Comments on: The Race For The Electric Car

Competition To Build A Viable Electric Car Heats Up, As Silicon Valley Gets Into The Game

[denn034]

I support the rush to produce a viable electric vehicle.

[jonathan1cas]

My this report does not reference http://gm-volt.com

It is out of date. There is old information.

[twoalbert]

I presume you were afraid of losing G.M. sponsorship, as this was a very poor and incomplete piece. #1 The Toyota Plug-In Prius hybrid is in production (unlike the Chevvy Volt); #2 Lithium-ion batteries are already passe''(check it out); there are all-electric cars that get 150+ miles/charge (but not made in the U.S.);wind generated & solar power is what many owners of EV''s have (and use). Coal fired power plants? Check out T. Boone Pickens'' web site re: wind generating "farms". Don''t forget the Nuclear power plants that are on line now as well as new ones being planned. Lest we forget; DOMESTIC natural gas is abundant (not the gas being imported by fools like California''s P.G.& E.): Again, check out T. Boone Pickens'' efforts.

Your story referenced Dell%u2019s recall of lithium-ion batteries in 2006, but failed to identify Sony as the source of those battery cells. Due to an error in the Sony manufacturing process, the affected batteries could potentially overheat as a result of a short-circuit within the battery cell. Dell put the safety of its customers first in announcing the recall, which was eventually widened to include all other computer companies using the Sony battery cells. In reality, only a handful of incidences was reported out of the millions of battery cells shipped in laptop computers. Lithium-ion batteries have a well-documented record of safe use in laptop computers and other products.

[ecs1749-2009]

"Power for electric cars does, as mentioned, come largely from hydrocarbon burning plants but no mention was made of the huge amounts of electricity used to boil and distill crude oil into motor fuels. That electricity certainly doesn''''t all come from waterfalls and windmills."

Doesn''t have to be that way. There is a long list of power plants being designed that are using renewable form of energy of one form or another (if all built, over 20,000,000KWs of them - enough to power millions of homes). You can look-up a document somewhere in the CAISO website which lists all these projects.

As one poster indicated, there are plenty of off-peak capacities to charge these electric cars.

[ideaman5-2009]

lutz isnt crazy he is an idealist certain people in this world dont want this to happen cause it will take money out thier pockets lots of it its called gauging the americans till there pockets are empty and cant go to work gas is half of minumum wage so how do u pay for gas and go to work in a minumum wage job if you got kids that need childcare

[ideaman5-2009]

who needs fuel at all why cant you do it with the technology we have today combining things that are used everyday with momentum and redistributing the power to drive the automobile even unessesary speeds can be achieved again there is someone who needs to get in touch with me

[ideaman5-2009]

electricity is no fuel it is a charged current of ****

[ideaman5-2009]

i can do the whole car for less than you all think it would cost and its so simple it would confuse the best of all

[asmartviewer]

"Martin Eberhard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Martin Eberhard is co-founder and former CEO of Tesla Motors, an electric car company in San Carlos, California. He was born in Berkeley, California on May 15, 1960.

Eberhard is passionate about sportscars but has moral disagreements regarding dependence on oil imported from the Middle East and is also concerned about global warming. This led to his co-founding Silicon Valley''s first automobile company with Marc Tarpenning."

It was very sad to see 60 minutes giving Elon Musk all of the credit due to Mr.s MARTIN EBERHARD and MARC TARPENNING! This viewing family prefers truth in our news programming!! Shame on Mr. Musk for not correcting you as well.

[ideaman5-2009]

ok here goes nothing i need bob lutz to get in touch with me i know how to build all electric car that need no engine to start nor does it have a limitation to the miles it can go no range no need for gas at all my e mail address is [e-mail] il be waiting for your e mail you want to win this race contact me il be traveling to detroit soon u dont want to miss this

[nordeck52]

"The price of oil is up, gas guzzling cars are out, and a race for a fuel-free, practical electric car is on."


It''s impossible to be fuel-free. The fuel they''d be using here is called electricity! So why call it a fuel-free electric car?

