"In sourcing" - GM to build new plant for electric cars in Maryland!

Ford is starting to get into the electric car business and now GM seems to be expanding beyond The Volt.

We are about 30 years late but I suppose that even in this case "better late than never" still applies.

They say that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step...

I know it is not many jobs and even if this does take off it will just reduce the sale of internal combustion driven vehicles.

I am just happy to see that EVs are finally starting to move out of the novelty niche and into the mainstream.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-fuel/news/bioengineers-turn-trees-into-tires

^snip^

Making Rubber from Plants

About 250 million tires are sold yearly in the United States. Each one is roughly one-fourth synthetic rubber (the rest consists of natural rubber, steel, nylon, polyester, assorted reinforcing chemicals, waxes, pigments and oils). Synthetic rubber production dates back to the early 1900s and mushroomed into an industry during World War II. Today it takes about seven gallons of oil to make a standard tire—five gallons as feedstock for chemicals that make up synthetic rubber, plus two for the energy required to power the manufacturing process.




But recycling the old tires into new ones would be a good thing if a viable process were developed.

On cars not too many people want or use them (and never put them on the front axle if you have them). On trucks or other larger vehicles the tire casing might get recapped two or three times before it gets scraped.

not really recycling.

I don't know anyone who has ever used them on a car. The recap can separate from the tire if it gets to hot. Not the safest thing in the world.

I have been a truck mechanic for 34 years and on the whole i can say recaps have became well worth the money over the years. They are just not stylish for ones car. The company i work for uses them on smaller local delivery vans and gets good use out of them. The problem of being for recycling them is extracting the cord from the rubber

Try this
Recycling And Disposal of Scrap Tires
http://www.ct.gov/dep/cwp/view.asp?A=2714&Q=324902

Tire Shredders
http://www.americanrecycler.com/june2003/spotlight.html

or for fun
"Automobile new and retread tires were carefully controlled and strictly rationed."
World War II Deprivations in the United States
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~grannyapple/INFORMATION/World%20War%20II%20Deprivations.html

Wasn't it Romney who didn't want to bail out the car companies?

(1) Creates new US jobs + jobs feeding these plants.
(2) Electric energy - doesn't help their Big Oil buddies and creates a cleaner environment.
(3) It's not in one of their Right-to-Work States - guess an educated union labor force still has value to GM.

Thanks for the link

gm and china are at war over chinese companies ripping off gm`s technology.

usa is still the most stable country in the world with the best workers in the world.

And some of the parts suppliers need to start re-opening their facilities in Ohio so they can give credit where credit is due - and boot the head Cheeto the hell out of office.

Or in petroleum powered vehicles. <- edit - except where needed, of course!

"Joule" would be a good name for an electric car - it's a unit of energy and sounds like "jewell".

"Erg" probably isn't in the running either.

Tesha

Joule would be a great name to build an ad campaign for the car.

and not a bad looking car...

Please look into these things before posting


http://www.driveforinnovation.com/the-volt-and-the-battery-fires-furor


^snip^

To recap, we know of three fires in which Chevy Volts were involved or nearby:

1. A fire destroyed a garage in northwestern Connecticut. The owner–a volunteer firefighter named Storm–had a Volt and a home-converted Suzuku Samurai EV (pictured, right); here's his blog on the fire, where he writes "definitely not the Volt." (Here's local TV coverage.) No cause has been determined.

2. In Mooresville, N.C., a fire in a three-car garage that housed a Volt spread to and destroyed a luxury home. Initial suggestions identified the 240V charging station as the possible cause. That's been rejected since then, as fire officials have said the fire started away from the vehicles and charging station. But no cause has been determined.

3. The National Highway Transportation Safety Board crash-tested a Volt, pushing it into a pole at 20 miles an hour. The car performed well and was stored outside in the cold. Weeks later, the car caught fire. The fire apparently was caused by a short when the punctured coolant system leaked into the LiOn cells.


There was only one fire and that was caused by a vehicle that was crashed and then just left to sit for weeks. Any privately owned vehicle would not have been neglected the way this one was.

It doesn't matter what *REALLY* happened; the publicity
is what will stick in people's minds.

And that's why "Spark" is a lousy name for the up-
coming car.

Tesha

At least some of them have seen the writing on the wall. They've figured out how to go green and create jobs and fulfill a real demand. May others follow post haste. We have some serious changes to make.

Thanks for the thread, Rosa Luxemburg.

It only took a near on global depression and government take-over for them to start building cars people actually want. I may soon be one of them.

Does GM build all the other motors that go into their cars?

Electric cooling fan? Electric steering? Power windows? Ventilation fans?

building them in china is no longer a wise thing to do for companies that want to protect their technology.

Everything from motors for appliances up to rolling mills. General Electric, A O Smith, Baldor, Emerson Electric, etc.

I would think that they have more production experience, lower costs, and better electric motor technology than GM?

in lousy conditions for crap pay doesn't lend itself to a quality product? No one could have expected that.

Glad they're makin it here and it's a step in the right direction BUT what the hells gonna happen when there's thousand's on the road and the electric grid is maxed out not to mention the fuel that creates the electricity. More nuclear waste, more fracking to get the gas for power plants, maybe more oil to run some of these power plants, did you know there's power plants that use rubber tires to supplement their fuel? .. Can you say back lash? This is a step we need to skip but we wont because there the potential for large sums of profit to be made. The electricity needs to come from somewhere else.

Great news.