And speaking of Cars....

GM is banking a LOT of their "farm" on their latest venture....(uh-oh...I hear another one of those reinventing the wheel moments fast approaching)....a concept car called the "VOLT" (as in electric folks). The 2007 Detroit carshow was the official debut for this vehicle.
Here's a link to the story: http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/01/07/detroit-auto-show-its-here-gms-plug-in-hybrid-is-the-chevy-v/
Now I'm all for anything that will get us out from under those OPEC SOBs ASAP, but back in the early 1990s, there was another car that did basically the SAME thing this new-fangled car does. It was called the EV-1, and about 100 were produced by GM, and LEASED to owners (mostly in CA). Curiously, they were all "mysteriously" taken back by GM, and subsequently CRUSHED (and still lie rusting somewhere in some salvage area) in AZ.

Here's that link:http://www.ev1.org/

This is a case for shooting oneself in the foot....a LOT...with a 40MM grenade launcher!

But even the EV-1 was far from the first ELECTRIC automobile. WAY back in 1832-1839, an electric carriage was made by a Scot (Robert Anderson). In 1865, a Frenchman (Gaston Plante) produced a better battery. And in 1899, a Belgian electric race car set the world speed record at a "blistering" 68 MPH. In 1902, the Wood's Phaeton had a range of 18 miles at 14 MPH and cost $2000! Electric cars enjoyed a small and expensive "heyday" until rising oil production in the U.S. saw fit to allow gasoline-powered cars to become cheaper still (and a lot more popular thanks to that affordability).

From the 1930s until the early 1970s, the electric car market was all but extinct. In 1971, the Battronic truck was introduced, getting 62 miles at 25 MPH w/ a payload of 2,500 lbs. After that the Sebring-Vanguard "CitiCar" was produced. They had a range of about 50-60 miles at a cruise speed of 38 Mph. Another company produced the ELCar with about the same range and speed.

In 1975, the United States Postal Service purchased 350 electric delivery jeeps from the American Motor Company to be used in a test program. These jeeps had a top speed of 50 mph and a range of 40 miles at a speed of 40 mph. Heating and defrosting were accomplished with a gas heater and the recharge time was 10 hours.

An early 1990s vehicle was the Ford Ecostar utility van with an alternating current motor and sodium sulfur batteries. The top speed was 70 mph and it had a range of 80 to 100 miles. While about 100 Ecostars were produced, it was considered an R&D vehicle and never offered commercially. SO there you go...a thumbnail history of ELECTRIC vehicles, which brings us back up to the EV-1...and now the VOLT.

It makes you wonder how many "other" technologies are sitting of dust-covered shelves in teh vast repositories across the nation. It seems that ONLY when it becomes VERY profitable, will some "new" technology suddenly be discovered (or even RE-discovered).

We've had safe cars....and cost-effective cars...and alternate fueled cars...Henry Ford's Model T could run on anything from kerosene to gasoline to diesel, to moonshine...and that was in the 1920s!

SO it MUST be time to reinvent that damn wheel again...and BS the consumer that it's something they cannot do without...when they COULD have had it AGES ago...for a lot less money and hassle.