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At Witz' End - Range Anxiety Q&A II
I really stepped in it last time by stating that GM never owned patent rights to Ovonic's NiMH batteries and never sold them to an oil company, and that no one sued Toyota. I believed those statements to be true at the time, but several of you straightened me out. However, since that complex issue has little to do with range anxiety, I'll come back to it at the end. Meanwhile, I wanted to address more of your comments and responses before moving on to new topics in future essays. Here goes: EV1 was a low-volume vehicle made of a bunch of ... Read more →
At Witz' End - Range Anxiety Q&A Gary Witzenburg
There was a lot of feedback (50 comments at last count) to my column on EV range anxiety, some thoughtful and intelligent, some not. The few who accuse me of being anti-electric vehicles, which I ...
At Witz' End: My night with range anxiety Gary Witzenburg
I left the dinner meeting around 9:00, with home roughly 60 miles away...no challenge for an engine-powered vehicle, even relatively low on fuel. You can always find an open station. Not so on this ...
At Witz' End: Detroit Auto Show: Reality Check - Part II Gary Witzenburg
In my first column reality checking the Detroit Auto Show, some of you questioned my assertion that even Toyota's relatively high-volume hybrids are probably not profitable. Of course, Toyota has ...
At Witz' End: Detroit Auto Show: Reality Check - Part I Gary Witzenburg
This year's Detroit North American International Auto Show (aka NAIAS) was easily the greenest ever, greener even than the evergreen Los Angeles show two months earlier. Several automakers (most ...
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At Witz' End: Other Views on Detroit 6 months ago on AutoblogGreen
"I hope GM goes bankrupt," said the young California man in the Japanese restaurant. Really? Why? "Because I hate the UAW," he responded, ignorantly equating America's largest automaker to its most powerful union. I guess, like so many Americans, he was unaware, or didn't care, that hundreds of ...
At Witz' End: What Auto CEOs Should Have Said 7 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Shouldn't those auto/government hearings have been reversed? Did it occur to anyone else that those oh-so-painful auto CEO/government hearings should have been the other way around? Instead of the heads of America's three remaining automakers groveling, begging and enduring live public floggings ...
At Witz' End: GM EV1 - The Real Story, Q&A III 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Editor's Note: If you missed Gary's previous articles on the history of GM's EV1, please start here. This post is the third of three posts where he answers reader questions that the EV1 series raised. Part I is here and Part II is here. Once again, questions may have been edited for space. Honest ...
At Witz' End: GM EV1 - The Real Story, Q&A II 8 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Editor's Note: If you missed Gary's previous articles on the history of GM's EV1, please start here. This post is the second of three posts where he answers reader questions that the EV1 series raised. Part I is here and Part III will run tomorrow. Gary's promised to move on to current and relevant ...
At Witz' End: GM EV1 - The Real Story, Q&A 9 months ago on AutoblogGreen
People are most critical of the things they least understand. – Paul W. Spoor, Bits & Pieces, September 2008. Why is it so important to some to cast GM as a villain? To believe that the only reason we don't have affordable, practical pure-electric vehicles today is that GM doesn't want us ...
At Witz' End: GM EV1 - The Real Story, Part IV 9 months ago on AutoblogGreen
NOTE: If you missed them, please start by reading parts one, two and three in Gary's EV1 series. What was learned, and is being applied today "As has been stated in comments [to the] previous two posts by Mr. Witzenburg, there are several things which just don't add up, and make him look like a ...
At Witz' End: GM EV1 - The Real Story, Part III 10 months ago on AutoblogGreen
NOTE: If you missed them, you can read parts one and two. High tech development, market launch and retreat Because its 1,175-pound pack of 27 advanced lead-acid (PbA) batteries - 26 propulsion, one for accessories - held a mere half-gallon of gasoline-equivalent energy, the production EV1 would have ...
At Witz' End - EV1 - The Real Story, Part II 10 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Note: read part one of this story here. Pause and rebirth I joined the GM EV effort in April, 1991 and began pulling together a small team of test and development engineers and technicians at GM's Proving Grounds near Milford, MI. One vivid early memory was driving the Impact concept car down a ...
At Witz End - GM's EV1, the True Story, part I 10 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Triumph of technology set the stage for the future Our gift is a world of opportunity. To leave it a better place than we found it is our greatest gift to the next generation. – Ken Baker, GM Electric Vehicles "Since when does being an auto engineer makes you smarter than scientists ...
At Witz' End - Global Warming Pro 11 months ago on AutoblogGreen
There are cogent arguments on both sides If you read my first ABG column a few weeks ago, you know that I'm no believer in human-caused global warming. My logical, data-driven engineering mind can't wrap around the idea that the 4% of CO2 created by all of the planet's human activity (96% is ...
At Witz' End - Gas Prices: Alternatives and Oil Supply 11 months ago on AutoblogGreen
Part of the problem is speculation: individual and institutional investors betting on higher future oil prices. Another big factor is the very weak U.S. dollar. But the bulk of the reason oil and gas prices have climbed so high is that age-old Economics 101 supply/demand equation. Global demand, ...
At Witz' End - Gas Prices - What To Do, What To Do? 1 year ago on AutoblogGreen
Left: "We can't drill our way out of this!" Right: "We can't conserve our way out of this!" Chorus: "We must innovate our way out of this!" (Maybe, but how long will that take? What will it cost? Who will pay?) Democrats: "Big Oil's fault! Confiscate their profits!" Republicans: "Environmentalists' ...
At Witz' End - Lies and Deceptions 1 year ago on AutoblogGreen
Scientists challenge today's biggest and most dangerous lie A few months ago, I was asked to speak to a group of engineers and researchers toiling on high-tech projects under the auspices of USCAR (United States Council for Automotive Research), the umbrella organization for collaborative research ...
