Challenge to Detroit - Build Series Hybrids
My Challenge to Detroit: Make a Plug-in Series Hybrid Crew-Cab Pickup truck capable of going 1000 miles on a tank of gas before I do it.
Of course, even if I loose this bet, we both win....
Imagine starting a trip in Brownsville, Texas, and going to Amarillo without stopping at a gas station to refuel. If that trip is in a "ForTwo", a "Mini-Cooper", or other fuel efficient car, then I believe you would feel rather cramped by the time you got to your final destination.
Now imagine that trip in a mid size crew-cab pickup. Something like the Nissan Frontier, or Toyota Tacoma, or Ford Ranger."How?", you ask.
Here is my Business Proposal to Reduce Fuel Emissions and increase fuel economy 400% by building Plug-in Hybrid Crew-Cab Pickups. I originally sent this to Google's Rechargit in 2007, and it was not selected for a grant. But if you have the resources to implement this plan with me or without me, I urge you to do it. Not because it will make you a billionaire, but because every 15 mpg truck that gets replaced as a series hybrid getting 60 to 100 mpg can only be a good thing.
JOIN ME! I am going to attend a class in San Antonio on doing EV Conversions at Ace Technologies on August 30th. Classes are filling fast.
I may try this as a Proof of Concept. Man turns Opel GT into 75 mpg Hybrid - In 1979
If you have a non-running Opel GT "Project Car" for sale, please contact me.
Visit PickensPlan
Or you can go directly to my page on the PickensPlan.com website.
Who Killed the Electric Car?
Watch it Free!Google made the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
available on the net for free.
Remember, When you shop for your next car, The Automakers WON the right to go out of business, when they WON the lawsuit against CARB, and WON the right to stop producing Electric Vehicles.
If you don't have time to watch, here are the highlights:
The Battery Patents are currently owned by Chevron
280 million barrels per year. How long until we have no more oil? The Automakers Sued CARB, and won the right to go out of business.
Geeks to the rescue
Andy Grove's American Magazine article: Our Electric future .Don't be mislead when you hear that allowing drilling in ANWR or Offshore will reduce prices. Besides the fact that it would take years to get any results, the amounts would be small, and with all refineries at capacity, it wouldn't be much help. The oil companies will never try to meet the demand. They are making record profits. They have no incentive to reduce prices. Here's my take on what should be done about Four Dollar Gas.
Toyota laid off 200 "temporary employees" in San Antonio in June, 2008. About 2000 San Antonios are producing a truck that Toyota has a 100 day supply of. Will San Antonio be the next Big Truck Assembly Plant to close down? Maybe we could get Toyota to retool the San Antonio Tundra Plant to make the Toyota A-BAT Pickup.
Did you catch "Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers PBS show on The Car of the Future?
Thomas Friedman, Author of "The World is Flat",
talks about the need for a new Energy Policy, and the current marketing trends by auto makers:
I can’t say it better than my friend Tim Shriver, the chairman of Special Olympics, did in a Memorial Day essay in The Washington Post: “So Dodge wants to sell you a car you don’t really want to buy, that is not fuel-efficient, will further damage our environment, and will further subsidize oil states, some of which are on the other side of the wars we’re currently fighting. ... The planet be damned, the troops be forgotten, the economy be ignored: buy a Dodge.”Read his New York Times Column in a story called Truth or Consequences
The End of the Oil Age
You will find items like these....
"The ranking of the top fifty global corporations by revenue in 2006 shows the economic dominance of petroleum-based automotive transport. Nine of the top ten and nineteen of the top fifty companies operate in either "Petroleum Refining" or "Motor Vehicles," contributing 46% of revenue. ...more
Why we need Series Hybrids
What I think they should do could be done TODAY. I think they should start by replacing the regular gasoline engine with a small horsepower engine that will power only a generator, used to re-charge the batteries and run the electric motor for extended periods, so that you can go more than 40 miles on a charge. By using wheel motors and a small number of batteries, a plug-in series hybrid could be built. The whole thing could cost under $40,000. That's still too high. Using a two or three year old crew-cab truck with a good body could get the cost down another $10.000. I have seen some 2002 models for $11,000, and with $10,000 conversion expense, we can produce a series hybrid for under $26,000, and that includes labor.
Wake up, Detroit
Newsflash! June 10th. Price of gas is now $4. Guess what happened to Truck and SUV Factories.
Let's look at the current top twenty vehicles for 2008 and compare to 2007.
