A TV documentary on "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

[fightingquaker13]

In spite of our reactor "Knowledge" over the Soviet Russians, (Or whatever you want to call them now), we still managed to damn near melt down Three Mile Island. I live 30 miles from the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. The largest in the country. I'm not worried about Al Qaeda, just the guys who work there.  Bill T.

With Homer and Smithers on the job you're golden.
FQ13

[Timothy]

In spite of our reactor "Knowledge" over the Soviet Russians, (Or whatever you want to call them now), we still managed to damn near melt down Three Mile Island. I live 30 miles from the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. The largest in the country. I'm not worried about Al Qaeda, just the guys who work there.  Bill T.

Don't worry Bill, it Palo Verde goes, you're gone anyway and all your worries are over.  IIRC, Palo Verde was a pretty well run site but I've been out of the biz for a while now.

I lived about a mile from Millstone Pt in CT.  We called it the "vaporized" zone. 

Remember, death is painless.  Radiation sickness is a bitch....

[warhawke]

The Russian dry reactors are an accident looking to happen, even without the lackluster performance of their technicians. Wet reactors are vastly safer, and Three Mile Island proved it because it DIDN'T melt down, and virtually all of the radiation was contained in the building, and what was released was the result of human error.

Pebble-bed reactors are a much more promising technology and far safer than any other current technology and shows great promise. Of course the watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) are moving heaven and earth to stop it. The Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor is surprisingly unbiased, though they do make too much of the graphite flammability issue IMO.

I do want to make clear, I am not saying that there is no hope for getting us the petrochemical monkey off our backs, far from it. I like Bio-diesel a lot, there are super efficient diesels out there right now that get 70+ MPG on #2 diesel and you get around 20% more mileage out of bio. Also, unlike ethanol it can be made out of non-food crops (like the system that uses municipal waste-water to grow algae which can be processed into bio-diesel) with current technology instead of the someday technology of cellulose conversion (though I don't disparage good research). The problem is the auto companies won't bring them into the country because our wonderful government taxes and regulates the hell out of them and makes it uneconomical. Also, bio-diesel gels at around 15 degrees F so it is limited during the winter months, but I think we could find ways around this. The problem is the government sticking their thumbs in the pie. We had PNGV in our facility for a while, the 6 billion dollar Clinton era boondoggle to build an 80+ MPG car. Of course the bureaucrats kept putting arbitrary limits on what they could do (like Aluminum instead of steel construction, which increased the weight due to the need for a steel frame, which was a payoff to ALCOA). Getting the government (and the corporate scum) out of the way would allow real solutions to arise, instead of new ways to maintain the profits of multinational corporations.       

Government is a problem masquerading as it's own solution. If real people were allowed to find real solutions to our problems we would be far better off, the government and corporations only want to increase their profits and power-base.   

[billt]

Perhaps in this time of crisis, we can get the Fantastic Johnny C. to come out of retirement, and head up the green jobs post vacated by Van Jones ? One can only hope.  Bill T.

 http://www.youtube.com/user/billt460#p/f/9/x6V5mYx9Yxc

"Come On Baby Shake That Thing".

[billt]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUXoCrlBgdc&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5_9Gi7w19Y&feature=related

Too bad Edward Teller is so old. He was able to blow a 1.3 mile wide crater in the bottom of the Pacific. Surely he could get us some cheap electricity.   Bill T.

[Sponsor]

[tombogan03884]

"Electric CARs" is the wrong approach.
Resources need to be put into finding an "electric PICK UP TRUCK".
Find an ECONOMICLY, practical fully electric Peterbuilt.
Models of electric vehicle now on the market are to small and basically useless. Like the horseless carriage. They serve to high light weaknesses such as battery technology.
One thing I dislike about Nuke plants, as well as the current system, is the centralization of something that could be essentially free to every one .
Think about the technology available today. If you can generate enough electricity, to charge a cell phone battery,you can have satellite communications , which means access to the internet.  Think about "Any person willing to purchase and maintain the equipment" has otherwise free rein of the worlds knowledge, porn, and Nigerian cash transfers.
Sounds Lib as heck right ?    
Communication spawns trade the way Demons spawn Imps.
Mrs. Nigerian  saw some things on TV that caught her EYE    So in an effort to satisfy the affectionate wheedling (Make the noise go away    ) He turns to the local version of "Hi Tech". The infamous Barrister Burundi with your $100 million. Don't laugh, they keep at because they make millions and they buy all kinds of things, what they want to buy , we have to make, this creates , or at least saves, jobs, which leads to more tax revenue
On the other hand decentralization has its more prosaic argument , limitation of physical damage, The North East Blackout's would not have happened with a decentralized power grid a squirrel gets into the system and fries it and takes out one small node. the problem is contained.

