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California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It
- rubbingalcohol 11y agoSerious question: unless all the electricity for these vehicles comes from completely renewable and environmentally friendly sources, won't banning fossil fuel emissions from motor vehicles just externalize this pollution onto electric power plants? Is there data to show that the environmental impact will be somehow lessened?
- baldeagle 11y agoIt is easier to monitor and maintain a few large sources of pollution than many many smaller sources.
- m-i-l 11y agoPlus the large sources of pollution are typically further away from major population centers (i.e. fewer people directly breathing in the output from the smoke stacks), while the small sources of pollution are in the major population centers (i.e. more people directly breathing in the exhaust fumes).
- Gravityloss 11y agoSince charging of electric vehicles can be done intermittently and can also be time shifted, it could match with renewable energy sources relatively well, acting as virtual storage.
- spacehome 11y agoGenerally, it's much easier to make a larger engine more efficient and pollute less than one that has to be small, light, mobile, and safe in an impact.
- billyhoffman 11y agoExactly. And we are talking about millions of ICEs in cars vs orders of magnitude fewer "engines" at power plants.
- smarterchild 11y agoThe keyword for the problem you're talking about is the "long tailpipe theory." [1] I was just reading Wait But Why's article [2], which concluded that the overall greenhouse impact will still be lessened by using electric cars over internal combustion. I didn't dig into the sources enough to conclude that it's truly a better option, but those articles are a good place to start. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_tailpipe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_tailpipe [2] http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-lif...
- danmaz74 11y agoDo those analyses also account for the energy needed to build the batteries? From the wikipedia link, it looks like they don't.
- tdaltonc 11y agoHow big is that fixed cost in proportion to the fuel energy? Also, how much energy does it take to make a combustion engine?
- msandford 11y agoIt's not really a fixed cost. Batteries aren't good for forever. They have a limited lifespan. An electric car could be thought of as a gas car with a very, very large, magical fuel tank. If a battery costs $20k (like a Tesla) and I spend $200/mo on gasoline then that's 100 months (simple interest) or about 8 years, before we even talk about the cost of the car or the cost of the electricity. I know that this doesn't feel good to talk about, but economics is more about numbers than feelings.
- aianus 11y agoThat economic analysis is flawed because you're ignoring the externalities of burning gasoline (health costs, climate change). Only if there were high enough taxes on gasoline to mitigate those effects, then you could accurately do that sort of dollar-cost analysis.
- 67726e 11y agoWell, let's say you've got millions of classes that all perform the same operation. Now you refactor those millions of classes to rely on a handful of classes to perform those common operations. Now you've just made it easier to eventually refactor those few remaining classes into something nicer, cleaner, more efficient. Sure, you're just shifting the source of pollution in the interim, but once cars are no longer polluting, changing the source they charge from is the last roadblock to removing those emissions from the system.
- ajmarsh 11y agoA quick googling produced: The impact of coal-burning power plants and gasoline can be quantified. The EPA estimates that the average passenger vehicle emits 5.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. Coal-burning power plants, on the other hand, produce more than 4 million metric tons per power plant, per year. The overall carbon dioxide output of coal-fired electric power plants exceeded gasoline by more than 30 percent in 2010.
- cjensen 11y agoCalifornia doesn't burn coal. It's mostly natural gas and some oil. Natural gas is a very efficient fuel in terms of CO2 output.
- adventured 11y agoCalifornia doesn't burn coal in-state, but it still gets around 5%-7% [1] of its energy from coal via imports from five coal plants. [2] I can't seem to find any more recent data showing how that coal energy use has declined in the last two years, the most current seems to be 2013. They appear to have projected to be getting 20gwh of energy from coal in 2015. [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/07/california-is-losing-a-big-nuclear-power-plant-so-what-will-replace-it/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/07/ca... [3] http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/tracking_progress/documents/current_expected_energy_from_coal.pdf http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/tracking_progress/docume...
