>Anyway, one thing about Al Gore was that he was (is?) pro-diesel, and >not afraid to say so when he was VP. He was the major force behind >the PNGV program - the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, >between government and industry. After the election or whatever you >want to call it, the PNGV program was abandoned, wound up, defunded, >or whatever you'd like to call that.
I never had such high regard for the PNGV. Part of this is just sort of personal: it's so fun to try to devise better ways to build cars, and it's so obvious that part of this is to squeeze more power and work out of a given amount of fuel with lower enviro impact, that why should the Big 3, or anyone else, need such a government program as an excuse to engage in this? Don't they love designing better cars? Don't they care to do this themselves, with or without being on the taxpayer dole? But my objections or concerns were more than that. As has been pointed out on this and other lists, high-mileage vehicles are not something new, and have to some extent been done before. To be sure, PNGV and other modern efforts ask more of a carmaker than designing a little box that could do 80 mpg with little safety or acceleration. The vehicles now may be required to use fuel that has lower BTU for stricter enviro purposes, and-or they may be required to be full-sized vehicles (I think this was a sticking point). It should be clear to some of us by now that the Big 3, and many other automakers, if not all of the major and minor ones, are not committed to bringing all their innovations to market, and that under some circumstances they will make a lot of effort not to bring them to market (no, I don't have a specific example in mind outside of the EV1 or RAV4 EV or Think City, for the moment). So, while I do follow with interest whatever innovations may (or may not have come from PNGV, it doesn't make me think that the Big 3 or anyone else really intended for those vehicles to come to market. I do think they could probably point now to innovations in present-day vehicles that "came out" of such programs as PNGV, just as Honda or Toyota or Ford or GM would point to innovations made for their EVs which are now part of their hybrid and fuel cell programs. A point worth somewhat getting together, in this grey-world we're in at present, as to FCHV vs. HEV, vs. GCHEV, vs. BEV vs whatever, is asking what we can learn from the ongoing NiMH situation and other Battery situations. Honda and Toyota, as I see them, ... just a hypothesis at this point, have been verboten from making good BEVs, as they all seem to have verboten themselves, but Honda and Toyota seem to realize that they can't, forever, stand in a middle territory of half-innovation. So, they've done the best they can within whatever non-forbidden territory they can find. They've allowed themselves small NiMH batteries for their hybrids, made by Matsushita?, and in alleged violation of the patent rights of the U.S. patent holder, Energy Conversion Devices. The problem is that even if we want to sympathize greatly with ECD ostensibly just wanting to get licensing straight, where would this leave Honda and Toyota if they wanted to use NiMH for BEVs? Or if they lose all court battles and they cannot get NiMH for HEVs? They're already *firmly* commited to HEVs are part of their future strategy. Is it any surprise that a controlling interest in ECD's battery efforts is or was maintained by Chevron Texaco? I get the feeling from C-T that they do want to be seen as more or less wanting ECD's solar or NiMH to succeed, but it's not clear to me how things are progressing in earnest to promote the use of those two technologies. At some point I will try to call them and ask them directly. In the meantime, I don't seem to see any BEVs for sale, anywhere. And the HEVs presently for sale are using batteries which are under a patent dispute (due to be resolved this month?) Could anyone claim this patent conflict *hasn't* hurt the planning for BEVs and HEVs? I don't know. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for Your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at Myinks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/l.m7sD/LIdGAA/qnsNAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
