Just wondering

And how will Campbell collect his road taxes and what will stop him from raising them until they approach the cost of gasoline?

Electric Cars are not a Solution

The comparison with car phones is silly. While certainly some of the smaller size comes from smaller batteries, the majority comes from the ever decreasing size of electronic components and better power management techniques.

A car on the other hand, actually has to real work and move its weight and the weight of passengers. The majority of the technology that has led to smaller cell phones will not increase the viability of electric cars.

Like a cell phone, you could just make them smaller and smaller to make them more efficient but people still have to fit in them.

Electric cars will not even really an environmental benefit anyway. Since they are cheaper to operate, people will just commute further which will use more energy and create sprawl.

It is much better to just give up on the myth that the electric car will ever be a viable alternative and instead focus our resources on creating really sustainable solutions such as high speed rail, rapid transit, cycling and dense mixed use communities.

Who Killed the Electric Car

The Canadian public has been trying to obtain electric cars for years, only to face obstruction from the Federal and Provincial governments, who are responding to pressure from the oil industry. For example, the Zenn electric car has been in production for a number of years in Canada, yet thwarted at every turn by regulations. Rick Mercer did an excellent video of this great little machine two years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M88k6Ip

And lets not forget Who Killed the Electric Car.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
This incredible tale demonstrates the US just might have taken a different path, but sadly, was derailed by the same old oligarchs (oiligarchs).

The remedy: citizens need to organize, organize, organize, and we can make a change away from the stale, failed policies of our ruling elites. Great coverage BTW.

more reasons it's a bad comparison

I completely agree with RAC's points and would also point out one big reason cels became popular was the 'network' effect, whereby the more people who had one, the more sense it made to get one. Fax machines are another great example. Cel phone have also evolved beyond their original use and are more like small computers with communications capability. Manufacturers found new uses for phones and that drove their widespread adoption.

Cars, no matter what powers them, are essentially unchanged from their forebears, and further, the more people that have them, the less useful they become, as road congest.

But hey, let's just keep puttin' lipstick on that pig. I'm sure we couldn't find other uses for the bazillions we're pumping into a technological and social dead end.

It seems that society is

It seems that society is consumed with the notion that the electric car is our answer for the future. I suggest that if one is interested in this subject, just google 'aircar'. I would think that electric cars should now be classified as old technology.

On the lower Island we have

On the lower Island we have Oak Bay allowing electric cars yet the next little fiefdem over( Saanich) won't allow them. Nobody including the Saanich mayor understands just why they arn't allowed.
Where is the provinc on the issue? My God electric mail trucks have been tried years ago in other places, and electric milk trucks were in England many many years ago.

Sure hope Frank Stronick can beat some sense into the so called political leaders
in this country

Old technology

Saanich disallowed those electric vehicles because they are too slow for city traffic.

They were only considered in the first place because they were a
Canadian "invention" and the media gave the some ink.

They feature no new technology and should not be compared to modern electric vehicles.

lipstick on the pig

Just having the NOISE reduced and the choking stink of exhaust will be a good thing for me as a pedestrian and cyclist.
People are too self motivated to give up their automobiles.
Now we've got the Blind complaining about the lack of noise.
Health Canada should have regulated use of these fossil fueled killers along time ago.
Government complicity has created an extremely stressful environment. If there was a carfree city in Canada, I would move there immediately.
Environmentalists have been far too INACTIVE on this auto congestion thing.So has Al Gore.

Self-motivation

"People are too self motivated to give up their automobiles"

Actually, self-motivation is entirely why people give up their cars. The usual reasons are that they want to feel better about themselves and their impact on the environment.

Propaganda is what's keeping people in their cars.

Increasing Demand

Rac's comment makes tonnes of sense. It's nice to see comments of those who think things through and critically engage a subject instead of blaming governments and blindly pursuing "progress" and "innovation".

To add to it - where is all the electricity going to come from?

They Tyee has ran a series of articles on the unnecessary pursuit of new electrical power generation in this province and it's horrible environmental impacts. We all comment about the crimes these companies developing this power will be doing just to sell it to the US (because we certainly won't be demanding it domestically). The preferred alternative from these protesters is to build a massive dam that will flood an 80km valley in the Peace (you know, cuz that's better than a hundred tiny projects throughout the province).

