
California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It - mactitan
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-03/california-regulator-mary-nichols-may-transform-the-auto-industry
======
stickfigure
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?

~~~
digitalzombie
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 think what she and California is doing now is a much better way, mandate it.

~~~
jonknee
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...

~~~
dubya
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.

------
danielweber
What is the comparison between using energy to generate liquid fuels from
atmospheric CO2 (which would be carbon neutral) and trying to electrify the
entire transportation sector?

Those Los Alamos guys [1] said in 2007 they could get it down to $3.40 a
gallon. Okay, maybe they were wrong and/or optimistic. But, still, there is
_some_ price point at which it is break-even. What is it? Five dollars? Ten?

The advantages of this over electrifying everything are that we already have
built up the infrastructure for liquid fossil fuels. There is no extra
engineering to be done for storage and/or transport, and no environmental
impact from building new facilities like battery factories or erecting more
transmission towers.

In both technologies, you start with an energy source, and then distribute it
to consumers who use the product up. Both are carbon-neutral once you get past
the "have the centralized energy source" step.

[1]
[http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom...](http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom.pdf)

[2]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/science/19carb.html?_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/science/19carb.html?_r=0)

~~~
marcosdumay
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.

~~~
tfinniga
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."

~~~
schiffern
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.

~~~
aianus
If I already own a perfectly good ICE car, as most people do, it's much less
wasteful to start feeding it synthetic gasoline than replacing the whole car
with an EV. And the benefits are immediate.

Edit: Also, the energy density of hydrocarbons is unmatched. Synthetic
kerosene could be used to run 747's; battery technology can't do that.

~~~
schiffern
>If I already own a perfectly good ICE car, as most people do, it's much less
wasteful to start feeding it synthetic gasoline than replacing the whole car
with an EV

Actually this is incorrect. 75% of the energy used by a gasoline car is in the
fuel it takes to drive it, and only 25% in manufacturing and disposal.

It's the same situation with incandescent lights. It's mathematically more
efficient to throw out a perfectly good one and replace it with something more
efficient.

>Synthetic kerosene could be used to run 747's; battery technology can't do
that.

[http://www.aviation.com/general-aviation/elon-musk-toying-
de...](http://www.aviation.com/general-aviation/elon-musk-toying-designs-
electric-jet/)

------
Animats
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 cost is solved,
and it looks like it's going to be, electric cars will start to take over. At
some point, there will be a tipping point, as gas stations start to close.

~~~
gambiting
And the fact that millions of people live in flats, condos, terraced houses
with no private parking spots and they can't charge their cars overnight. Here
in UK the vast majority of people I know live in places where it would be
impossible to take out a charging cable at night, so the only option
is...charging at work? But who will foot the bill for installing chargers at
literally every single parking spot everywhere?

~~~
Htsthbjig
I have an expensive American electric car and use it in Europe.

Before buying it I was worried about all the things you mention.

Now that I have been using it for some time normal cars look crazy outdated to
me. Going to some place(gas stations) just to fill the tank. Why? It should be
in my home, like with my electric car.

Lots of European houses have natural gas installations on homes, so why can't
we just plug our vehicles to that, like we do with electric.

In any western country there are electric cables everywhere since 100 years
ago or so, and most are not used at night, so it is not a big deal.

Impossible to take a charging cable at night? In the UK?.

I routinely use my car in Spain and Portugal, with no significant problems.

The only problem is that we attract significant attention everywhere we go.

~~~
gambiting
>>Impossible to take a charging cable at night? In the UK?.

I used to live in a terraced house, and sometime I would park right in front
of my door and sometime I would have to park 100m away. In any case, if I ran
a cable from my door to my car I'm sure it would get cut sooner or later, just
like wing mirrors get broken every now and then. If you live in the 4th floor
of a condo, how do you connect then? And I don't understand what you mean by
natural gas. Cars that can run on gas use LPG, so you would need to liquify
the gas coming for your cooker somehow.

------
rubbingalcohol
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?

