Caltrops - American McGee's Honda Civic





	[quote name="Fussbett"]If you want to compare the differences between China and America and then throw up your hands and say "It can never be done here because of all the advantages for China," then I guess that's pretty much the end of American competitiveness in everything, starting now. Just give up. Or, extending a Chinese/American differences further, you could also say that GM had an R&D, money, manpower, and government advantage for fifty fucking years before squandering it. Let's not lose sight of the fact that everyone could've built an electric car. That's the joke here. It's not insanely hard, not a crazy feat of engineering. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto" target="byd">BYD</a> did it in five years of car manufacturing, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors" target="tesla">Tesla Motors</a> did it in less, and both <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1" target="evi1">GM</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV">Toyota</a> put electric vehicles in the hands of consumers ten years ago (when they were forced to) before killing the projects. So this is why it's so crazy that here we are in almost 2009 and GM is saying that the Chevy Volt is <i>almost</i> ready. The hold up is that the batteries are still not quite up to snuff. Turns out that in 2000 maybe GM shouldn't have sold the battery company it acquired for the EV1, GM Ovonics, to... wait for it... Texaco/Chevron. Not that the Chevy Volt will do anything to help GM of course, but if the BYD F3DM beats the Volt to the American market too (BYD, GM and Toyota all plan a plug-in launch in 2010) it will be the final embarrassment. Assuming GM still exists, of course. [quote name="Entropy Stew"]Another thing: [quote name="Fussbett"]I love that unlike the elegant engineering of the Prius, the Chinese solution was to make two engines. One gas, one electric. Oh hey, it's nearly half the price of the Prius too! Imagine that. [/quote] What the fuck does that mean? The Prius works the same way.[/quote] From the Forbes article: "The Prius is designed "intelligently" because it automatically charges when energy discarded by the gas-powered engine during deceleration gets transferred to the electric battery. In the F3DM, the gas and electric engines are isolated from each other, so the battery has to be separately charged manually"[/quote]