EV DIARY - Part Two- WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR INDUSTRY?

EV DIARY - Part Two- WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR COTTAGE INDUSTRY?

Everything here is just my opinion, my two cents worth, and my opinion could be wrong, too.

Did you see the movie, "Who Killed The Electric Car?" and wondered why the dozens of small electric car makers never became more successful? In fact, almost all of them bit the dust, or went belly-up! The notable exceptions include CANEV in Vancouver Island, probably because most of his business is for airport utility trucks, not cars. The other notable exception is AC Propulsion in California.

Here's the bottom line: Electric cars cost 2X-10X more to operate, per mile, than a Toyota Corolla. (One exception is our electric pickup truck, which runs on nearly-free Revived Batteries.) Why? Batteries have a much-shorter-than-expected life in EV's, unless you have a work-around to prevent its early death. Early battery death can be as short as a several hundred miles. A new lead acid battery pack for a pickup truck would cost $3,500 or so. A new lithium battery pack for a pickup truck would cost $40,000 or so. Does this explain why only Tom Hanks bought the $90,000 eBox electric car?

So, why do lead acid batteries cost more than gas, you ask? In the words of some old-timers in EV's, "Batteries never die, they are murdered."

What is the weapon used to kill batteries, you ask? Its the battery charger, in my opinion. From what we could see in our electric pickup, the early death of batteries was caused by the Zivan battery charger -- the brand that is used by the vast majority of electric vehicles. We also observed that our Zivan NG3 charger's indicator lights indicated that the battery still needed charging, even though our multimeter indicated that the battery was already fully-charged and in the danger zone. So, we pulled the plug, even though the Zivan erroneously indicated that the batteries were less than 80% charged. Later, at least two batteries were damaged by the Zivan charger, imho.

As part of our review of battery devices, we tried battery voltage limiters ("voltage clampers") made by David Kronstein, a member of the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association ("VEVA") in BC. We asked David to limit the battery voltage to a particular voltage. David's voltage clampers worked perfectly on our test bench. However, on our pickup truck, the Zivan battery charger overran the programmed limits in David's devices, unless we installed two clamper per battery.

This is today's entry for my EV Diary. What do you think? Have we found What Killed The Electric Vehicle Cottage Industry, or not?

Rob Matthies