Ex-GM employee responds on electric car

Posted by David Roberts at 10:04 PM on 10 Jul 2006

Read more about: electric vehicles | cars

A man who claims to have worked for GM's Hughes division, which created the electric car, has responded to the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? on a usenet thread. He says:

Some facts about the EV1, the research and development of which was produced by _my_ division of GM, Hughes Electronics:

General Motors lost two billion dollars on the project, and lost money on every single EV1 produced. The leases didn't even cover the costs of servicing them.

The range of 130 miles is bogus. None of them ever achieved that under normal driving conditions. Running the air conditioning or heater could halve that range. Even running the headlights reduced it by 10%.

Minimum recharge time was two hours using special charging stations that except for fleet use didn't exist. The effective recharge time, using the equipment that could be installed in a lessee's garage, was eight hours. Home electrical systems simply couldn't handle the necessary current draw for "fast" charging.

NiMH batteries that had lasted up to three years in testing were failing after six months in service. There was no way to keep them from overheating without doubling the size of the battery pack. Lead-acid batteries were superior to NiMH in actual daily use.

Battery replacement was a task performed by skilled technicians taking the sorts of precautions that electricians do when working on live circuits, because that's what they were doing -- working on live circuits. You cannot turn batteries "off." This is the reason the vehicles were leased, rather than sold. As long as the terms of the lease prohibited maintenance by other than a Hughes technician, GM's liability in the event of a screw-up was much reduced. Technicians can encounter high voltages in hybrid vehicles. In the EV1, there were _really_ high voltages present.

Lessees were complaining that their electric bills had increased to the point that they'd rather be using gasoline.

One of the guys I worked with transferred to the EV1 program after what was by then a division of Raytheon lost the C-130 ATS contract. He's now back working for us. He has some interesting stories, none of them good, though he did like the company-subsidized apartment in Malibu. He said the car was a dream to drive, if you didn't mind being stranded between Bakersfield and Barstow on a hot July afternoon when a battery blew up from the combined heat of the day and the current draw.

It's from this thread. Take it for what it's worth.

For story: Ex-GM employee responds on electric car
9 Comments | Post a Comment

Well It Is Not Perfect

My boss, the General Manager the Burbank municipal electric utility, as well as a couple of our Board Members were more critical of the electric car than the movie and we had a lot of electric cars. They were and are strong supporters of the EV. Yes they were not ready for prime time. But they helped develop this next generation and it is better than the first. And I am sure from seeing stuff at CS Energy that the next generation will be better.

This is why it is so important to actually do something rather than just talk about it. Nothing gets to the point as much as real life.

We will not get it right the first time, it takes trials, we learn more each time. Sorry, that is just way creativity works in humans. You want perfect with no mistakes you will just have to speak to the politicians for they are never wrong, just ask them. (I make a little joke about the politicians, unfortunately it is not funny)

As far as the movie goes, it was fun to watch, saw lot of people I know, but it was entertainment. It has a message, that being do not give up on the electric car, but it is no deeper than that. The fuel cell is not dead, a lot of environmentalist support that technology without any support from big corporations. Again even that technology may or may not work out, but it is too soon to discount it.

by ffletcher at 12:29 AM on 11 Jul 2006

Corroboration

I hadn't been aware of the NiMH batteries' overheating problem, but had encountered a report from someone who thought he was an EV fan, and remained of this opinion after trying out a rental EV, figuring the one he got must have been broken.

I gather from Doug Wickstrom's posting that it wasn't any brokener than all the others.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Boron: fuel for solar cars

by GRLCowan at 10:07 AM on 11 Jul 2006

Is that all?

I'm not surprised that the electric cars had problems. What surprises me is how minor they were. Are these showstoppers?

A technician is required to replace the battery.
There is not currently an infrastructure of fast-charge stations.
The first serious effort by a major auto manufacturer at a new concept in transportation lost money.

We need to remember that the electric car is competing against gas-fueled cars that have had almost a century of continuous development and improvement. They were competing at a time when gas prices were extremely low, in historical terms. They were competing against a technology which has extraordinary subsidies (e.g. military effort to secure oil supplies) and externalized costs (air pollution, CO2 emissions).

I'm not a fan of private autos, but I do think that electric cars have a future. It may take a corporation with more imagination than GM to do it though.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

by Bart Anderson at 1:31 PM on 11 Jul 2006

Electric Cars Elsewhere

Here is a link to what some of the Chinese thinking is.

http://english.people.com.cn//200607/11/eng20060711_281950.html

patrick

by bookerly at 3:02 PM on 11 Jul 2006

Bogus is the Comment

They lost me after this paragraph:

>The range of 130 miles is bogus. None of them >ever achieved that under normal driving >conditions. Running the air conditioning or >heater could halve that range. Even running the >headlights reduced it by 10%.

I personally drove my EV1 with NiMh batteries over 120 miles on one charge from San Diego to Fontana. The heater or lights did not drain it as much as advertised.

by reten at 7:49 PM on 12 Jul 2006

Interesting

It seems that every objection against the EV-1 system is met by the new lithium ion nano tech batteries. Except one. The fact that batteries are always live until the charge is all drained.

A separate circuit breaker/thermal overheat switch on each battery or section of batteries would seem to solve that. Turn them all off before servicing.

For 2 billion Hughes ought to have done better on this project. I think this is a result of typical defense contractor runaway cost overuns.

I suspect if Halliburton were hired to build an electric car today the program would lose at least 100 billion. Not a formula for commercial success, maybe GM wasn't going for commercial success in the case of the EV-1?

Just as GM does not care that flex fuel vehicles do not help stop global climate change, they need the faux CAFE standard boost to keep the hummer assembley lines humming.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 6:58 AM on 13 Jul 2006

One extra

An electrician normally turns off circuit breakers before servicing power systems, and he does not have to be a specially trained "Hughes technician".

The defense industry types who brought US 1200 buck toilet seats and space shuttle foam solve the energy crisis? Not very likely, good contractor choice GM.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 7:05 AM on 13 Jul 2006

Batteries don't come with circuit breakers

What the guy meant was that battery is its own power source. A circuit breaker is something that disconnects you from the power source, i.e., makes a gap in the wire transmitting (or grounding) the power when it's open.

With a battery you just have a potential source of electricity- you can become part of the circuit by touching the positive and negative posts at the same time. Normally this isn't important because regular automotive batteries are only 12 volt.

by serial catowner at 12:16 PM on 13 Jul 2006

Uh yeah

I know that batteries do not come with circuit breakers. I'm just pointing out that maybe for a total of 2 billion Hughes might have included them?

That might have boosted the cost to 3 billion though.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 5:40 AM on 14 Jul 2006

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