GM leased 800 EV1s, starting in 1996, and celebrities like Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson were among its fans. (BBC Photo)

Electric cars were once widely touted as the solution to all our pollution ills and energy concerns. Now they’re not. A new documentary asks what happened?
The General Motors EV1 had a top speed of 80mph. It had a range of over a hundred miles. It could do 0-60mph in under eight seconds. And it was an electric car.
Not a milk float or a rinky-dink little two-seater runabout, but a normal car, and a milestone in the development of the electric vehicle, something that could swing the battle against air pollution in California.
And yet the ignominious demise of the GM EV1 is charted in a new film, Who Killed the Electric Car? In his documentary, film-maker Chris Paine, says cynical and conspiring car makers and oil firms, as well as apathetic consumers and weak government and regulators, helped end the electric dream in California, bbc.co.uk reported.
The development of the car by GM came as California brought in the zero emission vehicle regulation in 1990 which aimed to have 10% of all cars sold by 2003 give off no pollution. The film accuses lobbyists working for the motor manufacturers of getting the regulation watered down until eventually, it was no longer necessary to make electric cars. Indeed, GM was one of two car markers which sued the California regulators to repeal the emission mandate.
GM leased 800 EV1s, starting in 1996, and celebrities like Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson were among its fans. But even they couldn’t save the EV1. In 2003, GM scrapped the program, and insisted the cars be returned. Most were crushed.
Activists and former owners--including Baywatch star Alexandra Paul--picketed a yard where doomed EV1s were being stored. But all efforts to buy the cars were rebuffed by GM. GM said it could not sell the EV1s as this would make it liable for safety and continued maintenance of the cars, which would cost it money.

European Fear
It and other car-makers argued they had poured hundreds of millions into creating electric cars but saw little evidence of demand from consumers, and did nothing underhand. The lawmakers said other technologies offered a better chance to cut pollution, and changed the regulations to promote fuel cell cars, hybrids and other low emission vehicles. And opponents of electric said increased power generation would cancel out the benefits from reducing petrol use.
In a telling moment in the film, journalist Paul Roberts says the typical American consumer fears being made to drive “small cars and live in houses that are cold--they basically fear they are going to have to live like Europeans“.
And yet over in Europe it is not exactly as if the concept of the electric car is alive and kicking. On EVUK, a campaigning website, there is a plea to car manufacturers. “Please--Ford, Nissan et al: don’t just force-feed Europeans with worthy but nerdy little eco-shoppers designed to deter mainstream car-buyers.“
Instead of the EV1, UK drivers might cast their minds back to the Ford Think, fully launched in 2001. Available to lease for £80 a month under a subsidized scheme, they were city run-arounds, much less ambitious than the EV1, with a short range and a restricted top speed.

Customer Acceptance
Ford sold Think back to a Scandinavian firm. The cars were recalled from the lessees and shipped to Norway, where, it’s probable they went the same two-dimensional way as the EV1, Ford says.
“We got into the electric vehicle business. We got out of it again. We are a volume manufacturer. For the time being it is a very niche market,“ says Ford Europe environmental communications manager Adrian Schmitz.
“We are not saying there is absolutely no future for electric vehicles but we were disappointed about the very limited customer acceptance.“
Ford is now promoting a bioethanol version of the Ford Focus, and is pouring millions into hybrid cars and long-term development of hydrogen fuel cell technology. Take-up of alternative fuel vehicles varies widely. Ford has shifted 22,000 bioethanol cars in Sweden, and 100 in the UK.

