Chevy Volt Not Green Enough For California 384
thecarchik writes "The first two plug-in cars from major manufacturers will go head-to-head on warranties and lease prices: $350 a month for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, $349 for the 2011 Nissan Leaf. Now the choice shifts to other measures, including electric and overall range, as well as the plug-in perks that states like California offer to early adopters to encourage them to opt for electric cars. This is where it gets interesting. While California loves the Nissan Leaf, current regulations deny Chevy Volt buyers two significant perks: a $5,000 rebate, and permission to drive solo in HOV Lanes."
I'm puzzled (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently California can't afford to pay government employees, but can afford to give money to people who buy electric cars?
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:4, Insightful)
What's your point? We are also committed to building a high-speed train from Barstow to Lodi, at astonishing cost.
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:5, Insightful)
Even more astonishing than the cost of the $45 billion HSR line is the cost of the $80-150 billion alternative of expanding highways and airports just to move the same number of people.
Re:HOV is for CONGESTION not for ENVIRONMENT (Score:2, Insightful)
Change is bad, Mmmm-kay.
GM Must Be Freaking Right Now (Score:4, Insightful)
This takes away any sort of "green" cred the vehicle had. Whether it's actually true what Calif. believes or not isn't the point. People will PERCEIVE that the Volt isn't "green" regardless of where it's sold in the US.
Sucks to be them.
Re:WAKE UP CALL HERE PEOPLE, GM DID THIS TO THEMSE (Score:2, Insightful)
you need to stop believing those "documentaries" you've been watching.........
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:5, Insightful)
Any expenses necessary to maintain the status quo are simply necessary, or even "emergency". They don't count.
Any expenses incurred deviating from the status quo are radical, fiscally imprudent experiments that we can ill-afford.
Any attempt to actually assign numbers to these two categories, and compare them, makes you a pointy-headed wonk who is too boring for television.
Re:The leaf is not a hybrid (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, the answer is to drop all the regulations and incentives and bump the tax on gasoline and diesel by $5 per gallon. Why tax someone and refund the tax on hybrids that get worse mileage than some smaller cars? Why create all the tax and refund process in the first place? Just tax on usage, and let the rest go. The Free Market will figure it out. People will use less and pay more attention to economy of what they buy. And that will close the budget gap for CA as well (unless done at the national level, in which case it will go a long way towards closing the budget deficit).
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh bullshit - it's never going to be built, and the money will be pissed away
Re:The leaf is not a hybrid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It seems unecessarily complex... (Score:3, Insightful)
I completely agree in principal, but in practice it is difficult to implement. The problem is how to compare electric and fossil fuel vehicles. The fossil fuel consumption, toxic emissions and CO2 emissions from electric generation vary dramatically depending on location and time of day. At low use hours most of the inefficient power plants are turned off, most of the low emissions plants (nuclear, wind, hydro) are running. Charging your car at 2am probably contributes fairly little to emissions. On the other hand at peak use hours the power to charge you car may come almost entirely from high emissions plants - even just the very inefficient "peaking" plants. So charging your car during the day at work may be very bad for the environment.
If a large number of people purchase electric cars this will distort the picture even more. A small number of cars won't significantly add to the load and can be considered to have emissions produced by the average energy production at that time and place. If you add a large number of cars to the grid then the utility will be forced to turn on more less-efficient plants and the per-car emissions will go up.
My belief is that you do better taxing this at the source. If you tax fossil fuels for their CO2 output (and other externalities), then the market will do the right thing. Clean electric power will gain a competitive advantage and areas will clean power will be able to provide it more cheaply - making charging your car economically reasonable.
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:4, Insightful)
The only people going up and down hwy 5 or 99 are traveling/trucking. They got a car full of junk. these people aren't taking trains. Unless you think those IT workers in lodi/fresno/bakersfield need to commute to barstows booming job industry.
I used to think government was stupid. Now I believe they do stupid things on purpose to ruin us.
This is why we need a carbon tax (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know why people don't like this. Conservatives can feel all warm and fuzzy about the free market and liberals can feel all warm and fuzzy about encouraging people to make the most environmentally friendly choices. Warm fuzzies all around.
Why should ANY of them get an HOV lane pass? (Score:2, Insightful)
After over three years of living in California, the HOV lane policy continues to drive me nuts.
Firstly, why should driving a more fuel efficient car give one the ability to drive in the "high occupancy" vehicle lane? If the intention of this lane is to give incentive for people to carpool, then this makes no sense. Further, the state stopped giving out these passes. It essentially created an elitist class of early adopter Prius/Honda Insight purchasers that get to use this lane. So, if the legislature decided it wanted to change the intended purpose of the HOV lane to also incentivise the purchasing of more fuel efficient cars, it has failed there as well. It seems beyond unfair to me to take publicly funded roads and give such a small percentage of drivers, who bought the right car at the right time, special lane privileges for eight hours a day.