Then we all comment about the shameful way the governments have stood in the way of clean transportation, without giving a single thought to the fact that an increase in plug in vehicles will demand an increase in electrical generation, which we all don't apparently believe is real, despite our e-lives.

So what do you want? Environmental destruction through new electrical generation (not to mention new resources required for new cars to be built and those toxic batteries the electric cars require), or environmental destruction through tailpipe emissions?

Once again, scaling down, doing less, and doing more in our own communities is the obvious "solution". And once again, it is ignored, because this solution is an idea and is merely social change - there's no product to sell or technology to fund.

Yes, but ...

Are electric vehicles really going to resolve our carbon problems? Where will the electricity come from? And what about traffic?
Personally, I think electric bicycles would be a better choice.

Bad comparisons abound in

Bad comparisons abound in this article.

The first one is the cost of filling up an electric RAV4 at $2.

The fuel tank on a car last the life of the car - about 17 years - and would cost $150 to replace.

The battery pack on an plug-in electric car would last 3-5 years and cost $5,000-$35,000 to replace.

So the cost to fill up is a lot more than $2.

I won't touch the cellphone comparision except to say that most get tossed every 3 years or less.

A Good Shake

More like electric car supports need a good shake. With 6 billion people and counting we are pretty much at peak planet. What is the point of replacing the environmental damage caused by oil extraction with the destruction of wilderness to extract all the materials required for electric cars?

Goodbye Fossil Fuel Dependence, Hello Rare Earth Dependence!
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/goodbye-fossil-fuel-dependence-hello-rare-earth-dependence.php

We need to give up on the myth of the electric vehicle so we can move on from the automobile age and stop wasting money and resources on highway expansion.

just for the record:

modern electric vehicles are adjusted so that they only get charged to 80 % of the battery capacity, and only discharged to 30% ot the capacity.

Meaning that only about 50% of the battery capacity is ever used, thus ensuring a long battery life, probably as long as any fuel tank.

Pirate power neocons are everywhere

And they never stop.

60% of run of the river power appears in early summer. EV's store power overnight not over a year.

IPP power is very expensive-12 cents a Kwh - compared to the current spot rate and projected nuclear/solar alternatives at 2 cents.

Site C would only require only approx. 8,000 hectares of crown land in total (vs. up to 45,000 for the Bute Pirate Power project) but would deliver significantly more power throughout the year (4,500 GWh vs. 2,980 GWh from the Bute project) and would be much more valuable "firm power" The cost of power generated from Site C would be about half of that generated by the pirate Bute project.

Westinghouse sold four gigawatt class nukes to China for 5.5 billion. Had they been sold to BCHydro instead they could replaced Burrard thermal and almost doubled BCHydro's capacity at a small fraction of pirate Power costs. Lots of power available to make synfuel, run electric cars, and convert home heaters from natural gas to electrically run geothermal heat pumps.

Mantatory Telecommuting and 3 day work weeks for those eligable would cut vehicule traffic in half greatly reducing the need for EV's and transit builds.

van isle

Electric cars lead to maglev's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev_train

BTW, how would the sound system operate in an aircar........? :~)

For the REAL record

Battery life is not indefinite like sheet metal.

Keeping Depth of Dischange levels at 50% is necessary to get even close to the advertised number of cycles.

Even the best batteries struggle to get beyond 1000 cycles. And the capacity decreases beginning when they are new, and diminishes over time. As greater demands are placed on the battery (depth/speed of discharge), the cycle life degrades.

In fact, standards need to be developed so that consumers will understand the actual range of the vehicle, when it is new, and as the batteries age. The should also know the cost of battery replacement before purchase. A second sticker shock when new batteries are needed won't do the industry any good.

The main point is that batteries are considered a consumable just as carbon fuel, and they won't last the life of the vehicle. The cost of batteries needs to be considered as fuel.

Battery Life

You are quoting numbers for lead batteries.

Electric cars use lithium based batteries. They test to over 10000 charge discharge cycles at 90% drain.

