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Chevy Volt Not Green Enough For California
thecarchik writes "The first two plug-in cars from major manufacturers will go head-to-head on warranties and lease prices: $350 a month for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, $349 for the 2011 Nissan Leaf. Now the choice shifts to other measures, including electric and overall range, as well as the plug-in perks that states like California offer to early adopters to encourage them to opt for electric cars. This is where it gets interesting. While California loves the Nissan Leaf, current regulations deny Chevy Volt buyers two significant perks: a $5,000 rebate, and permission to drive solo in HOV Lanes."
Apparently California can't afford to pay government employees, but can afford to give money to people who buy electric cars?
The leaf is not a hybrid, the volt is. Seems pretty simple here folks.
HOV is for CONGESTION not for ENVIRONMENT. This is why for many years you could not build an extra lane on an interstate highway without building at least one of them as HOV. Of course, this so-called regulation was promptly disregarded in the New York City metropolitan area along whose left lanes on I-287 you can see the abandoned HOV signs and faded diamonds on their new left lanes.
But, seriously folks, HOV was always intended for congestion relief, not "clean/special fuel." This is why Virginia fights the hybrid-on-HOV law every time it expires. HOV was not originally intended to have anything to do with the environment, just congestion.
Kriston
This takes away any sort of "green" cred the vehicle had. Whether it's actually true what Calif. believes or not isn't the point. People will PERCEIVE that the Volt isn't "green" regardless of where it's sold in the US.
Sucks to be them.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I didn't think there were any series-hybrids on the market right now! Want!
In the 90's the GM and the oil companies colluded to trick the California Air Resources Board to scrap the EV1 pilot project. Now they make this piece of crap hybrid, which is supposed to be it's successor. Now California has learned their lesson, and rejected the Volt. Good for them. Fuck GM.
Assuming that introducing market distortions is, in fact, desirable(and, let's be frank, those already exist in vast numbers and a variety of forms for fossil fuels, roads, etc. so anybody whining about it being a liberal envirohippy conspiracy can spare me...) it seems like attempts to classify by "type" are far inferior to attempts to classify by efficiency.
All you have to do is calculate an adequately accurate conversion factor between a few fuel sources, based on what variables you care about(ie. co2 emmissions, foreignness, renewability, presumably a weighted average of some kind.) Then you could simply slap an "efficiency under expected conditions" number on each vehicle, without regard for how it achieves it, and go from there. Who cares if it is gasoline, hybrid, electric, diesel, alien tech, when we could know how efficient it is at moving from point A to point B at the lowest cost across the variables that concern us?
(If one were feeling really radical, one could simply apply a system of Pigovian taxes and/or credits to the fuel sources, and let car buyers follow their economic incentives from there; but I'm guessing that that'll be a non-starter.)
you need to stop believing those "documentaries" you've been watching.........
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1896
According to GM spokespersons Robert Peterson in Michigan and Shad Balch in California, GM decided in 2007 when it committed to series production of the Volt, to not seek California Air Resources Board AT-PZEV certification. Instead, the decision was made to certify the car in all 50 United States. ARB certification would have required, both GM executives explained, additional testing and since California's air quality regulators had yet to figure out how to classify the Volt, GM felt it was more important to continue the accelerated development program and get the car out by the Fall of 2010 then wait for ARB to come up with a way to categorize what will be for many drivers essentially an all-electric car, while for other who driver further distances each day, a hybrid.
Toyota is where Chevy is not, i see some larger problems here. this seems like prejudice against Chevy on the states part, CA is also using its incentives to steer the EV market. what part of the benefits made in USA do they not understand? this is a time where we need to reduce our amount of imports. whats next scare you into thinking you will get cancer, cause California knows something... I think they have been out in the sun too long!
Are we going to pretend that the General Motors EV1 never existed, now?
As Frances Cairncross and others have argued, the best way to figure out this whole issue is a carbon tax. Tax fuels based on their carbon content. Refund it back through payroll tax credits (or other means) for lower income people who will feel more of an impact. Direct proceeds to mass transit or basic R&D for fuel efficiency/alternative fuels/etc. Then get the hell out of the way and let the free market work its magic. People saying, "Man, $5/gallon is expensive, maybe I should buy a more fuel efficient car or take the bus" is a hell of a lot more effective than arguing over whether this car or that car should qualify for this tax credit or that HOV lane permission.