- nitrogen 11y agoThese numbers need a bit more data and some unit conversion before they can be compared. Tons/powerplant and tons/car are not comparable units. We need something like tons/mile_electric and tons/mile_gasoline.
- warfangle 11y agoIf only coal is considered, it doesn't look good. My math may be way off, but: coal: 1,933,130,000,000 kwh/yr plants: 518 kwh/plant: 373,191,120 tons/plant: 4,000,000 ton/kwh : 0.01 37.4% of electricity in US nat. gas: .0005675 ton/kwh 30.3% of electricity in US tesla S: .3kwh/mi Coal only: .003 ton/mi Gas only: .00017 ton/mi Coal + Gas + Renewables: 0.0012 ton/mi avg ICE: 12,000 mi/yr 5.1 ton/yr 0.000425 ton / mi As we move away from coal and towards renewables, it's obvious that electric cars become the winners. In areas with mostly coal power production, though, ICEs are more environmentally friendly. It's really telling how freaking dirty coal is.
- Ankaios 11y agoThe pollution gets shifted to the power plants, but the greenhouse gas emissions from power plants are often better than those from cars. IIRC, in California the fraction from hydro and other renewables is ~ 25 %. Nuclear is another 15 % or so. Natural gas is a big portion of the rest. People living in an areas that get all of their electrical power from coal need to be more careful about choosing the better option, though. In those cases, something like a high-efficiency hybrid may currently win.
- kwhitefoot 11y agoYes it externalizes it. But it centralises it too, making it easier to keep it clean. It also removes the pollution from town centres making them much pleasanter places to be. The total efficiency of burning oil in a large power station to power electric cars is generally is slightly better than burning the oil (which must be much more highly refined) in an internal combustion engine even if it is a hybrid.
- a3n 11y agoThere's also that you have to burn fuel in the tank trucks to get the fuel to the consumer. Centralized generation is vaguely like dependency injection, or loosely coupled modularity in general, you can put what you want into it. My only concern with electric vehicles is battery end of life. What do I the consumer do? Will I be able to sell my 25 year old EV? Have we gotten far enough to see what that end looks like?
- stephengillie 11y agoYou use/lose some of the energy in transport, either way. I forget exactly, but high voltage power lines lose something like 1% of their energy every...100 miles? Another way to look at it would be: How much electricity would it take an electric truck to deliver that gasoline?
- hire_charts 11y agoBy that argument, you lose energy when gasoline evaporates during transportation. In both cases (electricity and gasoline) loss is marginal and can be mitigated by striking a balance between centralization and transport/power line distance.
- fake44637 11y agoI wouldn't call it marginal (it's about 7% for the eletrical grid). See https://www.nema.org/Products/Documents/TDEnergyEff.pdf https://www.nema.org/Products/Documents/TDEnergyEff.pdf
- atlantic 11y agoEven if it does, relocating motor vehicle pollution away from major population centres will still have a massive public health impact.
- mtgx 11y agoYes, battery electricity is cleaner even if it comes from coal, compared to the energy given by gas in gas-powered cars. I've read an article about this recently but I don't remember which. The point it it's much more "efficient" to create that energy in a power plant than it is to do it within a small car engine. Now, add to that the fact that in the US, the electricity is not 100% produced by coal and natural gas (I think 70% in total, but that number will also shrink when more companies adopt solar panels and batteries for power generation/storage). Also, it's much better to keep the pollution away from the cities and people.
- jeromeflipo 11y agoAn electric car generates less than 25% of CO2 as an equivalent gasoline car in California [0]. In every US state, an electric car produces less CO2 than an equivalent gas car. [0] https://youtu.be/mURbzh9t0_0?t=5m40s https://youtu.be/mURbzh9t0_0?t=5m40s
- murbard2 11y agoBeyond what's been said about efficiency, you have to look forward a bit. Solar is really cheap and getting cheaper. This is anticipating for a future where a much larger fraction of the power on the grid comes from less polluting sources.
