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Bay Area To Install Electric Vehicle Grid
Mike writes "Recently San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland unveiled a massive concerted effort to become the electric vehicle capitol of the United States. The Bay Area will be partnering with Better Place to create an essential electric vehicle infrastructure, marking a huge step towards the acceptance of electric vehicles as a viable alternative to those that run on fossil fuels." Inhabitat.com has some conceptual illustrations and a map showing EV infrastructure, such as battery exchange stations, stretching from Sacramento to San Diego — though this is far more extensive than the Bay Area program actually announced, which alone is estimated to cost $1 billion.
Those were manufactured shortages thanks to the crooks at Enron, Duke Energy, and the sham Governor that was Gray Davis.
The problem with diesels is that the US raised the emission standards for diesel, even higher than what Europe had, as a result manufactures scaled back selling them here because they couldn't meet the requirements.
The problem isn't that SF wants to be electric-friendly, or even environmentally friendly. The problem is that they are doing it simply to cash in on a trendy idea. The union bosses responsible for building this grid will charge SF taxpayers billions to produce a sub-par grid, that will need constant repair, and that is unlikely to be utilized.
Why? Because the same people who promote electric cars, are also the people that recoil from even the word "nuclear"... and thus ensure that while the rest of the world forges ahead in power generation technology, we are stuck with 30+ year old inefficient uranium-guzzlers.
Perhaps people should consider that it's better to do things because they are the right thing, not because they are the "in thing".
"You're just substituting one energy source for another. You're not doing anything about the energy shortage."
Yes you are. It's a lot more efficient to have convert all your chemical energy into electricity at one central spot than to have millions of engines that the vehicles have to carry around with them. I believe the efficiency factor is something like 60%. Besides, there are non-chemical ways to generate electricity.
State governments, especially California, just can't afford $1B projects. But the Feds sure can. Because they are trying to counter a deflationary spiral, they are printing money as fast as they can and giving it to banks.
Compared to what they've been giving away, $1B is nothing. They really should consider throwing some of that over to CA. [It will create JOBS and reduce foreign oil dependency, Mr. Obama!]
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
At least spending a billion for this will produce something useful and will provide some jobs. It sounds like a bargain compared to $700+ billion to keep the bankers from having to move to smaller mansions.
I've lived and worked in the Bay Area. Pollution from cars is a problem. Cars are a problem.
Electric cars are not the answer. (I don't even want to imagine sitting in deadlocked traffic, heater or AC on, tunes playing, battery draining...)
Mass transit is the answer - not just BART - REAL mass transit. I cannot stress enough that if one travels to Japan and sees for oneself how fucking cool and efficient the Japanese mass rail system is - billion dollar proposals like this would die at conception.
Mass transit first - electric cars (if they're still needed, really) second.
Fuck me, America - can we try fixing problems instead of fixing symptoms - just once?!?!
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
And you're still cranking out CO2. This is about EVs (Electric Vehicles).
My Babylon
It's really so sad that "hybrids" have hijacked the public's perception of what a fuel efficient vehicle here in the US.
In Europe fuel costs 4 times as much as it does over here right now. The majority of vehicles sold in Europe are diesels. You almost never see a Prius. In fact, you'll see them ridiculed in the automotive press as an example of American idocy more often than you'll see them on the roads over there.
When my aunt stops getting checks from the government to NOT grow food on her farm, then I will start to worry about food shortages.
Why exactly is a Japanese car an example of American idocy?
11 was a racehorse
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Because they wouldnt have any profits anymore.
Much better to ask for free money. They'll probably get it too.
It's also interesting that this happened less than a year after deregulation. Doesn't disprove deregulation in theory, but 40 years of regulation worked great, deregulation worked less than a year, the utility companies are, as you said, crooks.
Deregulation is a nice theory though. Not quite as elegant as communism, but it's a nice idea.
