Volt's Latest Bad News-Couched as Good News

There is no connection, obviously. Lawmakers decided to lump the battery in with the emission system. It doesn't have to make sense.

In 1947, lawmakers in the U.S. made rhubarb a fruit, even though it is biologically a plant stem. One shouldn't expect too much logic from our lawmakers.

Tom

 

No, i think the SOC window will increase throughout the life of the car to ensure you still get 8kwh of power out of it. If the battery loses 20% of it's capabilities the total capacity becomes 12.8kwh, and a 8kwh usable area is a 62.5% SOC window. Sounds fine to me...

 

Ahh yes, the 'free market is good' mantra is back. Head down to the gulf lately, AustinGreen ? Below is a fair summary of CARB regulatory decisions over the past few decades. Feel free to google a picture of Los Angeles air in the 1960's to see where things were headed absent CARB courtesy of 'free enterprise'.

HowStuffWorks "How the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Works"

'Free Market'eers are like religious zealots.

 

I can not find any reference to the lawsuit that you state, only the one about cafe standards. LA was quite toxic and we did need an epa, I fail to see why california was the only state granted the right to regulate things, and was allowed to regulate far beyond environmental protection. If you can tell me the name of the lawsuit GM started that caused CARB to relax its rules and basically kill the electric car requirements it will help me understand the information. Even after the lawsuit they could have kept zev's, they just could not also regulate regular gas cars. They decided themselves to kill the ev. This is from pbs

NOW. Science & Health. Air Wars - California's Auto Emissions Laws | PBS

Yes I believe in the free market. I also believe that moneyed interests corrupt government, and the government the governs least governs best. That is for a different type of discussion. Let's look at MMS and the BP spill. Government to free marketeers must be there to protect competition and the public good including the environmental protection of the property rights of those living on the gulf coast. MMS was staffed by big government suporters of the mining and oil companies and failed to regulate properly. They did not even read BP's plan, which covered animals not in the gulf, and did not cover the habitats of the gulf. They further allowed bp to drill after numerous health and safety violations. Good free market tactics would have prevented the disaster. This includes removing the tiny caps of bp's liability in texas city and the gulf coast. Today homeland security is helping bp keep reports away from texas city and the spill, taking social security numbers of photographers that try to share the information, and giving it to bp security (big government taking away 1st and 4th amendment rights of citizens in favor of a multinational corporation and those in government getting paid by them). Try actually looking at the facts before vilifying a point of view. I'm not sure what BP has to do with CARB. Both MMS and CARB seem like things that need to be reformed.

 

A real "free market" would not have bailed GM out of bankruptcy in 2009.

 

I would wait on these Li ion cars to see how those batteries perform. The Volt is priced too high to be a serious hybrid player--whenever they get around to putting it on the market. The Leaf and a Hyundai hybrid are more serious players.

 

Uh-huh. Inane zealotry. Good free market tactics are use of LLC and abuse of the courts to outlast litigants, for a start.

 

One example from american history refutes this approach somewhat.

sunnyday.mit.edu/steam.pdf

A quick summary is the free market of steamships carrying cargo and passengers on the Mississippi was very competitive. As a result, many people were killed by boiler explosions as the various shipping companies were always pushing their ships to move people and cargo as fast as possible. The free market thinking was that lawsuits would provide motivation for the shipping companies to make safe boilers, hence let lawsuits go after big money.

What actually happened was that shipping companies raised rates significantly to cover the lawsuits. Boiler explosions continued unabated. Finally, national regulations were legislated requiring inspections and standards (install working relief valves) to be met in order to operated. The reduction in the death toll was astounding. The numbers are in the paper.

If your going to provide justification for "Good free market tactics", you should read this since it shows that these tactics may be far harder to achieve than straightforward government regulations.

 

For those actually interested in the facts, CARB rolled back the regs in 2008, making 2012 the first year that credits are important. This is likely a key reason for the targetting of 2012 for GM's applying for it. I am not going to defend gm, but please actually look at the facts.

Zero emission vehicle - DDWiki
Begining in 2012 a car company is fined $5000 for each car not produced. FC vehicles get extra credits. If you don't warrant the batteries you get no credit. A 50 mile ev gets more credit than a plug in hybrid with 75 mile ev range.

