When I petsit for friends I get a chance to see what's on television. Most of the it is crap, but I did catch a NOVA special on "The Car of the Future" featuring the Tappet brothers from "Car Talk." It was a pretty interesting show, outlining a number of competing technologies that may (or may not) change the way we get from A to B. What I found most interesting, though, was the disparity between what independent researchers & companies are doing vs. big time auto makers.
I was first struck by this big difference while watching Who Killed the Electric Car? (and, to a lesser extent, one of the storylines in Everything's Cool). There are many people working to convert their cars to alternative technologies, be it electric or biofuel, but even though electric cars have been produced in the recent past big automakers continue to drag their feet.
Take the Chevy Volt, for instance. It has a projected release date of 2010 and in the documentary a spokesman for GM stated that it has a projected range of (*gasp*) 40 miles. Shortly after the Tappet brothers are shown talking to GM's vp of environment and energy, Elizabeth Lowery, who says (if I recall correctly) that the new car will have about 500 horsepower. The Tappet's are agahst; who the hell needs that kind of power? Lowery responds "Well, I guess you don't!" This from one of GM's top folks in charge of considering the environment...
To me it seems that the Volt is a way for GM to look like it cares about making more efficient, cleaner-running vehicles without actually committing to making any changes. In some ways, like range, it is inferior to other electric cars and the boxy design of the vehicle makes it seem that the GM team didn't really care about drag and what that might do to the efficiency of the car. Compare that with the 2008 Tesla Roadster which can range over 200 miles on a charge and is essentially available now (with a sedan planned for 2010). How is it that Tesla can come out of nowhere with a car ready now that has five times the range of GM's "best" attempt at making a similar car that is still two years off?
Major automotive companies cannot presently be trusted to take an interest in making cleaner, better vehicles. They'll talk about hybirds and hydrogen and biofuels but the people really doing the work (and being ignored by the big companies) are independent people who have the means and the know-how to create new technologies. It seems that we're going to be stuck with gas-guzzlers until there's a major financial incentive to switch, a time that is swiftly approaching.
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I recently read an interview with Jay Leno that had a video attached that was basically a lecture by Jay on old cars. A surprising number of them had incredibly high full efficiencies for their times, like cars that got 50-70 mpg that were made in the 30s-50s. I think some of them were even GM cars. All of them were rather small and slow, however I certainly wouldn't mind such a minor sacrifice.
If these car companies had the ability to have such fuel efficient vehicles 70 years ago, one would think they could at the very least match that efficiency today.
I think it would be a nice idea if our society could collectively boycott the sale of any car that is below something like 50mpg, and then periodically raise that unit. I'm betting they would "suddenly discover" a way to make better cars pretty quickly.
I've been driving a Prius since April (and I love it), but even more I'd love to be driving one of these babies!
Even 20 years ago, you could get a mainstream 50mpg+ car.
Any increased efficiency since then has been swallowed up by bloat, a bit like faster computers getting bogged down with the horrible Vista.
And that's the truth of the entire thing. The major players in the auto industry care about market signals that are going to generate cash. After all, they are in the business to make money. This is why our brand new cars get nearly identical mileage to those made in the 70s and 80s: profit. Making cars more efficient doesn't necessarily turn a profit but it does incur a lot of R&D debt that they have to somehow recoup. By making a "fuel friendly" car (as GM loves to pitch, notice it's not "environmentally friendly"), they can make cars with absurd horsepower that have marginal fuel savings. Most people want just a few things in a car: trunk space, a nice interior, and a big honkin' engine that'll do 200MPH. It's secondary to think that along with lease payments, they'll also have to be paying to fuel a gas guzzler just as much as their former gas guzzler.
As another commenter posted, old cars did have great efficiency. Before the big block engine boom of the 60s and early 70s, fuel was cheap but people didn't have the same amounts of disposable income since it was the post-war era and right before the first fuel crisis in America. My old '85 Buick, a real heavy lunker of a car, got the same fuel efficiency as my girlfriend's 2001 Focus, which is substantially lighter and "more modern". They were made nearly 2 decades apart and there was nearly no forward progress made consumption-wise.
Live awhile in hill country or the mountains and you'll see a reason for horsepower. (Back when I was about your age we used to have city buses getting stuck on this one hill. The transit people had to have one towed.)
Big companies are their own problem. Unless the firm is set up for ingenuity and innovation as part of the corporate culture, you're not going to get much ingenuity and innovation out of them. And when it isn't management holding the corporation back, it's labor.
Agreed. Big American auto manufacturers are part of the problem, not the solution.
Even Toyota is holding back. The Prius is not so much a hybrid as it is a compromise. You Tube is full of vids that show how a few adjustments to a Prius can dramatically improve its mileage, or how easily Toyota, if they wanted to, could just make the Prius fully electric. Toyota knows Americans are salivating for electric cars, but they have to play ball with the oil companies and Detroit, who have decided, in this instance, that market forces will not rule, and they simply won't bring fully electric models to markets, no matter how hot the market is.
The decision is that it's more important to protect Exxon's record-breaking profits than to make loads of money themselves by bringing a product to markets that would just sell like hotcakes, even at a premium price.
I don't understand why GM would make a decision that they know will prevent them from making huge profits, being a market leader, and possibly dominating the market in EVs for years to come.
It is not bottom-line thinking. Bottom-line thinking would result in them going for the highest profit possible for their company, which, of course, would be to bring the Next Big Thing to the market before their competitors.
But they have decided, even at the price of losing tremendous profit, they are not going to do that.
The reasons, unfortunately for America, are politically driven, not market driven.
I'm calling "Horsesh*t" on GM. And even Toyota, for that matter.
I bought one of these:
http://www.piaggio.com.au/Products/Fly-125.html
Problem soled.
It could not be more obvious that the Volt is purely for marketing... Screw them all.
If I lived in California I'd buy an Aptera (www.aptera.com), but since I don't, I'll probably buy a Triac if the reviews are good: http://greenvehicles.com/
If you're only worried about driving inner-city (to and from work), I'd seriously consider writing my local politicians and get them to consider dropping the speed limit in the city to 35 MPH. Once that is achieved, you can purchase a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (NEV) also known as a Low Speed Vehicle (LSV) and commute. The problem with NEVs is that they are limited to ~25 to 30 MPH, and so on any road rated above 35 MPH, they're not legal. They also don't come with airbags.
The upside though? They're cheap and they have decent ranges.
GEM models start around $7k, with a range of 30 miles.
I saw that NOVA awhile back and I loved it. It's encouraging that so many people are working on alternative cars, but it's sad to see the major manufacturers holding to tightly to the oil industry.