Alternative fuels have been getting a lot of attention in the news lately, especially with escalating gasoline prices. A lot of that attention has gone to ethanol and its use to extend the supply of gasoline as an additive and eventually its use as a fuel by itself. But another biofuel, biodiesel, is starting to get more scrutiny and it may turn out to have more potential than ethanol as an alternative and renewable source of fuel.
Biodiesel is a relatively clean burning fuel made from domestic, renewable sources. It contains no petroleum in its pure form but can be blended at any level with petroleum diesel to make a biodiesel blend that can be used in any compression-ignition diesel engine with little or no modifications.
Although the term is sometimes applied to the bio/petrol diesel mixture, biodiesel rightly refers just to the organically derived fuel. Biodiesel can be made from a variety of sources including soybean or Canola oils, animal fats, waste vegetable oils, or microalgae oils.
It is produced through a process in which organically derived oils are combined with alcohol (ethanol or methanol) in the presence of a catalyst to form ethyl or methyl ester. Since soybean oil is the dominant oil produced in the United States, the development of biodiesel has focused around soy oil. One bushel of soybeans produces about 1.5 gallons of biodiesel, according to mountvernonnews.com.
The use of biodiesel fuel requires little or no modifications of current diesel engines. The biggest concern is the fuels stronger solvent properties. This characteristic has its good and bad points. Many older engines use rubber hoses to carry the fuel and can develop leaks if not monitored and maintained. Many manufacturers recommend changing these parts when switching to a biodiesel fuel or bio/petrol mixture.
One major diesel engine designer and manufacturer, New Holland, has informed the National Biodiesel Board it fully approves of the use of bio/petrol blends up to B20 on all diesel equipment it produces. B20 is a blend of 20 percent biodiesel fuel and 80 percent petroleum diesel fuel.
One of the beauties of using biodiesel, at least in a blend, is that diesel engines require almost no modification to use the fuel.
“As long as you are running anything other than the pure product, that is the B100 blend, it does not require any real modification,“ said Joshua Stockberger of Purrformance Diesel in Fredericktown. “In the winter time you will definitely want to reduce your fuel mixture to B10, though.“
Biodiesel has a solvent quality to it, which is in proportion to the ratio of the blend. This can be a factor in converting to the use of biodiesel in older engines.
“It is a factor in older vehicles due to the fact that is acts as a cleaning agent,“ Stockberger said. “You may have noticed on diesel pumps that kind of nasty varnish that accumulates after it sits for a while. Biodiesel will clean everything in an older engine, your fuel tanks, fuel lines, any varnish in the injection system. The possibility is that it will clog the fuel filters quicker. But that’s just a minor thing when you consider the benefits of it. Changing a fuel filter early is no big deal to me.“
Of the several naturally produced fuel alternatives, biodiesel may well become the biggest player in the game. It requires little or no re-engineering or design of engines, it is relatively clean burning, it can be made from a number of different source materials and, because of its higher solvent and lubricity, it make diesel engines run cleaner and quieter than when petro/diesel fuel is used exclusively.
But there are still other fuels under consideration and they show a lot of promise. Ethanol is perhaps the most talked about these days and there is the production of methane gas from animal manure and other organic substances. These will be examined in upcoming articles in the News.

Kenya’s electricity consumption has hit historical highs due to higher economic growth and an extremely cold spell.
Listed power producer, Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen), said on August 3 that power usage last week touched a ceiling of 930 megawatts (MW).
The previous record set in early 2006 was 920 MW.
The increase was recorded on July 26. Analysts, while noting booming business for KenGen, see this as a wake-up call for investors to move into the sector to avoid medium-term demand overwhelming supply.
“The current demand leaves a reserve margin of barely 100 MW of installed capacity,“ KenGen said in a statement. Reserve margin is what is left before all the capacity is used, allafrica.com said.
However, the power firm says emergency power generators brought in as precautionary measure following drought in 2005 and early this year had boosted reserves to 140 MW. National demand is forecast to escalate 150 MW yearly, if economic growth is maintained.
Interestingly, the statement issued during a dinner to thank the local and international media for their support during the firm’s successful initial public offer (IPO) in May, came amidst a reported stand-off between KenGen and the Kenya Power & Lighting Company (KPLC), over a 60 cents increase in payments to the power producer after the latter reverts to the Sh2.36 per kilowatt-hour bulk supply tariff (suspended in 2003).
KPLC believes its efforts to improve its profit will be hurt unless the Government offers them the cushion of Sh1.76.
The revenue stream is critical in funding KenGen’s power generation projects. On August 3, the firm steered clear of the issue, however, saying only that it was stepping up investment to keep pace with demand and cushion supply against rain failure.
Managing director, Eddy Njoroge, stated that the firm, which has listed 30 per cent of its shares on the Nairobi Stock Exchange, would inject another 450 MW into the national grid over four years.
“While the new level shows the pressure that demand is putting on existing capacity, we are also working on new capacity to meet the demand,“ he said. The projects include upgrading of Kiambere plant, Sondu Miriu, Olkaria third unit, Kipevu Combined Cycle and Ebburu among others.
Stepped up rural electrification is set to boost demand further. Mr. Njoroge said plans to export surplus power to Uganda were on, as the excess from the emergency units was unnecessary due sufficient long rains in Kenya this year.

