# New ideas?



## Green Machines (Mar 4, 2009)

I stumbled across this 1967 video of EVs in the UK, it says: 

'...within 5 years he expects to see 1/4 of a million of them on British roads..."

"....Britain is way ahead of the world in its electric car projects..." 

What happened??

see: www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-YHdvQefQY


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## Jens Rekker (Oct 26, 2007)

Reality happened.

The 1970's saw the first flurry of interest in EVs. The interest and innovation ramped up as the 1973 oil shock bit hard and started to ripen as the price rose higher under later obstructions to the flow of Middle East oil such as the islamic revolution in Iran and the Iraq - Iran War in the early 1980's. General Motors trialed an electric version of the Chevette called an Electrovette. Seibring went into limited production with a fuel saving Citicar, essentially a road-going electric forklift in a light chasis. The Citicar had no controller, just a crude three position contactor arrangement switching the battery pack for speed control. People honestly thought this was the leading edge of something that would build and mature.

The reality is that battery electric can not begin to compete with petrol powered transport as long as we have petrol's manifest advantages of energy density and a per litre price lower than bottled water or milk.

EV's may have their day when people consider that something fundemental has changed, or people reluctantly concede that things will not go back to the old days of cheap fuel. We see the possibility of this again for the second time since the 1970's energy crisis. There will always be early adaptors or simple enthusiasts that anticipate the coming of the EV. Even now with the spector of oil production depletion and carbon dioxide emission concerns, EVs are not tipping over the edge towards mass desirability. It makes no economic sense to convert an EV or pay the premium of a limited edition production car, compared to second hand or new petrol cars on purely financial grounds. There are only so many cars that will be sold on aspirational values alone (look at the uptake of hybrids, which are essentially the same price as standard cars).

When will EVs take off? I honestly don't know?


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## Woodsmith (Jun 5, 2008)

Green Machines said:


> "....Britain is way ahead of the world in its electric car projects..."
> 
> What happened??


The same as pretty much everything else.
We Brits bring forth a great idea and then don't follow it up. We then sit on our hands moaning about stuff and then when some other country redevelops our first efforts we spend our money to buy it in.

The same thing happened with the computer, the jet engine and the leaning high speed trains among others.


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