That's how everything works in the US. Things start in the cities and then the rest of the nation eventually catches on. California has been demanding higher efficiency appliances for decades now and because of the vast purchasing power of the state manufacturers are forced to meet our demand. This in turn allows other states to have the option to purchase those more efficient appliances, though it appears most opt for the cheaper up front appliances as opposed to the long run cheaper more efficient appliances. I guess some people just don't get this whole environmental thing.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
They had to pry those EVs out of the hands of their owners because they were leasing them at a tremendous loss. The EV-1 program was done for research and to gain experience. The company subsidized every single lessee to the tune of something like 50%. When it became clear that the EV1 would never develop enough demand to be profitable, GM wasn't willing to continue massively subsidizing these people and supporting a miniscule fleet of cars simply out of the goodness of their hearts.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I have a family member that does this. I can't remember how many years it is for, but they get a yearly check for a field they planted with trees (the idea is less corn in the market makes it more profitable for those that grow corn. The check is a heck of a lot less than a good crop, but on the other side you don't have to maintain the field).
Mass transit is the answer - not just BART - REAL mass transit. I cannot stress enough that if one travels to Japan and sees for oneself how fucking cool and efficient the Japanese mass rail system is - billion dollar proposals like this would die at conception.
No. Sorry. Mass transit is part of the solution, but it is not the solution.
The problem lies in the inherent difference between mass transit and public transit and most people don't recognize the difference.
Mass transit focuses on getting mass number of people between various high density locations. These are your medium to heavy rail systems. For the Bay Area that's BART and CalTrain.
In places like Japan, where they have high population densities, it works great. There's a reason places like Tokyo, Moscow, New York, London, etc., can have fantastically efficient mass transit systems: they have the population density to deal with it.
Public transit on the other hand focuses on being a 'vehicle replacement' so people in lower density areas can actually give up their cars. This is taxies up through light rail. Fewer passengers, but more convenient and more versatile.
Bay Area geography doesn't really favor Mass Transit. It's why BART basically sucks for commuting. With the exception of MUNI linking well to BART, most of the Public to Mass links suck.
The whole electric car infrastructure is an expensive idea, and it talks to the whole "chicken and the egg" problem. Without infrastructure, electric cars are useless. Without electric cars, no one will build the infrastructure. This is actively solving the infrastructure problem ahead of the cars.
Is it a good idea? Ultimately, yes. Is it the right idea? That's a lot harder to say. A massive bay area wide fleet of on-demand bio-diesel fueled hybrid shuttle buses might be better. But who's to say? Cars are a part of US culture partially because of our geography. We live in suburbia, which is inherently tied in with car culture.
Unless your mass transit plan includes re-arranging US cities and how people live in this country, it will never be the solution.
Cheers,
Bagheera
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
I'll make it simple for you. 10 years ago car companies realized that EVs don't need as many after market parts as IC cars do. So ever since then, they have acted to prevent EVs from coming to market. Not evil but against the public good. You are blaming the consumers (who did want to buy the cars) instead of the car companies (who didn't want to sell them). Quit being intentionally dense.
For comparison: a used Prius goes for ~24K USD http://www.internetautoguide.com/usedcars/11-int/toyota/prius/index.html
a new prius goes for ~22K USD http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/
Now why would a used Prius sell for more than the new one? Because you can't find a new one to buy. They are always on back order. Really? No demand? Stick to engineering...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Just because your car is powered by electricity doesn't mean the electricity was generated without the use of fossil fuels. Might I remind the greens that most electricity in the U.S. is (unfortunately) still produced by burning coal? The same coal combustion which causes acid rain?
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch (but solar and tidal energy are as close as we'll get).
