The War Against the EV (PDF)

What Every EV Automobile Manufacturer Should Know: It's War.
by
David Hermance
(lately of Toyota)

FOREWORD
You know I never thought I'd be writing this book – let me rephrase that, I didn't think I'd be
writing it from this side. It's been a long hard slog, an uphill struggle and in the end an outright
battle. The battle folks is about to be fought by one side in the dark and the other side on full
throttle. And guess what folks? Those of us with EV Vision are the ones in the dark. The guys on
full throttle, they're the ones out to throttle the EV World. How ironic that in the end it would be
the throttle that got me.
In the business world the word sabotage is a dirty word. So we don't use it. But my friends there is
no other word to describe the slaying of the EV Vision than a carefully orchestrated mission to
prevent the Electric Vehicle phenomenon from spreading its wings in the market. And spread its
wings it must for as I have shown along with many other eminent friends the need to move away
from the petrol driven vehicle in line with the End of the Age of Oil and the environmental
catastrophes that we are being warned about make it the only viable short term saving grace.
It's difficult to know where to begin, there have been so many twists and turns, spirals and dives in
the battlefield. Just when you think you are nearing a breakthrough you get the rug pulled out from
under your feet and its back to the drawing boards. I sometimes wonder how we ever got the Prius
to market at all. It wasn't luck folks, it was professional engineering skill and dedication from a
team of people I had the privilege to work with.
They say dead men can't talk so I thought I'd just come back to prove them all wrong. In this book
I'm going to set out the work to be done to bring the Prius and the next generation of Electric
Vehicles to the doorstep of Mr America wherever he might be, at a price which is affordable. We
could be selling these things for donut prices. Price was always an issue. Price aside, the
technology is there, the vehicle is there and more importantly, the market is there. However to each
and every American who is looking past the end of their nose, you have to know that if you want a
Prius, if you want a future, you have to join the fight for the EV movement. For fight it will be. If
they don't squash you they'll crush you. But they can't crush dreams. They would if they could but
it's not an option.

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Chapter 1
The New Dawn
Part of the Human Psyche is geared up to always express the future in terms of “Tomorrow” and I
am reminded of the well used expression “Tomorrow Never Comes”. It would be easy for the EV
World to fall into the trap of what I will define as the “Tomorrow Syndrome” and the consequence
of that my friends is that the EV Vision will always be a vision for tomorrow and tomorrow will
never come.
Having dedicated my life to the engineering quest, always looking for new solutions and sometimes
old solutions to improve our technological world and understanding in order that we may produce
more efficient products, I am amazed to say that it became necessary to run in order to maintain a
slow walk forwards in the mental outlook adopted by the vehicle manufacturers.
Despite the real opportunities and engineering skills which I have seen and experienced there is a
denial at the highest level of the need and market for the new EV Vehicles. Trying to understand
such a closed view leads only to a frustrating conclusion that it is a well ingrained doctrine which
shrouds any real or honest exploration or consideration of the true merits of the technology and
engineering skills which have been developed to produce the EV Vehicles of the future. It is not a
view – it is a roadblock.
Without wishing to sound like an anti-establishment maverick, I would put to one side my personal
thoughts on the matter and it is sufficient to say that there is a vested interest in opposing at the
strongest level the new EV technology. It comes from the top wherever the top may be. And
therefore it is up to each and every one of us who sees the folly of continuing to consider that new
cars should only be petrol driven with perhaps EVs as a gimmicky green thing to take on our
individual responsibility not only for our immediate environment but for the global situation to fight
for the technology which we know we must have. As I stated before, a fight is what we have, but a
fight with words and actions, providing accurate information driving a channel through their
propaganda, enlightening people to the wonderful clean technological revolution which is waiting
to flower.

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Chapter 2
The Way Forward
Who is going to make it happen?
How are they going to make it happen?
What “vehicle” are they going to use to make it happen?
