real automotive companies do extensive Research, and development, including testing of actual manufacured models from real automotive factories, then there are others, that take a 50 % deposit whereby the customer is warned he may not actually receive the car bought, as year after year, production is setback, with the models made in garages at extremely high costs, far greater than the pseudo factory built cars are sold for. the last loan from obamas boy at the doe of near half a billion dollars, added up to the billions already invested by the unwary investors, tricked by an arbitrary NYSE price, in the pretense of a real company, has only 149 million left to invest according to the statement supplied on the internet, and still no factory---its appears the car company may disappear about the same time as obama, ha ha ha, just kidding, solar city, and spacex, along with tsla, alias tesla, alias alias aias, whereby ironman musk does an incredible job on public relation stunts, as if the companies actually had a future, in this world, not onscreen, ha ha ha, just kidding, how on earth could an internet philanthropist, self proclaimed physicist who was the pseudo founder of paypal, and certainly not a 16 % owner,no way eh ? when they were near worthless, fired after a short stint on the board of directors before being bought out in a cash stunt to foster what may appear to be the act of a south african draftdodger, bankruptcy expert, endorsed by his lordship barry soretoe, and some other bad actors, in california whoes economy would be the 9th largest nation on earth, were it a country instead of the bankrupt state it is, where homelessness numbers in the millions, where you can drive for miles and miles, seeing people who live on food banks, living in squalor, not given social services reserved for the dominent sub-culture who administers social services, hired for their ability to vote, a lot ! in the 3rd world class state, hollywood, silicon gulley, etc etc, pretty good joke eh?
Two quick points: in general, SUV's are not designed to handle well in an emergency. High c/g and soft suspensions lead to my second point that I often hear from accident participants: over-correcting. We still do not teach poeple how to drive properly and the biggest hazard and cause of "accidents" is the driver.
NHTSA and the Fed's keep mandating vehicle safety designs to protect us from our incompetence, but no one is willing to address driver training and skills as a primary cause of incidents and fatalities.
Architect, My condolences on your lost. But in your grieving you seem to not be thinking well.
Take my seating. In fact it's I who ripped the idea off from F-1, Nascar, Drag racing etc who's driver walk away most times in T bones, etc at far higher speeds. It's in their rules as it should be.
To say GM does things right ignores it's history of opposing things like seat belts, etc.
One doesn't have to completely avoid a crash, just making the crash hit from a safer angle, say from Tbone to quarter panel hit thus handling can make a difference in even instant crashes.
I can't tell you how many times I've driven out of a crash, in the 1,000s over my 2-3 million miles on the road. I consider it the best safety feature as the crash you are not in is the safest of all.
My batteries are where they need to be for the correct CG making my CG both near perfectly balanced and 4'' lower than a Corvette's. I just design the weight for crash protection since it's already there. One of the ways I keep it light without hurting safety.
My body is at least 3x's stronger than a Durango's with better, more effective safety systems as used in racecars.
As for my head hitting the window I'll be held into the seat with it's side bolsters and 4 point seatbelt that my head can't hit the window in any survivable crash. My head hit my rollbar in my last crash though it didn't hurt me, I eliminated it by putting it inbetween the composite skins and will have other padding, etc in my new one.
I'm looking into side airbags too and my door sill is above my waist giving very good side protection.
While one can never be completely safe as too many in SUV's they thought were safe, have found out sadly bigger is not always better. And it's handling that makes SUV's less safe than a compact car as clearly shown by deaths/mile data.
Also larger vehicles are less strong/ unit of weight, especially trucks/SUV's. My roof is likely 5x's as strong as most SUV's were until recently.
While my vehicle looks simple and it is, a lot of thought, smart tech went into it to make it safe.
My wife was killed in a side impact collision of a Cherokee into a Durango. Not pretty, not pleasant. Great to know that you are such a skilled driver that you could have avoided the crash.
Sorry but I would tend to believe that GM knows more about collisions than you do and how to design to mitigate the dmage.
Your notion about sealing does not make sense at all. It would have been ripped into.
Nice to know that you can place the batteries wherever you wish. You must be driving a Jimmy flatbed.
More than one thing? Yup, just like the window. That broke her neck. I see that you have that factored in.
I love how people always compare EV's to economy cars when they ones available are high tech and luxury cars and sould be compared to similar high tech luxury, sportscars.
And you can be sure in 5-10 yrs most EV's will be worh a good amount more than similar ICE's. Don't believe me try to buy a 12-15 yr old Toyota RAV-4EV at more than it sold for.
Plus when a battery pack goes bad it usally just a few cells and can be repaired for far less than say a camshaft, valve job in a BMW. Several companies are doing a nice business repairing Prius packs that are now coming out of warranty instead of paying big bucks for new ones. Same will happen to others once they are older.
I think another good business model will be aftermarket generators to turn EV's into serial hybrids either rental or for sale once enough are on the road.
Pack rentals is another A Better Place is doing in some states and countries solves these problems of range, battery replacement, etc.
Architect, why do you think having the batteries in the chassis low is bad for a crash? First it nicely improves handling so one can avoid a crash and the battery box strengthens the chassis improving the overall strength the rest of the body is attached to.
It also seals the batteries under the car keeping them seprate from the passenger cabin in a crash.
I like it better than the Volt's as one can't get crushed against the battery pack in a side impact. An earlier EV of mine had such like the Volt and I won't do that again. Now I put then up front as crushable mass to absorb frontal crash forces instead.
If mine hits production my seats with excellent side support will move inward during a side impact taking the person/me with it away from intruding things. I'll also use kevlar as the most inside composite layer to spread loads and stop point intrusions. Safety is a system, not single things. For lowest weight, cost they all need to work together and do more than 1 thing.
Ramon, for this size battery pack heating and A/C are rounding errors. Plus it will be preheated/cooling before it's unplugged.
Regen at best is 50% eff so weight both from the extra rolling drag and extra acceleration is a big deal.
Panasonic/Sanyo cells go for far less OEM like $.25/wthr or $250kwhr as I recently called them for pricing for my EV's. If you are paying that price you need to lear how to shop better. Similar cells are used in RC cars/planes/etc go for less.
On my FreedomEV no website now as it's not done and unless can come up with a lot of money or someone else wants to, it isn't likely to be put into production anytime soon. I just use it as an example as I know it's numbers, costs well to educate others what can be done..
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