~~~
ajmarsh
A quick googling produced:

The impact of coal-burning power plants and gasoline can be quantified. The
EPA estimates that the average passenger vehicle emits 5.1 metric tons of
carbon dioxide equivalents per year. Coal-burning power plants, on the other
hand, produce more than 4 million metric tons per power plant, per year. The
overall carbon dioxide output of coal-fired electric power plants exceeded
gasoline by more than 30 percent in 2010.

~~~
nitrogen
These numbers need a bit more data and some unit conversion before they can be
compared. _Tons /powerplant_ and _tons /car_ are not comparable units. We need
something like _tons /mile_electric_ and _tons /mile_gasoline_.

~~~
warfangle
If only coal is considered, it doesn't look good.

My math may be way off, but:

coal: 1,933,130,000,000 kwh/yr plants: 518 kwh/plant: 373,191,120 tons/plant:
4,000,000 ton/kwh : 0.01 37.4% of electricity in US

nat. gas: .0005675 ton/kwh 30.3% of electricity in US

tesla S: .3kwh/mi

Coal only: .003 ton/mi Gas only: .00017 ton/mi Coal + Gas + Renewables: 0.0012
ton/mi

avg ICE: 12,000 mi/yr 5.1 ton/yr 0.000425 ton / mi

As we move away from coal and towards renewables, it's obvious that electric
cars become the winners. In areas with mostly coal power production, though,
ICEs are more environmentally friendly.

It's really telling how freaking dirty coal is.

------
downandout
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 the market.

The major hurdles with electric cars are cost and range. Cost will come down
on its own as battery technology improves. But imagine if these politicians
were intelligent and instead used their power to mandate that the industry
agree on a standard for interchangeable batteries, that all electric cars sold
must conform to the standard, and that all sellers of the gasoline that they
hate so much must install equipment to do automated swaps of charged for
uncharged batteries. If recharging the car (battery swaps) were faster,
cheaper, and more convenient than pumping gas, that would remove an enormous
roadblock in the minds of many consumers. Consumer demand for electric cars
would skyrocket, gas stations would have a massive new profit center, and as a
side effect, politicians would get the environmental benefits they desire far
faster than they would under their current plan.

~~~
joblessjunkie
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.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _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).

~~~
jacobolus
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.

------
yndoendo
Emergency situations and natural disasters, where are the discussions? Real
life has the two and yet there is no real life discussion of what one should
do with a pure electric car. Snow storm his the Midwest and nocks out the
power. You need to get someone to the hospital or you work at a hospital how
does one get the electricity to ready their vehicle? Electrical core for cars
yes but pure electric cars for real world scenarios does not fit.

~~~
brohoolio
This is where I start liking the Volt. Pure electric? No way. Not in Michigan
winters.

------
rhaps0dy
>Cali­fornia emits only 2 percent of global green­house gases

What? That's huge! California does not have 2% of the world's population, not
even close!

Looking at it another way, all the more effect the regulations there will
have.

~~~
patmcguire
World GDP is about $87.25 trillion and California GDP is about $2 trillion, so
California has more than 2% of world GDP. You could make the case that that's
a more important metric than population.

~~~
peapicker
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)

~~~
jdmichal
> 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...

~~~
brobinson
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...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/dole-and-other-companies-sour-on-delaware-
as-corporate-haven-1438569507)

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

------
femto113
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 clunkers with something that gets 40 mpg and a
huge net savings.

~~~
anigbrowl
Maybe, but you're making a bunch of assumptions here - people might well
replace an old clunker with a small compact for only $3000, but you can't take
that for granted. People who don't own a car already might enter the market at
this price (adding to pollution and congestion) or those who have efficient
cars might replace them with an equally efficient but much cheaper car and and
simply pocket the savings, for no marginal gain.