Second of all, I remain unconvinced that HOV lanes actually increase carpooling. People I know who live reasonably close together, and work at the same business, usually do carpool. But the fact is that many people are not geographically close enough, or on similar schedules to co-workers to make carpooling make sense. I suspect that most of the people I see in the HOV lane on the 101 just happened to be making a trip somewhere together, which is much different than carpooling on a daily basis. A related point is that signs currently list a car with "2 or more occupants" as HOV lane acceptable. The rule SHOULD be 2 (or I'd argue 3) or more LICENSED DRIVERS. The many moms I see driving their kids around in the HOV lane are hardly taking a car off the road, now are they? That is unless the driving age has been lowered to 10 without me noticing.
Finally, the real reason this all bugs me, is the endgame: helping the environment. I see two arguments. Referring specifically to giving Priuses, or Leafs, or Volts access to the lane - The owners of all of them still own a car, and are still driving somewhere, just like the rest of us. In many cases, it is better for the environment to keep the car we have rather than purchase a new one. Last I read, a large portion of the environmental impact of a car lies just in its manufacture. My second argument is from obervation. I've seen many instances on a four lane highway, with the fourth lane being the HOV lane, where it was mostly not occupied, meanwhile the other three lanes were moving at a crawl. Wouldn't it be better to open the lane up to all and give the cars a chance to operate in their more efficient highest gear rather than polluting at a bumper to bumper snail's pace?
I really believe that HOV lanes in general are a flawed concept, that unfortunately are around forever, because who wants to be the politician trying to get elected lobbying against them? Talk about fodder for your candidate. You might as well argue we end the war on drugs.
Re:The Chevy Volt is a series-hybrid? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure the manufacturers of diesel-electric locomotives, boats, submarines, and heavy trucks would all disagree with you.
Re:"The first two plug-in cars" ? O RLY? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are ONLY counting people driving on highways vs the train to/from very similar destinations then yes, mass transit wins hands down, always has.
Now, considering that situation would only be a small fraction of the total number of people who use said highways then you are probably looking at something more like $45B vs maybe $6-8B adjusted.
Keep in mind that operating the train will not be drastically cheaper than repairing highways so long term costs are likely to be similar.
Re:This is why we need a carbon tax (Score:1, Insightful)
the last thing we need is another market distortion that compounds the ones we already have into the 6th dimension.
oh and the reason is that most people cannot afford to rush out and buy one of those new shitsquirt electric cars for a cool $350/mo because the fuel for their old cars just artificially doubled in price...again. the last thing we need are more fuckin taxes on things. when govt gets more efficient with the money they have, then we'll talk.
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the idiots ultimately responsible for the HSR fiasco in California are the voters who passed passed Prop 1A which provides almost $10B (via bonds) to jumpstart the program. Without passage of Prop 1A, HSR probably would have stalled or died.
Fortunately for Californians, it's pretty easy for those who actually pay taxes to leave the state as it flushes itself down the crapper.
Re:HOV is for CONGESTION not for ENVIRONMENT (Score:4, Insightful)
If that results in too much congestion, just change the HOV rules to require that a "carpool" automobile be a non-commercial vehicle not currently in commercial use containing at least 2 (or 3) LICENSED drivers who are not directly related (spouses, parent/child). That would get rid of many of the cars that currently use the lanes and free up even more space to use the HOV lanes for other social engineering purposes like promoting environmental causes. A mother driving her kids to school is going to "carpool" anyway. Most spouses driving together will do it without the HOV lane incentive.
Re:The leaf is not a hybrid (Score:3, Insightful)
Bumping the tax on something by 100% of the product price is not free market enterprise. If you do that for gas, nobody will be able to afford anything. If that happened in my state, I'd immediately ask for a massive raise and start looking for a house and job in the next state over. I would go broke from the gas prices before I could buy a more economical car. I imagine it would literally kill the economy rather than encourage people to be more economical.
Re:The leaf is not a hybrid (Score:3, Insightful)
The drivetrain is all electric but the power source is not. That's the "hybrid" part.
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:3, Insightful)
California [reuters.com] and Greece. Sister states.
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never driven the 99, but I've driven the full length of I-5. With a few exceptions, that would be a lovely road to cruise fast on, and plenty of people do.
I wouldn't see a single autobahn lane as being practical nor safe. Even with the carpool lane(s) clearly marked as such, with double yellow lines indicating not to change into or out of those lanes, I've seen quite a bit of amazingly stupid things happen. Cruising in the carpool lane with two passengers (cruise control set, so I wouldn't attract unwanted speeding tickets), I had people just decide they wanted out of the regular traffic lanes and into the carpool lane. Ahhh, there's nothing like a brake check or quick evasive maneuver at 70mph to wake up your passengers.
No, any experiment where there is a large difference in speed or ability between adjoining lanes of traffic should simply not exist. I would suggest for any such experiment, drivers AND vehicles should be certified. That's not just a "ya, he can drive that fast", but an intensive training and testing period. Drivers in America generally don't understand the basic concept of "slower traffic keep right", despite it being in every driver handbook, and posted on signs in most states. Lets not forget the ideas of turn signals, proper lane changes, attentive driving, and safe following distances.
