Vertigo. It is a word you do not appreciate the meaning of until you have actually experienced it. The spinning of your head is such that you feel as though you are five hundred feet off the ground and trying to stand on a one square foot square without falling off. Dealing with it on a daily basis is difficult if all you have to do is stay home. Unfortunately, I have to work. I am fighting the Vertigo everyday so I can get a paycheck. I had three head spinning episodes before sitting down to write this. I just wanted all of you to know that I am still committed to the process of finding out how difficult it is to get a car like the Aptera and I will report on my findings as I get them. Two weeks of Vertigo has had one advantage though. I got to sit down to watch a movie this last weekend. The movie is titled, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” It is the story of the General Motors experimental electric car that many regular people like us loved, and how everyone in business and government that stood to loose money if it succeeded hated it. The car was very far ahead of its time and threatened the wallets of too many fat cats. This film is a must see, but be warned, it is not a happy film by any means. To me it shows how a lot of people like us fell in love with a vehicle that was so right and then had it ripped out of their hands. It was very depressing for me because I could easily relate to those people. Right now in this time frame we are all waiting for the Aptera to become reality. I believe in the car and I hope you all do too. But what I am afraid of with what little information I have got already about how my insurance company doesn’t recognize it because it doesn’t fall within their criteria of any sort of vehicle on the road that there will be many other road blocks (no pun intended). I feel too few people know about the Aptera right now so I am asking all of you to do something simple; e-mail your friends and family with the link to the Aptera web site. Help stir interest and also suggest that they watch the movie Who Killed the Electric Car?. If enough word about this car gets out, we may just save it from the fate the Tucker suffered.
October 18, 2007
Aptera research Vs Vertigo
Posted by buzzkill763 under Aptera, Aptera Motors, Environment, Hybrid Cars[2] Comments
October 18, 2007 at 5:00 am
The film “Who Killed the Electric car?” is total fiction, aimed at audiences ignorant of the history of the electric car in general, and the EV-1 in particular. The car wasn’t “beloved” by very many, it seems. GM fielded a ton of complaints from owners who found the recharge requirments
altering the schedule of their family activities and women were petrified that it would run out of juice in th eworng side of town (you couldn’t really tell how far the car could travle on a charge – it varied considerably – up to 20% – based on terraine, use of A/C, temperature and age of battery pack). The car cost $43,000 but could not legaly be sold -thus the crushing of the cars when the crappy EV-1 was canceled. It was deemed an “experimental vehicle ” by the Feds and GM could only lease and had to promise to recover all the vehicles when the leases expired. There were never more than 1100 car sbuilt and at no time were all of them on lease. The car was a total bomb – named by Time’s auto analyst last week as one of the 50 worst cars ever built. Its battery pack cost over $20,000 and needed to be replaced every 5 years. None of the EV-1 leases ever paid what they should have for the leases, because of govt subsidies, and none ever had to buy a new battery pack. The car was, without doubt, one that should never have ben put on the road. Chris Paine uses the
infomercial technique of using treehugging stooges to offer personal recommendations of what was a horribly inconvenient and expensive vehicle that couldn’t get you
to a destination 35 miles away with any reliability (as the Motor trend tester found out – the battery was dead after
70 miles, not the promised 110). Ed Begley added his preposterously inane lie when he claimed with a straight face that the EV-1 met the needs of 90% of the population.
90% of the population didn’t even have a place to recharge the EV-1.
October 26, 2007 at 5:29 pm
that’s absolutely correct, i’m glad someone saw through that film’s bias. There were some good points made, but it was so shrouded by Paine’s love affair with the EV-1 that you can’t validate most of the facts they spout in the film. It seemed all terrible when I watched the film, but with a miniscule bit of research on Wikipedia you can see how polarized the film’s viewpoint really is. I stand by GM’s decision to kill the EV-1. At the same time I’m glad to see some decent cars getting developed today.