California to Vote on Lowering Electric Vehicle Requirement
Tomorrow, California’s Air Resources Board will vote to lower the requirement of auto makers to sell a certain number of electric vehicles (EV) in the state as a condition for selling any vehicles there. It’s big news in the EV world because as California goes, so goes the nation. Read more, here.
The original goal, set in 1990, was to require 100,000 vehicles sold by 2003. That was lowered to 25,000. The vote is to lower it again to 2,500.
An online friend, Harlan Oehike, gave me his permission to publish a recent email of his, which is more poetic than I could write.
—– Original Message —–
From: harlan e. oehlke
To: xxx ; joel@unmassed.com
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 5:15 PM
Subject: Re: All Coming TogetherGuys -
Interesting goings on in the EV world lately. Auto lobbiests are trying to stall any demand for pure electric vehicles (I’m sure ‘big oil’ is putting in their two cents worth too) by watering down California’s laws which demand a certain portion of vehicles offered for sale in that state be zero-emission. This was how the Toyoto RAV-EV mentioned below came to be. Big push to convince CARB to vote in favor of EVs. See sample letter below from RAV-EV mailing list website…
Interesting note: There is apparently enough excess electricity generated at night (not consumed because of lower demand) to charge over 180 million electric vehicles comparable to the RAV-EV without having to add any extra power generating stations. The argument is that the pollution of EVs is transferred back to the generating stations. This pollution will be there whether or not EV are using it.
Electric power created by coal, hydro or nuclear (even solar or wind) is the first competition that ‘big oil’ is running into. Their lobbiests are working overtime to slow it down until they can invest all the billion dollar profits they’re making right now into acquiring these industries. The question is, why doesn’t the FTC stop this monopolizing of the energy industry ? Big oil is convincing lawmakers (or buying them off) that electricity is used only for houses and industry while oil is for vehicles. This is no longer true unless they can stuff that genie back into the bottle. Auto manufacturers don’t like it because of the loss in aftermarket business as the letter explains below. No oil changes, mufflers, radiators, alternators, etc.
I make my salary off of ‘big oil’, however, I still expect to have a choice as a citizen and I get mad as hell when my government allows special interests to take that choice away….
Here’s an interesting link: a mashup of all the plug-in stations in the US. www.evchargermaps.com. These vehicles can be plugged in anywhere, mainly your home, but notice how most of the public charging places are in Southern California.
California is THE place for electric vehicles. For most electric utilities, demand is lower in the evening, which is a good time to charge up electric vehicles.
(Photo courtesy of bradlauster.)
The California Air Resources Board (CARB), ended up slashing the number of zero emission vehicles required, again.
Air board trims mandate for zero-emission vehicles (ZEV’s)
http://www.mercurynews.com/drive/ci_8726167
Here are the number of ZEV’s required by CARB, by year:
Year Requirement
1990 10% of all vehicles sold by 2004 (roughy 100,000)
2003 25,000
2008 7,500