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

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

#171

Post by DannyBee »

prostoalex wrote: post #162
DannyBee wrote: post #32

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.

You may in fact be right, but nowhere, in any of this planning for the electrical car phenomenon of the future, do you find anyone thinking about this, and making sure that happens for the reason of supporting this plan.

Instead, you find all the talk is about the magical environmental benefits of this plan (which i expect are actually pretty slim in and by itself), without any implementation details of how california will prepare for it to happen. They talk instead of how they are going to force automakers to do the "right thing", with no self-introspection that "holy shit we may need to do some work too".

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

#172

Post by wcummings »

OrwellianChild wrote: post #153
wcummings wrote: post #77

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…

Public transit is cheaper for low income earners than driving and disproportionately used by them. Improving public transit is a much better solution.

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...

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

#173

Post by dubya »

jonknee wrote: post #115
digitalzombie wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing gas will hurt a lot of people and wouldn't stimulate the economy since people will just stay home instead of travel. And I don't recall that many people that can afford electric car such as Tesla. Nissan Leaf might be cheaper but it still a 100 miles range IIRC. You're basically asking poor people to buy two car. One for daily travel and one to travel say from LA to LV just to play some casino games. edit: I t…

If only there were businesses that specialized in letting you use a car for a predefined period of time if you agree to pay a daily fee for the privilege...

Rental cars have their own weird tax structure. Lots of areas tax rental cars and hotels because out-of-towners bear the burden. Rental cars in the UK were startlingly cheap when I was there, like 1/3 the price I would expect in the US. And you could rent one with a stick.

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

#174

Post by joblessjunkie »

downandout wrote: post #157

This is yet another indication that people at the highest levels of government simply don't understand or care how free markets work. You don't raise demand for anything by mandating increasing levels of production of a product that people won't buy. You do it by incentivizing or subsidizing the development of a product (and in the case of cars, a nationwide infrastructure) that has advantages over those already in t…

It's unfair to say that these people don't understand the free market. They understand that the free market will not push us out of gasoline cars and into electric cars until oil becomes very expensive.

The goal is to get Californians into electric cars before the gasoline runs out, thus before the free market is willing.

Nobody wants to pay more for their transportation, so at some point someone just has to step in and force the issue.

California's laws don't dictate exactly how producers and consumers find their way off gasoline, they simply state that they must, and so leave it to the free market to find that path.

Standardizing battery packs sounds like a terrible idea, since batteries are likely to change rather quickly in the near future, and this is a time when we want as much competition and innovation (both in technical methods and business methods) as we can muster.

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

#175

Post by Florin_Andrei »

joblessjunkie wrote: post #174
downandout wrote: post #157

This is yet another indication that people at the highest levels of government simply don't understand or care how free markets work. You don't raise demand for anything by mandating increasing levels of production of a product that people won't buy. You do it by incentivizing or subsidizing the development of a product (and in the case of cars, a nationwide infrastructure) that has advantages over those already in t…

It's unfair to say that these people don't understand the free market. They understand that the free market will not push us out of gasoline cars and into electric cars until oil becomes very expensive. The goal is to get Californians into electric cars before the gasoline runs out, thus before the free market is willing. Nobody wants to pay more for their transportation, so at some point someone just has to step in…

> Standardizing battery packs sounds like a terrible idea

But it would be great to standardize something. Imagine a world where my car could only burn Honda Gasoline (TM), whereas your car could only burn Toyota Gasoline (TM).

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

#176

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

I am really glad there are higher mileage requirements. I feel it is this impetus that has pushed the industry forward technologically.

You can get a VW Golf with a 1.8T that gets over 40MPG while delivering 170hp for the cost of around $20k. Volvo's new SUV is going to get mileage in the mid to high thirties with a turbocharged and supercharged four cylinder that puts out 400hp.

I don't see ICE engines going away like the article implies, especially if they can hit mileage and emissions targets like we are starting to see.

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

#177

Post by jacobolus »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #175
joblessjunkie wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfair to say that these people don't understand the free market. They understand that the free market will not push us out of gasoline cars and into electric cars until oil becomes very expensive. The goal is to get Californians into electric cars before the gasoline runs out, thus before the free market is willing. Nobody wants to pay more for their transportation, so at some point someone just has to step in…

> Standardizing battery packs sounds like a terrible idea But it would be great to standardize something . Imagine a world where my car could only burn Honda Gasoline (TM), whereas your car could only burn Toyota Gasoline (TM).

There are cars that run on diesel fuel, cars that run on ethanol, cars that run on gasoline, and cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells.

Your suggestion of cars that only burn HondaGas seems fairly implausible, as Honda would need to build a large network of special HondaGas filling stations, and no one would be willing to buy a HondaGas car until the network was complete. It would be massively risky for the company, and they would be pretty unlikely to try it absent some kind of external force.

(By contrast, an electric car can charge from widespread, non-proprietary electricity sources, not only specific branded superchargers.)

But in any event, I don’t think your world would be so bad in a nascent industry, where formulating a special type of fuel might conceivably lead to a dramatic improvement in efficiency or a dramatic cost reduction, or some other advantage.

Sometimes forcing standards helps build a common platform on which people can innovate in other areas, but sometimes forcing standards (or even just having de facto common standards win in the market) holds a whole industry back by precluding better alternative infrastructure.

In computing, we have many examples of this: the dominance of the x86 architecture, the C programming languages, UNIX, the mouse and keyboard as basic input devices, HTTP as the main network protocol, the Mac/Windows GUI, MS Office, Photoshop, etc... these behemoths all won over their respective markets then stagnated, in most cases allowing flourishing innovation on top but preventing some amount of innovation at the same level unless and until radically different conditions unseated them.

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

#178

Post by jacobolus »

gertef wrote: post #100
e28eta wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense to me: they're forcing the automakers to subsidize the R&D of electric vehicles from their profits on ICE vehicles, which seems like a normal thing for a business to do when it benefits the business. Since conventional automakers don't seem to be willing to aggressively pursue EVs on their own, this seems like a reasonable approach. Or, put another way, the consumers who continue to buy ICE cars, and i…

> Since conventional automakers don't seem to be willing to aggressively pursue EVs on their own, this seems like a reasonable approach. There are EV and plug-in hybrid options across many price ranges and car shapes.

And California policy has had a not-insignificant impact on that range of options.

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

#179

Post by jacobolus »

OrwellianChild wrote: post #153
wcummings wrote: post #77

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…

If we had some kind of basic income, gas taxes, road use fees, parking fees, and many other prices attached to negative externalities (e.g. general carbon taxes) would be much more palatable at a societal level.

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

#180

Post by wildstoats »

Animats wrote: post #105

The California Air Resources Board and the EPA have achieved quite a lot. Los Angeles air was barely breathable in the 1970s. Now, there's very little smog. Look at 1960s pictures of Los Angeles, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New York. That was once considered impossible. Now, it's mostly done. The only thing keeping electric cars from taking over is battery cost. Performance and range have already been fixed. Once battery…

I can't speak for LA or NYC but I would suspect in Cleveland and Pittsburgh this has much more to do with decline of the steel and coal industries than it does with automobile emissions.
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