[brosometal]

The original question asked was, "Who killed the electric car?".  I believe Warhawke hit the proverbial nail on the head:

Government is a problem masquerading as it's own solution.

Until everyone gets that very pertinent fact nailed into their collective noggins we can talk ad nauseum about foreign oil cabals and domestic corporate conspiracies but none of these have the power to tax and destroy freedom.  That is why our forefathers distrusted it so much. 

Focus on the real problem.

[brosometal]

I just came across this today and thought it would work here well.  I lifted it from one of the columnist at Daily Caller(http://dailycaller.com/).  You really need check it out.

I want an electric car for the awesome torque, but am worried that my friends will think I’m trying to make some kind of lame, self-aggrandizing “green” statement about myself. What should I do? — Jake


I’ve been there, Jake. When I went through my ethical eating phase, back in early 2010, I put up with a lot of grief from the Cro-Magnon types that I call friends. They didn’t cotton to my new conscientious lifestyle. But I ignored them, because I knew in my heart that right is right. If I don’t eat veal, then how are those poor, cramped baby calves ever supposed to escape those hideous crates? Yes, there were plenty of times when I felt like eating pork, or maybe a steak, and didn’t need the pasta carb-load that comes with the scaloppini. But sometimes we have to deny our appetites, to ignore the taunts of others, and to listen to that still, small voice that says, “It’s time to do better.”

Then again, you don’t seem to care about doing your part to halt global cooling by driving a gas guzzler. Ethics clearly aren’t your motivator, as they are mine. So let me just lay it out plainly: electric cars are goofy. Sure, I like the idea of bankrupting OPEC. And it would be really refreshing to hear cries of “blood for sand” instead of “blood for oil,” during our next Middle Eastern adventure. But let me run three terrifying words by you: Ed Begley Jr. He drives an electric car. Do you want to be thought of as an EBJ? Or do you ever want to get laid again? True fact: in blind taste tests, women will choose men who smell of fossil fuels over a guy who uses an electricity-generating bicycle to make toast, ten out of ten times. If you enjoy making sweet love to a special lady, stick with your Honda.

[Pixcutter]

Let's see...
The Prius has brake problems...the rest of Toyota products (not all yet named, but you can bet it's common thoughout since that's the kind of part that can be used universally) have accelerator problems...so much for Japanese wunderkars.  When the cost differential is so great that it takes 7 years to recoup that differential, the other ecological factors (mining for the materials, drilling for the materials, manufacturing) make the car no green solution.  It's just PR.

Both the supply side (generation) and the consumer side (electric cars) are still awaiting to be born.  When someone invents a way to effectively generate and STORE electricity, the electricly powered vehicle will truly be here.  Until then, petroleum fuels are still the most efficient.  It's just too bad we have to buy them from a culture that only wants us all dead or returned to an 11th century culture.

My response to this...Buy a Corvette.  430 hp and 17-25 mpg and 0-60 in under 6 seconds on a U.S. made car.  No other supercar INTHE WORLD can currently match that.  And you can get it other colors than black and gray.

[Tyler Durden]

I'm not concerned at all about being green.

Green is just an agenda, in my opinion, to affect a means to some end.

I am concerned about telling the hadji's to eff off.

If that means  pooping up some parts of the North American environment, just short of having chromium in the drinking water (think Erin Brokovich) or something similar to that, I'd be all for it. 

With what? 50 million Americans unemployed...Obama chose instead to do a federal land grab of some 10 million acres across 9 states.  My gut feeling is telling me that there is probably oil or some other vital resource under those lands.

It would be worth it to not have our economy manipulated by camel jockeys.  It would also be worth it to have our military sons and daughters brought back home (and then placed on the Mexico border or at our international airports...but that's probably better talked about in another thread at another time).