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Response to an interview with GM's Larry Burns on
| WorldChanging.com "...that tells you how serious we are about getting on with this. Now: is the battery ready? Not yet..." GM knows all about the superior Nickel Metal Hydride ("NiMH") batteries that last longer than the life of the car -- even a Toyota. GM used NiMH batteries on the 465 1999 EV1 that it was forced to produce (and would not sell) by California's Air Resources Board. Yet GM is claiming that they have to do research on much more expensive, volatile, toxic and shorter-lasting Lithium batteries. NiMH is cheaper, non-toxic, no memory effect, the standard for EVs, proven in millions of actual miles driven, virtually fault-free, powerful enough to push an EV to 80 mph very fast (faster than the VOLT) without help from ANY gas Internal Combustion engine, over 100 miles ALL-electric range, and plentiful, cheap and available. Yet Larry Burns fails to explain why GM refuses to issue the Volt with NiMH batteries, and no reporter has the knowledge or gumption to brace GM on this: Hey, Larry, even cobasys says NiMH is here, now, and Lithium..is not. Why are you doin' research, dude?? Are you maybe not serious about this, just using it to deflect criticism from your PR disaster of killing the Electric car? Not one reporter asks, and GM ducks the issue. One is tempted to believe that Larry Burns is not telling the truth, and that GM is colluding to kill the Electric car all over again. What they are really saying, is a siren song of sucking up to the oil companies: "Wait for 2010...ooops, 2012, well, wait until people forget about it...". That's what it really looks like, a big con job. WHY NOT ASK GM, it's a simple question?? And don't take an evasion for an answer, do some journalism! Even if GM wants to do interminable "research", it could issue the VOLT with existing NiMH batteries, and later, if their "research" pans out, upgrade to "Lithium". But GM is not, famously, a research company; they wait until others do the research, it is said, and then come out with the best technology is massive production that lowers costs. Hence, it's just not credible that GM's "research" is going to find groundbreaking technologies that don't yet exist; and there's no explanation for why they don't use NiMH again. After all, it worked last time in 1999, it is still working in the Toyota RAV4-EV, and it will work if they were to use it. Don't believe? Take a test drive in a real, working NiMH EV. Bigger, heavier than the volt, and drives better, too. After all, the Toyota RAV4-EV is REAL, and the phony Vold...is NOT. |
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