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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.
Why does the White House need (sticks pinky to mouth) ONE MILLION electric cars?
www.clarke.ca
to match?
Provide me w/ a chance to fold the solar cell garage into a home improvement loan and it becomes a lot more affordable, and having the solar cells eases the strain which charging so many electric vehicles would add to the electric grid.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Ive seen the way people drive when they are constrained by gravity. I would hate to see the way people drive when they could drive anywhere they chose. Cars over your house, cars in the woods, cars over lakes. Nuhh huh, you can keep your flying cars.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
There won't be a million people left in the country who can afford them in 2015!
I'm referring to the Mayan Apocalypse of course, the economic recover is totally working.
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.
If it’s done right there would not be any strain.
You can have the car charge during off peak hours. i.e. at night. This would add little strain to the infrastructure. Electricity also tends to be cheaper then. [Once again, off peak hours]. You just need to make it easy for the consumer so the plug it in when they come home put it does not start charging until 2 a.m.
I think that Siemens even research using car batteries as a distributive back up power source. Now that would require some upgrades to our gird.
Add to this the ecological footprint of most electric car battery manufacturing and it's an even harder sell.
I'd love an all-electric vehicle.
Except for a couple of things (I think).
I drive a hybrid car now, and in the LOVELY Minnesota winter, the batteries just DIE. I'm not kidding, they've had to be replaced. Even when they work my mileage almost halves in the winter. This makes me a it worried about an all-electric vehicle. A surprise "Hey your vehicle's range just dropped form 100 miles to 50 miles with no notice!!!!" is NOT a good thing.
Second, I want to be able to plug the thing into a regular ol' outlet.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
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 +
Everybody knows that the Republican Borrow and Spend technique is the only fiscally responsible choice. Paying down debt is un-American. Only a deadbeat pays principle. And how dare he tax rich people on parity with the poor! The poor exist to make the lives of the rich better! Damn him for creating more jobs in two years than Bush the Lesser created in four, maybe eight. And meeting 84% of his election promises in two years? That's a some sort of Kenyan Konspiracy!
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
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.
Your electric car is not going to waste 70% of that fuel though.
Cars in your house, in the woods and in the lakes is what you mean, I guess.
-- Cheers!
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.
My dad said we should add 10c per gallon to the gas tax every year, in 1991 after the first Gulf War. If we had done that we would have gas prices comparable to Europe and thus have the more efficient vehicle fleet they have. Putting a huge tax on gas will get you voted out of office in the next election, put a slow but steady tax in and it will just change buying habits over time.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Leave diesel off the tax for now so the trucking industry won't be destroyed in the process.
Here's the thing - if we're serious about cutting carbon emissions and oil dependency, a lot of the trucking industry needs to be on the long-term chopping block. If you want to transport goods in a way that minimizes the use of fuel, you'd do something like:
1. Put everything in standard shipping containers so you can easily shift it between different transport methods.
2. If it's coming from a foreign country or island territory, ship it to a convenient port.
3. Take it from the port via rail to the rail yard nearest its destination, unless its destination is near enough to the port that that's closer than any rail yard.
4. Truck it from the rail yard or port to its destination.
There's absolutely no good reason for trucks to have to transport things long distances. The reason it's common now has a lot to do with the highway system externalizing the cost of building and maintaining long-distance trucking's transport network. To fix that, you'd need to go for higher diesel taxes.
I am officially gone from
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.........
The difference is in energy conversion efficiency. An internal combustion engine is about 25% efficient. Add in mechanical losses and gasoline refining/transport costs and you're at about 15% of the energy from the oil that comes out of the ground to drive the wheels of your car.
Electricity has about 40% efficiency from a coal plant (higher for nuclear and renewables), 95% transmission efficiency to a person's house, and about 80% for battery conversion and electric motor efficiency. So overall about 30% of the energy from the coal drives the wheels of your car. Roughly twice as efficient as an ICE. Also note that the price you pay per kWh already takes into account the losses from the first two steps. So on a $ per mile basis, electric is about 5x cheaper than an ICE, assuming $3.40/gal gas.
The same reason is why hydrogen generated from electrolysis is a dead end as a fuel. You're talking about 40% efficiency from coal plant to electricity, and (optimistically) 65% efficiency from electrolysis, then 70% for a hydrogen fuel cell, and 95% electric motor efficiency. Overall you're at 17% of the coal's energy driving your car's wheels, which is pretty much the same as existing ICE vehicles. Factor in the storage and transport problems along with lack of infrastructure, and hydrogen is worse than oil. It only becomes viable if we can get nuclear or renewables to generate most of our electricity, and realistically, only nuclear has a chance of that in the next 20+ years.
(DIsclaimer: All numbers are ballpark what I remember off the top of my head. They may not be exact.)
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.
Where are they going to _park_ 1 million cars in, at, or near the white house?
As a Tennessean, I think it is doable. They just need four million concrete blocks.
This. Trucking gets use subsidies in the form of roads that rail can't match. This means our rail system sucks.
You describe Cash for Clunkers as "wildly successful." First, you do understand that this was Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's characterization of the program, right? And that Ray LaHood is the political appointee with the single greatest interest in painting the program in a positive light?
Economists have a different understanding of Cash for Clunkers. It was "wildly successful" among the upper-middle-class types who actually used the program; and a raw deal for everyone else. Economists Amir Sufi (Cal Berkley) and Atif Mian (Chicago) studied the program extensively. They found that ultimately, the program simply accelerated the purchases of middle and upper class types who *would have soon purchased new vehicles anyway.*
The unintended side effect was taking hundreds of thousands of perfectly usable used vehicles off the market, decreasing supply and so increasing the price for people in the market for a used vehicle -- i.e., the poor. Used car prices went up an average of 10 percent.
And of course, the actual money used to subsidize the new vehicles didn't come from thin air: It was *taken from everyone else* -- i.e., other taxpayers.
Ultimately, it was Basqiat's Broken Window Fallacy writ large. *Destroying things* -- whether they be windows or old cars -- does not create wealth. All we did was destroy the value inherent in the used cars, then create the illusion of "wild success" by transferring some wealth from group A (public) to group B (program participants).
So the "wild success" thing is a tautology. Of COURSE it was successful -- among the people it benefited. That's like saying Jesse James' bank-robbery spree was "wildly successful." For Jesse, you bet. For the bank's customers, not so much.
- aj