Will it be Toyota now?
To be or not to be, that is the question. Indeed, that is the question and it’s a difficult one to answer.
The Electrical Vehicle is a political issue, not just in the literal meaning but for any manufacturer
who produces a well designed Hybrid or Plug In Vehicle the consequences of this strategy have far
reaching effects to all four corners of the box - a road forwards with a new generation of
technological advance. Let me explain. Toyota or indeed any of the well established manufacturers
in the USA have produced petrol driven vehicles, basically the same petrol driven vehicles for over
40 years. New models, new editions of those models, new gizmos but nevertheless, the technology
is basically the same. The support structure and indeed the whole company ethos is concreted in the
petrol driven vehicle. It permeates every facet of its operations - its marketing, sales, its reason for
existing and this goes hand in hand with the oil producers - their image, their paybacks, the synergy.
It is a symbiotic relationship. So once a manufacturer, be it Toyota or more importantly GM or
Ford, produces a really good electric Plug In Hybrid with all of its customer appeal it changes
forever the way that company will evolve. There will be no going back and the fear - and I mean
Fear with a capital F which permeates the senior management in most of the automotive industry is
that once they have this marvellous technology in marketing form it shines a spotlight on what crap
they have been producing for the last 40 years. In fact, they might be liable under a number of laws
in the USA for having intentionally misled the US people, to have polluted, to have added stress
and strain to Global Warming, not to mention the amount of money in fuel to have been saved by
every family across the US. The truth is that the EV - clean technology, cost free for running is
such a potentially different animal to that which has been produced, let’s say even for the last
decade and its basic technology has been around for such a long time that people in these
companies have been struggling to dismiss(?) it.
The secondary problem is that once they produce one really good EV model nobody will want the
petrol ones anymore. So - if you take a company like GM or Ford with say ten model ranges and
ten models in each range, if one of these is a new generation marvellous cost-free car, who’s going
to want the other nine lines?
The fear of that transition is what has held back a lot of the companies and the very real expose of
the petrol driven phenomenon in the USA, the oil barons in bed with the motor cartels. This is what
I mean by politics and politics is not linked specifically to can we make the vehicle, can we make it
work - that aspect has been solvable for a long time. Once they change gear, and go towards the
Third Generation, there’s no going back - there is no reverse gear. They are very comfortable with
what they have. Even though the market is tough, better the devil you know. It takes a very strong
management to launch a new concept but with the Prius already gaining a respectable place in the
market, the alarm bells are already ringing through every car manufacturer, not just Toyota. If the
market reports about the conditions in oil supply are anything like accurate then necessity will drive
the change to the new technology and in some respects, crazy as it sounds, many of the
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management teams would rather feel it is pressure from external sources forcing them to change
their ethos to a new technology, than boldly making the decision themselves for the right reasons.
As I said, it’s a Culture of Fear and nobody makes good decisions when they are afraid. They can
only react and that’s what you have. So they want the situation to become so dire to guide them and
then they have to react - and that’s not making decisions at all, but in some ways that’s preferable to
having to admit that for ten years they have done nothing when they could have done so much. In a
way whoever makes the Big Leap - and it doesn’t really matter who that is - will take the leap for
the whole industry, not just the company that does it.
[Prius sales were planned to be half a million units in the USA in 2007.]
