How do we solve a problem like electric cars?

Gordon Murray, once famed for designing the McLarren F1 road car, has developed the T.27 an electric car for the masses. Trouble is what he’s designed is a golf buggy with big wheels and a roll-over loop. What he’s actually designed is a manufacturing process that removes the need for steel presses as his cars will be built of bits welded together by computer controlled robots. The process which he’s calling iStream cost 9million pounds to develop of which half was funded by the government.

The idea is to reduce the processes to reduce the emissions and improve sustainability. I’m having trouble with this concept however. In a ‘normal’ car factory a roll or sheets of steel get delivered and are stamped in a dye and spot welded together by a robot, then hundreds of workers go about bolting things onto that. What iStream is going to deliver is lots of steel tube and sheets get delivered and are welded together at which point someone will, presumably, come along and bolt things to the vehicle.

To my mind this plays into the hands of people who see electric vehicles as a joke. The ‘car’ is slabsided, open-topped and a single seater and looks uglier than a New York City meter-maids cart. Please forget the electric drive train and put in a 5hp diesel pop-pop engine and let it die with the other curiosities. If the T.27 had come along 100years ago when EV’s were more common it’d have been blown out of the water by others that were better designed and a damned sight more comfortable.

Murray claims that it’s designed as an urban transport vehicle and that we should still have a station wagon at home if we need to go further. I’m sorry but ecologically having two cars to do the job one does now? People WILL NOT buy it. If I want an electric car but occasionally need to run down to Brighton to see a friend, I’ll buy a Prius or Honda insight. I could even swing by the centre of London and pick a friend up on the way. If I had a T.27 I’d have to leave it at home, forget going through London and would have done the whole journey in my petrol car.

What we need is electric cars with decent ranges with ‘charging stations’ at fairly frequent intervals. Tesla have shown a 280mile range. Smith Ampere is only limited to 100miles because the battery pack is only as big as the diesel tank on a Ford Transit Connect. If a manufacturer like Smith were involved in the development of a vehicle from scratch we’d have this licked by now surely?

Honda motor cars have their petrol tank under the front seats, most cars have it under the rear seats. Okay this is a far out idea but if a manufacturer designed a car so that there was space under the front seats, the rear seats and possibly under the boot where people used to put spare wheels (when cars had spare wheels), it stands to reason that a compliment of lithium-Ion-Phosphate batteries could give a range of 300miles at 70mph.

Coupled to this a charging infrastructure at motorway services and supermarkets. Tesco listen up, if you put three-phase charging stations at your supermarkets you could sell us electricity at a profit! The people who don’t have a garage in which to charge their car up could have it fist charged at Tesco whilst they do their weekly shop. Or if I’m off to see Simon on the south coast I could drive for whatever the range is on my car, stop at a services, and have a coffee while ‘Moto’ top-up the charge in my car.

This isn't rocket science, it’s business. The main stumbling block is that we’re chasing ‘alternative fuels’ because BP, Shell et al. want to sell us stuff to go in our cars. Oil companies partner up with the big firms to supply lubricants for their cars and it’s a relationship that has gone on for years.

Auto manufacturers can do it, we want it, the infrastructure is easy and fairly cheap to put in. I’m sorry Gordon but whilst I commend your idea but Citroen trialled it in the 70’s with little effect and whilst an oversized golf cart is the dream of many pre-teens it’s not what Mavis down the road will want to drive down to the shops of a rainy afternoon.

GM decide not to sell Opel/Vauxhall

Okay, so I for one was over the moon when the sale of Opel to Canadian parts manufacturer Magna International Inc. Magna had shown a rare vision in modern automotive companies, it wants to promote electric vehicles (EV’s). Magna International had already developed EV technology and were buying one of Europe’s largest automobile manufacturers. Within a year or five there was the distinct possibility that we could have ‘normal’ electric vehicles rolling off production lines in Russelheim and Ellesmere Port. This could have been it, forget you’re G-Whizzes and Ford Th!nks, we would have had Opel Astras and Opel Insignias out there on the streets in ordinary peoples hands. That’s how EV’s will make it big, by them becoming the norm, not some little fibreglass go-kart.

Then comes the news yesterday that GM have made more money than they were expecting, US Taxpayers money, and to celebrate GM decided to pull the sale of Opel/Vauxhall. Ordinarily that would seem like good news but Magna had already been in discussions with the unions, had already worked out a way to make the business work after GM had let things get so bad. Now we’ve got GM playing the jealous older sibling “its mine hands off!” “you’re not having Opel/Vauxhall, I want them”. This leaves the staff unsure again what’s going to happen to their jobs, it means a stagnation of vehicle development and the prospect that we may have a version of the Chevy Volt thrust on us.

Don’t get me wrong the Chevy Volt IS a step in the right direction, it’s a 1.4litre hybrid, not a million miles from the old Toyota Prius, but that’s the point, the OLD prius. The new Prius comes with a bigger more efficient engine, it’ll come with a plug soon so you can plug it in boosting your mpg’s to around 150, still nowhere near the efficiency of a true battery electric vehicle but much better than what GM are promising.

That’s what’s going to happen, the Volt will be released with great fanfare but it’ll be released to a world where cars have already moved on. Toyota are miles ahead promising hybrid versions of all it’s cars, Honda have a couple of great cars, Magna Steyr are already developing their own car, Tesla have grasped the publics attention with their sports cars, Smith Electric have developed an EV version of the Ford Tourneo Connect, Ford may eventually bite the bullet and market a version of the focus with either a Magna or Smith drivetrain and Renault have already made a lot noise about the four new EV models they will be releasing soon.

So what of Opel/Vauxhall, well what we’ve got left is European arm of GM who were almost in a position to come out of the darkness and become world leaders in mass produced electric vehicles gobbled back into the arms of the company that destroyed it’s own EV programme for Hummers about ten years ago. What can we expect as the next move? I’m not sure but I’m guessing GM will find a way of stuffing the Volt project up somehow, Ford will flounder a bit longer and the smaller manufacturers will struggle to get enough interest to make the economies needed to get the price low enough to compete with mass produced oil burning vehicles we’ve become so used to.