A Hybrid for the Future - 1979

Pls don't take offense to this post:

Why does it have to be the president to push these technologies? The president of Japan didn't have to tell Toyota to push the tech. It should be the president of the the auto companies that have a long term plan. It doesn't take too much smarts to predict that oil prices were sure to increase. I blame the management @ GM and every other carmaker that let Toyota get ahead. I commend Toyota for having a great plan and implementing that plan. Poor management with no future vision is the reason for EV1's demise and the late release of the Volt (not to mention the bailout).

The tale of two companies:

Company 1
Excellent long term plan
Focus on quality
Focus on reputation
Move manuf to America
Agressive R&D

Company 2
Focus on short term (current)
Just enough quality to get by
Beg consumers to buy American
Move manuf to Canada and Mex
Rely on past success

Can you guess which company is which? If any company operates like #2, they are doomed to failure (ie: Kmart vs Walmart)

 

American cars, built to the lowest tender

(ducks for cover)

 

The 70's style and music is really insufferable to me, I can't finish it I'm afraid.

 

For the US market, part of it is military spending the drives innovation. GE and GM are also heavily contracted by the government to develop new systems for military practical purposes. Such as the engines used by military aviation on some jets and helicopters. The Hummer, is also a GM product that was first seen for the Military before it hit the civilian market. The president of the US does set some policies, while he may not be the overall decision maker, he does propose and set policies other will either push through implement.

The thing is, back in the 80s, the push was to innovate, but innovation for defense of the country against Russia, which also meant pushing for new technologies, like computers and communications. The Internet, for example, was partly a DARPA creation that we are all capitalizing on now. It has been in the works through the late 70s to early 90s. During the entire 80s, people who knew about the internet were the smattering of college students, professors and people who knew them and poking around with it. The internet didn't become mainstream until the early 90s, but originally the Internet was ARPAnet and was meant for devising a communications network other than the standard radio waves or traditional phone system.

It isn't just simply whether or not a company decided to go with something, sometimes it also requires getting backing to take the jump. The auto industry is one of those things where you can try and say "Hey, let's make a new car..." But at the same time, how do you get a car to be on the market? It has to go through some of the governments to vet it and time and effort put into it beyond the prototyping stage.

While companies can try and prototype, a completely new technology, there is that one other point I made about why the Leaf and the Volt aren't going to sell well 'right now'... Look at the US right now. To gain a reasonable benefit of the Leaf, for instance, you have to relegate that your driving is NEVER going to go beyond 73 miles, Round trip. Why 73? Well, depending on how well the battery holds the charge and operates, the worst case scenario from a full charge, I give the Leaf maybe 73 miles round trip before it is 'dead'. It can go a bit more, but worst case, 73 miles. This is without charging beyond the home station.

The reason I focus on this is the problem with how indepth is our current charging point opportunities? Right now, I say maybe 10%... 10% chance of finding a place I can plug a Leaf into. The Volt has a range extender, a gas engine to help recharge the battery, giving it a better chance than the Leaf for where it can go, however, you want to also use the Battery charging via the grid, which again, does not solve the problem of the immature infrastructure.

The other reason I feel that the infrastructure has remained immature is the LACK of encouragement of standardization. While the US is not going to be the authority of car manufacturing for the world, the thing is, if we want to be the forefront of innovation, we should be pushing for it locally as well as globally. We haven't exactly done that short of Apple and Google, but even, we haven't exactly tried to encourage a strong standard in our own country short of just gasoline. Others have played around with different sources, but on a mass production level, we have NOTHING. We have people doing their own experiments but that's those isolated areas, but will that help us if we want more people to adopt another technology? No, because in the case of cars, just like how Apple tries to cater to the lowest common denominator, the lowest common denomination of car owner will be the one who wants a transportation that just 'works'. Yes, the plug in option should just 'work' but when you introduce the price tag, the fact you are limited based on range for a pure EV, a lack of places to charge for the EV system... And to do that, you need governments to encourage the building or standardization of such charge points.

