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Musk, Others Want Volkswagen To Go Electric Instead of Fixing Diesels (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Volkswagen has put itself in a tough spot. After cheating emissions standards, the company faces billions in fines and repair costs to bring those vehicles into spec and make peace with regulators. But a group of business owners, investors, and environmentalists has a different suggestion. The group, headlined by Elon Musk, sent an open letter to the California Air Resources Board outlining their solution. They want Volkswagen to be released from its obligation to fix cars already on the road, and instead require that the company substantially accelerate its rollout of zero-emission vehicles.
They want Volkswagen's money to go into manufacturing plants and R&D for zero-emission technology rather than to government-mandated fines. (Note that these investments would give Musk, in particular, another direct competitor.) The letter says, "In contrast to the punishments and recalls being considered, this proposal would be a real win for California emissions, a big win for California jobs, and a historic action to help derail climate change. The bottleneck to the greater availability of zero emissions vehicles is the availability of batteries. There is an urgent need to build more battery factories to increase battery supply, and this proposal would ensure that large battery plant and related investments, with their ensuing local jobs, would be made in the U.S. by VW."
They want Volkswagen's money to go into manufacturing plants and R&D for zero-emission technology rather than to government-mandated fines. (Note that these investments would give Musk, in particular, another direct competitor.) The letter says, "In contrast to the punishments and recalls being considered, this proposal would be a real win for California emissions, a big win for California jobs, and a historic action to help derail climate change. The bottleneck to the greater availability of zero emissions vehicles is the availability of batteries. There is an urgent need to build more battery factories to increase battery supply, and this proposal would ensure that large battery plant and related investments, with their ensuing local jobs, would be made in the U.S. by VW."
Everyone talks about how dishonest VW was. But strictly speaking, they followed the letter of the law as it was written.
Well, no. They violated the letter of the law as it was written by introducing a "defeat device", which is a device which alters the behavior specifically for the purpose of defeating the test, or software which fulfills the same purpose. This is expressly prohibited.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I imagine cars would be charged mostly over night where there is low demand anyway (non peak). Heavy electrical users are often give price breaks on electricity use during non-peak hours, - sometimes residential users can get those discounts too.
Utilities are all about reducing demand use so they don't have to build and operate as many power plants. We get a break on our summer electric bill because we allow the local utility to cycle our A/C compressor on and off during peak load times. In the 10 years or so since we did that, we've never noticed a difference. So if car charges were a real problem, utilities could offer the same price break and just cycle the chargers on and off.