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
They require more time
Maybe. Over long distances of open highway during non-rush-hour, absolutely. Around town, false. In city, at distances under 5 miles or so, I'm usually faster than a car. Some of that is that a car might not be able to park very close to the destination...
require your wmployer have a place to change
Does your employer not provide a restroom?
require you don't need to carry much
Of course--but you should define "much". Panniers carry what I need most of the time, and some people use trailers for the really big stuff.
are more dangerous*
Completely, absolutely wrong. Or check the numbers yourself, but making claims that go against the evidence just makes you look like an idiot.
can't pick up very many people
Have you ever counted how many trips see no more than one person in the car? So use a car for the 10% of trips in which you need to pick up someone who doesn't have his own transportation. Would you like to drive and park on roads with 10% of the traffic that you see now?
can't get groceries
Bullshit. Where do you get these half-baked ideas? 95% of my grocery runs are by bike, to a store about 5 miles away. The only reason I tend to take longer than I do when driving is that I take a scenic route because biking is fun.
impracticable in an emergency
Can you be any more specific? Also, please take into account the fact that the more people bike instead of driving, the fewer emergencies there are.
require good health.
They also create it, in a bunch of ways, while cars destroy it both passively (no exercise) and actively (pollution, stress, accidents). How is this a problem? Also, as I noted, the Bay Area is largely flat, and therefore biking does not require especially good health after all.
Just how fat are you, anyway??
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Let's add some more facts to this discussion.
You talk about GM refusing to sell, service, or support EV1s outside of the tiny corner where they were running their project. Yet you completely ignore why they did this. I can only surmise that you are either being disingenuous or, more likely, you simply don't know.
So allow me to inform you. The batteries in the EV1 were extremely sensitive to cold, which ruled out most of the US due to the phenomenon we call "winter". There were also concerns about how they would respond to humidity, which ruled out all of the remaining places which get humid. Take a map of the US, eliminate all of the places which ever get cold or humid, and what remains is essentially GM's approved EV1 area.
This alone should tell you that the EV1 was not ready for full-scale sales and production. But it goes a lot farther than this. The EV1's design wasn't up to the rigorous safety requirements that any production car must meet. As a research project this made a great deal of sense. As a production car, obviously this simply could not work.
GM spent a billion dollars on the EV1, and leased them for half of what they would have charged if they had been trying to make money at it. A production-ready car that was up to production safety standards probably would have cost at least another billion dollars to design and certify, so jack that price up even more.
Of course GM never intended to sell any EV1s. That's pretty well implied by "research project". It was intended to give them experience for building an eventual production model electric car. The experience it gave them was, alas, that a production model would be impractically expensive. The truth of this should be obvious given that no car maker has ever built such a thing in the decade since the EV1 project was cancelled. Perhaps GM is colossally stupid. Given how much money they've been losing that proposition is pretty reasonable. But are all of them so stupid that they won't build electric cars even though everybody wants to buy them? No, they are not. Nobody is building electric cars because technology and demand simply haven't met yet.
I have no idea why you're comparing the EV1 to the Insight and Prius. The Insight and Prius are hybrid cars. That is, they have a gasoline engine and a small set of batteries to augment it, as an efficiency measure. The EV1 was a fully electric car, which is an utterly different kind of machine altogether, one which simply was not (and is just barely getting there now) ready for prime time.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
So....
Once I buy the car, it's my problem. As long as GM clearly says "no more parts, these are one-offs" when I sign the check, what's to support?
It's not much different than buying any other discontinued car (such as ones whose builders are out of business).
I understand the desire to stop the program at the corporate level, but they could have set a wildly high price and let some collectors keep them. Could also have just gifted them to some universities (although, I can understand that such an action might reveal technologies to the competition).
Get our screwed-up tort system fixed and perhaps this stuff could have happened. As it stands now, having a few hundred experimental vehicles on the road is a tremendous liability risk. GM was willing to take that risk when it was part of a program designed to lead to a production-worthy car, but once that program ended the risk became unacceptable.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Because the same people who promote electric cars, are also the people that recoil from even the word "nuclear"
No, we just recoil at the way Bush pronounces it. We have no problem with nuclear energy.
The real problem is that good reactors are expensive. People don't want to invest so much in infrastructure because it's "socialist".