Also, don't forget, the GM manufacturer is getting backing from the government for the Volt and had backing for the Hummer as well.

 

Sorry Keiichi but, we will just have to agree to disagree on this one. I place the blame on the management of GM (and other American carmakers) and not the gov't. A smart, well managed company could have supported the cold war effort and R&D on future cars. It all comes back to management (fail). The management at GM was not able to juggle all the rqmts necessary for future sustainment. The main reason was, simply lack of foresight. I'll bet they made a buttload of money on the defense contracts you mention. That money could have been used for R&D but, was probably used to line the pockets of the execs (bonuses, pay, cigars and who knows what else). I live in Bowling Green, KY (where the Corvette is made) and I still see GM's private jet flying in to our airport (what a waste). Their main focus still seems to be the truck and the 230mpg Volt hype fell flat (overpromise and underdeliver). They still haven't learned and, I don't think they ever will. I have lost all faith in ther management and, I predict bankruptcy or another bailout w/in 10 years.

I do have to give a SHOUT OUT to Ford for not taking a bailout but I don't have a good feeling about their future either. My vote goes to Company A.

 

Very interesting thread. If anybody else noticed Daihatsu was part of that venture and Toyota and Daihatsu have worked together and shared technologies. What was the depth of knowledge that Daihatsu was able to obtain on this Hybrid Technology Group. And have we ended up with a fully developed product from Japan that was again " Made in America " At the time I was one of the five "Electric Vehicle Coodinators" helping to introduce EV's to the local military base and it's mechanics. The whole project turned out to be a farce mainly because, at the time with battery technology being only centered around lead acid, none of the mechanics or Supervisors wanted to give daily priority to the state of charge of the battery package and could not understand what I was talking about when I stressed the importance of the individual cell levels. Anyway it was all fun and there were big plans under way for a showroom, a coal fired, dust burning, non polluting Electrical Plant as well as PV demos and Solar Hot Water Installation at the Base Gym. Since then dis-mantled. ?? What really fascinated me at the time was many of these ideas came down directly from the Carter Administration and were implemented where possible, the main problem being (IMO) lack of funding by congress. Anyway when Reagan came into Office, all the Base Energy Offices were pretty much disbanded and we all moved on. Meanwhile my son (15) moved into Basic Programming with his Radio Shack Computer and we all entered the Computer age ( 1980-1982). Still in it! :cheer2::cheer2::cheer2:

 

You are more than welcome to disagree, but you are also failing to understand that several of our recent technologies were spurn from necessity and driven by military necessity as well. The Internet as said before, and government funded. Computer improvements were also spurned by defense contract needs and government funding for development. Jet Engines were, surprise surprise, created from war efforts. Atomic/Nuclear power was developed through war efforts.

The video was also a showing of encouragement to develop such things, through the Department of Energy. Another government program. There were alternative energy developments that again, were funded by the Department of Energy, but also not getting funding limits companies on where to put their ventures.

And again, you do realize, despite your argument for its all GM's fault for the problem... They were also bankrupt and needed a bailout and government support to develop the Volt... GM, an american company that was struggling with a few things as well as competition against *gasp* Toyota which, *gasp* got Japanese Government support, and several other Foreign Car Makers due to cars being reasonably reliable compared to the American equivalent at a much more competitive price point.

Again... The argument kind of assumes that company A and B were at a good situation to begin with and Company A and B were not getting support for different reasons...

 

So what's next for Apple -- the iCar maybe???

Keith

 

We're going back and forth and hijacking this thread too much so this will be my last post on the subject.

I don't fail to realize that many technological advances were developed through gov't support. I just believe that successful companies will have the qualities of Company A and companies that fail will not. The fact that Reagan de-prioritized alt fuel tech didn't mean American carmakers had to as well. A well run Co. with vision won't need a DOE grant or encouragement. They should be on top of it already.

As for GM needing a bailout to develop the Volt, I ask, Why? The answer (in my view) poor management (lack of a plan, no foresight).