I agree the existing system isn't very economically efficient but ISTM that
you're assuming rather than demonstrating the efficiencies that would result
from your alternative scheme.

~~~
femto113
My example was really meant as a thought experiment rather than a credible
program, but obviously governments and institutions can formulate such plans
with requirements for the replaced vehicle, e.g.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System)

------
S_A_P
I generally feel a strong sense of resentment when a government entity
legislates for "my own good" or for the "people's own good". Whether it's to
outlaw drugs that I don't use or tell me what kind of car I have to buy I
don't like this.

However I also most people act in their own self interest most of the time,
and corporations are no different. I think things work best when there is a
way to align both government and private entities. I think the way she goes
about fuel economy standards is not that way. Politicians don't know the
science behind electric cars or ICE cars so how can they be in a position to
legislate their standards? What would CARB do if they legislated a major
manufacturer to pull out of the California market? At some point that could be
a viable option.

------
DannyBee
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 stress the
infrastructure[1], yet they are not doing anything to improve that
infrastructure, I can't say i'm impressed with california's long term thinking
here ...

[1] Some back of the envelope math: there are 20,665,415 registered autos in
CA. I'm going to exclude light trucks and trailers which make up another 12
million, and essentially double our numbers because they need more power/etc.
<10% of autos are electric, but i'll just remove 10% to round nicely, and say
"18 million non-electric vehicles. If they move to 85KWH cars, depleted and
charged once a week, now we have an additional 85KWH x 18 million cars of
electric power being used once a week. That's 1,530,000,000 KWH or 1530 GWH
extra that needs to be generated and distributed _every week_. That's 79,560
(52x1530) GWH a year.

California produces 200,000 GWH a year, mostly from natural gas:
[http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electric_generation_...](http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electric_generation_capacity.html)

So they need to produce and distribute 40-50% more electricity than they do
now to make this happen. Note that generation ability has not really moved
from 2000. In fact, it's gone down! If they also want to meet their goal of
moving generation to 33% renewable energy by 2020 (and eventually all of it),
and thus provide this capacity without staying on gas, they'd basically have
to _double all available renewable energy output_.

That's just the generation side. Then they have to make sure they can
distribute it.

Don't worry though. I'm sure all the right people talk and plan this stuff
together, and it's not just one part of the government doing something without
thinking about the long term consequences that need to be planned for
elsewhere - that never happens in government :)

Of course, the numbers above are just spitballing to show there is thinking
that appears to not be happening (as to whether it's a good idea or not, i
actually don't care whether my car is electric or not :P). The average car is
driven 15 miles a day, so maybe it takes 2 weeks to deplete your 85kwh
battery. But generally, no matter what sane thing you do to these numbers,
halve them, double them (maybe cheaper cars use crappier batteries/engines,
maybe they mean light trucks too, etc), it's still "a lot of extra to plan
for". Even a 1-2% change in electrical capacity is serious business.

Until they actually have a serious plan for solving these issues, i'm just
going to look forward to the lawn signs saying "80 volts is the new 120".

~~~
Retric
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.

~~~
rogerbinns
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](http://www.fishnick.com/pge/Decoupling_Explained.pdf)

~~~
Retric
Thanks, that's just odd.

------
nickpsecurity
That she pushes hydrogen so much is disturbing to me. The source we need will
either be water or polluting processes. Water is something we should be
protecting and conserving with battles going on for it all over. Definitely
don't need to be putting Niagara Falls worth of it into cars. The alternative
is commercial production which is anything but ecofriendly. That it contains
less energy than gasoline for same volume will impact efficiency, logistics,
and safety in some setups. Overall, hydrogen fuel is a _very_ bad idea. That
she pushes that undermines her credibility to me.

The reason I like electric, on other hand, is that makes the power-source
neutral and could spur investment into our strained grid + battery tech. Yet,
it has its own environmental consequences that should be carefully considered
by anyone claiming the moral high ground. The environmental impact of
manufacturing has a nice summary:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Environmental_asp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Environmental_aspects)

Or, we can just look at a picture of Nichols' "green" and "clean" vision...

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-C...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-
China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-
disastrous-scale.html)

...then guess what a 2000+% increase of that would entail.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I'm baffled by your inclusion of a link to a four year old anti-wind turbine
rant in the Daily Mail at the end of an otherwise sane and sensible comment.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I glanced at the photo in search results before heading to work thinking it
was the right article. It wasn't. Good catch. Here's the intended article that
covers the damage of rare-earth mining and why most countries don't do it:

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-
rar...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-
village-pollution)

The point of including the topic was that these people talk all kinds of green
while doing it using stuff made in most eco-damaging and unhealthy way. A
little hypocritical. Further, they should bring up the reality of expanded
mining of rare earth elements in these discussions [among other issues] and
attempt to make a cost-benefit analysis of various approaches. Current
approach is to pretend it doesn't exist or sweep it under the rug.

------
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.

------
Shivetya
Well battery tech will be a roadblock for some time but deadlines as far out
as these make it look like something is being accomplished but provide enough
time to not actually be a deadline. Converting off peak electrical power into
hydrogen is getting more and more viable and frankly, I don't mind storing and
transporting hydrogen versus stuffing the planet with li-ion batteries replete
with their hazards.