In 2008 the ev comunity tried to stop carb from reacting to the Hydrogen special interests at the car companies. It failed ofcourse. I am not against hydrogen, and think it is a great potential energy store, but CARB setting it as the biggest part of their ZEV agenda only helped push back plug in hybrid and ev vehicle development.
Take Action to Keep EVs in Our Future

The silly shift to hydrogen, the long warranties, and the silly regulations on paint don't really help CARBs case in my mind. IMHO its just another bloated and corrupt part of the california state government. If CARB is doing a great job why is the LA area still always in the top5 for most polluted often #1.

Exactly, then maybe the focus would be on how to get us the technology we want instead of schadenfreude about GMs troubles.

Perhaps if the regulators were regulating instead of breaking the laws of this land, you might have a chance of belief in big government taking care of us. BP's spill happened with the support of MMS and congress, after the pipe line leak, and after Texas City.


Meth, Porn, Guns, Graft at Agency Overseeing Gulf Oil Companies: Interior Department Report | Fast Company

Do you really want to argue if we had a small government and the free market things would be worse?

Hey I am for small government not no government. Of course we need some regulation. It is when the bankers fill the SEC, and the oil and mining executives fill MMS, that I think you need to take a step back and take the money out of it, and trust the people not the government. I think AIG should not have been allowed to get to big to fail. I think EPA should have pulled most of BPs permits after they were responsible for the Texas City explosion and almost all of the safety violations in refineries. BP did not pay what it would have in a free market for the pipeline leak. They didn't pay for the Texas city explosion. Why do you think they would expect to pay after getting away with those earlier activities. BP gives congressmen a lot of money on both sides of the aisle, and they turned the other way. A free market would have exacted a bigger slice, and good regulation would not have allowed BP to drill without a blow out plan. I guess you get what you pay for. Don't blame the market for that one.

http://robbishop.house.gov/UploadedFiles/salazar_timeline_final.pdf

 

Of course the market is to blame. Why do you think the government regulatory bodies were stuffed with industry bought insiders and puppets in the first place ? Republicans, unable to simply dismantle these agencies, circumvented them for business by letting business run them.

Best practice free market operations are to buy influence. Physicians are bought lunch, Tony is given a PHEV for a week, and politicians and regulators are given free visits from prostitutes. Public harm is spun with spokespersons and misinformation, while damages are mitigated with legal process.

It is all "the price of doing business."
If you do not recognize the CARB serial acquiescences as results of business using money and influence against the public good, I'll just leave you to your blind zealotry belief in the free market.

 

I refuse to get in this argument. Go ahead set up the straw man. Create the puppet. I see a small govenement with free market principles is beyond your compehension. Let's talk about CARB. You like labeling people. I hate what both parties have done to help destroy liberty and rights and that includes the environment. MMS is a disease of democrats and republicans not limited government advocates that don't like the federal government giving away our common property then pissing away the small price they got.

How does advocating hydrogen over plug in hybrids help the environment?
Why is a long waranty better for the environment than a normal waranty? Why is a 3 year lease ok instead of a long waranty on certain things. Why would a hybrid malibu get more credits than a fiesta. If you can answer the questions and still think CARB is interested in simple rules that help non polluting technologies equally I can tell we just have a difference of opinion, and world view, and reality.

 

California was already regulating autos for environmental purposes when CAA was being drafted. Since California has the largest Congressional delegation and had the most obvious environmental issues, the legislation was written so that they could continue to regulate autos but that no other state could, aside from agreeing with the CA standard.

This was a compromise. While it meant there would be two sets of standards, it also meant that CA and other states could be more aggressive in solving their problems without affecting states that were not observing poor air quality. IMO, the system worked.

 

The trigger for my response was the inference of legal cost being a good motivator for industry reform. Hence the link. That said, it also is very clear that bad government can be as destructive as total anarchy. What is actually being discussed (although not very obvious) is where does government regulation end and government market manipulation begin. It's pretty clear that CARB started as a worthwhile regulator board and has devolved into a defacto social agency attempting to control the auto industry. The best way to reduce gas use is to tax the stuff. After filling the 2010 Prius with 8.5 gallons (for 450 miles), it's clear that the auto industry has the solution, it's the larger population that has the problem.


I also agree that failed government agencies need to be scrapped and rebuilt. It will be impossible to get MMS back into a highly regarded regulation agency just by changing administrations every 4 or 8 years. That will be harder to solve.

 

It's always a balancing act between too little regulation and over regulation! Where we can, we the consumer must choose the best products available to combat the energy and environmental problems we all face! If enough of us do, markets and governments will follow!

