Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 11:44:33 -0400
Reply-To: Bulley <gmbulley@BULLEY-HEWLETT.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Bulley <gmbulley@BULLEY-HEWLETT.COM>
Subject: Bulley Rags on battery-operated vehicles: lite van content: was:
Diesels in America?
David wrote:
"Diesels have the reputation of being dirty and noisy and they will never
get rid of that reputation. Electric or fuel cell vehicles will arrive
before diesel is accepted."
Never is a long time...I think you're wrong, David.
I won't comment on fuel cell vehicles, because I don't know enough about
them to have a solid opinion. The TDI and electric are a different story...
The TDI, with its remarkable efficiency, clean burn, and quiet nature is
already beginning to supplant the gasoline engine in some applications. For
example, I just saw a HUGE motor-home a visitor from Holland brought over
to tour the U.S. Right on the motorbox, "2.5 l TDI"...the owner said, in
broken English, yah, this is the only motor available for this van...we
like it a lot...It is only a matter of time.
Americans love the "tactile" nature of a combustion engine. Anyone who has
driven a new Beetle TDI, Jetta TDI, or Passat TDI, will tell you it not
only sounds and feels almost exactly like a gasoline powered engine (better
in my opinion...more 'purposeful' and 'solid' than a gas car), but also,
the TDI acceleration curve and torque are far nicer to the seat of the
pants than any comparably-sized gas motor. The 50 mpg doesn't suck either.
TDI's don't belch soot, or make noise. Clean and smooth. Inexpensive fuel.
Low maintenance. The locomotion power plant for the next 20-30 years. Drive
one and see.
And while an electric vehicle seems like a novel and great idea on the
surface, so did Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic "Dome Home". They were
efficient, easy and cheap to build, low cost to maintain, suitable for many
climates...Why aren't we all living in golfballs?
Simple, because nobody wants to. It is a matter of choice, and just like
Fuller's revolutionary home, nobody wants an electric vehicle.
You will continue to see a small and vocal group struggling to tout the
"advantages" of a battery-powered car, as they have for 30 years.
Ill-advised states will try to offer incentives. Companies under government
mandate will offer incentives. And the population will continue to stop off
at the Shell station, drive home to regular, non-dome houses, and not plug
in and run up their electric bill so they can drive to work in the morning.
I would like for people to consider this...electric vehicles are not the
low cost, "pollution free alternative" that their cheerleaders would have
you believe.
The recharge-a-car folks are right...If the United States drivers plugged
in 218 million vehicles every evening, you would see a huge drop in
tailpipe pollution, and your "gasoline bill" would be a thing of the past.
The part they leave out is the HUGE rise in power plant smokestack
pollution, and the jump in utility consumption.
The United States' electrical generating capacity is near its upper
threshold currently; most communities have been affected in recent years
with rolling brown outs, and pleas from power companies to reduce usage
during summer heat. This makes sense; why would power generating companies
build huge margins of expensive generating capability? They build only as
demand increases...
I don't have the numbers, but if someone with one of our electric vehicles
listed tell us what the average current draw over time is for their
electric vehicle over the course of a month driving, say, 50 or 60 miles
each day, simple multiplication will give you an idea of just how much more
electrical generating capacity we are talking about... it is staggering...
Is anyone in the electric vehicle craze talking about where this extra
generating capacity is going to come from? and how much it is going to
cost? And who is going to pay for it? All electrical consumers?
I know I don't like to look of my electric bill as it is. I hate to think
of what would look like if Carolina Power and Light were having to build
two or three more plants to support a heap of drivers, plugging in their
cars. Perhaps a heavy tax on electricity for electric vehicle owners would
keep the playing field level?
Worse, as all these folks started sucking power for their 'recharge-a-car',
we would see an increased burning of heavy fossil fuels, like coal, and
fuel oil to run power plants here in the United States and elsewhere. Even
if the exhaust is "scrubbed" at the power plant, the resultant smoke is
still a horrible brew for our air, mostly CO2, a greenhouse gas, and sulfur
dioxide, which causes acid rain. Further, the sludge from the scrubbers is
another environmental toxin, which we don't have a great way of disposing
of. Why would we want to increase emissions at a power plant?
Last but not least, producing, fixing, and disposing of/recycling
combustion engine-vehicles is almost a science now. We learned most of the
environmental lessons, that's why for example, the oil is drained, the fuel
tanks and batteries are removed before a vehicle is set out in a junk yard.
We learned that those things leak, and get into ground water.
I, for one, don't want to go through a number of years like the 40's, 50's,
60's, and 70's when we polluted the land as we learned what we could and
couldn't get away with in nature. The battery industry has rightfully
earned a reputation for being environmentally untrustworthy, and hazardous.
When I think of that industry having to increase it's capacity to produce
and recycle enough huge batteries for 200+million vehicles, I shiver to
think of the environmental impact.
All things considered, I'm not sure I see how electric vehicles help our
environment, the most commonly touted advantage of electric vehicle.
For those of you who can't understand why many of us are all charged up
about the TDI, go drive one. Stand between a gas-powered Jetta, and a TDI
Jetta, and listen to both motors. Then look at the mileage estimate (one is
roughly twice the other, and yet has almost exactly the same performance).
Drive a TDI, and you will see why we are all scheming to import a batch of
5-cylinder TDI's for the Vanagon...
Thank you for your consideration,
G. Matthew Bulley
Bulley-Hewlett & Associates
www.bulley-hewlett.com
Cary, NC USA
888.468.4880 tollfree
-----Original Message-----
From: David..M [SMTP:dmc@CYBURBAN.COM]
Sent: Monday, April 26, 1999 9:54 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Diesels in America?