GM should be first out of the gate with an affordable 200 mile range EV by
late 16 or early 17. It will be interesting if other manufacturers follow
quickly or wait too see what the uptake is. Fuel cells will likely be the
filler application to directly replace fossil fuel engines.

that twenty year gap should be sufficient to get all used cars off the road as
the one issue not addressed by current rebates is that the poor rarely can
take advantage of them. Currently they seem to only serve the well off who
could buy into new tech without them. California is already taking steps to
fix this, income limits and such, but the federal government needs to do
similar. Direct it to average consumer priced cars and likely there would be
wider acceptance

~~~
pjc50
_I don 't mind storing and transporting hydrogen_

Spoken like someone who has never tried to store or transport hydrogen. It's
much less convenient than li-ion and has its own hazards.

~~~
Osmium
Isn't that the truth. Unless there's been a breakthrough in the last few
years, I remember storing hydrogen being an absolute nightmare: and not
because it can combust, but simply because it's so _small_. Minimising leaks
and achieving high storage densities, especially over longer periods of time,
is super hard and not least because the hydrogen diffusion can cause
embrittlement of metals too.

------
e28eta
I wonder if the Chrysler CEO is trolling us: "Don't buy the 500e, you get a
$45k car for $32k!"

~~~
wmf
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.

~~~
tankerdude
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.

------
pkteison
I wonder about the infrastructure change required for electric vehicles. The
bay area relies extremely heavily on on-street parking. If everything is to go
electric, will there be charging stations every 15 feet along every sidewalk?

~~~
jonknee
In the not very distant future cars will drive themselves to a charging center
and parking needs will be greatly reduced.

~~~
brohoolio
That's where things get interesting.

------
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...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/sky-high-california-gas-prices-have-
a-green-additive-1437174504) [1]
[http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2015-2-march-april/green-
li...](http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2015-2-march-april/green-life/3-dam-
detonation-videos-prove-going-green-blowing) [2]
[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-
rar...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-
village-pollution)

~~~
OrwellianChild
So, I _think_ you are trying to make an argument that opposes these more
stringent emissions requirements (correct me if I'm wrong), but I could just
as easily read these the other way...

1\. Chrysler's fleet is so inefficient that they have to make one-off cars to
bring up their average, losing money on each one. This regulation is single-
handedly forcing them to improve their fleet or suffer massive hemorrhaging
from the electric car mandates. Seems like it's working...

2\. Gas costs more in California, making people buy more efficient cars, drive
less, and seek mass-transit options, reducing traffic and encouraging
increased density. Maybe they'll buy a Fiat 500e?

3\. Fossil fuels have helped us get where we are, and now energy is so
ubiquitous that we have the luxury of looking for more efficient/less-emissive
options...

Looks like things are shaping up pretty well to me!

~~~
SovietDissident
_" The electric car is one of the ways carmakers expect to lower their average
fuel consumption and get to the 55 mpg average. The problem is, people aren't
buying, whether all-electric or plug-in hybrid.

General Motors is struggling to sell 10,000 Chevy Volts this year, and Nissan
has sold just over 8,000 Leafs. For context, about 13 million cars are
expected to be sold in the U.S. in 2011...

The bad news is that the technology is currently at a point where they have to
make trade-offs," Giffi says. "So they want that same vehicle — they want it
to look and feel the same. They also want it to perform the same."

Nobody is expecting those capabilities anytime soon."_[0]

 _Nobody_ likes them, and for good reason. Teslas are cool new-ish technology
and the best of the lot, and yet the range is still too low, the charge time
is too high, the infrastructure will take quite a while to develop, and
they're too expensive. They are the playthings of the Silicon Valley rich, but
not practical for the everyday person, whose main purpose for driving a car is
cheap and reliable transportation. Teslas and other electric cars are
uncompetitive because they are too expensive for what you get, and the only
way they become "competitive" is by artificially driving up the price of
gasoline-powered cars and fossil fuels. They get a subsidy because they are
ostensibly "saving the environment". As I pointed out earlier, the mining of
the materials to make these cars (especially batteries) is an extremely dirty
and energy-intensive process, mostly done in China by diesel-powered machines.
Also, the cars are plugged into an electric grid which is run mostly on
ancient fossil fuel plants[1] (as is most of CA's infrastructure), as hydro
and nuclear have become basically verboten or phased out of existence. If
being carbon neutral is the goal, driving your 20-year-old Accord _into the
ground_ would result in a fraction of the energy expenditure and emissions of
having a brand-new car built.[2] Or, actually, a horse and buggy would be the
most carbon-neutral solution.

