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"It is true that consumers cannot buy a quality electric car from a major manufacturer - the auto manufacturers do not make or sell them now. From 1996 until 1999 Honda, Ford, GM and Toyota made a few electric cars and LEASED them in California. My family had the opportunity to drive each of these cars and was thoroughly impressed with the technology. Between 1996 and 1999 there were a number of improvements to batteries and performance especially with the Toyota RAV4 EV.
| "Now for a few facts: a gallon of gas is equal to [about] 35kWh of electricity. The electric cars we drove held between 25 and 29 kWh per charge. They drove between 80 to 160 miles on less than the energy equivalent of one gallon of gas. Between 1996 and 2000, Edison sold off peak power (at night) for $.04 a kWh. This is because the use of power falls at night 33-50% below daytime use and big utilities would like to sell power at night, so they don't have to shut down power-plants. (It is dirty and expensive to have power plants shut down at night instead of selling power.) We found out that electric cars could drive [at least] 4 miles on a kilowatt-hour. If a kWh cost $.04, it meant we could drive a car 100 miles for about $1.16. Later Edison raised the cost of off peak electricity to $.12 a kWh. Then it would cost about $3.68 to drive 100 miles. When out of state scam artists such as Enron created the so called "electric shortages" by buying up all the power generation and conspiring to shut the power plants down at key times, the people who drove electric cars were outraged. A lot of them (like our family) installed their own solar systems. We installed a 3.2 kW system with a battery back-up for about $11,000. That system supplied the energy we needed to drive two electric cars plus power our house. Our son, who also drives electric, installed solar at his home and business. In 2002, when all of the electric cars were being rounded up and crushed (See "Who Killed the Electric Car") Toyota decided to end its program by quietly selling the last 328 of their cars to the public. Our family was lucky enough to buy three of these cars, which was the only time a modern EV was ever offered for sale, even if secretly. Our three cars are now pushing 80,000, 92,000 and 110,000 [miles]. After driving these cars it is easy to understand why manufacturers don't want to sell them. No lube, filters, oil changes. No spark plugs, tune-ups, engine repairs or smog checks. No catalytic converter: thousand of parts needed for a gasoline car are not required in an EV. They [don't] need brakes after about 50,000 miles [thanks to regenerative braking]; they only require tires, windshield wipers and wiper fluid. "Our family has driven about 600,000 miles without using any gas or oil. "Since 2000 we have made more power from our solar systems than our cars have needed. If we had to buy gas for (20 mpg) cars at only $2 a gallon for 600,000 miles (30,000 gallons of gas we avoided buying!) it would have cost us $60,000. It seems like the cost of energy (gas and electric) is only going to go up. Our solar systems have long since paid for themselves. Our electric bills are for reading and distribution charges: about $125 a year. "As to the extra energy. Net Metering in California allows consumers to buy and sell electricity at the same rate. Utilities do not pay cash to small producers but give them credits for production. Thus customers who have solar electrical system produce power on sunny summer afternoons, the peak power that utilities desperately need. Other consumers are spared blackouts and brownouts by the extra local capacity that can be installed on rooftops and in yards without additional infrastructure - try putting a new generating power plant in any urban area and see how popular that is. "When I read accusations like ["sockpuppet"] KB has posted I wonder what facts or experiences he relies on. Twelve years of experience with electric vehicles and 8 years with solar power have left me with a lot of factual information that contradicts [his] negative comments. "Lisa Rosen "Seal Beach, CA" [This was written in response to an apparent GM troll, will they publish her response? |
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