There is also what they call the threshold factor or the threshold size for the fleet in the USA. When
you drive anywhere in the US, in any city in the US, you get used to seeing lots of GM vehicles or
Ford vehicles and this generates an unconscious acceptance within the motoring community. The
idea of having half a million vehicles concentrated in the environmentally positive states California, New England etc., would mean that the number of Priuses on the road would stand out
like sore thumbs to the motoring community as a whole. While today it might be relatively rare to
see a Prius and the motorist might think “What’s that?” and dismiss it, when you reach the
threshold of half a million vehicles concentrated in a few states, their presence and numbers
accelerate their acceptance within the motoring community at large. Add to that the quite
environmentally obvious benefits for passers by, curiosity factor, green factor, organic factor, health
factor - all these trends that are sweeping America currently and the Clean Car becomes not just an
idea or a dream but a reality which people can see, touch and hopefully not smell. With a fleet of
half a million Priuses concentrated in a few states, the demand for the vehicle would drive the
marketing strategy. The marketing strategy would be to stave off orders because the demand would
far outstrip anything Toyota could produce. The marketing strategy would no longer be one of
selling faster, bigger, more motoring for your buck but it would be selling less - less fuel, less
fumes, less fuss and fostering a growing environmentally conscious consumer society. Now that
could be a very dangerous thing. There would be spin-offs. One could say it would be educational.
The best way to educate is by example and the Prius would teach even that sector of the population
who don’t understand the current urgencies to focus their attention for long enough to grasp the
concepts of the new technological revolution.
And it would not stop at personal vehicles of course. The Light Commercial, taxi and full
commercial vehicles would be a sector that would rapidly want to enjoy the benefits of the EV
technology. One could say, indeed one would say, that with the launch of further models of the
successful Prius, as the threshold milestones were passed, it would be an EV tsunami!
They have to get it right - if everyone’s waiting for Priuses, everything else stops. People won’t
just buy another car, they will wait - indeed, they are already waiting. And people will have to wait.
It’s been like trying to get through the sound barrier, just to get the EV accepted as an option, with a
lot of the company effectively being like a heavy weight - drag - so that instead of the vehicle
gliding in the slipstream with a well thought out company sales and marketing strategy, instead of it
being able to harness and embrace the excitement and creativity of this new vehicle and use that to
energise the company and staff, to pull together the collective company energy, for it to be a
flagship, for people to be proud of it and want to be associated with it which it could have been, it’s
been a long uphill battle with a large part of the company acting as a weighty drag and thereby
some of the creativity the vehicle has the potential to generate has been capped, lost, diffused and
sometimes used negatively at the people involved with the project. That is less the case today
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because the Prius has managed, despite all the efforts to control its development, to break through
and establish a niche in the market, a rapidly growing niche at that. Barring any catastrophes
between now and 2010, the Prius and other EV model ranges will become the top selling vehicles in
the US market. Note I say “other” models because on the drawing boards there are other models
that will make the EV not a need to have but a must have. It will be a Number One seller. But you
didn’t hear that from me.
It’s not just “Who Killed the Electric Car?” although that statement is valid. The real statement is
that the EV will kill the petrol car because nobody wants to go backwards - once they have driven a
good EV nobody wants to go back to petrol. It will be just like the Industrial Revolution. [EVs are
in fact cheaper to produce than conventional vehicles and the US is such a consumer society, it will
become a must have item.]
Strategy - It’s All About Strategy
In a war, strategy is a matter of life and death. They say business is war. Strategy in business is life
and death for that business. Professional military planners use a number of complex computerised
tools and simulations in order to test run a number of different strategies - they call it wargaming.
It’s always a good idea to incorporate a fully fledged test programme into your business strategy for
bringing a new product to market. The test strategy is crucial to the successful introduction of any
new product. In the EV World, this product will have high visibility based on high expectations
and it must deliver in all areas of its program. It must be a reality. People must experience the EV
Vehicle with no negative connotations or stigma. If the EV Vehicle fails to deliver in the technical
or practical field then sales targets will not be met and marketing of the product will not be
effective.