Californians may marginally start taking less fuel intensive options in terms
of transportation, but most people want to live in suburbs where they have a
some room to breathe in their backyard, the schools are better, and a car is
necessary---higher prices will effectively force them to spend more on fuel
(at the expense of other things). The people in Marin County driving their
Teslas and Priuses don't really care, but the lower-middle and middle-class
gets clobbered by high energy costs (and has been leaving the state in droves,
for that reason and others). And it isn't necessarily because transportation
is more expensive; energy costs affect the cost of heating and cooling your
home, the price of farming and delivering your produce, the cost of your
clothing and smartphone, etc.! These sorts of regulations have led to the mass
exodus of companies and jobs in manufacturing and heavy industry (which used
to be the way many middle-class Californians made a living) to other states
and other countries. Let's not forget that the least wealthy people are
usually the least mobile as well.

Fossil fuels allow us to have an incredible standard of living. What if food,
fuel, clothing, and transportation costs doubled or tripled overnight? This
would certainly make the average person's standard of living a lot worse. And
this is exactly what these foolish policies have accomplished and will
continue to accomplish.

[0][http://www.npr.org/2011/11/21/142464818/can-electric-cars-
he...](http://www.npr.org/2011/11/21/142464818/can-electric-cars-help-
automakers-reach-55-mpg\\)
[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Cali...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_California)
[2][http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/aug/17/car-
scrap...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/aug/17/car-scrap-energy-
efficiency)

~~~
OrwellianChild
I really appreciate the thorough, cited reply! There isn't enough of this deep
dialogue on the 'net, much less on HN. Upvoted, for that alone. :)

All of your concerns are rational considerations: integrated costs of
materials, existing demand for electric/plug-in hybrid vehicles (though I
think you'll see there's been growing uptake since your 2011 source!), sources
of power on the grid skewing towards fossil fuels...

The ultimate question (one that you and I may ultimately all on different
sides of), is whether or not things will always be this way. Also informing
this is where things are going _to_. I don't have my sources available for
proper citation (happy to share them later if you are interested), but share
of forecasted new power generation is _dominated_ by solar. Graduated
regulations are integrating the cost of externalities for sources like coal
and other polluters that make them look less like the sure bet they were in
the past. The battery density, range, and charging capabilities of electric
cars are improving dramatically under concentrated R&D. Tesla's entire company
objective is to bring their technology down to consumer-level with the Model 3
in 2 years time. These developments and more signal to me that we are moving
to a much more friendly ecosystem for the technologies that could push
gasoline cars to the sidelines in very short time.

In this dynamically changing market, some companies (Fiat included, likely)
will find themselves lagging due to a combination of internal organizational
conflict or maybe just failing to "read the tea leaves" correctly. Witness GM
and Chrysler going under when Ford stayed afloat in the 2008 crisis...
Sometimes companies get it wrong and fail to innovate, and regulation like
California is pushing is designed to incentivize the right kind of decision
making out of even those who drag their feet.

Thanks for being willing to have this discourse with me!

~~~
SovietDissident
I'm mostly just avoiding the tedious task of refactoring some load tests,
haha.

Almost all solar power is heavily subsidized by the government, and is still
more costly than its worth:

 _" In spite of government’s best efforts to encourage innovation by solar
energy companies and encourage Americans to rely more heavily on solar
electricity, solar power continues to be a losing proposition. American
taxpayers spent an average of $39 billion a year over the past 5 years
financing grants, subsidizing tax credits, guaranteeing loans, bailing out
failed solar energy boondoggles and otherwise underwriting every idea under
the sun to make solar energy cheaper and more popular. But none of it has
worked. Solar energy remains prohibitively expensive – often three times more
than electricity produced from natural gas or other sources. As a result, less
than 1 percent of the electricity consumers by Americans comes from solar
energy sources."_[0]

Solar has a cost problem and an intermittency problem: _" At first glance, it
looks like [photovoltaics (PV)] could be competitive with coal or natural gas
plants if the PV cost were to drop below 10 cents/kWh. But there is an
important difference between PV and the traditional technologies which makes
this simple cost comparison invalid.

