Hello -
I am going to be posting blurbs from this book :
The Car That Could:
The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary Electric Vehicle
By Michael Shnayerson
Hardcover edition published in 1996
This is a cross-thread to aerohead's :
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tion-6566.html
I am just picking out paragraphs that catch my eye.
Page 9
Quote:
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As far as Runkle could see, Baker had no choice. Thought the concept electric car could be changed and improved upon, its basic dilemma was fixed. It had 843 pounds of lead acid batteries instead of a gas tank; each of those pounds contained about 16 watt hours of energy. The energy density of gasoline when used in cars was 5,000 watt hours per pound [after taking into account driveline losses]. Put another way, those batteries packed the energy equivalent of a bit more than a gallon of gasoline. Perhaps better batteries would come along, but Baker shouldn't count on it. He had to make the EV energy efficient to a degree that no car had ever been made before. The skunkworks team claimed it's one-of-a-kind car had a range of 120 miles, but this was a car with none of the amenities a real car would need. It wasn't even crashworthy. Somehow, Baker would have to make it so, and make it saleable, while preserving, if not increasing, its range.
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CarloSW2