The argument doesn't assume A and B were at a good situation. I didn't even consider that but, In the 70's and 80's, Japanese car companies were importing our steel, building the car, exporting to the US and selling us cheaper, higher quality cars. I hate that that happened but, it did. So, if anything, Company A was in a much worse situation than Company B.

That's my humble opinion.

It's been a great debate. I appreciate your views and patience with me.

 

Your argument DID assume A and B were in good situation... You ignored the fact that for Toyota, they had support from the Japanese Government to develop their Hybrid and we are taking advantage of that as is the Toyota company by 'spreading' the wealth. At the same time, the desire to 'buy american' was still a hard sell as foreign imports were, by in large, still cheaper than most american made products. Said american companies were also outsourcing their jobs to foreign countries to cut costs and maximize profits, but for the US automakers, that is still difficult to do if most of your stuff is still based in Detroit or some of the US based locations.

Your argument was saying that one company did not try to innovate, yet, GM was the one who tried to do the EV1... And it only lasted a short time and was canned, partly due to funding issues and other things. At the same time, said company went with what can sell versus what could not sell to stay afloat... So you are telling me that you expect a company to keep going with something that will still need more money to develop over time, without funding and relying on their own income which depends on other sales to help keep up something they are still working to improve, could not sell and had to take back?

There is a problem with that kind of thinkin too, you know. You should also understand that the whole 'You have to spend money to make money' idea is hard to really sell when you don't have much backing to begin with, cause again, ignoring the whole 'another government supported and financed the development' part for the Toyota Prius Hybrid, along with another company collaborating with them to do it... Suggests there is just more to it than just a company 'sticking with it.'

 

Well lets say its the Government not just the president, it includes the congress and the DOE, NHTSA, and EPA. The reason the government needs to be involved is the free market does not do a good job on assessing auto pollution, OPEC, and limited oil. They have done a couple of good things like Clean Air Act under Nixon and Strategic Petroleum Reserve and CAFE standards under Ford. They also have done an awful job at pulling cars. Japan's equivalent did give Toyota and the other Japanese car companies huge sums of money to pull hybrids onto the road. Japan's engergy policies though are also a mess. Here is a summary of energy policy US

The Efficacy Of Presidential Energy Policy - Forbes.com

Agree here, but there are 9 global car companies that control most production, that's a very small number. None of them can be trusted to get it right, and all are subsidized by governments.

Post bankrupcy is hard not to blame GM managements for their troubles. You also have to give props to Toyota for taking losses and getting the prius to be a sucess. But lets not over state this. Toyota is not a solution to the countries oil problems. They still sell trucks and suvs, and hybrids are less than 1% of the vehicles on the road.

Toyota fell behind gm and vw last year, but volume doesn't mean much. The Japanese government has reacted by massive programs to sell more Japanese built cars. They are doing this corporate welfare in a way to reduce oil usage though. Toyota's management like gm over invested in Trucks and SUVs, and did have some of the same group think. Hyundai/Kia is the up and commer.

 

Yes, Let's get the record straight instead of providing partisan propaganda.

Gas fell in 80's due to global recession, just like oil will fall in near future when Europe and US debt crisis explodes. The 80's recession was triggered by high oils crisis (just like 2008 crash and future recessions from now), but economy rebounded when oil prices went down. Reagan happened to be in office and took all the credit. BTW, soviet union folded due to low oil prices too.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_oil_glut"]1980s oil glut - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]


It was not solar water heater on the white house that leaked. It was the roof that needed resurfacing and solar heaters were dismantled. Now they are museum pieces, including in China. Chinese lead in solar energy now and are laughing from Americans who developed the technology, but never used it and allowed them to copy it and mass produce.

Where Did the Carter White House's Solar Panels Go?: Scientific American

 

Let's see I criticised Nixon and Carter and praised Obama and Bush on this policy. How does criticizing democrats and republicans and praising others partisan. Oh I get it, its only non-partisan if you only talk bad about republicans. Nice. I guess I know how you stand.

