lame. none are normal 4 door cars. why produce 3, and then whittle it down to only one of these 3? jeep minivan sports car
None of these wackjobs at GM would give a s**t if gas wasn't so high causing their sales to plummet. Make an electric car, fine, but don't talk about "saving the environment". Last I checked when Toyota and Honda were making Insights and Priuses GM was busy making the H2.
Agreed, they were too busy lining their own pockets and putting in more cup holders. Lazy lazy lazy. DD
Actually that's neither accurate nor fair. GM was making inroads in the electric car business way before the Prius, and spending billions on the tech in the process. The US consumer just wasn't going to buy it with gas at 1.50 a gallon in the mid 90s. Who Killed The Electric Car? You Did.
Welp, this might signify the death of Tesla as an automaker, though if they are smart they'll sell off their intellectual property before they get raped again (Fisker). The only real breakthrough Tesla has is a nifty drive motor/power controller combination, the body was a Lotus as is the Dodge sports car. Well thermal management of the batteries is also an issue but I'm sure A123 will do a lot of the work for them. And Hayes, that isn't fair either, not only was gas 1.50 a gallon.... but the EV1 and any other car loaded with lead acid batteries was going to be a slow, short range dog. Battery tech STILL isn't quite up to the task of replacing ICE 10 years on with the world clamoring for higher power density in laptops etc. (Though I'll admit the power draw requirements are different, that's not the problem)
every little thing/option helps btw does anyone read the TMQ on espn, had a great section on horsepower and mileage over the past two weeks articles, Hold Your Horsepower: Gasoline demand has declined slightly since 2005. And a few months ago, Congress enacted the first tightening of vehicle fuel economy rules in two decades; barrel prices of oil are declining. So far, so good. But oil is still well over $100 per barrel, versus about $74 at this time last year, and gasoline still costs nearly a dollar more per gallon than at this time last year. The longer-term picture is bleak. In 1973, America imported 6 million barrels of petroleum daily. Currently it imports more than 13 million barrels each day. Yesterday I heard a radio announcer say, "Now that the gasoline price crunch is over …" Don't make the mistake of thinking for one minute that America's petroleum addiction is even close to fixed. For cars, SUVs and light trucks, there are two forces at play in oil-addiction trends, but only one is generally recognized. Everybody knows the fad of big vehicles increases petroleum needs -- according to the EPA, the average weight of passenger vehicles has risen 30 percent since 1988, while average MPG is down. The other factor, little acknowledged, is horsepower, which has risen even more sharply than weight. Twenty years ago, the average new passenger vehicle sold in the United States had 120 horsepower. For this model year the figure is 230, almost double. There will be no fundamental change in oil import levels until horsepower numbers change. Like weight, horsepower depresses fuel economy. Simply knocking a third off the horsepower of new U.S. passenger vehicles would, in about a decade -- as efficient new vehicles replace wasteful old ones -- eliminate approximately the amount of oil the United States imports from the Middle East. Yes, it's that simple. Race cars need lots of horsepower; suburban family cars do not. Excessive horsepower causes the United States to be dependent on Middle East dictatorships, engages military commitments to those dictatorships, drives up the price of oil and pushes down the value of the dollar. Horsepower is also the enabler of road rage -- rapid acceleration allows cutting off, drag racing and sudden lane changes. Road rage entered national consciousness as a problem in the mid-1990s, exactly when the horsepower ratings of new vehicles began to spike. Yet nearly all auto companies selling in the United States continue to introduce overpowered cars that require far too much fuel. The problem transcends brands, whether domestic or international. The new BMW 550i sedan has 360 horsepower and records just 18 MPG. Pontiac's new 361-horsepower G8 GT is a small car that gets just 18 MPG. Only in America do small cars waste gasoline. Ford's new Taurus sedan has a 263-horsepower engine which delivers only 22 MPG in its front-wheel-drive variant, an awful 19 MPG in the all-wheel-drive version. The Taurus isn't a sports car, it's a family car! Toyota's new Camry, another family car, offers 263 horsepower and just 22 MPG. The Dodge Avenger, a family car, when ordered with the optional 255-horsepower engine posts just 18 MPG. Infiniti's 320-horsepower FX45, Cadillac's 403-horsepower Escalade and the 500-horsepower Porsche Cayenne Turbo achieve a dreadful 14 MPG. (All mileage figures in this column are the "combined" numbers that blend city and highway driving. Under real-world circumstances, especially stop-and-go commuting, many drivers average well below the official number.) Plus, the more horses, the more greenhouse gases. According to the EPA, a Porsche Cayenne Turbo emits 13.1 tons of greenhouse gases annually. Check any car's MPG and greenhouse numbers here. [+] Enlarge