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White House Wants 1M Electric Cars By 2015
coondoggie writes "The White House has outlined a wide-ranging plan for putting one million of what it calls 'advanced technology vehicles' on the road by 2015. Most observers would say that is a good start, but is it reasonably doable? The next White House budget will include a number of investments and enticements to make the goal achievable in theory. Of course, not all of the provisions are likely to make the cut."
Most observers would say that is a good start, but is it reasonably doable?
First of all I realize you just copy/pasted the first paragraph from the article but "most observers" sounds a bit like weasel words and I didn't see where in the article anyone was calling this a "good start" nor can I think of anyone who would say that. This (like a lot of them) is a pretty polarizing issue and I'd bet "most people" are going to end up claiming it to be a waste of taxpayer money or too little too late. Not a whole lot of moderation out there these days in political views.
Secondly, sure it is achievable and you don't even have to raise taxes. Shift some of the oil subsidies toward this initiative. If you're afraid of losing jobs in the oil industry, include stipulations of domestic job creation and opportunities on these investments. I think Obama already promised to shrink oil subsidies down so that over the next decade $20 billion is saved by the taxpayer -- why not use that for this? Whether or not it's going to actually achieve a desired effect, now that's the real debate. Not whether or not it's 'doable.'
My work here is dung.
That will get demand to outstrip capacity, and automakers will adjust production to compensate. Leave diesel off the tax for now so the trucking industry won't be destroyed in the process. Presto, lots of new electric cars on the roads. If that doesn't happen, the highway trust fund will be flush enough with cash to take care of just about any road infrastructure need.
If we're serious about Middle East dependencies and carbon footprint, then we need to act serious.
And who does Obama think he is, a czar from old pre-Soviet Russia? Electric cars will succeed or fail based on their utility to actual customers, not because of some cockamamie subsidy scheme.
Dog is my co-pilot.
This will result in a million diesel cars a lot faster than a million electric cars.
Add to this the ecological footprint of most electric car battery manufacturing and it's an even harder sell.
Really. Roads are paid for by taxed gas. The more gas you use, the more you pay for road improvements. It would be logical if you had metered power for charing cars that was taxed for road repairs. However I hold the much lower view of what they will want to do is to place GPS units on the cars so they can tax them by actual mileage. This then opens the door for insurance companys to track you, to be billed and ticked for speeding and general government oversite into your life. Such as "that is 4 trips to McDoanlds this week, keep it up and we will charge more for health care." Then with the foot in the door, they will go after adding GPS to regular cars and trucks.
Beyond that the "greeness" of the cars are up for debate. Considering what it takes to make a battery, what to do with them when they go bad, and how much of a toxic trouble they are in an accident. Then we can talk cost. An electric car starts at $40,000 and will need $5,000 or more in new batteries every 5 or 6 years. Add in the fact that the "power" the car uses comes from a power plant that burns coal or crude. All you have done is moved where the carbon footprint takes place at.
I find it hard to get excited by something that seems to cost more, lowers my standard of living, is no better for the environment, and takes away freedoms that I currently enjoy. All in the name of trying to NOT change the temperature of the plant when there the one thing we know is the temperature is going to go up and down like a yo-yo over time no matter what.
vi +
The energy equivalence between gas and electricity (gal to kWh) is not very interesting although I know the EPA is trying to make such an equivalence to say what the MPG equivalent value for the Leaf is. The reason that it is pointless is that efficiencies at the production end and the consumption end are different between the two energy delivery systems. So why not use a metric that roughly tracks efficiency (not counting subsidies) - cost:
If the Nissan Leaf gets 3.4 miles per kWh (http://gas2.org/2010/11/22/epa-gives-nissan-leaf-99-mpg-rating/) then those 3.4 miles costs 10 cents or 34 miles/dollar (2.9 cents/mi) assuming your 10c/kWh number.
My 2005 Prius averages around 45 mpg and gas is around $3.40 where I live, so 45/3.40 = 13.2 miles/dollar (7.5 cents/mi).
So the Leaf is 2.5 times better than the Prius on cost per mile basis. Now the cost of the Leaf's batteries must be taken into account of course, but it is at least possible that future battery technologies and gas and electric costs will result in a trade where it is cheaper to run electric cars over their life than it is to run gas cars. I sure hope so - I hate gas cars for their noise and their pollution which is never as good integrated over their lifetime as an electric car.
Except that many parts of the grid heat up during peak hours, and the engineers who designed it did so with a dependency on low power consumption at night, which would allow them to cool down. If you have a bunch of cars in an area charging at night, there won't be enough time for the transformers (etc.) to cool off before companies open shop in the morning and start heating those components up even more. Then one day, BOOM!
It's not just peak performance of the grid that matters, it's the minimum, peak, mean, and average.
Sorry, but the math is a bit off. Yes, that's the energy conversion, but keep in mind that the electric motor is about 3x as efficient as a gasoline engine, so the actual cost in terms of actually moving the car around is maybe a third of that.
Rather than keep progressing down this road, lets take away all incentive via tax.
Taxes should be for nothing more than funding the common govt functionality, and most of it should reside a the state level, since the state is closer to its citizens and can more efficiently fill their needs in a more targeted way.
But lets take ALL tax breaks away that try to iinfluence behavior. Stop child credits. Stop house deductions...get rid of all deductiions really...lets get to more a a fair or flat type (type, I'm game for some mods, not the strict definition) of tax where everyone just pays their fair share. We'd have more tax income coming in, and everyone would likely end up paying less in total taxes.
Lets to to where we use taxation ONLY to fund the govt, and lets get the govt out of the business of trying to tell me how to live and run my life!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I just heard on the news in the break room, that while the US still just barely has the top credit rating...they tell us that if we don't get the deficit under control pronto, they're gonna drop our credit rating.
Man, you think things are bad now...wait till THAT shoe drops.
I'm no economist but my take on things is: good. If that happens, the sooner the better because 1) we're not going to ever stop spending until it happens and 2) the longer we keep spending, the more exacerbated it's going to be when that "shoe drops." So do it now and get it over with, it's time for us to swallow our own medicine/reap what we've sewn/<bad metaphor here>.
... four or five years ago? I spoke with him again over Christmas and he had exactly the same warning for me. Well, when does it hit?
I do get a kick out of these "oooh boy, you just wait" style omens when it comes to the economy. A long time ago my uncle set me straight about how China is artificially keeping the yuan low compared to the dollar so they can sell us cheap crap and undercut any American company. He was all "long run this" and "crisis that." He promised me one day Wal-Mart was going to find itself on top of this massive infrastructure across the country with no cheap Chinese goods to fill its shelves with because the USA and other nations had wised up and stopped this market manipulation. That was
The fact is, countries should not be investing in our money market. We're no "habitual defaulter" like Greece but we're being very stupid with our money and we should pay for that. You might be surprised to hear an American say this but: stop investing in us. Don't reward stupidity. Don't let us keep our perceived worth artificially high via bogus credit ratings. It's just as dangerous as China's artificially low yuan.
Our deficit is the greatest shame in my eyes and the blackest mark on my generation. Starting with Reagan, continuing through every president and transcending political lines, it has gotten completely out of control. Social Security is a ticking time bomb. Our patchwork on the financial and housing crisis is also a ticking time bomb. We're on borrowed time here and I have the gut feeling we would be better off paying sooner rather than later.
My work here is dung.
This. Trucking gets use subsidies in the form of roads that rail can't match. This means our rail system sucks.