[cdkennedy]

Your piece on electric cars didn''t address how our already taxed power grid would handle 1,000''s of cars charging up their batteries. The answer is that most people would do the same as they do with their iPods, cell phones, Blackberry''s, etc. They charge them while they sleep when the grid has considerable available capacity. For a graphic display of that capacity, look at California''s www.casio.com. We are a long way from overwhelming the night time capacity of the power grid.

[cdkennedy]

Power for electric cars does, as mentioned, come largely from hydrocarbon burning plants but no mention was made of the huge amounts of electricity used to boil and distill crude oil into motor fuels. That electricity certainly doesn''t all come from waterfalls and windmills.

[jship1]

I am glad to see this type of technology getting some attention. Sense wall street has been recapitalized, raising the MPH of the american automobile is the only way to recapitalized the average consumer.

If the electric cars become battery assisted, like the aptera you could go across county for less than 100 dallars. If you retrofit our electric power plants with a bio-reactor (RED HAWK POWER PLANT Arlington, AZ) you will clean the air of CO2 and the by products will give us all the ethonal and bio-disel this country can use. If you like being in the forfront of ideas, how about taking a look at this technology.

[wizardgunta]

You did not mention that "TESLA" was given tax benefits to stay in California by the guy named "ARNOLD" who you say is purchasing one of these NEW autos. I beleive "TASTA" was going to move its'' company to Arizona or nearby but the "Governator" made them a great deal to stay in California(JOBS!!!) ...

I was most distressed that Lesley Stahl''s report made ABSOLUTELY no mention of Martin Eberhard, the founder of Tesla Motors, and focused on Elon Musk who''s contribution was being smart enough to know a good thing when he saw it and having enough capital to take it over once all of the hard work was complete. Mr. Eberhard''s story is the one worth telling. He is the person who conceived the idea of developing a high end electric sports car and persevered to make all of the pieces come together. It was his genius, vision and tenacity that brought the company to where it is today. His one mistake was not understanding the motives of his investors.
Shame on 60 minutes for not telling the real story and for further advancing the career of a corporate raider.

[buttonjockey]

Electric cars are absolutely feasible! Right now you can buy non-running Geo Metro for $300 (like I did) and convert it to electric for about $5000 on good old lead acid batteries and get about a 50 mile range and travel at highway speeds for much of that 50 miles. We''ve been doing it since the 70s.

But it gets better! Now that battery technology has made big advances, you can up the cost by another $5000 and use lithium ion batteries (the new ones that don''t burn) and up that range to somewhere between 100 and 150 miles, depending on how you drive. These cars are extremely low maintenance too!

Go ahead and pay $40k to $60k, we already can do a $10k conversion. And, LIon batteries might be 3 times the cost of lead acid, but they last 3 times longer and weigh almost 3 times less. It adds up, it can be done.

As to the electric demand creating more coal burning at power plants, that''s a temporary problem. While American interests have ignored the clean potential of using wide swaths of the barren Mojave desert to harness solar energy cheaply through mass scale, foreign interests from places like Germany and Italy have ALREADY acquired the rights to build those installations here. It will happen sooner than you think.

[rgkntulsa]

Why can''t the driver turn the gas motor on and off? Why do they have to have complicated software that decides to run it 3 minutes based on how far you are from home?

[ibzjem]

...I also have the sense to realize that Global Warming is a theory. ...

Posted by bfatman at 08:45 PM : Oct 05, 2008

Theory -
A coherent statement or set of statements that attempts to explain observed phenomena.

i.e. There is now a well-developed theory of electrical charge.

and

A logical structure that enables one to deduce the possible results of every experiment that falls within its purview.

i.e. The theory of relativity was proposed by Einstein.

A theory is more like a scientific law than a hypothesis. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers. One scientist cannot create a theory; he can only create a hypothesis.

Relative gravity is a theory, there''s the germ theory, etc.

A theory is not a guess. Global warming "theory" is not conjecture.