I don't know why people don't like this. Conservatives can feel all warm and fuzzy about the free market and liberals can feel all warm and fuzzy about encouraging people to make the most environmentally friendly choices. Warm fuzzies all around.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
After over three years of living in California, the HOV lane policy continues to drive me nuts.
Firstly, why should driving a more fuel efficient car give one the ability to drive in the "high occupancy" vehicle lane? If the intention of this lane is to give incentive for people to carpool, then this makes no sense. Further, the state stopped giving out these passes. It essentially created an elitist class of early adopter Prius/Honda Insight purchasers that get to use this lane. So, if the legislature decided it wanted to change the intended purpose of the HOV lane to also incentivise the purchasing of more fuel efficient cars, it has failed there as well. It seems beyond unfair to me to take publicly funded roads and give such a small percentage of drivers, who bought the right car at the right time, special lane privileges for eight hours a day.
Second of all, I remain unconvinced that HOV lanes actually increase carpooling. People I know who live reasonably close together, and work at the same business, usually do carpool. But the fact is that many people are not geographically close enough, or on similar schedules to co-workers to make carpooling make sense. I suspect that most of the people I see in the HOV lane on the 101 just happened to be making a trip somewhere together, which is much different than carpooling on a daily basis. A related point is that signs currently list a car with "2 or more occupants" as HOV lane acceptable. The rule SHOULD be 2 (or I'd argue 3) or more LICENSED DRIVERS. The many moms I see driving their kids around in the HOV lane are hardly taking a car off the road, now are they? That is unless the driving age has been lowered to 10 without me noticing.
Finally, the real reason this all bugs me, is the endgame: helping the environment. I see two arguments. Referring specifically to giving Priuses, or Leafs, or Volts access to the lane - The owners of all of them still own a car, and are still driving somewhere, just like the rest of us. In many cases, it is better for the environment to keep the car we have rather than purchase a new one. Last I read, a large portion of the environmental impact of a car lies just in its manufacture. My second argument is from obervation. I've seen many instances on a four lane highway, with the fourth lane being the HOV lane, where it was mostly not occupied, meanwhile the other three lanes were moving at a crawl. Wouldn't it be better to open the lane up to all and give the cars a chance to operate in their more efficient highest gear rather than polluting at a bumper to bumper snail's pace?
I really believe that HOV lanes in general are a flawed concept, that unfortunately are around forever, because who wants to be the politician trying to get elected lobbying against them? Talk about fodder for your candidate. You might as well argue we end the war on drugs.
And all these people really need to travel back and forth all the time between those points because of ...why? Really, fuck-ing why? How come no one brings this up there at all, is it an "inconvenient truth"? Why do they need either expensive upgrade at this time, alleged "mass" transit or "private" transit, just to keep burning some form of energy, go to lunch someplace else, "go shopping", or what? How about Californians realize they got so used to making huge money during two really bogus back to back boom and bust cycles (dot com and real estate churning) that they became obscene travel energy hogs, and a lot of this travel is just 'because they can", no different from someone driving his hummer to the end of the driveway to the mailbox..
Why not just, ya know, stop being "green" hypocrites and cut back on excessive travel in the first place, or in other words, be responsible and drop demand? Then you wouldn't need to spend these huge sums on any of those projects, the existing infrastructure would be "enough", with much cheaper normal maintenance. Is a really unnecessary trip in an electric car all that "green"? How about the same really unnecessary trip with "mass transit" some boondoggle high speed train, or worse, flying in some atmospheric kerosene exhaust spewing jet? When is jet travel *ever* "green"? Never, near as I can see, absolutely never.
And California as "high tech"? Prove it! Why do they still have millions commuting to go sit in offices in the internet age? Shouldn't they be showing the world this isn't necessary now? All those silicon valley high tech computer places, Google, Apple.., all that "we are just so gosh darn special" brags everyone else hears over and over again all the time.. so why aren't they showing the way that physical commuting, using any form of energy burning transportation, isn't really all that necessary anymore for really a lot of people? Why aren't they leading the world in getting good ultra high speed fiber to every residence and business in the state?