- runamok 11y agoA huge amount of energy in gasoline is wasted as heat. About 70%. Electric plants lose much less energy due to reusing the heat fairly efficiently. There are some losses due to power transmission there of course. Keep in mind some electricity that ends up in cars would/should come from renewable sources... http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml
- runamok 11y agoFYI the losses of different power plants vary greatly but are higher than I thought. http://www.brighthubengineering.com/power-plants/72369-compare-the-efficiency-of-different-power-plants/ http://www.brighthubengineering.com/power-plants/72369-compa...
- zaitcev 11y agoAll is left for you is to learn why resistive losses on the order of about 30% are necessary for the (unbuffered) electric grid to function at all.
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- stephengillie 11y agoStationary power plants can be optimized much more than a car. A car engine has to give optimal power at a range of torque and horsepower outputs, from starting out at a stop light, to passing people on the freeway, and maybe pulling a loaded trailer. A stationary plant can be optimized to be much more efficient at single rate of torque and horsepower.
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- bluthru 11y ago- Electric vehicles are more energy efficient. - Gasoline requires lots of transport. (Shipped across the ocean, trains, refinery, delivered to a gas station, travels with the car until burned.) - Electric vehicles last longer. - Electric vehicles can be charged with a personal solar array. - Less smog which means better health and cleaner cities. Making density more attractive is always green. - ICE cars have 152,300 automobile fires per year in the US. - Even creating electricity using bad methods keeps the pollution somewhat concentrated. Does this matter with regards to climate change? Probably not, but I don't know.
- steve19 11y ago> Electric vehicles last longer. Do they? Because ICE vehicles last decades and they don't have expensive battery packs that need replacing.
- bluthru 11y agoI'm willing to bet all of the ICE-related maintenance will cost more than a battery pack replacement.
- brohoolio 11y agoI drove a $500 dollar car another 100,000 miles and only had to do oil changes for the engine. I'm guessing shocks, struts, etc that I did have to fix would be the same on an electric. This was on a 90s car, I'm assuming the current generation of ICE cars will only last longer if properly taken care of.
- tdaltonc 11y agoI imagine that the women in that picture is supposed to look like she's taking in a breath of fresh air, but she looks incredibly smug.
- Shivetya 11y agoWell battery tech will be a roadblock for some time but deadlines as far out as these make it look like something is being accomplished but provide enough time to not actually be a deadline. Converting off peak electrical power into hydrogen is getting more and more viable and frankly, I don't mind storing and transporting hydrogen versus stuffing the planet with li-ion batteries replete with their hazards. GM should be first out of the gate with an affordable 200 mile range EV by late 16 or early 17. It will be interesting if other manufacturers follow quickly or wait too see what the uptake is. Fuel cells will likely be the filler application to directly replace fossil fuel engines. that twenty year gap should be sufficient to get all used cars off the road as the one issue not addressed by current rebates is that the poor rarely can take advantage of them. Currently they seem to only serve the well off who could buy into new tech without them. California is already taking steps to fix this, income limits and such, but the federal government needs to do similar. Direct it to average consumer priced cars and likely there would be wider acceptance
- pjc50 11y agoI don't mind storing and transporting hydrogen Spoken like someone who has never tried to store or transport hydrogen. It's much less convenient than li-ion and has its own hazards.
- Osmium 11y agoIsn't that the truth. Unless there's been a breakthrough in the last few years, I remember storing hydrogen being an absolute nightmare: and not because it can combust, but simply because it's so small. Minimising leaks and achieving high storage densities, especially over longer periods of time, is super hard and not least because the hydrogen diffusion can cause embrittlement of metals too.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoThink of all the people that light up smokes, etc at the gas station. Then, think about this with a fuel that's invisible when it's leaking. Guy that worked at a hydrogen plant made that point to me when talking about the safety precautions they took.