AP Photo/Nick Ut A 1968 Corvette -- which had less muscle than a typical 2008 family car. Less horsepower would mean better fuel efficiency, diminished petroleum imports and lower carbon emissions but, inevitably, reduced acceleration. Don't buyers crave speed? Most cars are already too fast! Thirty years ago, the average passenger vehicle did zero to 60 MPH in 14 seconds; for 2008, the average is about 8.5 seconds. That new 263-horsepower Ford Taurus family sedan does zero to 60 in 6.5 seconds -- the same acceleration as the 1968 Corvette with the famed 427 big-block V8. The new Camry and Honda's comparable new Accord do zero to 60 in about 7 seconds. Acceleration of this type is not needed for everyday driving; such power is useful mainly for speeding, running lights and cutting others off. Lexus has aired ads boasting that its new IS-F model, with a 416-horsepower engine, does zero to 60 in 4.6 seconds; the new 480-horsepower Nissan GTR is even faster at 3.8 seconds. Both have dismal mileage ratings. Lexus is telling the business media the IS-F is intended for the United States and won't be pushed in the company's home market of Japan. There, the IS-F's road-rage engineering and 10.2 tons of greenhouse gases released annually might be controversial. In addition to reducing fossil-fuel use, dialing down horsepower would reduce highway deaths. Researcher Michael Sivak of the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute has found that highway fatalities dropped sharply earlier this year as gas prices shot up, with highway deaths declining 22 percent in March and 18 percent in April. (Note: You can reach the Transportation Research Institute only by car.) This spectacular decline in deaths, receiving little public notice, came about, Sivak found, mainly when drivers slowed down in order to improve MPG. High-horsepower vehicles encourage speeding, because they make soaring above the speed limit feel effortless. If horsepower were reduced by sensible amounts, there would be less driving 80 MPH in 60 MPH zones, or 50 MPH in 30 MPH zones. Sivak's numbers suggest that if America became sensible about speed, perhaps 8,000 lives per year could be saved. Eight thousand lives per year would represent more Americans saved than if all incidents of drowning were eliminated. Federal legislation to regulate the horsepower of passenger vehicles, perhaps by establishing a power-to-weight standard, would reduce petroleum consumption, cut greenhouse gas emissions, lower U.S. oil imports, strengthen the dollar, and take some of the road-rage stress out of driving. So what are we waiting for? Whatever your answer, don't reply, "No one can tell me what I can drive." Courts consistently rule that vehicles using public roads may be regulated for public purposes, such as safety and energy efficiency. NASCAR races occur on private property -- there, horsepower is nobody's business. On public roads, horsepower is very much everybody's business. You'd be laughed at if you asserted a "right" to drive a locomotive down the freeway. Where is it written we have the "right" to operate an overpowered car that wastes oil and pollutes the sky? [+] Enlarge AP Photo/Scott k. Brown NASCAR cars need high horsepower, cars bound for suburban shopping malls do not. Meanwhile, all the talk lately has been about getting drivers into hypothesized future vehicles that might get excellent mileage, such as plug-in hybrids. Even assuming such cars someday are in showrooms, the payoff is greater for getting people out of low-mileage vehicles right now, because low-mileage vehicles are disproportionate consumers of fuel. Assume an average year of 12,000 miles traveled. The driver who trades in a 15 MPG SUV or high-horsepower car for a 20 MPG standard-engine full-size car would reduce fuel use by 200 gallons. The driver who trades in a 20 MPG full-size car for a 25 MPG midsize would reduce fuel use by 120 gallons. The driver who trades in a 25 MPG midsize for a 30 MPG compact would cut fuel use by 80 gallons. The driver who trades in a 30 MPG compact for a 35 MPH current-technology hybrid would save 60 gallons. And the driver who trades in a 35 MPG current-technology hybrid for a 40 MPG advanced plug-in hybrid would save 40 gallons. By far the best oil-reduction bang for the buck lies in people giving up large SUVs, pickup trucks used for commuting, plus any type of overpowered vehicle, in favor of driving regular cars. The math is presented in detail in this paper by Richard Larrick and Jack Soll of Duke University. This suggests that instead of tax policy being focused on credits for buyers of high-mileage hybrids, and federal subsidies being focused on the development of high-mileage hypothesized future designs, tax policy should reward those who junk SUVs in order to buy regular cars. Tax programs to encourage drivers to junk old high-polluting automobiles were successful, so a junk-your-SUV program might work, too. More on Mileage and Politics: Last fall, after 20 years of strident inaction, Congress finally passed a bill to increase the fuel efficiency of cars, SUVs and pickup trucks. There was a lot self-congratulation on Capitol Hill. The law seemed to mandate roughly a one-third increase in new-vehicle MPG by 2020 - enough to eliminate the oil the United States imports from the Persian Gulf. Sounds great! But