Do you see a trend here? Big cars down, small cars up? But the top two in sales in 2007 are still two of the top three in 2008. Yes, pickups. So, why won't Detroit make a Plug in Series Hybrid Pickup? Maybe they don't want to get stuck with unsold inventory. I think they figure that they can still make their large profits on trucks for a few more years. Wait until gas starts selling for $4 a gallon, and we will revisit these numbers. 2008 Sales figures show an even larger decline. Factories are being shut down.
RANK VEHICLE 2008 2007 '07 RANK % Change 1 Ford F-Series P/U 319,542 411,926 1 -22.4 2 Toyota Camry 282,012 282,044 3 0.0 3 Chevy Silverado-C/K P/U 264,309 357,893 2 -26.1 4 Honda Accord 247,244 219,488 6 +12.6 5 Honda Civic 234,086 201,652 8 +16.1 6 Toyota Corolla 228,926 231,940 4 -1.3 7 Nissan Altima 182,435 164,717 9 +10.8 8 Chevrolet Impala 152,320 201,612 7 -24.4 9 Dodge Ram P/U 150,272 214,569 5 -30.0 10 Ford Focus 138,649 109,876 15 +26.2 11 Chevrolet Cobalt 130,660 112,287 14 +16.4 12 Honda CR-V 122,230 124,262 11 -1.6 13 Toyota Prius 106,225 110,565 16 -3.9 14 Chevrolet Malibu 105,212 76,816 26 +37.0 15 Ford Escape 102,486 104,645 17 -2.1 16 GM Pontiac G6 98,943 82,462 28 +20.0 17 Ford Fusion 98,530 88,042 20 +11.9 18 GMC Sierra P/U 94,770 115,185 12 -17.7 19 Toyota Tundra 89,929 105,990 23 -15.2 20 Ford Econoline/Club Wagon 85,721 106,045 13 -19.2
The reason that Prius sales were down is they ran out of stock and could not produce enough to meet demand.
Will Detroit still consist of Ford, GM, and Chrysler in 2010. That's when the ONLY electric vehicle that is in the planning stages is due to come out. The Chevy Volt has been delayed again, due to battery supply problems. That's sad when you think that GM used to own Ovonics, which made the very powerful NiMH battery that gave the EV1 a 100 mile range. So, when they "won" the right NOT to make electric cars by suing the California Air Resources Board, they more or less sealed their fate to continue making "big SUVs, big trucks, and ignoring the fact that they had invented something that would help us get off our dependence on oil. They sold the Ovonics development company to Texaco, which was consumed by Chevron, and now they can't get enough batteries. Toyota, on the other hand is building new battery factories in Japan, because they committed to larger numbers of batteries. The problem is that their Patent agreement allows them to put only a small number of batteries in each car. Why would Chevron withhold this battery from the market? Ask them.
In an interview with Orange County Weekly, Doug Kortoff summarized the current state of NiMH.
The battery we use is the NiMH, same as used in cameras and small cylinder AA, AAA, etc. Toyota-Panasonic formed a partnership "PEVE" to license and improve NiMH for EVs. Around this time, GM purchased the worldwide patent rights to the NiMH battery. Later, GM decided to sell those rights to Texaco, which then merged with Chevron. Chevron then put the battery rights under control of a Joint Venture, "COBASYS," and decided to fund a lawsuit against large-format (electric car battery) competitors such as Toyota-Panasonic. Chevron's lawsuit led to a settlement agreement with PEVE (and Sanyo, etc.) whereby Toyota paid $30M to Chevron, Toyota was granted the rights to use "small-format" batteries on the Prius, and Toyota agreed not to build "large-format" versions of its batteries (needed for plug-in cars) for export to the U.S. until 2014. At least, that's what it seems to be; portions of the settlement agreement are still secret.
So, it will be up to a handful of entrepreneurs to get American car buyers turned on to Electric cars, Plug-in hybrids, and hopefully soon, Series Hybrids.
VentureBeat website has a list of currently available electric vehicles. Notice that on only one company produces a Series Hybrid Pickup, and it is only for fleet purchase.
Is Forty Years a Long Enough for Development of Series Hybrids?
Although Chevrolet would have you believe that the Chevy Volt, due out in 2010 is a new idea, GM built their first series hybrid cars in 1972. By the way, it used a Stirling Engine, which is a closed system, and is zero emissions.
I also ran across a thesis written in 1969 that discussed plans for a series Hybrid car. Mr. Szott is now building a "Hybrid Electric Horseless Carriage".
I understand that Dean Kanem, the inventor of the Segway is thinking about producing Stirling engines. What about it Dean?