- rhaps0dy 11y ago>California emits only 2 percent of global greenhouse gases What? That's huge! California does not have 2% of the world's population, not even close! Looking at it another way, all the more effect the regulations there will have.
- a3n 11y ago> California does not have 2% of the world's population Consider all the power required to support a Californian's life style, including his direct use and all the services and products that converge on him. That Red Bull can on his desk is probably not negligible, not when you factor in all the infrastructure required for it.
- Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 11y agoWhat does the number of people have to do with this? Industries contribute much more to emissions. (also not relevant, but California's current GDP is ~2.2T, which is around 3% of the total world GDP (75T)).
- Retric 11y agoA lot of California pollution is indirect, as in produced from factories outside of the state. Which makes GDP a terrible measure of pollution.
- arnarbi 11y agoI agree with you that's a strange statement. But also consider California's GDP is about 2-3% of the world GDP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
- patmcguire 11y agoWorld GDP is about $87.25 trillion and California GDP is about $2 trillion, so California has more than 2% of world GDP. You could make the case that that's a more important metric than population.
- Animats 11y agoThe California Air Resources Board and the EPA have achieved quite a lot. Los Angeles air was barely breathable in the 1970s. Now, there's very little smog. Look at 1960s pictures of Los Angeles, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New York. That was once considered impossible. Now, it's mostly done. The only thing keeping electric cars from taking over is battery cost. Performance and range have already been fixed. Once battery cost is solved, and it looks like it's going to be, electric cars will start to take over. At some point, there will be a tipping point, as gas stations start to close.
- gambiting 11y agoAnd the fact that millions of people live in flats, condos, terraced houses with no private parking spots and they can't charge their cars overnight. Here in UK the vast majority of people I know live in places where it would be impossible to take out a charging cable at night, so the only option is...charging at work? But who will foot the bill for installing chargers at literally every single parking spot everywhere?
- cracell 11y agoSeems like battery swaps are the solution to this. Essentially the battery pack is designed to be easily removable and you just "lease" it in one way or another. You go to a fuel station and swap your battery packs with some that are already charged. Here's Tesla's pilot program http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/battery-swap-pilot-program http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/battery-swap-pilot-program There's a lot of big challenges to this (weight of batteries, standardization, convenient swap stations, etc.) but I haven't heard of any better ideas at this point.
- gertef 11y agoBattery swaps help with long-range trips, but are in no way a convenience improvement over filling up a tank of gas.
- Htsthbjig 11y agoI have an expensive American electric car and use it in Europe. Before buying it I was worried about all the things you mention. Now that I have been using it for some time normal cars look crazy outdated to me. Going to some place(gas stations) just to fill the tank. Why? It should be in my home, like with my electric car. Lots of European houses have natural gas installations on homes, so why can't we just plug our vehicles to that, like we do with electric. In any western country there are electric cables everywhere since 100 years ago or so, and most are not used at night, so it is not a big deal. Impossible to take a charging cable at night? In the UK?. I routinely use my car in Spain and Portugal, with no significant problems. The only problem is that we attract significant attention everywhere we go.
- danielweber 11y agoWhat is the comparison between using energy to generate liquid fuels from atmospheric CO2 (which would be carbon neutral) and trying to electrify the entire transportation sector? Those Los Alamos guys [1] said in 2007 they could get it down to $3.40 a gallon. Okay, maybe they were wrong and/or optimistic. But, still, there is some price point at which it is break-even. What is it? Five dollars? Ten? The advantages of this over electrifying everything are that we already have built up the infrastructure for liquid fossil fuels. There is no extra engineering to be done for storage and/or transport, and no environmental impact from building new facilities like battery factories or erecting more transmission towers. In both technologies, you start with an energy source, and then distribute it to consumers who use the product up. Both are carbon-neutral once you get past the "have the centralized energy source" step. [1] http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom.pdf http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/science/19carb.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/science/19carb.html?_r=0
- marcosdumay 11y agoWhere's the electricity coming from? If your answer is natural gas, or oil powered generators, then no, there isn't a price point where it will break even. Now if you can answer that question with nuclear reactors or renewables of any kind, then your logic probably applies. Yet, I doubt it will ever be the main fuel powering our transportation.
