In order to fight global warming, is anyone producing 4-wheel drive electric cars?

Question

Seems like they'll need to if we stop using oil to pave and patch our millions of miles of roadways. Or will we go back to breeding and abusing beasts of burden, increasing grain requirements and methane emissions?

Answer 1

How about an 8-wheel drive....a Japanese car is being developed that uses 8 wheels and an electric motor at each wheel that produces 80-100 hp each...0-60 in 4 seconds and a top speed of 230 mph...it's called the Eliica

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliica

Or the Opel Eco-speedster...113 mpg from a 1.3 litre turbo diesel and a top speed of 155 mph.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/...

Answer 2

No number of electric cars, bicycles or pogo sticks are going to "fight" global warming.

The Earth has natural cycles of warming and cooling.  Don't be fooled by 'Hollywood Al' and his grant-sucking cronies!

Answer 3

Yes. Chevy is.

Answer 4

First 4 wheel drive has high demand for energy so 2wd only for the masses.  GM did make the ev1 sold thru saturn dealers (leased) but recalled all and destroyed them.  Could have been really good.  So now there are a few specialty makers of electric vehicles.

Roads can be paved with concrete instead of tar.  Grain and other feed is currently being transformed into alcohol to mix with gasoline for the e85 capable engines which a lot of new cars are coming with.  But this is driving up food pricing for corn and such.  

So you can look into building an electric car for yourself and if you like utilize solar panels to trickle charge the batteries when it is parked during the day.  This would reduce your usage of the plug in at home and again contribute to lower energy demands.

Answer 5

yes. but they're not coming to the market till 2010 or 2012...

so we'll just have to keep poluting the planet...

BTW.. there's already a bunch of technologies, but petrol companies, will not allow all this new tech to come out.

I think they want to dry all the oil in the planet, after that will have to clean the planet.

Answer 6

dont worry about it, global warming isnt real

Answer 7

no electric cars being produced this century =D

Answer 8

chevy is coming out with a tahoe, which is ran by fuel cell which is electric.   very very cool you should go to their website, maybe you can sign up to test drive it for awhile to tell them how it works

Answer 9

All we need to be saved from that situation is for you to stop being self-righteous and go out and invent and mass produce the type of car you say we need. Problem solved.

Answer 10

A few (if not most) of them are. They have individual motors for each wheel.

Answer 11

Most people don't need 4-WD, they just need to learn how to drive.   My little 2WD toyota with bald tires has driven past many huge 4WD vehicles stuck by the side of the snow and ice covered road.   If you've ever been stuck in snow or mud you know you have to ride the clutch to keep the wheels from spinning.   An electric vehicle should be able to make the wheels turn as slowly as you want them to.    When cars first came out they wern't geard so hi that they could even spin their tires very well, so were able to climb out of most mudholes with ease.   Take a look at pictures of old roads.   There was usually nothing solid about them.

Answer 12

Even if they did, it wouldn't be practical for the commuter who drives over 40 miles .Remember the propane promotion it never got a real foothold either.The reasons have to do with profit and feasibility rather then environmental issues.CAFA standards are still going through transitional phase's as to what is consider allowable mpg's for certain types of vehicles.Combined that with the EPA standards for emissions,and you basically have a big cluster flock.

Answer 13

Is global warming going to end up like the acid rain epidemic of 15 years ago oh yeah no one even remembers that load of c**p either. remember the second ice age science predicted in the 70"s  what happened ???

Answer 14

The only fully electric car that came close to mass-production was GE's EV-1 which has since been discontinued. They even took steps to eradicate any sign they'd ever existed. "Who Killed the Electric Car" tells one side of the story, GE didn't take the chance to explain their actions. The main problem is that they never adopted state-of-the-art battery technology so it wasn't an effective test of powering a car with nothing but batteries.

Fuel-cell vehicles are more promising since you don't rely on a bank of heavy batteries, especially lead-acid batteries which present a risk on their own from leaking after an accident. Honda and GM are doing wider tests that other makes of fuel cell vehicles but most are now doing some testing.

An interesting new technology was just disclosed by a small US company named QuantumSphere Inc that boosts the efficiency of electrolys dramatically. If proven it would make a huge impact since you wouldn't need to store large amounts of hydrogen aboard, you could produce it as you go by splitting water into it's components and moving the hydrogen and oxygen into the fuel cell. From their announcement:

"The process by which electricity is used to generate hydrogen and oxygen from water is called electrolysis. Through the use of a new proprietary nano catalyst formulation, QuantumSphere has demonstrated production of hydrogen and oxygen in an alkaline electrolyzer with 85 percent efficiency under ambient conditions, making it a commercially viable replacement for fossil fuel-based production methods."

This greatly exceeds the DOE's target for future efficiency of hydrogen production.