by Robert L. Gisel
Whoever thinks the Electric Vehicle isn't popular or is not wanted by consumers has their head in the sand. An explosion of new electric car inventions hitting the market proves it's popular draw.
"C-NET's Michael Kanellos did a little thinking out loud this week when he tried to list all of the electric car start-up companies (not major automakers working on EVs). He counted 16 small companies. The names on this list will be familiar to just about anyone who reads AutoblogGreen, but I thought it was interesting to see them all gathered in one place:
\"Tesla Motors (sports cars), Wrightspeed (sports cars and plug-in drivetrains for trucks), Fisker Automotive (electric sedans), Zap (low-speed and sports cars), Miles Automotive (low speed), Zenn Motors (low speed), AC Propulsion (retrofitting Scions for electric), Phoenix Motorcars (SUVs), Aptera (three-wheelers), Porteon (low speed electrics), Lightning (sports cars in England), Reva (economy cars), Ultramotor (electric trishaws), Myers Motors (freakish three-wheelers featured in Goldmember), Think (electric economy cars) and Venture Vehicles (three-wheeled electric cars.).
I'd say the only "major" player that Kanellos missed is GEM, which has been making glorified golf carts for ages. Other contenders not on his list include Universal Electric Vehicle, American Electric Vehicle, G-Wiz and Hybrid Technologies. I'm sure there's at least a couple more we're missing, but we're already got over 20 small EV companies. Pretty soon, he figures, this list will be much easier to calculate: 'History shows that most of these companies will be wiped out.' So it goes, as my favorite author would write. [Source: C-NET]"
That last premise saying "History shows that most of these companies will be wiped out" presumes that history repeats itself, that the existing monopolistic cutthroat major car companies are not prevented from covert dirty dealings to wipe out the companies. Looking over the failure of some very excellent car lines in the past that were ousted from the scene with even a casual observation reveals black PR campaigns and abscams and all manner of dirty tricks to plaque any good competitors into failure.
My own survey of this, in asking persons would they like a plug-in electric recreation vehicle that could go 300 or more miles before recharging while having the power and performance standards of existing gasoline vehicles, the answer is invariably "Yes, if you could provide that there would be a lot of takers". The next comment is generally this, that I will need some very good security to stay alive as my life would be in grave danger from the unscrupulous big car companies. That is not something that concerns me just that that is the consensus.
The bottom line is this: the public have shown they want the option to drive around without stopping to pumping gas, inventions abound to fulfill this, the state of the art in electric vehicles makes these realistically doable and now is the best time to pursue this option.
My EV retrofit program is going to require funding and your interested contributions are appreciated.
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