Wouldn't that be cheaper, greener and actually more effective than either the road and airport upgrade, or the whizz bang super high speed train alleged "upgrade"? All I am seeing is them sitting there all smug and "green" all the time, and they are the biggest energy hogs in the nation still. Plus water hogs. Live in a desert, and just demand the rest of the nation provide them with all the water they can evaporate away, "just because" they are California and somehow "special", and always seek to dictate to the rest of the nation how to think and act, "follow our lead"! BS, they are energy hogs, electric cars or high speed trains, regular gas hogs or flying around to go "do lunch" in some other city, it doesn't matter, never sit still or enjoy where you are, always have to "go someplace else". That's almost a freaking disease, and it certainly is some form of harmful obsession that is ingrained in their culture now. So ingrained, no one there can see it. Obsessive compulsive travel junkies.
I've you've ever been to the sf bay area during rush hour, most commuters would give their left nut for the ability to drive in HOV lanes. This will be /huge/ - the volt, with it's integrated range extending gas engine seems like a better idea than the all-electric leaf, but the market value of a HOV sticker, even without the rebates has got to be five or ten grand.
CA was bought and sold to Asia years ago. That GM, almost entirely from the US, didn't feel the need to pay to play isn't exactly a shock.
sorry for being Captain Obvious again but plug in hybrids use electricity and until California goes to green or renewable power plants using windmills, water turbines, geothermic energy, solar cells and the like most power plants are coal burning which is of course more CO2 being released into the environment that SUVs put out and give you less gas mileage than an economy car so of course it wasn't green enough for California.
Wait until Marice Strong finishes making deals in China to make the Cherry series of cars, really cheap, uses parts via designs stolen from Chevy and illegal and IP violations in the USA, EU, and Canada, but China does not care. Gives off more emissions than three SUVs yet claims to be green tech anyway even if it is not a plug in hybrid and just a normal car with a normal motor based on stolen designs and such a poor quality at a low price that in order to sell it in the USA would have to bribe many politicians and government inspectors and the like to sell it in the USA as a $4000 car with 16 MPG and exhaust so bad you can see the black smoke come out of it and hard to breathe near it, and about as green as a watermelon's insides. But don't worry Strong will sell carbon credits to you at a high price to offset the carbon it emits which averages out to at least $10,000 to $15,000 a year to cover the CO2 emissions so then it really is a green tech just as much as George W. Bush and Sarah Palin are liberals and atheists with an impossible 356 IQ level and 9000 years of power thanks to the Time Cube!
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Best quote of the article...
"Even worse, Sexton notes, is a bizarre paradox created by the AT-PZEV requirement: A car (Prius) that must use its engine on the freeway will get HOV-Lane access, while the Volt--which can run on battery power at highway speeds--will not."
California is full of idiots who keep electing uber-idiots to office.
Sorry, this is a clear case of typical short-sightedness of politicians. They pass legislation without thinking half a thought about it (heck they pass it without reading it). The result is stupid stuff like this.
(ie: crux of the problem, the Volt's motor is NOT low enough emission for California's liking. So they totally dismiss the fact that said motor will run far less often than an average motor.)
If they passed the law based on an avg. miles per year and the waste emitted on a yearly basis, the Volt would easily make the muster. This is akin to the problem some states had with the Prius. People could not register their Prius' because they could not pass the state emission tests. Because the testing equipment was incompatible with a hybrid vehicles operation. So wait, we have a cleaner, more fuel efficient vehicle but can't register it because of EMISSIONS testing. WTF.)
Let's not even get into the fact that my Prius must run the motor for a few minutes, wasting gas, in order to warm up the catalytic converter. Thus, if I am taking a 5 minute drive down the street. I have to emit extra pollutants thanks to environmental regulations. Our government should have made an exception to having to have the catalytic converter warmed up, and allowed for a gradual warming.
Just stupidity....worse, we elected this stupidity.
Guess that makes us (Americans) stupid!
IDIOT.....
Stop watching hackumentaries.
EV1 was NOT viable for U.S. market. You want proof of that? Look at the Honda Insight which was capable of getting 75mpg. It was a similar design (2 seater, not-sporty). It had three significant differences:
1. It could be refueled and continued with driving in a matter of minutes, versus hours.
2. It cost around $20,000 versus $60,000-$120,000.
3. It had all the current safety equipment required by law for a production car. The EV1 did not. And the added weight to add it would have resulted in the vehicle's range being drastically reduced.