You have no idea what is going on do you? Oil was deregulated allowing prices to rise and fall, and not keeping gas prices artificially low with shortages. This allowed for proper investment. Iran evened out, and opec sold us their oil. The prices for gas were much lower in the american good economy than in recession. Oil is not going back to low levels of the late 80s no matter how screwed up Europe is on their financial crisis. Things might go lower if the Iranian and Sudanese situations get better, but its not going to get as low as it was before.

A little tough to find, but it was those great solar panels that probably damaged the roof
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/24/us/white-house-will-not-replace-solar-water-heating-system.html

Solar Panels to Be Installed on White House Roof - WSJ.com

And remember those were 1979 dollars, would save about $1000 a year less maintenance. So in some minds this was a symbol of green energy, for me it was a symbol of a photo op and waste of government cash. It was to what save a tiny symbolic amount of natural gas. Remember those cuts to the solar budget were about cutting subsidies just for solar water heaters. A pretty awful investment in 1986 when the panels were removed. Now they and solar cells are cost effective. It would have been nice if regan had not cut R&D, but cudos for removing a symbol of inefficient government. A bigger help would have been to remove the carter era mandate to build more coal power plants, but that would have to wait.

Plenty of time to fix the solar spending cuts
Clinton increased some funding for solar.

.
Obama promised to put new less expensive more efficient modern panels up, that could actually have a decent payback. I don't think its happened yet. I don't really care. When that first article I quoted was written in 2007 it was Europe that was leading. Plenty of chances for higher investment in solar as europe did, but now in 2012 it is china.

Isn't the help for plug in hybrids and solar the important part, not a really expensive solar water heater.

 

I think ALL Governments main buildings (White House, Houses of Parliament etc) should have PV installed. What a great way of leading the way as well as powering some of the building.

Instead it's left to private investors;

Work starts on solar bridge at Blackfriars station | Environment | guardian.co.uk

 

Well, I didnt watch the whole video...I just cant waste my time watching cavemen touching themselves.

What I do know is that without the bailout GM would not be.
They said we cannot survive. Gov says, ok we give you money, you give us car.

Umm, without the bailout GM would not be.

Without the bailout GM would not be.

Think about it.

The Gov owns GM.

It is all a mask, along with all the others our gov does.

Until anyone realizes that we would still prosper (if that is what you want to call it)
as a nation without GM, then we would prosper.

We have hybrids, the Prius. It is available in the US.
And I bought two of them.

I have no faith in US autos, and whether another bailout will occur,
just depends on if/when the public needs a mask.

In today's global position, it is not who designs, manufacturers or markets the product,
it is who succeeds in a business.

GM didnt, Toyota did.

 

This thread was really about government support for PHEVs, which we now have, both the support and the real vehicles Its taken a long time since this program produced a vehicle in 1982 though.

Grumpy if you are saying the governments main buildings should be powered by renewables, I am in complete agreement.

But let's face it, it is more green for the whitehouse to be powered by wind turbines in Maryland than it would be to put back up some 33 year old ineffiecient (24% versus today's 60%) solar water heater from a past president. That's what 350.org had asked Obama to do. The cost of installation would probably be as great as any tiny symbolic energy savings. It also would have tied this president to a previous unpopular one that would hurt politically like the empty gesture.

9 years ago solar water heater was put on a different building to heat the whitehouse swimming pool, that probably saved more energy per year than the old solar thermal panels. But this wasn't on public display like the last one, with a big photo opportunity. The president is having the DOE put up PV along with a symbolic solar water heater, which finally makes financial sense and energy sense. The new system will produce about 20x the energy as the old. But it is going slow, there is competitive bidding from the DOE since this is going to look political and the white house needs to be above board. DOE is also spending $10,000 just for a consultant to make sure this system doesn't damage the roof of a national treasure.

The more important thing for renewables and pollution are policies, not a symbolic old solar panel. I would like some better policies. At least the DOE is going to put up a better solar PV system.

 

Oh yes, I do have some good ideas what is going on. The gas prices regulation in 70's produced shortage of gasoline on the US internal market but did nothing to the global oil prices.