as your columnist wrote in December 2007, "TMQ is hugely suspicious … [there is] a waiver provision that says that if the new standards prove too onerous, automakers can ask they be waived. That is a formula for what Washington specializes in: the appearance of dramatic action while nothing actually happens." So what's going on in Washington right now? Pleading poormouth, the big three automakers are already asking for a waiver from the 2015 interim standard, which requires roughly a 15 percent improvement in fuel efficiency. That standard does not take effect for seven years, and already Detroit automakers are saying they can't meet it. Or perhaps, they don't want to try. Lee Hyun-Soon, president of Hyundai, told the Wall Street Journal last week his company will meet the entire 2020 standard by 2015, and will do so entirely with conventional vehicles -- no complex plug-in hybrids, just sensible engineering using existing technology. Whenever Washington seems to get serious about oil waste, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and Subaru put their engineers to work -- then build, at American factories staffed by American workers, vehicles that comply with MPG rules. Whenever Washington seems to get serious about oil waste, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors put their lobbyists at work to dilute or evade the standards. There are only 535 people in the United States so gullible they would believe Korean engineers can meet a technical standard, yet American engineers cannot. Unfortunately, those 535 people are the members of the United States Congress. [+] Enlarge AP Photo/Ron Edmonds Are they the 535 most gullible people in America? Has anyone from the mainstream media followed up on how last year's seemingly strict MPG bill is being watered down? As Eric Patashnik of the University of Virginia details in his powerful and timely new book "Reforms at Risk," reporters are often present when "dramatic" legislation passes, then treat the enactment as the end of the story -- paying no attention as lobbyists later water down a bill. As Thomas Friedman points out in his important new book "Hot, Flat and Crowded," the refusal of Congress and the White House to take any real action against oil waste has had the effect of transferring hundreds of billions of dollars to Moscow, and to the oil sheiks who support anti-Western and anti-Israel terrorism. If MPG standards were higher, oil demand would fall. Instead, high demand holds up barrel prices, enriching Persian Gulf dictatorships and Vladimir Putin. Why, Friedman asks, is Russia suddenly confrontational? Because in the past two years, Russian elites have gotten super-rich, owing to rising oil prices brought on at least in part by U.S. stupidity regarding petroleum waste. If Congress grants Detroit the MPG waivers it seeks, the stupidity will march on. Meanwhile, back at the federal budget: In 1976, the entire U.S. national debt was about $800 billion, converted to today's dollars. Last summer, Congress without debate and with barely any notice added $800 billion to the national debt ceiling -- raising that ceiling by an amount equal to the entire debt a generation ago. With no debate! The U.S. national debt was $5 trillion in 1997, and has doubled to almost $10 trillion since. Why aren't the young outraged? The old are acting irresponsibly -- spending like crazy but unwilling to tax themselves, then handing the bill to the young. If the young were spending borrowed money like crazy, the old would be lecturing them. How come in Washington, the old can get away with behavior that would be called reckless for the young? At any rate, the moment another $800 billion worth of borrowing was authorized, supposedly for "emergency" purposes, lobbyists got to work trying to seize every penny now. The big three automakers are now asking Congress for $50 billion of that $800 billion, supposedly to retool to build the fuel-efficient vehicles they had no way -- just no way on Earth -- of knowing they would ever be required to build. As Paul Ingrassia pointed out in last week's Wall Street Journal, when Congress bailed out Chrysler in 1980, the deal was structured so that if the company recovered, taxpayers got most of their money back. But what's being asked for now is pure subsidy -- money taxpayers will never see again, and that will be used in part to fund the bonuses of overpaid auto executives who got their companies into trouble in the first place. (The Journal opposes the bailout, though the $50 billion would go to Corporate America.) Ingrassia further notes that when Chrysler's Lee Iacocca tried to weasel out of the deal and keep the money that was promised back to taxpayers, Ronald Reagan stood firm and would not budge. Contrast Reagan's sense of civic responsibility to the current president and Congress, both of which just cannot wait to give away other people's money. Now connect the dots! The automakers are asking for $50 billion in handouts to meet new fuel economy requirements -- at the very time they are also asking for waivers from those requirements. If the past is any guide, they will get both the subsidies and the waivers. The net will be zero progress, more billions of dollars for oil shipped to anti-American forces in the Persian Gulf, and more debt handed to everyone under the age of 30.
