Revenge Of The Electric Car [Theatrical Trailer]

[Video Link] The documentary Revenge Of The Electric Car opens in the US beginning Oct. 21. Looks like fun.

Revenge Of The Electric Car follows 4 larger-than-life entrepreneurs at the forefront of the electric car race. First, there's Bob Lutz -- Mr Detroit himself, the cigar-smoking vice-chairman of GM, who has been making gas-guzzling cars his entire career. He is challenged by Elon Musk, the young dot-com maverick billionaire who thinks that he can show Detroit how to build cars with his Silicon Valley-based Tesla Motors. Carlos Ghosn of Nissan-Renault, the desperately smart and ruthless businessman who singlehandedly rescued Nissan from ruin, wants to flood the market with affordable mainstream electric vehicles. And lastly, "Gadget" Abbott, a reverend/designer/engineer is one of thousands of electric car DIY-ers who together may be a force big enough to change the auto industry forever.

I'm rooting for the reverend.

• [Pretty Simple]

  Unfortunately, 70% of the US’s electricity currently comes from fossil fuels.  Not sure an electric car alone is going to make a huge difference in the environment, unless there’s also a concerted effort to implement other methods of generating electricity.

  • [poon hound]

    My guess is that if you include all of the energy loss due to resistance in the generators and the wires and the batteries…ect, transitioning to electric cars would actually increase CO2 emmissions per mile driven.   Petroleum is useful because it is an efficient, transportable form of energy ‘storage’.

    • [Brainspore]

      Don’t you think your estimate should also account for the fact that you’d no longer have to ship huge amounts of petroleum products to local distribution centers in every neighborhood in America? That’s not super-efficient either. Besides, a single well-run power plant can extract energy from petroleum products more efficiently than several thousand cars.

    • [Stefan Jones]

      No. You are wrong.

      The “well to wheel” efficiency of electric cars is significantly better than gasoline powered vehicles:

      http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric/efficiency

      If you really care about greenhouse emissions, the situation will only become more favorable for the electric car as solar and wind energy prices come down and as we have to increasingly rely on costly, polluting shale oil extraction for petroleum.

      • [hab]

        Actually, well to wheel efficiency will depend on where you live and what time you charge, so I would take Tesla’s claims with a grain of salt.  They do have a business to run. I like their cars, though. My heart desires an electric car, but my brain isn’t convinced.

        http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2010/11/24/the-epas-electric-vehicle-mileage-fraud/

        An electric car is more or less a status symbol, kind of like having a photovoltaic panel array on your roof. For its cost and associated subsidies (which primarily benefit the wealthy), it is not actually more efficient to the entire system, but it does make a public statement about the beliefs and priorities of the user. It shows that their heart is in the right place.  It’s kind of like having a “Support the Troops” sign or a Virgin Mary statue on your front lawn.

        • [Stefan Jones]

          Electric cars are expensive status symbols now.

          Much like gasoline cars were 100 years ago.

          They won’t be forever.

          The only real question is, will the Henry Ford of the electrical car industry be American, Indian, or Chinese?

  • [Stefan Jones]

    I’m convinced! Let’s keep doing the same stupid, short-sided crap we’ve always done.

    Let the Chinese and Indians figure out the new battery technologies, and working out the learning economies of making electric cars.

    All that R&D stuff just diverts money from going to the stock holders and job creators, and encourages nerds and hippies to think they’re better than the frat brothers who’ve made this country great.

• [Brainspore]

  The thousands of DIYers are a great way to incubate ideas and test new technologies, but most people will only buy an electric car if it’s built by an established manufacturer. A car is too big of an investment for most people to gamble on a workshop that might be bankrupt in another six months. Luckily it doesn’t have to be either/or.

• [ikoino]

  Here’s the breakdown of energy sources that feed into electric: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/energy/energy_archive/energy_flow_2009/LLNL_US_Energy_Flow_2009.png A quick look might support Pretty Simple’s premise, but there’s more to it. Electric cars can move people or shift electrons – the later which offers new opportunities.

  Match plug-in electric with rooftop solar panels, a smart grid enabled spot energy market, and below zero billing that enables users to get money back from the utility. The results are new efficiencies. A local supply from rooftop panels avoids the transmission loss from long distance power lines. Uploading energy into the grid can smooth out peak loads. Load balancing has been estimated to cut energy distribution infrastructure costs by 20% – say around $300 Billion between now and 2030. Meanwhile, the yearly cost of power disturbance in the US is estimated to be about $100 Billion. 

  So, I think there are other advantages to plug-in electrics.

• [CCSurfer]

  Thus marking the only time in Boing Boing history during which the readership is collectively rooting for a Reverend (other than Horton Heat).

  • [jimh]

    What about Reverend Billy?!
    http://boingboing.net/2010/10/09/reverend-billy-and-c.html

• [bcsizemo]

  Well actually a standard car engine isn’t setup to be extremely efficient, it is setup for best power vs. efficiency over a broad and usable range. 