I also have this question. Why would General Motors say that they are "studying the concept" of a series Hybrid when they have been working on them for almost 40 years? They pretend to know nothing about them, and are constantly "only a few years away". It seems they are always have some excuse for not producing them. I see the Volt as a doomed project.
GM introduced the EV1 in 1995, and never marketed them nation wide, knowing that their lawyers were in a lawsuit with California to stop the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate. If they had advertised them, they would have sold plenty. I doubt that GM wanted to sell EV1s on a national basis. When I was a salesman, we went by this old saying:
“He who has a thing to sell,I think that if GM wanted the EV1 to succeed, they could have done it easily. I never heard of the EV1 until the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car" came out. Had you?
And goes and wishes in a well,
Will not as likely get the dollars,
As he who climbs a tree and hollers”
The meetings are fun and informative. The fastest hour of the week. Call or write for details.
We used to make Limestone Address Stones as a Hobby. Visit our TexRocks.com website.
Some Electric vehicle websites in the Seguin - Austin - San Antonio Area
Members can order ACEAA decals.
Next meeting is at the factory for Zwheelz in Western San Antonio. Mark your calendar for Sunday, August 10th, from 3-5pm.
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-1604 to Culebra/FM 471 west - continue west about 6 miles, past government canyon - just past purple AAA storage sign on left - San Geronimo Airpark, gate should be open - Gary's cell is 210 722-2977 - if you go by Stump's restaurant and Exxon that's about 400 yds too far - second hangar - green, second bay on front (north) side |
The Austin Area Electric Automobile Association.
Next Meeting Saturday, July 12, 2:00 pm, Terrazas Branch Library , Austin, Texas.
Join either club by becoming a member of the National Electric Auto Association Their newsletter, Current EVents, is outstanding.
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For those unaware, Google's non-profit wing, Google.org, has an
initiative in place advocating plug-in cars. They call this
RechargeIT - read all about it at http://google.org/recharge/.
Anyway, I was feeling bored so I decided to drop something in their
"suggestion box". I figured if I posted it here maybe a couple people
might actually read it:
Quality commercial plug-in vehicles were produced by nearly all major automakers in the late 90s in response to California's ZEV mandate. These cars, including GM's EV1 and Toyota's RAV4-EV, proved extremely reliable and fun to drive, yet they were removed from the market and crushed when California regulators caved to special interests and killed the ZEV mandate. Despite this tragedy, over 300 RAV4-EVs were released to the public and remain in use today. Some of these cars have topped 100,000 miles driven, while requiring nearly zero maintenance. Their NiMH battery packs, using 10 year old technology, still provide over 100 miles range. Many of the lucky owners of these cars have installed photovoltaic panels on their homes and have driven thousands of miles completely carbon-free. These people are accomplishing the goals that RechargeIT purports to be trying to solve. More information about these people and their cars can be found here: http://evnut.com/rav_owner_gallery.htm The point of this is that the technology exists to achieve the goals of RechargeIT and has existed for some time. What is lacking is simply the will of a major automaker to produce and sell vehicles like the EV1 and RAV4-EV. As consciousness of the need for electric transport has become more prevalent, small companies like Tesla have sought to step up where the majors have failed and produce vehicles of their own. This is excellent, especially for your founders when they receive their Roadsters. However, while Tesla and others take years to try and "reinvent the wheel", countless tons of CO2 are being pumped into the atmosphere while the average consumer who wants a plug-in vehicle has no realistic option. Major automakers like GM and Toyota have already made the investment to develop the best electric cars ever made, but without the will to produce the cars this investment remains entirely wasted. My suggestion to Google is this: Rather than donating money for researching a problem that has already been solved, forget the non-profit idea and buy GM. It may sound silly, but last I checked Google's market capitalization is more than ten times that of GM, and with GM's current management, it would seem that ratio is only going to grow. GM's commitment to wasting money on greenwashing PR and lobbying corrupt politicians while producing nothing but gas guzzlers has and will continue to destroy this once great American company and the country it helped build. Buy GM, immediately resume production of the EV1 and do something GM never did with the car before by offering it for sale to the American people. Forget the hype about the Volt and the laughing stock that is hydrogen and produce what has been proven to work and produce it NOW. I, for one, am optimistic enough to think that if Google follows this course people might even buy the cars. Perhaps you can accomplish your stated goals and actually make profits instead of non-profits, so to speak. Thanks for your time. |
What does your candidate think about energy?
We will post more stories as we find them.
John Penry
If you are in the Comal ISD, here is a "Notebook of information for Parents, Patrons, and Taxpayers"
Bottom of the Page Bonus! View The world's Deepest Holes . AMAZING!
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