Free Republic

From the Express News... Power stations wait for traffic Colin McDonal, San Antonio Express-News  Updated 02:25 a.m., Tuesday, February 21, 2012       San Antonio now has more than 120 public electric car charging stations spread across the city, putting it on par with places like Austin, Seattle and San Francisco in welcoming the new vehicles. CPS Energy installed the stations and is celebrating them today at the Santikos Embassy 14 movie theater on the North Side with local electric car owners — a number that CPS estimates is now 80. ~snip~ The U.S. Energy Department paid for the stations, valued...

California continues its leading role as the national laughingstock of regulatory absurdity. This week, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), forged another link in its unbroken chain of disastrous environmental policies. New CARB regulations reflect a decision process heavily influenced by three primary sources: Joseph Stalin, Al Gore and Pee-Wee Herman. Let's look at the latest batch of lunacy from those swell 'crats in Sacramento. As an added bonus, we read from SFGATE, the reliable Left Coast mouthpiece that happily shills for the hard left Democratic mouth breathers. ".... the California Air Resources Board unanimously approved strict vehicle emissions regulations...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- California air regulators passed Friday sweeping auto emission standards that include a mandate to have 1.4 million electric and hybrid vehicles on state roads by 2025. The California Air Resources Board unanimously approved the new rules, which require that one-in-seven of new cars sold in the state in 2025 be an electric or other zero-emission vehicle. The plan also mandated a 75-percent reduction in smog-forming pollutants by 2025, and a 34 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over roughly the same time. Automakers worked with the board and federal regulators on the greenhouse gas mandates in...

Europe’s motorcycle industry is having a tough ride in the current economic times despite being touted as one of the solutions to road congestion and pollution. Sales of motorcycles and similar light vehicles have plummeted in the past five years, from 2.7 million in 2007 to 1.7 million last year, industry figures show, hampering efforts to roll out a new generation of hybrid and electric transport. “The crisis has deeply, deeply affected the European market,” said Hendrik von Keunheim, president of ACEM, the European motorcycle industry trade group. “Many European suppliers are struggling.” The European Commission’s 2011 transportation White Paper...

For electric vehicle enthusiasts with the “if you build it, they will come” mentality, who endorse endless taxpayer subsidies for plug-in automobiles and infrastructure to charge them, there’s bad news this week. The Daily Mail reported that sales of electric cars in the United Kingdom have fallen so sharply that there are now more charging stations than there are vehicles. If you thought the flaccid U.S. sales of the Chevy Volt (7,671 units) and Nissan Leaf (9,674 units) were a letdown – despite significant government funding for research and development, batteries, charging systems, and a $7,500 tax credit for...

As the U.S. government Venture Capitalist-in-Chief (and President) Barack Obama and his Department of Energy investment guru (and Energy Secretary) Steven Chu pour other peoples’ money into their favorite “clean” technology schemes, private backers appear to be following them off the cliff, “as publicly traded battery makers watched their stocks tank and their businesses stumble,” according to a Dow Jones report late last month. According to a Dow Jones-owned industry tracker called VentureSource, private investors put $372.7 million into 14 battery deals over the first three quarters of 2011. Whether they would have transferred so much cash into the...

MSN Autos - General Motors announced in Shanghai today that it will jointly develop an electric vehicle with longtime Chinese partner SAIC -- a move that some U.S. lawmakers have likened to a shakedown. China has built its manufacturing infrastructure around low-cost production and continues to lag behind other developed countries when it comes to developing and implementing cutting-edge automotive technology. For the past 25 years, the Chinese government has required foreign automakers to partner with Chinese companies, which are required to own a stake of at least 50 percent. China also imposes heavy tariffs on imported cars, which some...

Consumer Reports has painted an ugly picture of the Nissan Leaf, as did an early enthusiast based in Los Angeles, who described his frustrations with the heavily subsidized, all-electric car in a recent column. Now comes what must be the definitive example of the Leaf’s impracticality – this time from a (still) hard-core advocate, whose 180-mile Tennessee trek to visit family over the holidays required four lengthy stops to keep the vehicle moving. Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, set out from Knoxville on Monday with his wife and son, headed for the Nashville...

NLPC Associate Fellow Paul Chesser was interviewed last night on Cavuto on the Fox Business Network. Paul asserted that electric vehicles like the Chevy Volt have failed in the marketplace, despite massive taxpayer subsidies. VIDEO 3:49 minutes

Many articles written over the past year have questioned if President Obama will be able to reach his goal of having a million electric vehicles on US roads in 2015. A more important fact has been overlooked. That is, even if we get a million EVs on the roads in four years, we will have done practically nothing to reduce oil consumption in America. To be more specific, we will reduce consumption by approximately 0.15%. Is it worth the billions of taxpayer dollars spent producing controversial vehicles like the Chevy Volt in order to lessen foreign oil dependence four...

