Q: Who Killed the Electric Car? A: It’s Own Simplicity
Moving parts break. CDs became popular back when I was in high school. I remember going through three Discmen in those four years. Each of them cost about $100-150.
I also have an old walkman radio dating back from before CDs. It still works the same way it did when it was new. The radio cost about $20.
The difference is moving parts
Here is someone whose 30 gig iPod broke after being dropped once. Here is Arstechnica documenting an iPod Nano continuing to play after being sat on, dropped from various heights, dropped while running, dropped from moving vehicles, thrown up in the air, and then run over with a car. The 30 gig iPod’s hard-drive has moving parts, iPod Nano’s flash memory does not.
Moving parts break
I saw “Who Killed the Electric Car?” last week. At one point they showed a drawing of the inside of a General Motors EV1. It was pretty much just wheels, a steering wheel, and a row of batteries. Here is a picture of what those batteries replace:
The internal combustible engine. Moving parts, destined to break.
Here is a vague, generalized equation meant to prove a point through its scale:
77 (average life expectancy in the USA) - 24 (guesstimate at the average age a first car is purchased) / 10 (guesstimate at the average number of years a car with a combustible engine lasts before it breaks-down) = 5.3 (rough estimate of the average number of cars purchased in one person’s lifetime)
299.5 million (population in the USA) * 4.3 (average number of cars that wouldn’t be purchased if cars didn’t breakdown) * $27,958 (average cost of a car) =
$36 trillion (rough estimate of the amount of revenue the car industry can expect to lose over the next 77 years if electric cars were sold for the same amount as cars with an internal combustion engine)
I think what killed the electric car was its own terrible performance. Demand creates additional supply and nobody wanted the EV1.
So by what mechanism did they stop any competition in this area? Killing off their own car is one thing– but somehow they kept the world from developing a competing technology?
And if you do really believe they stopped all competitors, why hasn’t that same mechanism been used to stop the Tesla?
If our auto regulations weren’t so onerous, I’d be driving a half-width CommuterCar just like George Clooney. But with the path to market being absolutely clogged with red tape, it can only be sold as a kit, and thus not in high volume.
It must be a helpless feeling to believe every power in the world is aligned against technological advancement in automobiles.
Hi Morgan,
Thanks for the comment.
This part definitely made me smile:
I actually do believe this, or something like it. And not just in the case of automobiles. One of the hallmarks of our era is that sometimes innovations don’t happen because more money can be made by not innovating.
For example (note that I am not saying any of these are happening, they just illustrate my point):
Why would you cure cancer if you were selling a $50 a day pill that keeps patients alive? Why would you pursue alternative energy sources if you already had so much infrastructure (power-plants, transportation vehicles, pipes, etc…) in place for oil?
In regards to your question, “so by what mechanism did they stop any competition in this area,” the point isn’t that they stopped competition. The point is that it doesn’t make sense for a car company to build this car because it threatens their revenue stream from selling combustible engine automobiles. If the electric car is not just better, but way better than a traditional combustible engine car, then all of a sudden that makes the factories, equipment, old-stock, manufacturing personal, and salespeople used for building and selling combustible engine cars obsolete.
Which brings me to your final point wondering “why hasn’t that same mechanism been used to stop the Tesla?” Telsa Motors is a Silicon Valley startup. In other words, they have no revenue stream based on selling combustible engine automobiles that could be disrupted by the new technology in electric cars. In fact, I would argue that the content in my original post actually points to the likelihood of a company outside the automobile industry building and marketing this product.
Finally, I am certainly not an economist or an expert on the auto industry, I am only an advocate of building simple and innovative products. The point of my original article was just that simple things break less. And sometimes just breaking less is a really really big deal. However, I would say that do believe that capitalism in it’s current has state does have some problems with respect to providing incentive to innovate.
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/ElectricCarDemand
Sign this petition if you truly want to make a difference and force the auto manufacturers to make the electric car available once again to us on the retail market. ITS TIME WE TAKE A STAND!
Did anyone notice durin the film, “Who Killed the Electric Car”, when one women protester was arrested she was places in plastic handcuffs and another was places in less comfortable metal hand cuffs. Draw your own conclusions. I just want to know did anyone else notice that occurence of bias. Also, notice how the arresting officer appeared to been threatening the woman with a colapsable metal rod while she was cuffed. We are a nation being manipulated in failure in order to make a few more billionaires. The same planned obsolescence bulit into are cars is built into out thinking from top to bottom.
The government doing this is nothing new. Google “Tucker Automobile” and see the similarities.
Watched “Who Killed the Electric Car” recently (great documentary), then i heard that GM and Tesla are making another run at the electric car (yay for progress!) hopefully development of this technology can continue forward uninterrupted by the powers that depend on oil consumption.
Agreed that EV’s have a simple design,and better perspective,then how can they be killed, with efforts from ZAP and other’s I think they will come back with a deeper approach !
Gee and I though the conversion kits for electric bikes was expensive.
ELMO