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Who's forcing Marchionne and all the other major automakers to sell mostly money-losing electric vehicles? More than any other person, it's Mary Nichols. She's run the California Air Resources Board since 2007, championing the state's zero-emission-vehicle quotas and backing President Barack Obama's national mandate to double average fuel economy to 55 miles per gallon by 2025. She was chairman of the state air regulator once before, a generation ago, and cleaning up the famously smoggy Los Angeles skies is just one accomplishment in a four-decade career.
Nichols really does intend to force automakers to eventually sell nothing but electrics. In an interview in June at her agency's heavy-duty-truck laboratory in downtown Los Angeles, it becomes clear that Nichols, at age 70, is pushing regulations today that could by midcentury all but banish the internal combustion engine from California's famous highways. "If we're going to get our transportation system off petroleum," she says, "we've got to get people used to a zero-emissions world, not just a little-bit-better version of the world they have now."
We've seen campaigns to defend smoking and not wearing seatbelts and not getting vaccinated. Is this like that, or is there more to it?
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 03 2015, @08:49PM
We don't need another Enron. We already have an ageing infrastructure ran by for-profit energy companies that would shit itself from the additional load. No where in the article is this talked about.
Point is if they want to push electric cars as hard as they want to, they also have to push utilities to upgrade infrastructure. ConEd was warning all of south queens (NYC) to turn power hungry appliances like air conditioners, washers and dryers off in the middle of a heatwave to allow them to conduct repairs. Either it was a hoax to keep their loads light during peak or they were serious. You think air conditioners and dryers are high loads? Wait until we have millions of electric car chargers installed. There is no way the current grid would support an all electric automobile society.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:14AM
That's a real problem, but it's a sort of chicken and egg thing. If the cars aren't there, then the normal demand on the infrastructure doesn't need supplementing. Sometimes it does, but it's "uneconomical" to "overbuild" or "overmaintain".
So it's a question of timing, as much as anything else. How can the electric cars be fed into the system at a rate just sufficient to allow the grid to be strengthened to keep up with it. Of course, there's also the question of how the grid companies can be motivated to build-up and maintain the grid. They seem quite happy to skimp on needed maintenance already.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Tuesday August 04 2015, @03:02AM
I have never understood why time-of-day based electricity rates are so uncommon in the USA. They have been used for decades in the UK and many appliances include a delay timer so that they can be run at night.