The wargaming model allows for every small tactical eventuality to be considered and weighed in
the overall strategy in order to minimise the risks and maximise the successes. Nothing is too small
to be considered irrelevant. Time and time again, experience has shown that it is these very small
things that slipped by, which did not receive attention which can undermine even the most
“flawless” strategy. Such will be the need for the attention to detail in the launch of the Next
Generation EV Vehicles for the business world mirrors in some ways a battlefield. I am reminded
of the times my attention was drawn to the fanatical chess player who seemed to spend hours and
hours pondering before moving his piece. It always seemed to me that not only did this require
patience but it seemed almost an obsessive over attention, particularly when you saw some of the
skilful players discussing the post match autopsy at length. However, I am reminded that as part of
their strategy and to ensure they did not make the same mistakes next time, they needed to fully
understand ALL aspects of the game. They needed to observe the board and pieces from all
perspectives. A similar attention to detail will be needed in the launch of the new EV Vehicles. it’s
important to look at the market from a number of positions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

The existing manufacturers’ positions
The existing automobile consumers’ position
The Green Consumer
The Political Landscape
Peak Oil
Global Warming

and so on and so on.
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In life and death, you often don’t get a second chance. If you’re lucky, you get one shot. Nothing
can be more true of the launch of the next generation EV Vehicles. And if you think that sounds
over dramatic, that is because from the outside perspective the EV looks just like another me-too
product. However, from the inside it is a revolutionary product.
There has never been a revolution in which blood has not been shed in some metaphorical sense.
There has never been a revolution without a number of small turf battles and dirty tricks. The EV
revolution will be no different from any other revolution in history. People often think that in the
past the Industrial Revolution was recognised at the time as furthering mankind and providing more
people with a better standard of living. This is a view through rose tinted spectacles and for those
who lived at the time or who have studied that era the sharp contrast between the historical accounts
and reality have little in common. Because revolution means turning, cartwheel, upside down, head
over heels, waves, change and in the case of the EV Revolution, a tsunami of mega proportions.
Consider the reaction of the oil barons. Consider the reaction of those who have a political interest
in global warming for surely there is one as the evidence clearly demonstrates. The Ice Caps are
melting, sea levels are rising, CO2 levels are rising, a crisis is predicted by a number of scientific
communities yet governments, political figures, power brokers, all seem to be ignoring or be
cocooned from understanding and more importantly, doing what’s necessary.
Revolution has an energy of its own.
The Political Hot Potato
Governments come and go. Some are more memorable than others.
Battery Notes
In order to market an EV one of the most important parts is the battery system and technology and
the fact that the car manufacturers have to rely on partners and 3rd Party companies to help them
engineer and design the power pack. They are then reliant on other people and that puts them out
on a limb. It shifts the control but not the responsibility. This is a new technology - the lines of
responsibility are the same but this is a new thing, there is no track record so they are pioneers and
you tend to get problems in pioneering situations. Because we want to get this into a car which is a
mass market product, there is no easy way to do it. It’s a mass market product, so if there’s a
problem, it’s a mass market failure. They have to launch 100,000 vehicles at least. There are a lot
of different operating conditions and they have to rely on other people. Toyota do not have inhouse specialists, it’s not an in-house skill and that’s the problem because they can introduce a
problem. There is no way to know if the battery is a good one or a dud. It’s just the process, it’s
not been mass tested.
What is the War About? What is it Really About?
All business is war but this is different. This isn’t about getting a product to market - no, correct
that, this is about preventing a technology and a train of thought from permeating into
consciousness to create a New World Order. Not a political one, but one of Natural Order Out of
Chaos which would transpire with the knowledge gained from EV vehicles.
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[There has been so much suppressed for so long that there is now a damned up tsunami of
knowledge across the world desperate to burst out upon the scene.]
The Sacrificial Lamb
The car manufacturers as we know them today will be offered as a sacrificial lamb to continue the
obfuscation and pretence that Peak Oil and effects of Peak Oil are not an immediate threat. The
stark reality is that Peak Oil has been with us for a few years now and it is becoming increasingly
difficult for governments of many countries to hide this fact from their populations. The impact of
Peak Oil if we do nothing is to permit the chaotic breakdown of our fuel and hence transport
systems which in turn will lead to the breakdown of the world business cycle. The EV Imperative
is a desperate measure. Under the surface many people who understand the real situation with the
world resources of oil and gas know the panic and at the same time blindness of the political ruling
systems.