But first, take a look at the cost of electricity from a coal plant. The total
cost is projected to be 9.5 cents/kWh per the [U.S. Energy Information
Administration (EIA)] study. About 6.5 cents of this is capital cost and about
2.5 cents is the cost of the coal. Looking at the natural gas plant, one can
see the capital cost is about 2 cents, and the fuel cost is about 4.5 cents.

Solar has no fuel cost element but significant capital investment.

But here is the rub. If you plan to power a city with PV, it is not sufficient
to simply build a large PV array, because PV only produces power during the
day. At night and during cloudy weather, a back-up power source is needed
since there is no practical way to store the PV energy.

So the city must also build a conventional coal or gas plant, which will sit
idle on many sunny days. The real cost of the PV is not just its cost, but
also the cost of the back-up plant. Coal and natural gas plants do not need
back-up like PV does.

So what is the real value of PV? It is principally the fuel savings which
occur when the traditional plant can reduce output during sunny days. Or
stated another way, PV is worth avoided fuel cost. The main point is that PV
is not competing against the LCOE of coal or natural gas plants; it is
competing against the variable operating cost of these plants, which is 2-4.5
cents."_[1]

Solar is fine for heating your pool or providing a little energy on sunny
days, but if I'm on the operating table, there's not a snowball's chance in
hell I want the doctors to be relying on solar power without a fossil fuel
backup.

Wind power is also very costly. It requires a lot of the rare earth mining I
cited earlier and kills an est. 234,000 birds per year in the U.S. alone.[2]

My point is that there are negative externalities associated with all types of
energy production; I don't have any problem allowing new forms of energy to
_compete_ for adoption. But competition does not mean taking a superior form
of energy production (oil, gas, nuclear, hydro) and artificially inflating the
price through regulatory policy[3] so that inferior forms of energy production
(solar, wind) may become "viable" on a large scale. Undo the bad
law/regulation which shackles nuclear, fossil fuels, and hydro (outside of
some basic stuff like the catalytic converter), stop subsidizing wind and
solar (and oil as well), and let them compete!

I keep coming back to this: cheap, reliable, portable, plentiful energy is
what makes modern life possible---the more we can rely on machines to do the
back-breaking work humans used to do, the better. The more energy a society
uses, the wealthier and healthier its citizenry. As the name of that site I
cited suggests, (fossil fuel, hydro, nuclear) energy production is the Master
Resource from which _all else is possible_ in a modern economy.

Regarding your last point, you cannot say on one hand that it is a
"dynamically changing market" and car companies simply need to adapt, while
acknowledging in the same breath that government regulatory policy has placed
these undue burdens upon the companies in the first place! It's like
California creating the conditions for fuel costs to rise, and then blaming
the oil companies! Let's see it in action:

 _" Based on an Air Resources Board analysis, the Western States Petroleum
Association last year extrapolated that cap and trade would add 16 cents to 76
cents a gallon to the retail price of gas. Other economists projected a
10-cent bump. Sure enough, gas prices skyrocketed this year, though it’s tough
to disentangle the impact of cap and trade from other ill-conceived
environmental policies.

State and federal environmental mandates have forced several smaller,
inefficient refineries in California to shut down over the past two decades.
Only 14 refineries in California produce the state’s pristine-burning fuel,
and most operate at nearly full capacity to stay cost-effective. Few refiners
outside the state blend California’s reformulated fuel.

In most of the country, a problem at one refinery won’t significantly affect
retail gas prices. But in California, when one refinery shuts down, others
can’t pick up the slack. And it can take weeks to import refined fuel by
tanker. In the meantime, customers are stuck paying higher prices.

Hence this year’s price swoon. Following an explosion at an Exxon Mobil
refinery in Torrance, and a labor stoppage at a Tesoro plant in Martinez this
winter, gasoline prices rose nearly a dollar. Eventually, imported oil helped
cover the supply-demand gap. But recently a Tesoro refinery in Carson reduced
its output to perform annual maintenance, which has again stretched supply in
the Southern California market.

In May Democratic state legislators held hearings to “investigate” the gas
price spike. San Francisco hedge-fund grandee Tom Steyer has demanded
subpoenas of oil-industry executives.

