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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.
If it was diesel I would be way more interested. Why bother with a gasoline engine?
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.)
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.
I'm sure the manufacturers of diesel-electric locomotives, boats, submarines, and heavy trucks would all disagree with you.
Here in DC, we have Slug Lanes. It is informal, not run by any government which is why it actually works. Essentially, commuters wishing to use an HOV lane pick 2 people waiting at bus stops or parking lots so they can. So as a result, you do actually get cars off the roads. Of course, if the government managed it, it wouldn't work.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
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.
Typically diesels are more efficient than spark ignition engines - though not as much as it seems. Diesel fuel is more dense than gasoline so while the carbon emissions are better per mile, it is not by as much as the miles per gallon would suggest.
Typically diesels are more expensive and heavier than equivalent power spark ignition engines (for similarly advanced designs), so there is some disincentive to consumers. Diesel fuel is somewhat less available in the US.
Possibly a more serious problem is that diesels produce more non-CO2 emissions, especially particulates, than spark engines. This has gotten better over time, but modern spark engines are still cleaner.
A diesel hybrid is still a good idea - but not quite as big a win as it might seem
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.
So let me get this straight; You think that the government could never organize something like Slug Lanes, and yet the government is the one who set up the HOV lane on the highway in the first place. The government is instrumental in the smooth functioning of slug lanes!
You should consider taking a step back from your anti-government ideology and realize that just like any large organization, sometimes things are done right and sometimes they are done wrong. Government is no different from any other large bureaucracy.