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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

#81

Post by schiffern »

tfinniga wrote: post #67
marcosdumay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the electricity coming from? If your answer is natural gas, or oil powered generators, then no, there isn't a price point where it will break even. Now if you can answer that question with nuclear reactors or renewables of any kind, then your logic probably applies. Yet, I doubt it will ever be the main fuel powering our transportation.

From the linked pdf: "We have limited our studies to nuclear power because its capital costs are lower than wind and solar-electric power, and it has significant environmental advantages over fossil energy sources, which are not carbon-neutral."

If that (huge) assumption is allowed for this technology, why not EVs?

You can paint a very rosy picture of any transport technology if you assume away fossil fuels.

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

#82

Post by Retric »

rogerbinns wrote: post #66
Retric wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd that you think private companies who own and operate the Grid need public support to expand it. If demand increases they make more money which can pay for upgrades directly or in the case of large shifts pay down loans. PS: A 2% change per year is actually well within normal variations.

California decouples utility profits from demand/quantity supplied, and has done so since about 1980. If they didn't, then as you point out, the utilities would be trying to get people to consume more. Here is a two page CPUC brochure (PDF) about it: http://www.fishnick.com/pge/Decoupling_Explained.pdf

Thanks, that's just odd.

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

#84

Post by brobinson »

jdmichal wrote: post #74
peapicker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at GDP per person in the population, California is only 14th in the US ($58K per person -- Delaware at #1 is $112.K per person GDP), so they have room to more efficiently make that GDP per person than they do. Delaware does have a higher CO2 emission rate per capita, tho (nearly 50% more than California)

> Delaware at #1 is $112.K per person GDP Is that real, or a side effect of the number of companies which are basically ghost-chartered in Delaware? > Delaware does have a higher CO2 emission rate per capita, tho (nearly 50% more than California) I wonder how much of that is due to increased heating necessary during winter...

Not sure what percentage are "ghost-chartered", but according to this article I read earlier [1] corporate fees cover over 25% of Deleware's budget.

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/dole-and-other-companies-sour-on...

Might need to Google that URL and click through to skip the paywall.

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

#85

Post by bluthru »

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #2

Serious question: unless all the electricity for these vehicles comes from completely renewable and environmentally friendly sources, won't banning fossil fuel emissions from motor vehicles just externalize this pollution onto electric power plants? Is there data to show that the environmental impact will be somehow lessened?

- Electric vehicles are more energy efficient.

- Gasoline requires lots of transport. (Shipped across the ocean, trains, refinery, delivered to a gas station, travels with the car until burned.)

- Electric vehicles last longer.

- Electric vehicles can be charged with a personal solar array.

- Less smog which means better health and cleaner cities. Making density more attractive is always green.

- ICE cars have 152,300 automobile fires per year in the US.

- Even creating electricity using bad methods keeps the pollution somewhat concentrated. Does this matter with regards to climate change? Probably not, but I don't know.

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

#86

Post by knorby »

stickfigure wrote: post #30

I don't get it. Mandating that auto manufacturers sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles seems a bit like legislating the weather. If CA really wants to push people into electric vehicles, why not manipulate the demand for electric vehicles? Perhaps add another dollar or two to the gasoline tax?

I'm guessing here, but since fleet fuel efficiency standards have been around for awhile, making cars like hybrids attractive to sell, extending that concept is natural.

I would love to buy an EV right now, but charging it really wouldn't be practical for me given where I live, so it isn't really a practical option, but I believe that could change in the future. As bad as gas prices could get, it still takes some incentive to get that kind of practical infrastructure change made, in terms of businesses to sell them and for parking lots to have them. If you have auto manufactures on the hook the sell them, they need to figure out those practicalities that go beyond R&D. Plenty of electric alternatives (e.g. hydrogen) have died out, despite R&D from a number of groups, in part because the lack of fueling stations make them incredibly impractical.

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

#87

Post by nhaehnle »

stickfigure wrote: post #30

I don't get it. Mandating that auto manufacturers sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles seems a bit like legislating the weather. If CA really wants to push people into electric vehicles, why not manipulate the demand for electric vehicles? Perhaps add another dollar or two to the gasoline tax?

It does seem a bit backward. On the other hand, the auto manufacturers are perfectly capable of achieving this end result by themselves: Just subsidize the sale of electric vehicles by raising the price on non-electric vehicles.

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

#88

Post by msandford »

hire_charts wrote: post #70
stephengillie wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use/lose some of the energy in transport, either way. I forget exactly, but high voltage power lines lose something like 1% of their energy every...100 miles? Another way to look at it would be: How much electricity would it take an electric truck to deliver that gasoline?

By that argument, you lose energy when gasoline evaporates during transportation. In both cases (electricity and gasoline) loss is marginal and can be mitigated by striking a balance between centralization and transport/power line distance.

> By that argument, you lose energy when gasoline evaporates during transportation.

Please show me where gasoline is being shipped in open vessels for that argument to hold water. Oil tankers? Sealed. Tanker trucks? Sealed. Your car's gas tank? Sealed.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/high-tech-fuel-tanks

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

#89

Post by tankerdude »

wmf wrote: post #48
e28eta wrote: post #37

I wonder if the Chrysler CEO is trolling us: "Don't buy the 500e, you get a $45k car for $32k!"

The car may cost $45K to make, but that doesn't mean it's worth $45K. Maybe it's worse than the cheaper gas version.

I wonder how much of it is due to scale. If they were to make and sell, say 10% of what their other car models sell, then what is the cost per car?

I'd like to see the data points at certain % to see if it's a limited quantity problem or something specific to electric cars where he'll always lose money.

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

#90

Post by SovietDissident »

1. "Sergio Marchionne had a funny thing to say about the $32,500 battery-powered Fiat 500e that his company markets in California as “eco-chic.” “I hope you don’t buy it,” he told his audience at a think tank in Washington in May 2014. He said he loses $14,000 on every 500e he sells and only produces the cars because state rules re­quire it. Marchionne, who took over the bailed-out Chrysler in 2009 to form Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, warned that if all he could sell were electric vehicles, he would be right back looking for another govern­ment rescue."

In order to meet the fuel economy standards, car companies have been building cars that nobody actually buys to bring up their averages. Unfortunately, this means that the cost of all their other cars must also go up.

2. Thanks to the slew of environmental mandates, Californians are now paying $1.11 more for gas on average than the national average.

Also, "Over the past three years, electric rates in California rose by 2.18 cents per kilowatt-hour—about four times the rate nationally—as more solar and wind power has come online. Meanwhile, nuclear plants, which generate cheaper electricity, have been decommissioned, and hydropower has flagged because of the drought."[0]

So, the environmentalists and leadership in CA oppose fossil fuels, oppose nuclear, and actively work with their vast legal resources to sue hydroelectric dams out of existence to preserve the habitats of bait fish.[1] For the time being, they are ok with solar and wind power, but what happens when they realize that it takes actual mining and lots of high-torque, powerful diesel trucks to extract the stuff from Mother Earth?[2] Not to mention the processing/manufacturing.

3. Fossil fuels have been a boon to human life and have raised our standard of living and life expectantly immensely, and should not be dismissed so lightly. You can burn a bunch of stuff for energy (peanuts, wood, animal dung, whale oil) but there's a reason that fossil fuels have had such longevity in their usage---they have high potential energy, good portability, are ubiquitous, and they're cheap! The positive effects far outweigh the adverse effects, especially when you can start using things like catalytic converters to make their emissions less harmful.

[0] http://www.wsj.com/articles/sky-high-california-gas-prices-h... [1] http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2015-2-march-april/green-li... [2] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rar...

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