Apparently, the marketing arm of this company has never heard of the Darwin awards myth about JATO units and automobiles.
Guest essay by John Hardy
The best-selling EV worldwide has been the Nissan Leaf. In Q1 2018 it was overtaken by a model made in China by BAIC, a domestic Chinese company. There were three other domestic Chinese manufacturers in the top 10. Forget CO2 and all that greenwash: the Chinese mean to eat the Western auto industry for breakfast.
Image copyright JATO Dynamics. Used by permission.
https://www.carscoops.com/2018/05/baic-ec-now-worlds-best-selling-electric-car/
Yes the BAIC EC is small, range is limited, at $22k it could be cheaper (although if you figure in lifetime fuel costs it is competitive with the cheapest cars on the US market). It won’t haul a ton of logs up a muddy track or take 6 people from LA to NY without recharging or whatever is today’s excuse for dismissing EVs.
EVs are getting better all the time and if the Western auto industry waits until the competition are shipping big volumes of cheap 300 mile range cars the game will already be over. As a start they need to put serious money into battery gigafactories (The Chinese are running off with that football too).
Oh and for our US friends, BAIC have parked their tanks on your lawn. They are setting up a plant in Mexico. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201802/22/WS5a8e8636a3106e7dcc13d696.html
On reading through the discussions above it occurs to me, as an engineer, that the ‘next big thing’ in private transport is most unlikely to be the electric car for a whole host of reasons all related to the blindingly obvious fact that when it comes to energy density based on either mas, volume, cost or time taken to refill, a tank of petrol/gas or diesel or liquid petroleum gas, beats anything else hands-down on all fronts.
So what is this really about and why do some motor manufacturers want to be seen going along with this boondoggle?
Well here’s my tuppence-worth on this.
I think the next big thing will by flying cars.
When you’ve finished having a good laugh, may I suggest you stop to think for a moment.
Flying cars, once they take off (yes, I do love a pun) will transform the planet.
Just think. Fewer, not more, motorways, spaghetti junctions etc. etc. Wild-life (and humans) able to roam free without fear of becoming roadkill. The list is long.
Possible? In my view yes. But not powered by batteries of any kind. And not when fuel prices are held artificially high through cross-subsidisation of electric vehicles.
And who might pull this off?
Well Elon Musk can reverse-park his rockets (while most of us struggle to reverse-park our cars).
So, could the man who was educated at Pretoria Boys High one day pull this particular cat out the bag?
Well, he does do difficult with seeming ease and although the impossible may take him a little longer he does have the perfect plant to begin manufacturing them …
As some Roman once said, “Out of Africa, always something new.”
“Wild-life able to roam free without fear of becoming roadkill.”
Unless you are a bird.
Just finished vacation in Phoenix (May 2018) and got to use my daughter’s electric BMW car to run around town. Max charge range was claimed to be 88 miles. Turn on the airconditioning and the range dropped to about 75 miles (nice feature to show miles remaining). Since the Phoenix metro area is roughly 100 miles east to west and 75 miles north to south, I had to plan outings carefully (ended one with 6 miles remaining). A full recharge took more than 12 hours. The temperatures this May were not too bad (highs in the 95 to105F range). If the battery ran down while out on the road, the vehcile required a flatbed pickup and delivery to a charging station (in this case, home). My daughter did say she could get a plug-in at one of the malls for about $10 (minimum cost to connect).
Could this vehicle be named after an early Darwin Award recipient?
As I recall the award was created by G. Gordon Liddy back in the ’90s. to recognise those who removed themselves from the gene pool with an act of exceptional stupidity before procreating.
This Darwin Awardee strapped two JATO booster rockets ( 3000 lb. thrust each) on his 3000lb. automobile ( an Oldsmobile if my memory serves)… His and the vehicle’s remains were found embedded two hundred feet above the road in a cliff face with the brakes still fully applied.
Just wondered if there’s a connection..??
Cheers