flacaltenn
Diamond Member
I'm crushed.......but the facts do tend to stand on their own
Look jlm -- If it was such a great investment, we have adequate energy to support it on the grid, and there WAS no MIXED MESSAGE about restricting build-out of additional electricity and the grid ----
Why don't we cut the subsidies and just GIVE the Post Office an all-electric EV fleet??
Start with California because they've already got wildly screwed up mandates for meeting EV deployments. And their lights are barely on anymore anyway...
Now THAT my friend, is a very good question. The issues that I have witnessed wrt adding to the grid is not a question of if ( I think the answer there has been "yes, do add") but HOW to do so in a manner that will be ecologically neutral or ecologically friendly. I see lots of discussion about adding hydro, wind power, nuclear and other replenishable methods of power generation at the same time that I see discussion about taking coal based power generation offline.
I do not know all the incremental details around this, as the power industry is not one that interests me. The automotive industry, however, interests me greatly and allows me to be able to pay DTE Energy for what I take out of the grid.
People are generally confused about the diff between what runs the electricity grid and what runs our transport. You're not, but oil has little to do with electric power. And so-called Alternatives are inadequate to move transport needs to electricity. That's why I favor fuel cells and hydrogen for transport. That way hydrogen production from wind/solar CAN work because there's a storage mechanism to overcome sketchy and unreliable performance.
As for the subsidies.....they are not specific to specific products. The point of the subsidies is to energize the car buying public to consider electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. It's sort of a chicken and egg thing.
- The development of clean energy cars will not continue unless people buy enough cars to give car companies incentive to build them.
- People won't buy clean energy cars until there is infrastructure to charge them and the prices come down
- Infrastructure providers won't build infrastructure until they know people will buy cars to use the infrastructure
- Prices won't come down unless automakers have some reason to believe they can produce and market clean energy vehicles without taking a cash bath, so we're back to the beginning of the circular argument.
Funny how there were no subsidies or adequate infrastructure for TV or Cell Phones and yet they are still building out infrastructure for those two. That's why I suggested canning the subsidies and instead DEMONSTRATING viability by SHOWING the market that it can work. Not much infrastructure required to complete a transistion of the Post Office to EV. Tho I suspect there will huge embarrassments on days that the mail doesn't get delivered.
What the federal government is doing to jump start the process is to say " here Mr. And Ms. Consumer, is a short term opportunity to use some of the federal tax-money you've paid over the years to get out in front of the curve and buy a technologically advanced vehicle". Now, contrary to what a lot of people on this site may believe......
- There is a sunset on this incentive
- GM and the Chevrolet Volt are NOT the only vehicles eligible for this incentive, just the most popular so far. The Ford Focus Electric, The Tesla S, and several products made by Japanese automakers are all eligible for all or part of the incentive, depending on motor power and battery size.
- How long the incentive window lasts is directly tied to how many vehicles a company has sold that are eligible for the incentive, then that company can no longer extend the incentive to customers.
The Volt and Leaf are doing no better at sales volume than the puny Smart Car. GM and Nissan were bullied into scaling up EVs before the technology could support a "normal size" vehicle. Nothing poisons the tech well faster than GOVT edicts pushing for mandates and quotas.
The point is to get people to buy enough electrically powered vehicles to provide automakers the incentive to continue development and to provide incentive for power companies and equipment providers like Coulomb Technologies (makes charging stations) to spend the time, money and resources on development of products that will allow renewable energy sourced vehicles a chance to grow in the marketplace.
Not really such a thing as a "renewable energy sourced vehicle". Nissan recommends a 230V 40 service to run their charger and at that -- it still takes 7 hours. Waaay beyond the scope and convienience of home-scale solar and wind. If you don't want serious blowback from grid brown-outs, and outages -- we best get off this NEGAWATT conservation kick and look at genuine INCREASE in capacity.
One other tidbit. The Chinese government is heavily subsidizing the development of electric vehicles, batteries, and electric motors. Several European companies are subsidizing the development of renewable energy powered vehicles, including battery electrics and fuel cells. A growing number of large European cities are setting up zero emissions zones where only vehicles capable of running on electric only are allowed to enter. If US based automakers are not in a mode to develop hybrids, electric vehicles, and fuel cells, the US auto industry will go the way of the US steel industry, the US television industry, and the dodo bird and companies subsidized by other governments will control the US market.
The Hybrid concept is Great. And that CAN be scaled up as engineering has shown. I've got nothing against EVs -- but I'd rather (like WestWall) put money into fuel cells and hydrogen. The whole plan falls together better than HOPING that wind/solar are gonna fix the EV problem. That's not gonna happen.
Sorry I took so long to reply.. Had pressing issues of parsing Prez speeches and all that.