plug-in states and ghg

There were two companies in the room when the incentives were passed. Those were gm and toyota. Both tried to pass the largest incentve for the car they wanted to build anyway. That is why the max credit was based on GM's size, and the minium was lowered to toyota's size. Everything else is just a fairy tail. Toyota did a lot to create the Japanese incentives that favored it too. Let us not be in denial about toyota's goal here.

The government's goal was to nurture a technology that would reduce gasoline usage. Lke all government programs it is not optimal. It had the pacs from GM and Toyota moving it.

Well we can agree on that. They used an existing platform designed for a small battery. Please stop with the foolishness that it is optimal for efficiency. I fully expect the redesigned prius phv to have a larger range. The c-max took the trade off for range instead of cargo space. It used an existing vehicle too. If it were designed from scratch to be a cuv phev it would have been longer with better aerodynamics and more room for both cargo and batteries. Both companies tried to do their best trade offs with existing vehicles.

I'm not quite sure what the point is here, but it appears to be pure sophistry. Toyota doesn't want to sell you a phv in most states, so that will definitely have limited appeal say in florida, texas, ohio, illonois, where people want to buy plug-ins and often buy renewable electricity also. Most that buy plug-ins do not rank ghg high on the list, but those that do often buy renewable electricity. I don't think the leaf sells badly in WV because it produces more ghg than a prius, I don't think people in west virginia without solar care about ghg.

This seems like a misinformed goal given the sales distributions of cars. Doesn't the volt produce lower emissions than the prius phv on weighted average where it is sold?

There are two things wrong here. You are still using average electricty, instead of weigheted average and those numbers I pumped out were for 2007 we are cleaner now. When you look at likely sales the energi will be lower. The other problem is if these folks are self selected they care about using less gasoline, so not only will they use less gasoline but those that care about it will produce less ghg also. It is unlikely battery weight decreased much highway mileage where we will going most of the time. It is likely an artifact of the epa testing procedure where the hybrid used its battery better, but the energi was fully depleted. Still there may be a small hit. YMMV. Short trips will not hurt the energi's mpg.

 

+1

They still don't sell many plug-ins even with the $15K incentives. If that changes let me know.

If more plug-ins are sold to use local coal, that doesn't seem to be a bad trade off.

I would love to hear if plug in sales in wv are now up to 1%. That would help get the negative anti-plug-in politics out of it. I'm happy if WV and Kentucky get onboard the plug-in band wagon to reduce gasoline even if it does mean more coal in those states.

 

The amounts were written in law in 2008, so yes we have learned a lot. In 2009 the number of vehicles were increased.

Nothing wrong with making the law better now. Suggestions have been to make the money an instant rebate so that the consumer doesn't need to fill out the tax forms, and to increase it to $10K maximum. Neither are bad ideas, but there are also moves to kill the credits completely. Given how bad congress has been doing lately, and the bigger financial cliff looming, I don't think improving this law should be high on the priority list.

Again I don't want to make this a thread about one plug-in versus another. There are numerous threads about that, and all the plug-ins have trade offs.

It all depends on what question you are asking. If you are asking how with this vehicle impact my carbon footprint, an individual should take their own likely driving habits, utility, and choice of renewable or regular plug power. The national average whether weighted by sales or not should have nothing to do with that calculation. Other considerations about the car such as limited range, cost, comfort, handling, acceleration, etc come into play and may be much more important than ghg.

If the question is how does this vehicle affect ghg for the country then sales weighted averages are appropriate if you have the data. Even sparse data is better than just taking the grid as a whole.

I am not sure what disaster you see happening. Less than 4% of new cars are plug-ins or hybrids, and the volt produces a lower carbon foot print than many of them. So let us say the volt is only cleaner than 97% of new cars sold today. Would increasing its sales, or even the sales of the fisker karma - the highest ghg plug-in - mean disaster. Or would it mean a step in the right direction?

 

I don't want to get political here, but the point of the subsidy is to develop technology for plug-in cars. That is without borders. The program was not about american competitiveness like PNGV, that failed to provide fuel savings but excluded foreign manufacturers except Mercedes. PNGV seemed to have backfired on the american competitiveness front

Now Toyota did get the most money from cash for clunkers which was a jobs program. I don't know why imported cars from Japan were included there. They definitely did not help keep US companies from bankrupcy, and the Japanese program was written to not include cars imported from north america. That seems like the program was just a check written by the tax payers to big auto companies.

If you are trying to incubate bev and phev technology including batteries and fast charging giving everyone buying a nimh prius money makes no sense at all. Some here don't like the idea of plug ins or the US government simulating demand. That is something for FHOP, and I have said my piece on it before. Remember if you are focusing on low emissions as they have in Japan, fewer plug-ins get sold and the program is many times more expensive.

 

Yes, I agree completely here. In fact other states may pretend to sell them their cleaner electricity, but.... Even with the imports california is only about 8% coal.

My point was a user like you that buys a leaf and solar will really have a low carbon footprint for your car. If you charge at night then you are using most combined cycle plants in California. When your solar is going on the grid during peaks your are offsetting peaking power plants and power coming from other states. It does not make you go to zero, but solar + leaf is much lower than prius + gasoline in ghg.

IMHO CA could do much better with better regulation. They would drop real co2 by quickly building quick cycling ccgt plants that are compatible with solar. That would eliminate teh 8% of coal imported and many peaking plants would operate less, dropping the cost of electricity and ghg. This does not mean that california is not doing much better than states like west virginia or indiana.

 

When you talk about bad subsidy programs, how to get it wrong, you can't really ignore cash for clunkers. It cost $2.85B in 7 months, much more than the plug-in subsidies will cost for many years. It failed to help employment because it was short lived, and mostly gave people money to buy cars they were going to buy anyway, or pulled sales forward to reduce future sales. It is estimated that it cost between $8K-$25K per real new car sales in the period. Nothing wrong with the mpg requirement, except it was too low to really make this an efficiency program. If it was a jobs progarm, like it was suposed to be instead of corporate welfare for toyota and gm, then imported cars should have not been included.

 

You probably should think of engineering goals and outcomes before analysis. The volt was engineered to use less gasoline, not to produce fewer ghg. You are adding your own goal, and putting it above all the others. Then even with your own goal, many in those states can buy renewables if there goal is to reduce their carbon foot print.

Finally what car are you comparing. Lets look at some toyotas.
Compare Side-by-Side
346 for the smallest yarris
573 for the sienna
739 for a 4wd tundra
Now if the volt is a ghg disaster, toyota needs to stop selling these vehicles right now..... Or maybe you are just inserting drama here. That for the bottom 10 states, only one of which even buys many volts, you need to buy renewables for a volt or leaf or prius phv to have lower ghg than buying a prius. BTW the prius doesn't sell well in 8 of those states also.

And in the country the volt likely produces around 215 g/mi much less than a versa and it uses a lot less gas too. Why would anyone focus on states that are only a small percentage of sales?

But here you are rigging the test. If selling a leaf or tesla or volt reduces them for the country, why should we care that we have states with high ghg electricity. THat should not prevent the sales of plug-ins. Waiting for the worst states is just a false choice.

Well I absolutely disagree with you here. The grid is the grid and it changes slowly. Plug-ins will last a long time. You propose to lock us into a future of gas shortages simply because in hand picked states, where plug-ins don't sell well, todays electricity is slightly more carbon intense on a plug in, than the very best gasoline car in terms of ghg. That is a false choice.