More Deluded Rantings of a Deranged Mind...
Honda, Suzuki, and Yamaha were making gasoline engines that were capable of normally aspirated 250 HP per liter 25 years ago for motorcycles. Honda was offering cars with 50 MPG 25 years ago. Those cars were 49-state legal, and the catalyzed exhaust version for California got 49 MPG. Hypermilers were getting those cars to 100 MPG 25 years ago, and they were not hybrids. If not for regulatory changes in emissions, and restrictive changes in crash protection which made even non-harmful gas compounds illegal and demanded that the weight of cars go up, Honda would have passed 100 MPG years ago.
The traditional automotive industry is not interested in achieving
'major change' at all. They only do
'incremental change' and even that hearkens back to what they could have accomplished decades earlier. Most of the
'advances' in making the majority of gas guzzlers moderately more fuel efficient has been made by adding more gearshift profiles to automatic transmissions. It used to be a point of pride that a truly powerful motor would
"...only get 3 MPG!"
I find it disingenuous that people who lambasted both EPA regulatory requirements under Corporate Average Fuel Economy
(CAFE) since 1976, and dismissed the technological advances that made them possible, now laud the results of those very same improvements in ICE vehicles as if it were made in a willing, purposeful, natural fashion.
- They didn't want fuel injection, because they preferred carburetion.
- They didn't want automatic transmissions, because they preferred manuals.
- They didn't want catalytic converters, because they preferred leaded gasoline and a rich mixture.
- They didn't want engine management computers, because they preferred cars be simple as possible for the shade tree mechanic.
Every step of the way traditional automobile manufacturers have fought the advance toward the future, always wanting to stay in the past, because that was always
'good enough' for them, and their Customers. If the Detroit Big Three had their way, no one would own a car that weighed less than 6,000 lbs, was less than 22 feet long, got more than 8 MPG on the highway, used anything less than a big block V8, that didn't need a variety of parts replaced every 1-3 months, that didn't need the whole vehicle replaced every 2-4 years... But now they talk about the
'superiority' of petroleum fueled ICE vehicles over BEV as if it is something to be proud of, when in their hearts they despise everything their precious gas guzzlers have been forced to become with the passage of time.
Before advances in battery technology, and the coming of an upstart such as Tesla Motors, the traditional automobile manufacturers could ignore electric cars. They did so gladly. They would turn their attentions toward electric cars from time-to-time, but only to ridicule them. They thought it was rather cute that warehouse switched to electric fork lifts, and airports and seaports switched to electric carts. They could live with those minor
'innovations', because those electrics were largely out of the public eye and were so obviously handicapped by short range and the need to be plugged in almost all the time. When General Motors accidentally made a viable electric car in the EV1, they campaigned vigorously to make it a failure and finally succeeded in that endeavor, just in time to buy AM General and start pumping out HUMMERS.
You see, traditional automobile manufacturers don't actually make cars anymore. They build mobile spare parts conveyances. When they design a product line, it is always with a look to the future. But only in terms of how much revenue can be made on the car through service, repairs, and replacements of parts over its limited lifetime of use. Sure, they had to make their cars a little bit more reliable, with the caveat of
'regular maintenance' to consider... But once a warranty ran out, it was back to the same old status quo for vehicles sold as used cars. Alternator, water pump, oil pump, head gasket, transmission seal... The cycle of remove & replace is ongoing until there is a permanent failure of seized parts somewhere in the mix. The car is built when the number it can achieve is most profitable in the long run.
Electric cars counteract that entire paradigm because once you get them to work, they... work... and don't stop working. Ever. Tesla Motors is close to getting there.
The two biggest arguments against electric vehicles are their cost and their range. The greatest expense of their manufacture is in the batteries, and it just so happens that the extent of their range comes from batteries as well. Once you are able to achieve range, then the next argument on the list is that they take too long to charge.
Those arguments become less newsworthy by the day. There is a lot of talk about the energy density of gasoline. But one gallon of gas will never produce more energy. An ICE can at best only use 15% of that energy at its peak efficiency, which goes down with age and wear. An 85 kWh battery pack stores as much energy as 2.5 gallons of gasoline, but uses 85% of that energy in an electric vehicle. That's why you would be lucky to travel over 50 miles in a comparable ICE using 2.5 gallons of gas, while the equivalent energy in a Tesla Model S 85 takes you over 250 miles.
The cost of batteries will come down due to improvements in the technology and economies of scale through greater production capacity. The energy density of batteries improves at a steady, predictable rate. The number of battery cells that allowed 85 kWh in 2012 will allow 170 kWh by 2020, and probably sooner, but will cost less than they did before. Less than ten years after that, the same number of cells will make for a 340 kWh storage capacity, if not more. Battery packs will cost less, take up less space, weigh less, and provide far more power than ever before, while a gallon of gasoline sits still at 33.7 kWh and hybrid cars struggle to use even 7 kWh of that potential at 20% efficiency.
When Tesla made the Roadster, the Naysayers proclaimed it was just a small, impractical
'toy for the rich', and thus did not qualify as a
'real car', even if it had managed to attain the impossible: a 200+ mile range.
When Tesla announced the Model S, the Naysayers stated it was undoubtedly vaporware, because there was
'no way' that anyone could make a full-sized electric sedan that was worthwhile.
When Tesla went public, Naysayers proclaimed they must be setting up a scam, that they just wanted to frighten a larger, established, automobile company into buying them.
When the Tesla Model S arrived, Naysayers said it too was a
'toy for the rich' and that it would be a niche product, with little to no adoption, because it was too different from the norm.
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, Deception, Denial, and Duplicity... Such are the tools of Naysayers.