Efficiency and Infrastructure

Electric is over 90% efficient.
Combustion is under 30% efficent.

Even if powered by coal stations, electric vehicles are a better use of our resources. No combustion type engine is going to be the future.

Electric also has an infrastructure in place that hydrogen doesn't. That technology will require massive state intervention to take off because of the barriers to entry electricity doesn't face.

Finally, electric vehicles have been proven. Big car companies have made them successfully as long as a decade ago.

The barrier now is public acceptance and cost efficiency (but the engines are so much simpler that there will also be large gains).

air cars

Personally, I prefer air cars. Air cars do not use the dangerously toxic batteries found in electric cars.

http://www.mdi.lu/english/

Licensed air car manufacturing plants are being franchised and developed all over the world. The cost of owning a franchise is realatively cheap. The footprint for an air-car factory is small. They are cheap to build, but they employ more people than traditional plants. The money spent on an air car, therefore, goes into paying workers, not plant and equipment.

Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) is a company in the US that has purchased an air car franchise. Though they have many of the same sort of specs, ZPM air cars are more attractive than the French version; and ZPM air cars will meet North American air-bag safety requirements etc.. Here is the ZPM website, though I notice they are "temporarily" off-line.
http://zeropollutionmotors.us/

If electric car manufacturers can find an inexpensive ultra capacitor, it will make for a good competitor for air cars in my books. In theory, ultra capacitors could be made to hold enough electricity to allow a car to travel about 800 km between charges. Electric cars being built today could switch over to capacitors when their batteries wear out.
http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/energystorage/ultracapacitors.html
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:EEStore

air cars

The conversion electric to compressed air to mechanical is only 30% efficient. Lotsa waste heat. Might as well use gasoline.

waste energy, seth

Over-all efficiency of the air car as a system is greater than the 30% you quote, Seth. Small wind and small solar panels can be used to provide the energy to recharge the car. Compressed air then acts as a battery to store the energy that would otherwise go to waste during non-peak useage times. Direct mechanical to mechanical energy can also improve the efficiency of compressing air with mechanical advantages being applied to compressors connected to storage tanks without ever converting to electrical. For example, ocean wave and/or wind action could be compressing air without going through the mechanical to electrical to compression cycles. Water wheels on rivers, solar external heat source engines, and geothermal engines can likewise be used. the condensed heat extracted by air conditioners could be used for compressing air, as well. None of this is rocket science, we (people) just need to get our collective heads around harnessing energy that is freely available instead of always looking for high-carbon, environmentally unfriendly solutions provided by international oil and electrical generating companies.

Look at the Impacts

SharingIsGood, All the "solutions" that you mention have an environment impact including construction and access roads at the site as well as material extraction to build the devices. This energy is far from "freely available" on a mass scale.

The best solution is to move to forms of transportation that have smaller resource and energy requirements such as high speed rail, rapid transit and cycling.

The personal automobile is a symptom of cheap oil and steel. Once those are gone, which is pretty much now, it is time to move on.

sorry rac, but

I am an aging baby boomer, and the mechanics of my body no longer permit cycling. I live in the BC Interior. I have plenty of natural energy resources in my area that I can cobble together to meet energy and food needs. Further, I have purchased rural property in another province (away from Campbell and his band of bootlicks) where I will be retiring. That property can also sustain myself and my wife with net-zero power consumption. I currently drive about 7000 km per year. After I retire, I hope to get it down to just a couple of thousand km/yr. I am in full agreement with high speed rail, light rail and (cycling for those who can). I have always thought the Coquihalla and similar highways were foolish. Far better to use trains etc. to move goods and people when density warrants it. The last 5 years that I had lived in a city, I didn't require and didn't even own a car. In low population (rural) areas, however, public transportation and bicycles often don't get the job done. I don't want to live in the city, it is not a healthy place for me to do more than visit every once in a while. I just want to grow my garden, raise my chickens and catch a fish every now and then. An air car will do just fine for my needs; and I intend to produce the electricity that it requires to run. I've completed calculations for my building a bird-friendly fibreglass helical wind turbine. I will merely require a bit of wiring, a few swiches, a generator and an inverter. The carbon it takes to make those components in the first place will be offset by my not sucking power from the grid that uses hydro-electric and fossil fuel to produce energy. I paddle and use wind for my small fishcatching watercraft.