- strictnein 11y agoWhy doesn't natural gas count? It's increased usage is one of the key reasons the US's carbon output is down over 10% since 2005. > "There are two basic factors that have contributed to lower carbon intensity (CO2/kilowatthour [kWh]) in the electric power sector: 1) substitution of the less-carbon-intensive natural gas for coal and petroleum, and 2) growth in non-carbon generation, especially renewables such as wind and solar." http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/carbon/ http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/carbon/
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- stickfigure 11y agoI don't get it. Mandating that auto manufacturers sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles seems a bit like legislating the weather. If CA really wants to push people into electric vehicles, why not manipulate the demand for electric vehicles? Perhaps add another dollar or two to the gasoline tax?
- Steko 11y agoTax increase requires supermajority in CA.
- e28eta 11y agoIt makes sense to me: they're forcing the automakers to subsidize the R&D of electric vehicles from their profits on ICE vehicles, which seems like a normal thing for a business to do when it benefits the business. Since conventional automakers don't seem to be willing to aggressively pursue EVs on their own, this seems like a reasonable approach. Or, put another way, the consumers who continue to buy ICE cars, and in doing so create pollution, are helping to pay for the EVs that other people are buying.
- gertef 11y ago> Since conventional automakers don't seem to be willing to aggressively pursue EVs on their own, this seems like a reasonable approach. There are EV and plug-in hybrid options across many price ranges and car shapes.
- jacobolus 11y agoAnd California policy has had a not-insignificant impact on that range of options.
- igravious 11y agoI never knew that. I thought it was upcoming competition from Tesla and the "writing on the wall" so to speak... I didn't know that legislation was manipulating the product output mix of Big Auto...
- DannyBee 11y agoCalifornia also has the worst electrical infrastructure in the nation, and is not doing something like "requiring the EV people who will stress it" to pay a tax for improvements, or if they wanted to be punitive, a tax on gas cars to pay for it, or anything other than saying what a great idea this would be and pushing for it on the environmental side. Given that converting all cars in CA to electric would seriously stress the infrastructure[1], yet they are not doing anything to improve that infrastructure, I can't say i'm impressed with california's long term thinking here ... [1] Some back of the envelope math: there are 20,665,415 registered autos in CA. I'm going to exclude light trucks and trailers which make up another 12 million, and essentially double our numbers because they need more power/etc. <10% of autos are electric, but i'll just remove 10% to round nicely, and say "18 million non-electric vehicles. If they move to 85KWH cars, depleted and charged once a week, now we have an additional 85KWH x 18 million cars of electric power being used once a week. That's 1,530,000,000 KWH or 1530 GWH extra that needs to be generated and distributed every week. That's 79,560 (52x1530) GWH a year. California produces 200,000 GWH a year, mostly from natural gas: http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electric_generation_capacity.html http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electric_generation_... So they need to produce and distribute 40-50% more electricity than they do now to make this happen. Note that generation ability has not really moved from 2000. In fact, it's gone down! If they also want to meet their goal of moving generation to 33% renewable energy by 2020 (and eventually all of it), and thus provide this capacity without staying on gas, they'd basically have to double all available renewable energy output. That's just the generation side. Then they have to make sure they can distribute it. Don't worry though. I'm sure all the right people talk and plan this stuff together, and it's not just one part of the government doing something without thinking about the long term consequences that need to be planned for elsewhere - that never happens in government :) Of course, the numbers above are just spitballing to show there is thinking that appears to not be happening (as to whether it's a good idea or not, i actually don't care whether my car is electric or not :P). The average car is driven 15 miles a day, so maybe it takes 2 weeks to deplete your 85kwh battery. But generally, no matter what sane thing you do to these numbers, halve them, double them (maybe cheaper cars use crappier batteries/engines, maybe they mean light trucks too, etc), it's still "a lot of extra to plan for". Even a 1-2% change in electrical capacity is serious business. Until they actually have a serious plan for solving these issues, i'm just going to look forward to the lawn signs saying "80 volts is the new 120".
