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California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

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161–170 of 218 posts

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#161

Sadly this sort of mandate leads to a very inefficient application of money to reducing pollution. After that $14,000 "subsidy" the 500e still a $32,500 car, which will appeal primarily to people who are likely replacing an already efficient late model vehicle for a tiny net carbon savings. That same $14,000 applied to the base model 500 Pop would make the price about $3,000(!) and you'd have buyers replacing old clu…

The Federal and State subsidies for EV's drive down the used market value of the cars substantially. I just purchased a 2013 Nissan Leaf and you can get the base models all day long for 10k, or 13k'ish for the high end model. There is probably a little bit of a FUD discount as well since nobody knows how long the batteries will last, or what will happen when you want to change them. Incidentally, my Leaf replaced a Nissan XTerra :)

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#162

California also has the worst electrical infrastructure in the nation, and is not doing something like "requiring the EV people who will stress it" to pay a tax for improvements, or if they wanted to be punitive, a tax on gas cars to pay for it, or anything other than saying what a great idea this would be and pushing for it on the environmental side. Given that converting all cars in CA to electric would seriously s…

The long-term trends look favorable for rooftop solar and community solar.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/uciliawang/2011/08/08/chevy-volt...

http://www.sandc.com/products/energy-storage/ces.asp

The grid of the future might be decentralized and autonomous.

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub... Since 1980 we've gotten about 50% better mileage over all. Considering the number of cars is greater today the real effect of gas saved is even more.

I was hoping for evidence of causation, not correlation :-/

Law passes requiring improved mileage or fines. Auto makers followed by increased mileage and avoided fines. It's pretty simple.

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#164
60% of the electricity produced in California is from burning natural gas[1]. At present, switching to EV's is not going to reduce overall emissions unless an equal push is made to increase production of electricity by wind, solar, nuclear, etc.. However, the smog in urban centers like L.A. might be reduced even if overall carbon emissions aren't.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#165
post #40

California also has the worst electrical infrastructure in the nation, and is not doing something like "requiring the EV people who will stress it" to pay a tax for improvements, or if they wanted to be punitive, a tax on gas cars to pay for it, or anything other than saying what a great idea this would be and pushing for it on the environmental side. Given that converting all cars in CA to electric would seriously s…

I think this is why Tesla's home battery is going to be such a big deal in the near future. You could buy your own solar panel system and use it to charge your home battery, which would in turn power your electric car. You wouldn't be adding additional stress to the grid and it would probably be less expensive in the long-run. Not to mention that you'd be running on 100% renewable energy.

Anyone ever do the math on charging your car using a solar panel? I'm guessing that unless you have a massive solar panel setup, it would be tough to charge an electric car and get more than 50 miles out of it.

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was hoping for evidence of causation, not correlation :-/

Law passes requiring improved mileage or fines. Auto makers followed by increased mileage and avoided fines. It's pretty simple.

Alternative narrative: Customer demand shifted to cars with higher mileage. Auto makers stopped resisting higher CAFE standards because the minor increment was meaningless. See also: The ongoing debate over minimum wage laws and unemployment.

Inferring causation from correlation is not "pretty simple", but a lot of poor decisions are made under that assumption.

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Perhaps add another dollar or two to the gasoline tax? If only, the gas tax is waaaaaaaaaay too low.

Increasing the price of gas would incentivize more efficient vehicles for sure, but it is also incredibly regressive, impacting lower-income individuals disproportionately. The rich keep driving their Escalades since it makes little difference to them what the gas costs, but the poor can't afford to get to work... To the extent possible, it's best to try to avoid externalities like this, making a gas tax less appeali…

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Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Perhaps add another dollar or two to the gasoline tax? If only, the gas tax is waaaaaaaaaay too low.

Increasing the price of gas would incentivize more efficient vehicles for sure, but it is also incredibly regressive, impacting lower-income individuals disproportionately. The rich keep driving their Escalades since it makes little difference to them what the gas costs, but the poor can't afford to get to work... To the extent possible, it's best to try to avoid externalities like this, making a gas tax less appeali…

Use the proceeds to further subsidize and increase the coverage of public transit to make getting to work cheaper. A gas, or carbon (if you want to get closest to the raw input as possible) tax would probably be the best price signal to what you want to reduce demand for.

Forcing automakers to sell more EV's also makes cars more expensive. So then people don't buy new cars and continue to use old ones, the worst emission offenders?

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#169
post #103

California also has the worst electrical infrastructure in the nation, and is not doing something like "requiring the EV people who will stress it" to pay a tax for improvements, or if they wanted to be punitive, a tax on gas cars to pay for it, or anything other than saying what a great idea this would be and pushing for it on the environmental side. Given that converting all cars in CA to electric would seriously s…

Cars charge overnight, which is a trough in electric demand. power plants prefer even loads. So car charging loads would be much less stressful than, say, growing population 10% and increasing peak demand.

"which is a trough in electric demand"

Except, with some of the suggested solutions, like rooftop solar/etc, we know that over time it causes the normal power usage to invert (see germany, which no longer has a mid-day peak).

That is, the trough is no longer at night, but in the middle of the day.

Ever barring this: think of this another way: If you suddenly increase nighttime usage by several thousand percent, it's unlikely to be a trough anymore, and pretty far into a spike.

THe carport amperage/voltage is usually around 240v/30 amp. This is a lot, and definitely a ton more than the average power usage of a home at rest or even with the AC on.

At that voltage/amperage, it would take 10+ hours to charge an 85kwh battery

If you go to 240/50 amp, it's about 7 hours, but again, even more of a factor than the average hours residential usage.

This is like having 4-5 high end electric oven on full blast for 7 hours.

(or in maker terms: i have a really nice 3hp table saw, really nice 3hp jointer, planer, cyclone dust collector, cnc machine, vacuum clamp, etc. Having them *all running at once takes less power than the carport :P)

I would bet, in fact, that it would shift peak residential to nighttime by a significant factor (to put some perspective on this: average residential usage is like 25-30kwh a day, so 85 at night would definitely be "huge")

(Again, it's not that i don't think there are solutions, but in grand california tradition, they chase some magically happy utopia without actually ever planning for the long term consequences, then act shocked when they happen)

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing the price of gas would incentivize more efficient vehicles for sure, but it is also incredibly regressive, impacting lower-income individuals disproportionately. The rich keep driving their Escalades since it makes little difference to them what the gas costs, but the poor can't afford to get to work... To the extent possible, it's best to try to avoid externalities like this, making a gas tax less appeali…

Use the proceeds to further subsidize and increase the coverage of public transit to make getting to work cheaper. A gas, or carbon (if you want to get closest to the raw input as possible) tax would probably be the best price signal to what you want to reduce demand for. Forcing automakers to sell more EV's also makes cars more expensive. So then people don't buy new cars and continue to use old ones, the worst emis…

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