“As everyone knows, the oil companies have been charging Californians up to $1
billion per month more for gasoline than if we paid the national average,” the
billionaire environmentalist asserted. “It’s time to put an end to the Big Oil
giveaway.”"_[4]

What I have done so far is offered an overview of a contrary position, which
is basically a riff on this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Case-Fossil-
Fuels-ebook/dp/B00IN...](http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels-
ebook/dp/B00INIQVJA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1438712813&sr=8-1-spell).
I would recommend it to anyone interested in the other side of the debate.

[0][https://www.masterresource.org/solar-power-
issues/government...](https://www.masterresource.org/solar-power-
issues/government-business-waste-with-solar/)
[1][https://www.masterresource.org/solar-power/solar-power-
cost-...](https://www.masterresource.org/solar-power/solar-power-cost-
intermittency-too/)
[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_power)
[3][http://www2.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan/clean-power-plan-
existing...](http://www2.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan/clean-power-plan-existing-
power-plants) [4][http://www.wsj.com/articles/sky-high-california-gas-
prices-h...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/sky-high-california-gas-prices-have-
a-green-additive-1437174504)

~~~
OrwellianChild
Upvoted for more dialogue. :)

Re: Fuel costs and the competition with Coal & Natural Gas...

What you're describing is exactly the reason (from my perspective) that
incentives for solar, wind, etc. exist... The up-front costs of R&D for new
technologies, particularly those with long payback periods and uncertain
progress milestones, are not well-provided for in a marketplace that isn't
pressured by high costs of existing solutions. Without pre-emptive investment
in alternatives, we'd just burn coal until we literally ran out, and there are
significant economic and environmental consequences of proceeding in that
fashion.

Beyond the basic subsidy concern, the cost of coal, natural gas, etc. is _all-
in_. What we have to measure is not just the cost of replacing fuel in
existing plants. What we have to measure is the lifetime cost of installing
new capacity. We're turning on new power plants worldwide at a truly
astonishing pace. I would like as few of those to be legacy technologies as
possible. The trend towards new installations being solar comes from the
latest Bloomberg energy forecast. [1]

The "we can't just do solar - what about nighttime" argument (and the same for
wind, on a still day) is an acknowledged limitation that is being circumvented
by battery storage, decentralized grids, and other infrastructure investments
(witness the SolarCity/Tesla model where everyone has a battery pack on their
home, much like you keep a propane tank on your off-grid homestead, as one
example). It will never be the case that the shadow from a cloud interrupts
your triple-bypass surgery, just as generators would currently take over in a
brown-out on the current grid.

Re: dynamic market vs. stodgy old companies... My view is that
people/companies respond to incentives at different rates and sensitivities.
You can have a market swinging towards electric cars (GM is happy to sell you
a Volt, Nissan the Leaf) and still have a company like Chrysler/Fiat dragging
its feet. Regulatory pressures, be they a gas tax (I'm not a fan - too
regressive), an electric car mandate, tax and commuting incentives for drivers
of efficient cars, etc. are designed to serve as mobilizers for even those
companies that are too mis-managed to follow the over-arching trend of the
markets. This is how we get things to move faster in our favor, particularly
when there are significant downsides to staying the course re: air pollution,
environmental degradation, climate change, etc. Whether the price of gas rises
due to taxes or swings of the oil industry, I'm indifferent - the price hike
has the same effect on incentives. The only benefit to a gas tax (which,
again, I'd rather avoid since it hurts the poor), is that when the price of
oil goes down occasionally, the price of gas stays at the same high level. It
reduces uncertainty in the market and allows everyone to uniformly plan for an
economy that must absorb those high costs.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-23/the-way-
hu...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-23/the-way-humans-get-
electricity-is-about-to-change-forever)

------
beloch
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California)

------
davidgerard
Is it just me or is Bloomberg going full-clickbait?

------
daily_dose_420
Liberals LOL!

------
tdaltonc
I imagine that the women in that picture is supposed to look like she's taking
in a breath of fresh air, but she looks incredibly smug.

~~~
MrZongle2
Maybe that's what her car really runs on. Reference:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smug_Alert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smug_Alert)!

~~~
MrZongle2
The angry response to my post is quite telling. Guess I hit a nerve.

