There is a powerful reason that automakers worldwide are speeding up their efforts to develop electric vehicles — and that reason is China.If you've bought a new car in the last fifteen years or more, you may have noticed a sticker in the side rear window that proclaims that the car is a "ZEV" or "PZEV" vehicle. That's a program of the California Air Aesources Board-- if the automakers want to sell cars in that state, they have to meet CARB standards. Between California and other states that have piggybacked on CARB's rules, it eventually gets to the point that it's simpler to make the cars all that way.
Propelled by vast amounts of government money and visions of dominating next-generation technologies, China has become the world’s biggest supporter of electric cars. That is forcing automakers from Detroit to Yokohama and Seoul to Stuttgart to pick up the pace of transformation or risk being left behind in the world’s largest car market.
Beijing has already called for one out of every five cars sold in China to run on alternative fuel by 2025. Last month, China issued new rules that would require the world’s carmakers to sell more alternative-energy cars here if they wanted to continue selling regular ones. A Chinese official recently said the country would eventually do away with the internal combustion engine in new cars.
And so it'll go, eventually, with cars that are environmentally compliant with Chinese rules being sold worldwide.
California has been doing that for a long time. Back when I rode a motorcycle, there were the California models and the "49 state models" and now I think they're all the same.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like it does take some large state actor to get the ball rolling on issues like these.
I remember when I was a kid and a motorcycle fanatic, my dad used to tease me by saying that internal combustion engines would have to be replaced with something cleaner, eventually.
I didn't believe him at the time, and I was also blissfully unaware of how bad the air was at that time (mid seventies) because in Eureka, the worst air we got was when the wind blew the smoke from the pulp mill into town, and even that wasn't too bad.
But if you look up old photos from that time from major cities in the US, the air was brown. Not like Beijing on a bad day, but not much better.
There's a haze of smoke hanging in the air this morning from the fires north of here, and it is very noticeable, whereas before we changed policy it was always like that, only with finer, more dangerous particulates.
So it looks like China is gonna eat our lunch on electric cars, like they've already done on solar panels. They are estimating the creation of thirteen million jobs in the solar sector in the coming decade, and many of the workers they are using are retrained coal miners, who are thrilled to be able to work safely and above the ground.
Seems like a program that would work well here if we weren't so damn backward and set in our ways that we automatically reject anything that might interfere with the way our grampa did things.
-Doug in Oakland
My first new car was bought in the Southeast, but passed Cali's smog tests five years later. DMV charged me $300 for "smog impact"; bringing in my out of state vehicle, though compliant, increased the amount of smog generated.
ReplyDeleteApparently vehicles shipped in to the state new did not have the same impact.
Years later the courts voided the provision and ordered DMV to refund owners. I gave them the VIN and tag numbers, but surprise! they had no record and could not refund me. And my then-bank was absorbed by another and closed. :(
China? They sau a lot, not all of which is true.
I note Ford sold half as many vehicles in China as in the USA, but China is also a dangerous market. The government might take your stuff, the government might allow Chinese companies to copy your stuff, or they might decide to simply forbid you from doing business there.
They also now have Ford's (and others') balls in a vise.
Electric cars don't do much more than concentrate the pollution by the power plants, if the generating plants are coal-fired. Which a lot of Chinese plants are. China is far behind the curve on this, for it's only been less than two decades since they stopped making coal-fired steam locomotives.
ReplyDeletePlus, really, the infrastructure won't handle the additional load required when everyone gets home at 6 pm and plugs their car in to recharge. Especially on hot days when the AC load is already high.
ReplyDeleteIf they can solve the range issue, and the electrical load issue, then it will happen. (not sure what they will do for trucks and such though).
We have looked at a Leaf, for our household (2 cars, one 3/4 ton pickup) an electric car might work, even with it's poor range, for one of the cars.
Which is exactly why the Powerwall will work. Charge on solar during the day, discharge to house as needed. I could easily see a Powerwall unit storing energy till about 2-3PM, then reducing household electrical demand during high demand/rate times till 6-7PM.
ReplyDeleteTakes a LOT of solar panels (even in the southwest, where insolation is highest) to charge a powerwall for continuous use throughout the day and night. Seriously, look at the square feet needed.
ReplyDeleteNow, you can charge to store energy when usage is low (late at night), for when usage is high, but the efficiency is terrible.
It is a A Solution, if not a good one, though.
Hey Doug, what do you mean "the air from the pulp mill wasn't that bad". That was some nasty Green smoke from LP. It made the whole of the waterfront area smell horrible, all the way past Sears on the hill there. I guess you got immune to it, I never did.
ReplyDeletew3ski
Since the Powerwall is designed to work with solar roof tiles, that covers a good bit of the space you need. Maximum efficiemcy, nope...usable efficiency, check. Power the plug-in at night, store till 2 or 3, supplement till 6 or 7, bank more till 9...during the wimter the power demand is lower.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't THAT bad, and you could only smell it when the wind was just wrong. Did you know that the mill is gone now, and there's a superfund site where it used to be?
ReplyDelete-Doug in Oakland