- e28eta 11y agoI wonder if the Chrysler CEO is trolling us: "Don't buy the 500e, you get a $45k car for $32k!"
- wmf 11y agoThe car may cost $45K to make, but that doesn't mean it's worth $45K. Maybe it's worse than the cheaper gas version.
- tankerdude 11y agoI wonder how much of it is due to scale. If they were to make and sell, say 10% of what their other car models sell, then what is the cost per car? I'd like to see the data points at certain % to see if it's a limited quantity problem or something specific to electric cars where he'll always lose money.
- owen_griffiths 11y agoHe is definitely not serious - the reason they sell the car at 32k is that is the best price to get the required sales. If people don't buy at that price, they'll have to go even lower, and lose more money.
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- fraserharris 11y agoExtremely poor air quality in major cities has spurred the Chinese government to adopt clean-air policies. Cars are a major source of air pollution. [1] http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/china-s-climate-change-plan-represents-decisive-move-1.2297631 http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/china-s-climate-change-pla...
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- swsieber 11y agoI think they would, since they're killing their citizens through pollution. First world ignorance at it's finest. Since she's talking with several cities, I think has a shot of exporting something. China is far below our current environmental standards, so raising the standard isn't something 'environmental', it's more like self preserving pragmatism in the short run.
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- nextos 11y agoI agree, but perhaps they may realize quite soon that things might not be sustainable the way they do them. Beijing is a mess smog-wise.
- prewett 11y agoThey already realize that. An internal Party document said that pretty much all major Chinese cities "unlivable" (can't find a source), and Beijing's mayor said the same thing [1]. I'm guessing that part of the problem is that while there are environmental regulations, court decision are strongly influenced by ... things other than perhaps a strictly literal application of the law. This makes enforcement difficult, and I believe the environmental regulations have been widely ignored, even when told point blank a few years ago to clean themselves up. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/28/beijing-smog-unliveable-mayor-wang-anshun-china http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/28/beijing-smog-un...
- nickpsecurity 11y agoThat she pushes hydrogen so much is disturbing to me. The source we need will either be water or polluting processes. Water is something we should be protecting and conserving with battles going on for it all over. Definitely don't need to be putting Niagara Falls worth of it into cars. The alternative is commercial production which is anything but ecofriendly. That it contains less energy than gasoline for same volume will impact efficiency, logistics, and safety in some setups. Overall, hydrogen fuel is a very bad idea. That she pushes that undermines her credibility to me. The reason I like electric, on other hand, is that makes the power-source neutral and could spur investment into our strained grid + battery tech. Yet, it has its own environmental consequences that should be carefully considered by anyone claiming the moral high ground. The environmental impact of manufacturing has a nice summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Environmental_aspects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Environmental_asp... Or, we can just look at a picture of Nichols' "green" and "clean" vision... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-C... ...then guess what a 2000+% increase of that would entail.
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoI'm baffled by your inclusion of a link to a four year old anti-wind turbine rant in the Daily Mail at the end of an otherwise sane and sensible comment.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoI glanced at the photo in search results before heading to work thinking it was the right article. It wasn't. Good catch. Here's the intended article that covers the damage of rare-earth mining and why most countries don't do it: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rar... The point of including the topic was that these people talk all kinds of green while doing it using stuff made in most eco-damaging and unhealthy way. A little hypocritical. Further, they should bring up the reality of expanded mining of rare earth elements in these discussions [among other issues] and attempt to make a cost-benefit analysis of various approaches. Current approach is to pretend it doesn't exist or sweep it under the rug.