 

I wasn't trying to say that the lawsuit was the best way to regulate, in fact it should be a last resort. I was talking about he lawsuit because it really wasn't about ZEVs at all. CARB was free to set those. In fact if it had simply reduced the levels instead of killing the mandate, the ev1's would have never been crushed. They wanted to create an oxymoronic category partial zero emissions vehicles, and their definitions and new rules had nothing to do emmissions regulations. They never went to court, and worked with Honda, Toyota, GM, Chyslser, and Ford to come up with rules that would work for them and let them set up this bizarre substitution of PZEV, and AT-PZEV vehicles in the law. All the big auto companies killed their ev prohgrams. CARB later has added the enhanced AT-PZEV and silver+ and have set calculation rules for things like the plug-in prius and and volt. This is really where extended range plug in hybrid vehicle comes from. Clear rules that kept tech out of it would allow for small companies and others to help reach our goals, but this is not CARB. No one should believe that the lawsuit prevented CARB from ZEV, it was all about the partial zev's.

I agree that CARB probably started as a good idea, but it has too much power. California just should not be able to be the only state. The federal government stopped some of Texas's standards on pipelines because of interstate commerce, and yes there were California corporations involved in pushing a leaky pipeline through my part of town.

Off topic rant. MMS started as a bad idea under Reagan and I don't see how anyone could think having the agency that sets bids and rules for our natural resources, and collects revenue should have no scientists but ensure safety and environmental regulations. It gained more corruption and power under each subsequent administration bush 41, clinton, bush 43. Obama promised to reform it, but from all evidence under the current administration it has continued to fester and rot. Both sides of the aisle know about this red headed step child, but it brings in a huge amount of revenue and who ever is in power wants to hold onto it. As responsible citizens we need to tell them NO! Kill the beast, and get rid of the department. Put some checks and balances back into government (EPA is logical for standards and inspections, interior department wants to change the name and get more money to fix it). No more oil companies and mining companies writing single bid contracts. No more giving leases free money because it forgets to collect revenue.

 

No. The auto companies (GM included, irony of ironies) put extreme pressure on CARB to allow HEV vehicle production in lieu of ZEV. Personally I think it was the right thing to do, given the cost of BEV cars then, and the realization that a HEV equaled a BEV in emission reductions given California's energy mix at the time.

CARB did not anticipate, however, that their compromise would be used against them by the auto companies just a few months later as a demonstration of de-facto CO2 regulation. CARB was probably manipulated, and certainly out-maneuvered in the courtroom by the auto companies, aided and abetted by the bush white house that filed an amicus curie on behalf of the auto companies.

Fwiw, I have always thought that pollution goals should be set that are completely technology neutral. This has not happened because the auto (or whatever) companies first argument is always 'tech does not exist for what you demand.' Since regulations require that demands be feasible, the regulatory agencies are manipulated into choosing tech winners and losers.

 

I agree with most of this.
CARB likely was manipulated into writing bad rules. The problem is, once the lawsuit happened they could have rewritten the rules. They chose instead to settle out of court, keeping some of the potentially illegal rules and rolling back on the very zev regulations that they claimed to support and were perfectly legal for them to enforce. This makes CARB as guilty as the auto companies in my mind.

It is not unusual for the federal government to get involved with this type of litigation, what was unusual was for the president to get involved. This makes the bush administration partially culpable, since instead of pushing CARB to rewrite the rules to not violate rights of the federal government, they aided the auto companies to settle out of court on their terms. Then the DOE invested money where carb and the car companies wanted it in hydrogen, instead of helping investments in EV and Plug in technology. In effect favoring the technology and companies that CARB favored. In later years of the last administration CAFE standards were raised and incentives for EVs and PHV were raised.

 

An old article about CARBs latest major change should help people understand the rules.

Hydrogen Car Prospects Sputter - Forbes.com

IMHO 2008 change was to favor the volt and plug-in prius. In also drastically reduced incentives to produce any ZEVs or plug-ins. CARB continues to favor hydrogen in the new rules, and makes technology choices, not pollution choices in their rules.

 

The unusual part was the white house opposing its own executive agency. Bush had not quite had time to gut the EPA and fill it with incompetent cronies ... err, I mean 'advocates of deregulation'.

Now complete the details of the actual subsidy amounts and percentage CAFE increase. Those moves were sops to avoid actually doing anything. But they appear to have been successful in at least one regard: you have bought the spin, and are regurgitating it.

 

Let's return to the GM bashing, please. Leave it to GM to build a car propelled by electricity that can't meet emissions standards.