^ The horsepower/mileage link is more complicated than indicated. The Corvette gets awfully good mileage considering it has 400+ horsepower, and consider that the Pontiac Solstice gets better mileage with the turbocharger and increased horsepower (19/25 vs 19/28). Higher compression and turbocharging improve both mileage and horsepower. If someone were to stuff a Duramax 6.6 liter V8 into a Vette or Camaro, you'd have a 360hp, tire smoking muscle car getting 30mpg. There is no doubt that, in general, smaller engines are more efficient... and even more important, the fewer the cylinders the more efficient an engine becomes due to increased friction, pumping losses, etc... Agree with the deficit/automaker ripoff stuff in the piece
They are just going to do what is going to make them the most money. Laziness has nothing to do with it.
In other news...Ike could increase power bills for years to come. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hurricane/ike/6014950.html It seems to me that this kind of thing might have some kind of effect on the market for electric cars.
How is that working for them now? yea. Finance 101 ...diversify. I wouldn't call it laziness. I'd call it greed and lack for basic understanding of normal business cycles.
LOL! They will break down in less than 3 years, just like their GAS-GUZZLER counterparts...! United States made cars... crap.
By the end of 2010? What the hell is so complicated about an electric car? I get 40 mpg on my motorcycle, so I guess I can wait. The sports car looks ok.
Tata Motors to introduce Air Car - Is it the next big thing? Tata Motors is taking giant strides and making history for itself. First the Landrover-Jaguar deal, then the world's cheapest carand now it is also set to introduce the car that runs on air, compressed air to be specific.. With fuel prices touching nearly $150 per barrel, it is about time we heard some breakthrough! India's largest automaker Tata Motors is set to start producing the world's first commercial air-powered vehicle.The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Nègre for Luxembourg-based MDI, uses compressed air, as opposed to the gas-and-oxygen explosions of internal-combustion models, to push its engine's pistons. Some 6000 zero-emissions Air Cars are scheduled to hit Indian streets by Augustof 2009. The Air Car, called the MiniCAT could cost around Rs. 3,50,000 ($ 8177) in India and would have a range of around 300 km between refuels. The cost of a refill would be about Rs. 85 ($ 2). Tata motors also plans to launch the world's cheapest car, Tata Nano priced famously at One lakh rupees by October. The MiniCAT which is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis that is glued not welded and a body of fiberglass powered by compressed air. Microcontrollers are used in every device in the car, so one tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights, indicators etc. There are no keys - just an access card which can be read by the car from your pocket. According to the designers, it costs less than 50 rupees per 100Km (about a tenth that of a petrol car). Its mileage is about double that of the most advanced electric car (200 to 300 km or 10 hours of driving), a factor which makes a perfect choice in cities where the 80% of motorists drive at less than 60Km. The car has a top speed of 105 kmph. Refilling the car will, once the market develops, take place at adapted petrol stations to administer compressed air. In two or three minutes, and at a cost of approximately 100 rupees, the car will be ready to go another 200-300 kilometers. As a viable alternative, the car carries a small compressor which can be connected to the mains (220V or 380V) and refill the tank in 3-4 hours. Due to the absence of combustion and, consequently, of residues, changing the oil (1 litre of vegetable oil) is necessary only every 50,000Km.] The temperature of the clean air expelled by the exhaust pipe is between 0-15 degrees below zero, which makes it suitable for use by the internal air conditioning system with no need for gases or loss of power.
Diversification of product lines doesn't exactly help if there isn't an available market. In fact, it would probably hurt since more product lines would result in more variable costs. Up until recently, nobody gave a second thought to buying an electric car. Beyond that, stockholders would have crucified them for reinvesting earnings into electric cars. Forgive my ignorance on the current market for electric cars, but as far as I know, the market isn't close to saturated, and Chrysler now seems to be on relatively parallel ground with other manufacturers who wish to enter the market for electric cars in the USA. And I wouldn't call it greed, merely capitalism. For 99% of large corporations, $$$ > everything else. As much as we'd like our large corporations to be socially responsible, they won't unless there is some quid pro quo.