SharingIsGood Well, it is

SharingIsGood

Well, it is not like air or air cars are going to be affordable or available anytime soon for the average person. Sure a few people can use a large and unsustainable amount of resources to make them work in their own life but it is not a solution for the masses.

Taxis, carsharing, etc. are all better solutions than everybody owning their own car. And, if nobody had a car, public transit would be viable even in rural places. Anyway, most people that have ever lived and ever will live will not have cars. As I said, without cheap oil and steel, the personal automobile will be history soon for the average person.

air cars

The bodies are composite plastics - they use less carbon to made than metal does to extract, melt and shape. The air cars cost about $20,000 - not too expensive by today's standards. The one i purchase is likely to outlive me. Like I said, public transit was fine in the city; but I don't find city-flok clammoring to use provincial dollars to provide public transit for us quaint rural folk who log the trees, mine the ores and grow the crops. I will be using very few resources to make my air car run. As long as I don't drive it too fast or too far, I'll never have to put gasoline in it. The wind won't mind if I slow it down a bit. After all, many of the trees that would have gotten in the way of the wind have been cut down for homes (some of which are overly huge) and second homes for city folks. The country folks I know usually have but one house. Where I live, we have city folks driving (for up to 4 hours) out here on Friday afternoons in their SUVs loaded with ATVs, motorcycles and speed boats to "rest up" in the country - then back they drive again Sunday evening. They burn more fuel just trying to relax than I burn in an entire year doing my work and taking care of my family.

Canada has plenty of land and resources to sustain its population quite easily into perpetuity - if people learned to live within nature instead of covering it over to build yet another, Starbucks, a shopping mall or a WalMart.

Thermodynamics and Telecommuting

It is the Law of thermodynamics not telecommuting that gives you the 30%. Compressing air and decompressing air produces heat. Lots of it. Net loss more than 30% each way.

Non peak power would be better spent charging 90% efficient electric cars and producing synfuels.

Gordo could cut BC's greenhouse emissions in half almost overnight by forcing the provincial and municipal governments to adopt mandatory 3 day work weeks and telecommuting with business required to follow after a short training period. Ain't happen'n because Gordo's corporate owners don't want empty downtown office buildings and canceled highway and bridge projects.

whoops big typo

It is the Law of thermodynamics not electrical mechanical conversion efficiency that....

No One Killed the Electric Car

I'm actually quite facinated about the idea of any alternative form of transportation, but I'm also a realist, who did, at one point and time had a mechanical education. So there's a few things I like to point out:

- Battery technology peaked almost 100 years ago, and no matter how many billions corporations, and countries spend on improving the technology, the battery is hard pressed to be improved. Yes there are newer variants like lithium ion which powers the Tesla Roadster, which essentially has 7000 laptop batteries as it's power plant. However, finding clean, cheap power storage is no different than trying to find the cure for the common cold.

- Some of the past technolgy is what I find to be more beneficial - Diesel Electric trains for example. This is a form of hybrid where the main drive is electric, however to maintain a charge a relatively sized (considering it's a locomotive) Diesel engine would manintain that charge. There are some manufacturs like Citroen in France and now GM (with the Chevy volt) that are doing this.

- Just want to also give the other side of the "Who Killed The Electric Car" story. Check out this rebutle http://blogs.edmunds.com/karl/2006/06/gms-ev1----who-killed-common-sense.html

Overall I agree with the article, but considering the fact that Toyota still loses about 2 grand from every Prius they sell (which is down from 5 grand when the car was introduced) we still have a way to go as consumers.

You'll get a charge out of this

What they need is a better battery and its in the works, as there is one so small that can go great distances with little need for charge while speed is not sacrificed. When is it available well as soon as they can bring down the price?
It will make for speedy change while stimulating sales and making for better days ahead. Well at least less pollution on the road as was watching an old video clip of BC and everyone was on bikes while cars where the rare.
The future one can dream as the streets where a flurry of cyclists all fit and good to go as traffic flowed with but a few cars as I also watched Japanese Canadains being locked up and losing their home. I know Gov wants to clear the downtown east side of the homeless and the addicted by charging them for being addicted. As police say need to save them from themselves and need to be locked up until they come clean?
But yet there is a big problem with drugs in prison and HIV and this is the reality as report from HIV legal network outlines.