- yndoendo 11y agoEmergency situations and natural disasters, where are the discussions? Real life has the two and yet there is no real life discussion of what one should do with a pure electric car. Snow storm his the Midwest and nocks out the power. You need to get someone to the hospital or you work at a hospital how does one get the electricity to ready their vehicle? Electrical core for cars yes but pure electric cars for real world scenarios does not fit.
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- brohoolio 11y agoThis is where I start liking the Volt. Pure electric? No way. Not in Michigan winters.
- davidgerard 11y agoIs it just me or is Bloomberg going full-clickbait?
- SovietDissident 11y ago1. "Sergio Marchionne had a funny thing to say about the $32,500 battery-powered Fiat 500e that his company markets in California as “eco-chic.” “I hope you don’t buy it,” he told his audience at a think tank in Washington in May 2014. He said he loses $14,000 on every 500e he sells and only produces the cars because state rules require it. Marchionne, who took over the bailed-out Chrysler in 2009 to form Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, warned that if all he could sell were electric vehicles, he would be right back looking for another government rescue." In order to meet the fuel economy standards, car companies have been building cars that nobody actually buys to bring up their averages. Unfortunately, this means that the cost of all their other cars must also go up. 2. Thanks to the slew of environmental mandates, Californians are now paying $1.11 more for gas on average than the national average. Also, "Over the past three years, electric rates in California rose by 2.18 cents per kilowatt-hour—about four times the rate nationally—as more solar and wind power has come online. Meanwhile, nuclear plants, which generate cheaper electricity, have been decommissioned, and hydropower has flagged because of the drought."[0] So, the environmentalists and leadership in CA oppose fossil fuels, oppose nuclear, and actively work with their vast legal resources to sue hydroelectric dams out of existence to preserve the habitats of bait fish.[1] For the time being, they are ok with solar and wind power, but what happens when they realize that it takes actual mining and lots of high-torque, powerful diesel trucks to extract the stuff from Mother Earth?[2] Not to mention the processing/manufacturing. 3. Fossil fuels have been a boon to human life and have raised our standard of living and life expectantly immensely, and should not be dismissed so lightly. You can burn a bunch of stuff for energy (peanuts, wood, animal dung, whale oil) but there's a reason that fossil fuels have had such longevity in their usage---they have high potential energy, good portability, are ubiquitous, and they're cheap! The positive effects far outweigh the adverse effects, especially when you can start using things like catalytic converters to make their emissions less harmful. [0] http://www.wsj.com/articles/sky-high-california-gas-prices-have-a-green-additive-1437174504 http://www.wsj.com/articles/sky-high-california-gas-prices-h... [1] http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2015-2-march-april/green-life/3-dam-detonation-videos-prove-going-green-blowing http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2015-2-march-april/green-li... [2] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rar...
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- pkteison 11y agoI wonder about the infrastructure change required for electric vehicles. The bay area relies extremely heavily on on-street parking. If everything is to go electric, will there be charging stations every 15 feet along every sidewalk?
- femto113 11y agoSadly this sort of mandate leads to a very inefficient application of money to reducing pollution. After that $14,000 "subsidy" the 500e still a $32,500 car, which will appeal primarily to people who are likely replacing an already efficient late model vehicle for a tiny net carbon savings. That same $14,000 applied to the base model 500 Pop would make the price about $3,000(!) and you'd have buyers replacing old clunkers with something that gets 40 mpg and a huge net savings.
- anigbrowl 11y agoMaybe, but you're making a bunch of assumptions here - people might well replace an old clunker with a small compact for only $3000, but you can't take that for granted. People who don't own a car already might enter the market at this price (adding to pollution and congestion) or those who have efficient cars might replace them with an equally efficient but much cheaper car and and simply pocket the savings, for no marginal gain. I agree the existing system isn't very economically efficient but ISTM that you're assuming rather than demonstrating the efficiencies that would result from your alternative scheme.