The solar-hydrogen fuel cell home, located on the USMMA campus, is now officially open for tours. (Archinect.com Photo)

Last month, New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) dedicated their 2005 Solar Decathlon house as “America’s First Solar-Hydrogen Home.“...
New York Institute of Technology’s (NYIT) 2005 Solar Decathlon team dedicated their solar-powered home as “America’s First Solar-Hydrogen Home“ at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the US Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) at Kings Point, NY, on Monday, June 19, 2006. USMMA was NYIT’s sole academic partner during the international competition that is sponsored by the US Department of Energy. The ceremony was held in conjunction with USMMA’s commencement, where President George W. Bush delivered the keynote address.
The solar-hydrogen fuel cell home, which is now permanently located on the USMMA campus, is now officially open for tours and will serve as a renewable energy research and educational center for the academy’s Alternative Power Program (APP), which was founded in 2004. NYIT President Edward Guiliano, PhD, and Captain Douglas Brown, USMMA APP program director, each applauded the collaborative efforts between the two schools. Other speakers included Richard King, creator and director of the Solar Decathlon for the US Department of Energy and Richard M. Kessel, chairman of the Long Island Power Authority, archinect.com said.
The 800-square-foot house was originally constructed on NYIT’s Old Westbury, NY, campus, disassembled into seven parts, transported and rebuilt at the National Mall in Washington, DC, for the 2005 Solar Decathlon. The global competition, which ran from Sept. 29 - Oct. 16, 2005, featured 18 schools from 13 states, Canada, Spain and Puerto Rico, and challenged teams to originate and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar-powered home. Following the competition, the house was transported back to New York, rebuilt, and donated to the USMMA.
NYIT was the only finalist participating from the New York metropolitan area and the only school to use a hydrogen fuel cell for energy storage. Greg Sachs, USMMA APP program manager and the Solar Decathlon team’s lead engineer, helped to ensure that NYIT’s plans for hydrogen fuel energy came to fruition. NYIT has again been selected by the US Department of Energy to compete in the 2007 Solar Decathlon.

All refer to fuel that’s made from bio-produced materials such as plants. Chengci Chen (pronounced Chen-see Chen), an assistant professor of cropping systems at the Central Agricultural Research Center at Moccasin, and his collaborators are investigating Montana’s potential for producing biofuels using “biomass,“ which refers to all biologically produced materials like grains, straw, hay, trees and fruits. He and his collaborators are working on a project to evaluate the ethanol production potential of various straws, hays, and silages in Montana.
People can make fuel from many kinds of plants, though over 90 percent of ethanol made in the United States comes from corn grain. However, other sources of ethanol are needed, because even if the entire United States’ corn crop was used for ethanol, it would meet only 10 percent of the country’s fuel needs.
So researchers are looking for new sources for ethanol. Since the jury is still out on what combination of sources will be best to replace petrol, Chen is working with sources that will be more universally available--especially in Montana, technologynewsdaily.com said.
Chen is working on the issue from two directions. First, he is looking at how to maximize the volume of Montana crops or their residues with less input. At the same time, he is looking for the most efficient enzyme to break down the biomass into sugars and also looking at microorganisms that can ferment the sugars into fuel.
Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, said in a recent email that rapid technological advances in the production of such cellulosic ethanol are contributing to its tremendous potential as an easy-to-use fuel in conventional vehicles.
How best to bring that tremendous potential to Montana is just what Chen and his collaborators are researching.
“If we use grass and straw, you can find the stock everywhere,“ Chen said. “It is widely available in many regions of the country, rather than being limited to the Corn Belt, and it has the potential to have higher production in Montana.“
The United States is facing increasing energy challenges. President Bush’s proposal for additional clean-energy research in his State of the Union Address acknowledged the need for extensive research in biofuel, and the US Department of Energy announced this month an ambitious research agenda for developing cellulosic ethanol. The Department of Energy called it in a news release “a renewable, cleaner-burning, and carbon-neutral alternative to gasoline“ and “an economically viable transportation fuel.“
“Montana farms produce 10 million tons of wheat and barley straw that are typically left in the field. An additional five million tons of hay are produced annually,“ said Dave Wichman, superintendent of the Central Ag Research Center “The advantage of using annual farm crops for ethanol production is that farmers can produce biomass with conventional crops and equipment, and can alternate crop production for energy, food or feed,“ he added.
In areas with irrigation and enough heat, a double-cropping system with winter cereals and warm season grasses like winter triticale and sweet sorghum, can be adopted.
“The biomass production increases by as much as 50 percent using this system compared to a single-cropping system,“ Chen explained. “Even perennial grasses like switchgrass might be grown on marginal lands or lands retired from the Conservation Reserve Program.“
Chen is working with scientists at the Biological Engineering Department of North Carolina State University to screen chemicals and enzymes that pretreat and convert biomass into sugars.
“Biomass energy can contribute to cleaner air through reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It can also improve rural economies, and reduce energy dependence on foreign petroleum oils,“ said Ralph Peck, director of the Institute for Biobased Products at MSU. The institute has funded Chen’s research after receiving a line-item appropriation through Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont.
“One of our goals is to make the new ethanol production methods from biomass competitive,“ Peck said.