  The original idea of the Volt was a totally electric vehicle, supplemented by a gasoline powered generator.  By having a fixed speed gasoline engine the efficiency could be tuned to that exact speed and be much better than an engine that needs to go from 1k-6k rpms.  It’s a good idea, but does add a bit of extra weight. 

  If anything I’ve seen a couple of DIY electric cars that take a similar approach, but put the gas generator in a small pull along trailer.  It allows the car to travel as long as you need, while keeping weight down when you only need to go around town.  -Of course this was serious DIY, so a modern manufacture could make something similar and much more practical. 

• [philipbarrett]

  Electric cars are ideal for urban use, small cars rule, commutes are short and 1 less contributor to the city smog makes sense right?  

  However, we have a snag here.  Most urban parking is on street (even more so in Europe) so overnight charging becomes a real issue unless we care to see orange extension cords stretched across sidewalks. 

• [ernunnos]

  It’s all about the batteries. It’s just like flying cars. It doesn’t matter how neat they would be, in theory, if you don’t have an engine & fuel with sufficient thrust-to-weight. And it doesn’t matter how neat electric cars would be, in theory, if you don’t have the proper energy density.

  So none of these guys matter because they’re not the guys working on the batteries. There’s no secret to putting an electric motor in a car. If anything, that’s easier than an internal combustion system. All the “innovations” like aerodynamics and lightweight materials are just lame attempts at compensating for the fact that all batteries suck. 

  At least the flying car guy actually realized his problem and went out and started an engine company, which actually has made some advances and money, selling into other markets that can use the same efficiencies.

  • [Brainspore]

    The batteries we have now are more than sufficient if we start to rethink our transportation infrastructure. Most commuters could get to work and back on a single charge in a standard electric car. The tricky part is that they take a long time to recharge for longer trips- but that obstacle could also be overcome if battery exchange stations were as commonplace as gas stations are today. A lot of companies are starting to explore this approach: build the cars with standardized, easily swapped-out power packs which are leased instead of sold with the cars. Design the cars right and you could swap your empty battery out for a fully-charged one in less time than it takes to fill up a tank of gas.

• [Kimmo]

  Some pretty damn dodgy dealings (as usual) behind the scenes in this arena.

  Check it out here: Corruption and DOE

  • [Stefan Jones]

     I wonder who funds and organizes the “corruptiondoe” site?

    I’m all for transparency and accountability, but that smells of astroturf.

    • [Kimmo]

      How so? I was surprised to see Tesla mentioned, but I didn’t notice anything else odd about the site from a brief perusal.

• [fnc]

  Next time you’re pumping that delicious energy rich gasoline into the tank of your car consider that the pump you’re using to do so is powered by electricity.

• [dutchboy99]

  It would have more impact if  there were actually electric cars driving around commenplace.

• [David Yoon]

  Very cool. No mention of Coda, though?

• [ernunnos]

  In essence, the tricky part is that batteries suck compared to liquid fuels, and since even you don’t think they can be improved in the near future, you have some scheme for working around that. But that sucks too.

  Gasoline stores in a below-ground tank, with high density, and can be transported to and from that tank by the simple expedient of pumps. Apart from diesel/gasoline and octanes, there’s not much required to accommodate  different types of cars. The only thing they need to standardize on is the size & shape of the nozzles. Batteries are bulky, would need to be stored while charging. How many cars does the average service station refill every day? How much space would be required to have that many packs on hand? How many standard shapes & sizes are you going to have? What access methods? Where is the access panel, how is it opened? How are you going to get the batteries in and out of the car, and back and forth to the charging station? You don’t want to be hand-carting these things to and from a warehouse, and lifting them into your hood. You can visualize a system where you drive over a hatch, and some robot removes the multiple battery packs from under your car (due to bulk and weight, batteries are usually distributed around the vehicle) and hoists new ones into place, but that’s a lot more infrastructure than a  simple tank and a metering pump. More complicated, more prone to failure, more expensive.

  And none of this is necessary if you can create batteries that don’t suck compared to liquid fuels. Solve the battery problem, you solve everything else.

  • [Brainspore]

    In essence, the tricky part is that batteries suck compared to liquid fuels, and since even you don’t think they can be improved in the near future, you have some scheme for working around that.

    Gasoline and batteries each have distinct advantages and disadvantages and if you judge either based on how well it does the job of the other you’re bound to come up short. For example: you can’t fill up your gas tank with fuel sent directly to your house over the existing electrical grid, even if you’re not in a hurry. You can’t make gasoline out of whatever energy source is abundant in your area. You can’t drive a gasoline-powered vehicle in an enclosed environment without adequate ventilation. Etc. etc…

    Nobody is saying that better batteries shouldn’t be a focus of research, but to claim that electric cars are not viable until they come along is disingenuous. “Nobody try to buy or sell an electric car until everything is perfect!” gets us nowhere.

• [Ben Nelson]

  One downside to many electric vehicles is the cost. While the Tesla is featured in the film, it cost as much as my house.

  I decided to build my own electric car, using salvaged materials, and off-the-shelf parts. The whole project cost me $1300, and is now my daily driver.

  Even electric motorcycles are now going mainstream, but some of us have already been building them for years now.

  -Ben

  300MPG.org