The fact that every level of government taxes our income, consumption and property prompted John R. Smith to ask in the title of a recent BizPacReview post, “Why don’t they just tax our corpses?” Owning an automobile requires that we pay a sales tax, title and registration fees, annual registration fees, ad valorem taxes, state and federal gas taxes, and, if we want to avoid the “I-95 parking lot,” we pay a turnpike toll. Even if we don’t own an automobile, our taxes help pay for our neighbor’s hybrid car, and for the ethanol he pumps into it. Apparently, this...

ELECTRIC cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetimes than petrol equivalents because of the energy consumed in making their batteries, a study has found. An electric car owner would have to drive at least 129,000km before producing a net saving in CO2. Many electric cars will not travel that far in their lifetime because they typically have a range of less than 145km on a single charge and are unsuitable for long trips. Even those driven 160,000km would save only about a tonne of CO2 over their lifetimes. The British study, which is the first analysis of the full...

Electric-car makers and utilities said most owners will probably charge their vehicles at night when the rates are lower. But because of the tiered rate system, their electricity bills will still probably be high… One plug-in hybrid Volt would increase the average household's electrical usage 60%... California households pay steeper rates for their electricity compared with other states -- about 35% more than the national average...

Californians may end up paying the highest electricity rates in the country to charge their electric vehicles, a new study says. The state's tiered rate system, in which customers are charged higher rates as they use more electricity, could make plug-in hybrid and battery-powered vehicles more costly to own, according to a Purdue University study. The study was unveiled as the first of the electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles are reaching consumers. Two vehicles, the all-electric Nissan Leaf and the plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt, started being delivered to their first customers last month. Electric-car makers and utilities said most owners...

    Promises of Electric Vehicles?  Vlado BevcSynergy Research Institute, P.O.Box 561, San Ramon, California 94583  The promotion of General Motors Chevy Volt by three mayors (Contra Costa Times, November 6, 1010) merits some mundane evaluation from the energy standpoint. Electric vehicles –with an internal combustion engine assist – are compared to a “typical car” using 13 cents of $3.00/gallon gasoline per mile, that is one that makes 23 miles per gallon. (13/300 = 0.0433 gallon/mile) In a conventional car 25 percent of 37 kWh from a gallon of gasoline gets into traction (because of losses in the engine and drive train)....

The latest Senate energy bill, quietly unveiled last week, looks like sweet compromise on radical measures like cap and trade, but buried within is a bitter poison pill that will could be swallowed in a vote that may come this week. Unlike the 1,200-page House of Representatives energy bill, which passed last year, this scaled-down proposal does not call for an 83-percent reduction in greenhouse gases (or any reduction in greenhouse gases) and contains no mention of a cap-and-trade scheme. Also contrary to the House bill, this one does not provide a family of four earning up to $55,000 with...

In brief: This new coalition of members of the electric vehicle community, infrastructure, and more proclaim that the U.S. needs to have 75% of its light-duty vehicle miles go electric by 2040. They officially released their report titled Electrification Roadmap, which outlines a vision for the deployment of EVs and infrastructure on a national scale. Members of the coalition include GridPoint, INc., Coda Automotive, Nissan Motor Company, Johnson Controls, FedEx, and A123 Systems. Everyone in the coalition produces vehicles, infrastructure, or components for the EV industry. That 75% goal would mean 200 million cars being replaced by electrics in only...

According to U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, the stimulus bill will force the military to buy electric vehicles. You have to wonder if the democrat's cheese has completely slipped off their cracker. Are electric tanks and helicopters next? The military can not depend on electric vehicles in a time of war or emergency. That is highlighted now in the State of Kentucky where Governor Beshear has deployed the entire KY National Guard to help out in an ice storm. There is now no power in the areas they are being deployed. Electric vehicles would be useless.

Many members of Congress believe they know what the car company of the future should look like. “A business model based on gas — a gas-guzzling past — is unacceptable,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said recently. “We need a business model based on cars of the future, and we already know what that future is: the plug-in hybrid electric car.” But the car company Schumer and other lawmakers envision for the future could turn out to be a money-losing operation, not part of a “sustainable U. S. auto industry” that President-elect Barack Obama and most members of Congress say...

The buzzword out of Detroit these days seems to be "hybrid." As the Big Three automaker CEOs return to Washington today -- arriving by hybrid vehicles instead of private jets -- they will try to sell Congress on turnaround plans focusing on an aggressive new line of fuel-efficient cars. Lawmakers might buy the plans from Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, but it is going to be a lot harder to sell American drivers on the hybrid cars. The key may be gas prices. Maryann Keller, who runs an automotive consulting company, said that people lined up to buy more-efficient cars...