The US is no exception, nor indeed Europe and many other regions. Governments would rather
have a national emergency with the breakdown of society to empower their control of the
population and installation of Martial Law than to see a new clean “Free Energy” EV Vehicle
provide the world with an exciting and new system of transport and with it the freedoms that would
make this New World Order more correctly the People’s World Order as opposed to “Some
Government’s” NWO. When you look at it from this perspective you can understand why
governments fear the Peak Oil truth and the inescapable illumination it provides to those who study
it. I touched on this at the beginning - the fact that governments would rather handle Peak Oil as an
emergency rather than confront and handle it by another method. It would be true to say that the
more “power mad” a government is, the stronger the tendency to ignore Peak Oil. The payoffs are
plainly obvious. Where does that leave us today with America? Who would disagree that the
current US Administration has demonstrated that they are one of the most power hungry regimes
that the States has seen since the Second World War?
Now you can understand why I say that the EV Vehicle is revolutionary and that to bring it to
market is a war unlike any other in history - but its effects if we fail to bring the EV to market will
be more disastrous than those of any other war that has gone before.
Therefore the EV War must be won. We cannot fail. The stakes are too high.
The Universal Dodgem
Privilege, it is said, is the prerogative of the rich and famous. And whilst that may be true in some
circles I have been privileged with a commodity far more valuable than any of the above - that of
insight and inside information. For make no mistake about it, solutions to the problems that we are
facing today demand new thinking and the keys to solving the problems are new knowledge that
will give us the power to overcome any hazards, any obstacles that we may meet.
From that standpoint I will take this chapter to educate, to illustrate and to bring you up to speed
with what is possible - no, what is fairly easy to do and is just the beginning of what is possible. It
is no longer a dream or just pie in the sky. Knowledge is power and I had some of it which I hand
to you now. Use it wisely. Let the lesson begin.
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Fairgrounds. Sideshows. The hustle and bustle of the energetic crowd mingling with the less than
honest showmen inviting us to take a pot shot, take a chance, take a ride. As you walk around any
fairground the picture would not be complete without the sight of the infamous Dodgem. What a
magnificent beast! From its brightly painted chassis to its glowing teeth painted across its bumper,
this vehicle is your chariot to the future, my friends. With its feet firmly fixed on the ground, its
metal ground sheet forming the dodgem arena’s floor to its high tail, wiggling across its skyward
grid sparking and biting, it is propelled by electric energy to delight the occupants and thrill the
children.
This is truly an Electric Vehicle which demonstrates not only the future of the EV Vehicle but more
importantly the new revolutionary technology which will supersede the Prius and all its ilk which
are currently under wraps in the Toyota stable.
I can hear the laughter at my last few sentences from the people who “think they know” about
Electric Vehicles. But you have to realise that the Dodgem holds the key to such secret knowledge
that the only place you will find this technology on show is in the fairground. This is the only place
it has ever been allowed to be demonstrated, since it was not felt that anyone would ever take the
Dodgem with the seriousness which it deserved.
If you want to hide something, put it in full view where everyone can see it.
For you see, the Dodgem illustrates perfectly the application of the Ground - Sky battery free
Electric Vehicle which was postulated and trialled in secret following on from Nikola Tesla’s earth
shattering discoveries over eighty years ago. At the time, the “market forces”, oil barons whose
political and commercial clout ruled the roost made it an imperative to ensure their future market
was never compromised by the emergence of what I will call “Dodgem Technology”. They
certainly dodged it and they’ve been dodging it ever since. They are decidedly dodgy.
The uneasy feeling which exists today in many parts of the so-called “official” EV programs by
automobile manufacturers among people who are trying to develop the very basic EV concept using
a battery as an interim system, is well founded. This is what I call “Dodgem Mark I”, a stepping
stone to the real Dodgem Mark II which does not need a battery, only a connection to ground and
sky.