--
Now, what was the result of Honda's Insight? Oh, that's right. It lost money. And in it's final year it sold a whopping 350 vehicles and was pulled from the market. And that was a vehicle that was a fraction of the cost of the EV1, and had none of it's limitations or drawbacks except for being a 2-seater.
The result, proof that the EV1 was "non-viable" as a production vehicle.
Changing a low rpm to a high rpm only requires a simple gear. That surely is no high tech thing.
The problem would be more that Americans (and Japanese) are not used to diesel.
Also there might be relative less gain for a hybrid diesel by running it a at constant speed than for hybrid gasoline.
And there is a money thing. A Diesel engine currently is more expensive than a gasoline egine. Adding the price of diesel + electric might just make it too expensive (compared to...).
If you don't want to believe me, that's fine. But the information is out there for those who are willing to read it.
"That stupid documentary" is only two or three sides of a multi-faceted problem.
For anyone to say that ANY SOLELY electric car is unviable for the North American market is a moron... and the consumers who still choose to pay for gas are too.
This isn't about the EV1. This is about GM shooting themselves in the foot by screwing around with the government.
Well, let's see, you don't like it when we say the obvious: Mass Transportation. We hear the excuses it doesn't work there because the cities are to big.
Well, the cities are too big because most of the Americans wants a house for themselves (their family), and a grass lawn where they can make nice barbecues but take 1 ton of water a year to keep green. Come to Europe and take a look around. Practically no-one in a big city has a house for themselves, we all live in apartments. If you really want an house, well you have to move to the countryside. Where there is plenty of space and few people and you can drive your cars in normal roads. You gas is way to cheap there, and you got used to it. In fact you got so used that it's not enough to keep driving around ... you have to drive around in huge cars, or SUV's.
In a normal city, public transportation works. If you can't have metro everywhere, you get bus lines. But of course, that only works, if people actually live together, not if the house are so big and so separated that the BUS has to stop every 10 houses to pick up and drop people. Also, if you see in Europe, even in big cities, like Amsterdam, Madrid, Paris or even London (although London seems to be the least of the bunch), people actually live in the centre of the city. The centre is not just shops/restaurants/cinemas, no, there is people there ... but again, people living in apartment blocks.
That is the real problem you have. No mater how good are the cars, how good are the roads. If you continue building your cities this way, you will always need more and more roads and have more and more cars because it will be impossible to provide mass transportation to everyone.
I’m waiting for the day that next of kin are given a tax break for family that commit suicide under the premise of reducing their carbon footprint.
Just put in a federal hybrid allowance into the ISTEA legislation that funds interstate highways (and HOV lanes)..
Of course, 10th Amendment, but we did pay for those roads with federal taxes, or else they wouldn't be subject to ISTEA..
Finally some reason! Where are my mod points when I need them?
This takes away any sort of "green" cred the vehicle had.
The thing costs $41,000 which is an average family's yearly earnings in the US.
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to make $41,000 if you're not the Fed, whether that money is genearated directly by the buyer or through his contractors/suppliers/employees.
For this money you could buy and gas three families with new Honda Fits to replace their old vehicles.
Economics is hard - harder still when there's a political agenda behind perceived brand values, and triply so when the government owns the brand.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Come to Europe and take a look around. Practically no-one in a big city has a house for themselves, we all live in apartments. If you really want an house, well you have to move to the countryside. Where there is plenty of space and few people and you can drive your cars in normal roads.
In North America, many people with yards work with their hands on various projects.. I spend my weekends in the garage either working on my boat or my vehicles. I have old vehicles which I maintain/upgrade myself. I don't buy a new vehicle every 5 years. In europe (I've spent a lot of time in Germany, Austria, Sweden), few people have anywhere to work on stuff and so when something breaks, like their car, they have to take it to a mechanic or buy a new one. Friends of mine in one of the aforementioned countries, pooled their resources and purchased a boat. However, the boat needs a lot of maintenance which requires expensive covered storage. Whenever they go to work on their boat, they have to transport a lot of heavy tools and supplies in backpacks on the subway. To buy more supplies, they have to call a taxi to take them to the marine chandlery. It was an exercise in futility and they sold the boat. They no longer try to work with their hands. So it's back to a life of working out at the gym and hanging out at the pub...
Sure, it's a single datapoint... My point is that there's a certain difference in lifestyle.. I go stir-crazy when I go to Europe to work for 6 weeks in an executive apartment.