The oil crunch started as OPEC oil embargo due to USA supporting Israel in their wars. As the oil price skyrocketed, it pushed global economy into long lasting recession and inflation. The oil companies rushed into oil discoveries and invested heavily in infrastructure thinking the high oil price would last.

Well, it didn't due to the the negative feedback between global economy and oil. That overinvestment in oil industry created a huge glut of oil in 80's that spilled to the 90's fueling good times in USA.

That is over with the peak oil, but we do have a glut of natural gas. With the comming recession oil will go down some under $100, but not much. It takes $75 to pump a barrel of crude oil last time I checked.

The link doesn't say anything about solar panels damaging the roof.

 

Ok, maybe you do know a little. This is quite different than what you wrote. I would add that artificially low oil prices greatly increased demand for oil in the 70s. This increased demand from the US, along with the restricted supply did indeed press oil prices up. The other factor, which we are dealing with today, was monetary policy which weakened the dollar. In the 80s monetary policy changed and a stronger dollar could buy more oil.

Wow way to blame the US. Do you think the united states should have helped Syria, Iraq, and Egypt try to destroy Isreal. Israel defended themselves from an attack trying to destroy the country and push the Jews into the sea. How about in 1973 OPEC first used oil blackmail to influence the foreign policy of the US, Europe, and Japan.

Well there is this supply demand thing. Shortage and high prices causes investment which increased the supply. The high prices also effected behavior reducing demand. Saudi and other OPEC countries wanted its cash, and wanted demand to go back up, so they increased supply. Its the way to break a monopoly Unfortunately demand is too high today to do the same thing.

I wouldn't call it over investment. It was more insurance against oil blackmail. Now if there had been higher cafe standards and a oil tax, we would have had our cheap oil which is good for the economy and more efficient transportation.

Its about $9 for saudi oil, $20 for a producing well in the US, $70 for tar sands syn oil. But yes this was my main point, demand from china, India, etc along with less oil and the weak dollar means that things can't really fall much further than $50/bbl, and likely will stay above $70/bbl except in rare cases. The price spike this time is fear about boycotting Iranian oil starting in July. If that happens prices will go up, but there is enough other oil to pump to avoid gas lines.

It does say the roof was damaged under the panels. QED, there would need to be an expensive installation to prevent future damage according to the NYT report. Does it really matter? Solar panels reduce the need for coal and natural gas, not oil. It was empty political symbolism of wasteful spending on a program with no hope of success in reducing oil demand.

I would have preferred Regan continued funding R&D on wind turbines and PV, but really we would not really be better off today if there was more solar thermal water heaters. Now that solar PV is cost effective, its fine symbolism to put it on the whitehouse roof, but policies are much more important.

Infact other than rich people heating swimming pools and hot tubs solar thermal water heaters like the carter panels may be a technological dead end.
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/solar-thermal-dead

 

How do you jump from
Quote:
The panels of the system had been dismantled to fix the roof underneath. Dale A. Petroskey, a White House spokesman, said Friday, ''Putting them back up would be very unwise, based on cost.''
to

As for the original cost, assuming the WSJ is not full of it, might it have something to do with the install being the White House ?

 

I cannot help but laugh every time AG tries to rewrite history with li'l Bush as an environmental president. Just for a start ...

He supported ANWR drilling;
He blocked CO2 regulation by the EPA or CA;
He tried to turn the EPA into a basket case of political appointees backed by the oil industry, with regulations written by the oil lobby;
He blocked the EPA from discussing AGW;
He took years to admit the Earth was warming, and by 2008 was only ready to admit that AGW was true, but of undetermined significance (0ne of the standard denialist arguments to this day);
Proposed that CO2 emission reductions be voluntary LOL;
Proposed in 2008 that the CO2 loon denialist OK Senator Inhofe chair a summit on climate change;
Cut funding for atmospheric research;
Increased oil exploration subsidy, while throwing a token subsidy at wind.

That is just the beginning, off the top of my head.