.
The car was too successful.
No it wasn't successful. It was a money losing project from the start. They where only made to meet a requirement for zero emission vehicles, when that requirement went away the cars went away.
"One industry official said that each EV1 cost the company about US$80,000"
en.wikipedia.org
"General Motors lost two billion dollars on the project, and lost
money on every single EV1 produced. The leases didn't even cover
the costs of servicing them.
The range of 130 miles is bogus. None of them ever achieved that
under normal driving conditions. Running the air conditioning or
heater could halve that range. Even running the headlights
reduced it by 10%.
Minimum recharge time was two hours using special charging
stations that except for fleet use didn't exist. The effective
recharge time, using the equipment that could be installed in a
lessee's garage, was eight hours. Home electrical systems simply
couldn't handle the necessary current draw for "fast" charging.
NiMH batteries that had lasted up to three years in testing were
failing after six months in service. There was no way to keep
them from overheating without doubling the size of the battery
pack. Lead-acid batteries were superior to NiMH in actual daily
use.
Battery replacement was a task performed by skilled technicians
taking the sorts of precautions that electricians do when working
on live circuits, because that's what they were doing -- working
on live circuits. You cannot turn batteries "off." This is the
reason the vehicles were leased, rather than sold. As long as
the terms of the lease prohibited maintenance by other than a
Hughes technician, GM's liability in the event of a screw-up was
much reduced. Technicians can encounter high voltages in hybrid
vehicles. In the EV1, there were _really_ high voltages present.
Lessees were complaining that their electric bills had increased
to the point that they'd rather be using gasoline.
One of the guys I worked with transferred to the EV1 program
after what was by then a division of Raytheon lost the C-130 ATS
contract. He's now back working for us. He has some interesting
stories, none of them good, though he did like the
company-subsidized apartment in Malibu. He said the car was a
dream to drive, if you didn't mind being stranded between
Bakersfield and Barstow on a hot July afternoon when a battery
blew up from the combined heat of the day and the current draw. "
groups.google.com
Now battery and other associated technologies have improved. Something like the EV-1 would be more practical now, but it still wouldn't be cost effective.
Something like the Volt (essentially a plug-in hybrid) could possibly be cost effective and also have adequate range and refueling ability. But "could possibly" isn't "is" or even "will be". Its a big if, not something that is nearly certain.
Something like the GEM is a niche car for Americans, and a small niche at that, not something that's going to take over the market. Even with $10/gallon gasoline, something like the Volt is much more likely to be successful (although at $2/gallon gasoline I don't think it will sell as well, and definitely not without heavy subsidies), cars/carts like the GEM would only move from a tiny niche to a moderate sized niche, their numbers would go up A LOT, but you wouldn't see them in the scores or hundreds of millions. |