- femto113 11y agoMy example was really meant as a thought experiment rather than a credible program, but obviously governments and institutions can formulate such plans with requirements for the replaced vehicle, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
- tigeba 11y agoThe Federal and State subsidies for EV's drive down the used market value of the cars substantially. I just purchased a 2013 Nissan Leaf and you can get the base models all day long for 10k, or 13k'ish for the high end model. There is probably a little bit of a FUD discount as well since nobody knows how long the batteries will last, or what will happen when you want to change them. Incidentally, my Leaf replaced a Nissan XTerra :)
- 11y ago
- downandout 11y agoThis is yet another indication that people at the highest levels of government simply don't understand or care how free markets work. You don't raise demand for anything by mandating increasing levels of production of a product that people won't buy. You do it by incentivizing or subsidizing the development of a product (and in the case of cars, a nationwide infrastructure) that has advantages over those already in the market. The major hurdles with electric cars are cost and range. Cost will come down on its own as battery technology improves. But imagine if these politicians were intelligent and instead used their power to mandate that the industry agree on a standard for interchangeable batteries, that all electric cars sold must conform to the standard, and that all sellers of the gasoline that they hate so much must install equipment to do automated swaps of charged for uncharged batteries. If recharging the car (battery swaps) were faster, cheaper, and more convenient than pumping gas, that would remove an enormous roadblock in the minds of many consumers. Consumer demand for electric cars would skyrocket, gas stations would have a massive new profit center, and as a side effect, politicians would get the environmental benefits they desire far faster than they would under their current plan.
- joblessjunkie 11y agoIt's unfair to say that these people don't understand the free market. They understand that the free market will not push us out of gasoline cars and into electric cars until oil becomes very expensive. The goal is to get Californians into electric cars before the gasoline runs out, thus before the free market is willing. Nobody wants to pay more for their transportation, so at some point someone just has to step in and force the issue. California's laws don't dictate exactly how producers and consumers find their way off gasoline, they simply state that they must, and so leave it to the free market to find that path. Standardizing battery packs sounds like a terrible idea, since batteries are likely to change rather quickly in the near future, and this is a time when we want as much competition and innovation (both in technical methods and business methods) as we can muster.
- Florin_Andrei 11y ago> Standardizing battery packs sounds like a terrible idea But it would be great to standardize something. Imagine a world where my car could only burn Honda Gasoline (TM), whereas your car could only burn Toyota Gasoline (TM).
- beloch 11y ago60% of the electricity produced in California is from burning natural gas[1]. At present, switching to EV's is not going to reduce overall emissions unless an equal push is made to increase production of electricity by wind, solar, nuclear, etc.. However, the smog in urban centers like L.A. might be reduced even if overall carbon emissions aren't. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California
- TYPE_FASTER 11y agoI am really glad there are higher mileage requirements. I feel it is this impetus that has pushed the industry forward technologically. You can get a VW Golf with a 1.8T that gets over 40MPG while delivering 170hp for the cost of around $20k. Volvo's new SUV is going to get mileage in the mid to high thirties with a turbocharged and supercharged four cylinder that puts out 400hp. I don't see ICE engines going away like the article implies, especially if they can hit mileage and emissions targets like we are starting to see.
- daily_dose_420 11y agoLiberals LOL!
- S_A_P 11y agoI generally feel a strong sense of resentment when a government entity legislates for "my own good" or for the "people's own good". Whether it's to outlaw drugs that I don't use or tell me what kind of car I have to buy I don't like this. However I also most people act in their own self interest most of the time, and corporations are no different. I think things work best when there is a way to align both government and private entities. I think the way she goes about fuel economy standards is not that way. Politicians don't know the science behind electric cars or ICE cars so how can they be in a position to legislate their standards? What would CARB do if they legislated a major manufacturer to pull out of the California market? At some point that could be a viable option.