In fact, it has been a preoccupation with the powerful oil marketeers and interests to ensure that any
potential threat from any EV technology was removed, diminished. The phrase was “to do what
was necessary”. It was war and always was. Camouflaged by the commercial vendetta and
campaign which undermined, suppressed and in some cases eradicated potential new EV
developments.
Without going into the technical aspects of the Mark II EV Vehicle at this point in my writing, I
will simply say that it is possible using a contact with the ground and an aerial into the sky to
generate a low electric charging current, a trickle current for want of a better word which will drive
and power the engine of an EV Vehicle – a specially designed engine, a new engine for the EV
Vehicle Mark II.
Anyone, any serious scientific technical person, who is working on the current EV Mark I Battery
Vehicles will ultimately fall over the discovery of the hidden science behind the Mark II Vehicle I
have outlined. This is what is known to those who would rather the EV did not ever materialise
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onto the marketplace as the EV Danger Zone. It is a Zone which is policed and watched by a very
powerful system indeed.
Moving on without giving you yet the detailed scientific description of the Type II EV, what I will
indicate here is that this technology could be presented to market in a variety of different forms of
systems – systems which harness the Earth's natural energy fields and convert them to useable
power on request. One such system though, for example, I will describe.
Never Mind Walk On Water, Let's Run On It
When I was in Japan in the late 80s, visiting some of the workshops in Toyota's experimental
services and research centre, I was taken to one side by a Senior Engineer who asked me if I'd like
to see a controversial new piece of equipment, which they had set up following the disclosure of a
new technical idea. The source of the idea was from outside the automobile industry. My
enquiring mind seized upon the opportunity of course to question, before I made any reply, as to
whether this would be a complete waste of time since my schedule in Tokyo was very short. As
usual though my inquisitiveness got the better of my judgement and I accepted that I would find
myself behind schedule, so I said “I'd be very happy to see that”.
The Senior Engineer took me to a separate part of the research facility where, using a plastic ID
card we gained access to a subterranean facility. The security increased my inquisitiveness since I
had not known that Toyota was pursuing with this amount of dedication the EV Vehicle
technology.
Without revealing the exact detail of the technology I will describe in outline what had been
achieved. It was truly remarkable. A small electric motor – small by car standards – was running
continuously. It could be accelerated to speeds which would be the equivalent of 200 mph. It was
silent. It had no vibration. It had minimal moving parts except for the purpose of the illustration
which showed a drive shaft to 4 wheels.
The black box driving, powering, providing the energy for this was a 6 inch cube of a coil
arrangement – not an electric coil, I'll just use the term “a coil arrangement” with some high energy
shielding to protect the environment should an unfortunate accident occur. The principle of the
technology and the medium from which the energy was derived in its sealed container was water.
So a small cube containing water and a cube arrangement was able to deliver sufficient power to
run a vehicle up to 200mph. Magic Box? No. High technology and application of principles
which up to this time had been overlooked, yes. The Chief Engineer told me that the project was
highly successful, the power system was proving highly reliable and that commercially it would be
relatively straightforward to put it on the market. However, he looked at me and said: “The
political environment is a different matter. Are you religious?”. “Not especially”, I said. “Hmm”,
he said. “Well”, he said, “you've heard the expression that Christ walked on water. To get this to
market we'll have to bloody well run on it – because that's what these new EVs will run on, they'll
run on water.”
I stopped and blinked and that was fatal because I said “Is this a joke? Is this a test?”. He sensed
my concerns and said: “It's no joke, it's real”. I blinked yet again at the full realisation of what this
might mean for the world. Should this technology be applied across our industries, the implications
of what this would mean for our planet and more importantly for our oil companies and the political
system dawned on me. And I wondered if I had seen something that maybe I should not have seen
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