Gas prices 10 years ago were about a buck a gallon. Now it's $3+, that's a 300 percent increase. Are you broke yet?
Tons of our tax dollars go to subsidize the oil industry. Jack up the gas tax, kill CAFE, quit subsidizing oil, and I'll be happy.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I'm convinced that if California weren't so scenic, enjoyed such appealing weather, and didn't have established industries, making it difficult to pick up and leave, the state would be a wasteland by now. All those idiots in government may have the best of intentions, but that doesn't always translate to what's best for the state and it's people.
If they had any common sense they would be looking at this Volt, taking note that it's made by an American automaker and a significant portion of it is manufactured here, features all the right ingredients for being a clean vehicle, doing so in an ingenious fashion, and make the effort to have it qualify as a zero-emissions vehicle. Or, at least compromise for some partial benefit. How about a modicum of national pride here?
CA is too big to fail so the Feds step in?
This would in almost every legal sense demote California from State to Territory or perhaps Protectorate. As such, they would at best qualify for a single non-voting representative in Congress (No Senators at all). Also no votes in the Electoral College. As this would disenfranchise around 10% of the entire population of th ecountry, expect trouble.
If chicanery is used to preserve CA as a state expect much more widespread trouble as the folks in the rest of the country have no particular desire to pay extra taxes to fund the bloated pensions of the parasites infesting California's public servant labor unions (teachers and prison guards for example). Nor will we be thrilled at paying the additional Leaf subsidy.
So, in keeping with a rather dismal view of CA's future, I would expect that the Leaf will get every benefit the political class in CA can heap upon them while anything with an internal combustion engine will wind up being further penalized to help pay for the subsidies being given to the Leaf.
But the real reason the pols are encouraging folks to buy the Leaf is because the politcal class recognizes that folks who drive a Leaf will not be able to pack up and leave - not with a max range of 100 miles followed by a very long recharge cycle. It could take them many days to make it from the coast to the eastern border of the state - assuming they can find charging stations at all. In short, if you buy a Leaf, you have just self-defined yourself as a serf - actually a slave - as you have renounced the "Right of Departure" all serfs enjoyed.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
The measure for the carpool lane should be miles*people per gallon. Say the limit for the HOV is set at 55 MMPG. This means you can only drive alone if your car gets 55 miles a gallon or better. If your car gets 27.5 MPG, you only need two people in it. Everyone else needs three.
If your car qualifies for occupancy 2 in the HOV, your annual tag is a different color. If it qualifies for occupancy ONE in the HOV (though how to classify plug-in hybrids remains an issue), you get yet another sticker. If you have no special sticker, you need three people in the car.
The greatest advantage would be that no extra stickers need be sent out -- you'd still get one every year just like you do now. It would just carry an additional meaning. Every year, if the MMPG threshold needs tweaking, it doesn't mean having to wait for a bunch of stickers to expire. If people want to take advantage of a rule change mid-year, they'd have to pay for a new sticker. Otherwise they wait till registration rolls around.
Optionally, each car could be tagged with its highway mileage when initially registered. Then each individual highway could have a different limit as appropriate. If the HOV lanes are barren, bump the limit down. If they're as bad as the other lanes, bump it up. We already have the electronic signs all over the place, it wouldn't take new hardware.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
>What if our autobahn, like the German Autobahn, prohibited passing on the right, thus[sic]
> making the far right lane the slowest lane and [sic] the far left lane the fastest lane,
> eliminating large differences in speed between adjacent lanes of traffic?
----
How does slowing down the entire highway to stay behind the visitors traveling 30MPH in the
far left [fast] lane help anything?
That's simply unworkable.
As long as you have police who prioritize giving _speeding_ tickets over ticketing for violating the state LAW of "slower traffic
stays right", this won't work.
I've never seen nor heard of anyone getting a ticket for not moving over to the right when they are going too slow. It's a state law which is never enforced. The situation may be influenced by the fact that increasingly, many traffic laws are created with a profit motive in mind, and have little or nothing to do with public safety. THAT should be illegal...but hey..it is capitalism at work -- if there isn't a law against using the legal system to make money, you can bet that the various levels of government will start using the legal system to make money.
this whole thread has produced two most excellent new quotes that i need to remember:
"From what I can tell, California is about regulations that make people who don't know much feel good."
&
"I used to think government was stupid. Now I believe they do stupid things on purpose to ruin us."
Beautiful.