I 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?
What 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.
The 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.
Serious 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?
Yes 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.
The 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.
Well, 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.
Stationary 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.
Generally, 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.
The 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.
A 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...
Since 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.
Beyond 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.
Yes, 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.
- 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.
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.
An 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.
This 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.
It'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.
Mandating production of something people don't want does not make people buy it, that's true.
But mandating production does make research happen, which drives prices down on the thing you want, and makes it closer to marketable.
And mandating sales means that the company has to discount it until demand gets high enough. As long as it's still worth it to them overall to do business in the state, that works just fine in the market.
This is subsidizing, it's just making the car companies pay for it more directly than a tax.
But it works about the same as a tax on non-electric cars that pays for electric car incentives.
Emergency 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.
Sadly 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.
Maybe, 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.
I 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.
California 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.
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".
That 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:
I'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.
I 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.
Well 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
He 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.
I 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?
1. "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.
So, I think you are trying to make an argument that opposes these more stringent emissions requirements (correct me if I'm wrong), but I could just as easily read these the other way...
1. Chrysler's fleet is so inefficient that they have to make one-off cars to bring up their average, losing money on each one. This regulation is single-handedly forcing them to improve their fleet or suffer massive hemorrhaging from the electric car mandates. Seems like it's working...
2. Gas costs more in California, making people buy more efficient cars, drive less, and seek mass-transit options, reducing traffic and encouraging increased density. Maybe they'll buy a Fiat 500e?
3. Fossil fuels have helped us get where we are, and now energy is so ubiquitous that we have the luxury of looking for more efficient/less-emissive options...
Looks like things are shaping up pretty well to me!
60% 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.
[+] [-] stickfigure|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielweber|10 years ago|reply
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...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/science/19carb.html?_r=0
[+] [-] Animats|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rubbingalcohol|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kwhitefoot|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smarterchild|10 years ago|reply
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
[2] http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-lif...
[+] [-] 67726e|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] stephengillie|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spacehome|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baldeagle|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ankaios|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] runamok|10 years ago|reply
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml
[+] [-] Gravityloss|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] murbard2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bluthru|10 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ajmarsh|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] atlantic|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeromeflipo|10 years ago|reply
[0] https://youtu.be/mURbzh9t0_0?t=5m40s
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] downandout|10 years ago|reply
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|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Dylan16807|10 years ago|reply
But mandating production does make research happen, which drives prices down on the thing you want, and makes it closer to marketable.
And mandating sales means that the company has to discount it until demand gets high enough. As long as it's still worth it to them overall to do business in the state, that works just fine in the market.
This is subsidizing, it's just making the car companies pay for it more directly than a tax.
But it works about the same as a tax on non-electric cars that pays for electric car incentives.
[+] [-] yndoendo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhaps0dy|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] femto113|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] S_A_P|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] DannyBee|10 years ago|reply
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_...
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".
[+] [-] nickpsecurity|10 years ago|reply
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_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-C...
...then guess what a 2000+% increase of that would entail.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dylan16807|10 years ago|reply
Not that I think hydrogen is better than batteries.
[+] [-] gertef|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TYPE_FASTER|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Shivetya|10 years ago|reply
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|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] marcosdumay|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angrybits|10 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure the solution to that is clean public transportation, no?
[+] [-] e28eta|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] owen_griffiths|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkteison|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SovietDissident|10 years ago|reply
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-h... [1] http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2015-2-march-april/green-li... [2] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rar...
[+] [-] OrwellianChild|10 years ago|reply
1. Chrysler's fleet is so inefficient that they have to make one-off cars to bring up their average, losing money on each one. This regulation is single-handedly forcing them to improve their fleet or suffer massive hemorrhaging from the electric car mandates. Seems like it's working...
2. Gas costs more in California, making people buy more efficient cars, drive less, and seek mass-transit options, reducing traffic and encouraging increased density. Maybe they'll buy a Fiat 500e?
3. Fossil fuels have helped us get where we are, and now energy is so ubiquitous that we have the luxury of looking for more efficient/less-emissive options...
Looks like things are shaping up pretty well to me!
[+] [-] beloch|10 years ago|reply
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California
[+] [-] davidgerard|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daily_dose_420|10 years ago|reply