Chu added: “Harm reduction measures aimed at preventing HIV transmission in prisons are not new in Canada and the federal government has acknowledged publicly the value of needle exchange programs that have operated for more than 20 years in communities across Canada. But for some reason it has refused so far to let these services operate in prisons, which is at odds with good public health practice and human rights.”

If the city really wants to do something positive it should get rid of any cars that are not electric, to start as their are also bikes that charge up.

batteries

Batteries are still dangerous and poisonous and expensive for the most part. The ultra capacitors are getting nearer as scientists at MIT and in Texas and elseehere learn to arrange material(atoms) in thin films. Who cares if the energy I use to charge my car gets wasted through thermodynamic inefficiency. If I had not collected any of the energy, it would have been "wasted" anyway. The wind always blows whether I collect and condense its energy or not. Carbon fibre tanks are very lightweight and relatively inert compared to batteries. Saying it is a bad thing to use air to drive cars is like saying we should not use water to grow plants since so much of it gets wasted in the soil.

Honk Honk

The car isn't going anywhere as truly believe its an addiction, and a need as a man's first car is his love. And from then on man and car have a relationship for its life as its more than a car its an extension of a man and the rest I will leave to your imaginations. Have you seen Flubber or Herbie the cars that talk. I was just hoping they would make room for bikes and smaller electric or air cars and leave the tanks at home. Its do able, its believable and there will be immediate results as air quality will improve dramatically.

The future looks good

Something to keep in mind when we research lithium based technologies is that at any time, another more advanced one might come along and its funny the GM and Ford couldn't figure that out until it cost everyone everywhere. How about the bright promise of the ultracapacitor? Smaller than a lithium battery, it is lighter, it could potentially one day replace that lithium altogether? Or wind for the matter as its a road well traveled and the future looks good as the battery we so small it was the size of a pin with software attached.

http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/energystorage/ultracapacitors.html

battery disposal and safety issues

The following link provides info regarding some of the problems associated with batteries: http://www.p2pays.org/ref/07/06033.htm

Electric Jumps

Own the car, lease the battery :

http://wot.motortrend.com/6352443/auto-news/nissan-projects-future-cars-shared-not-owned-ev-batteries-sold-separately/index.html

Own the battery, lease the car :

http://www.autolinedetroit.tv/journal/?p=713

'A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.'
Churchill

Ok, I'll buy one

Seth says..

"Electric cars use lithium based batteries. They test to over 10000 charge discharge cycles at 90% drain."

Show me such a battery and I will buy one.

You can't, because they don't exist, and won't for a long time to come.

Now Now

Its just around the corner, I do believe as its a question of demand. Is it possible? You bet as it wasn't that long ago that modern technology was large, difficult to store, and was constantly breaking down. As my first computer was as slow and awkward and could barely store information on as took forever to get on the web. Welcome to your high speed highway and don't forget the batteries are already in the making.
But back to the future as bikes also should play an integral part in the environment yet there is no real place for them.
http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/ubcreports/2009/09jun04/09jun04index.html
Here is a mystery, who unloaded a 1.7 million dollar donation to UBC with out leaving a name? Do you think it just may have something to do with the surprising endorsement of Premier Campbell during the election? Its very, very suspicious no doubt as it could easily be said that many of British Columbians don't come cheap. Well at least their endorsements or the information they share as rail gate is still being played out in the media.

You're right jwstewart

But you're right too seth...only problem is that thin-film batteries utilizing sputtering, vapor deposition & solvent coating of electrolyte have only succeeded in laboratory trials of working cells.

No large commercial process nor application has developed at this time and the performance characteristics of microbatteries are only sufficient to easily power micro-sensors and CMOS microelectronics. New materials and processes need to be investigated and it'll likely be awhile before we have multiple charge/discharge reliability over a 15 year life cycle to power electric cars.

Cell phones...no problem.