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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
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.
California and green have little to do with each other. I just moved out here to take a job, and I was thinking I'd like to buy a diesel as my next vehicle, since to my way of thinking a diesel is far greener than a moderate hybrid like the Prius (the Volt is a different animal). Plus the low-end torque is great, as is the possibility of converting it to alternative fuels. Much to my surprise, I learned that you can't even buy a diesel car out here.
From what I can tell, California is about regulations that make people who don't know much feel good.
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!
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.