As you exceed 150mph (242kph), "safe following distance" becomes a whole new concept. If you don't believe it, try realizing that the cars a mile ahead are only doing 30mph, and you have to slow from 150 to 30 before you hit them. (assume there is no option to drive in another lane, nor ditch into the grass). In the time that you realize "those cars are going slower", you're already a quarter mile closer. Your "good" brakes and "good" tires slow you down pretty quick, but when you bleed off 100mph, you're still going faster than they are. Pray to god they don't see you in the mirror and hit the brakes in a panic.
Autobahn style driving would definitely need clearly separated lanes. That would be with K-rails on each side, and safe acceleration/deceleration lanes. Anything less would be catastrophic. It's not the drivers and vehicles that could be certified that I'd be really worried about. It would be the 99.999% of the drivers on the road that worry me.
Re:GM Must Be Freaking Right Now (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd always just taken the general more power per stroke, less energy required to produce the fuel, and better mileage as the main reasons. Always assumed they had more carbon output than a non-plugin hybrid, but I figure thats probably offset by the reduced energy required for manufacturing. Thanks for that tip though, I'll have to look into that 20% and revise my thoughts.
Unfortunately I don't think the California standard is based on anything that reasonable, but probably 20-year old ideas of particulate emissions and slow, smelly engines that have been largely mitigated by modern technology.
Re:HOV is for CONGESTION not for ENVIRONMENT (Score:3, Insightful)
Good for whom? Or what?
Traffic engineering is about vehicles and passengers, not about what kind of car. Encouraging owners of gas-powered single-occupant-vehicles to switch to hybrids doesn't let the road carry more vehicles. Nor, since an SOV's ratio of vehicles to people moved is 1:1, you wouldn't increase the person-carrying capacity, either.
HOV lanes increase the number of people a highway can carry when the vehicular capacity has been reached.
As for the 'environmental' benefit of letting hybrid owners use HOV lanes, if you let electric or hybrid vehicles into the the HOV lanes, then you just free up more capacity in the general traffic lanes for non-hybrid cars that pollute more.
How much fuel does a hybrid save you at freeway speeds, anyway? Is it as good as the 50% or 66% reduction from carpooling? In fact, wouldn't it be better to put the hybrids in the stop-and-go traffic and let the gasoline-powered cars use the HOV lanes?
- RG>
Re:The leaf is not a hybrid (Score:3, Insightful)
A $5/gallon tax would just about cover the externalized costs of gasoline -- the environmental destruction, the foreign policy costs of keeping cheap oil flowing, the social costs of automobile-centric planning. A "free market" only exists when such costs are brought into the equation.
Unfortunately, we've spend so long making public policy decisions based on externalizing such costs that to throw them all in at once would be highly destructive. We need to implement such as tax gradually, maybe over ten years; 5 cents a gallon the first year, then 10, then 20, then 50, then 75, then a dollar, 2 dollars, 3, 4, and up to 5 dollars in the tenth year; with proceeds earmarked at mass transit projects and buybacks of inefficient vehicles. That'd be about right, if we made a WWII-level all-out effort to move to sustainable transportation.
Re:The leaf is not a hybrid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:2, Insightful)
Not so easy if you live in LA and have been hit by the housing bust.
Even if you have a nice home and can afford to pay the 700,000 mortgage, you still can't choose to pick up your stuff and walk away. You'd incur massive capital losses.
Re:HOV is for CONGESTION not for ENVIRONMENT (Score:1, Insightful)
HOV is for CONGESTION not for ENVIRONMENT. This is why for many years you could not build an extra lane on an interstate highway without building at least one of them as HOV. Of course, this so-called regulation was promptly disregarded in the New York City metropolitan area along whose left lanes on I-287 you can see the abandoned HOV signs and faded diamonds on their new left lanes.
But, seriously folks, HOV was always intended for congestion relief, not "clean/special fuel." This is why Virginia fights the hybrid-on-HOV law every time it expires. HOV was not originally intended to have anything to do with the environment, just congestion.
If the HOV is underutilized, the non-HOV lanes will be more congested than necessary. Let the mothers with babies, electric cars, motorcycles, or whatever use the HOV as long as it moves at the limit.
Re:GM Must Be Freaking Right Now (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on how you define Green. California has for the past 30 years been focusing on Air Quality ("Smog"), which actually has less to do with fuel economy and CO2 emissions and more to do with the other combustion byproducts. From California's perspective, a 2-stroke moped is orders of magnitude worse a polluter than a Prius.
Passenger cars are held to much higher emission standards than trucks. California has the strictest air quality standards in the world. (Air Quality != CO2 emissions).
Diesel cars that are sold in Europe do not usually have expensive exhaust after-treatments, and those models are too dirty for California's emissions regulations. From an air quality perspective, diesels are orders of magnitude worse than hybrids. In particular, NOx (Nitrous Oxide, smog public enemy #1) and particulate emissions are the problem. Once you add the equipment required to meet those regulations, the cost far exceeds any fuel benefits you'll see, coupled with higher-than-average Diesel fuel prices here.
What doesn't sell in California doesn't get made for the US, since Cali is more or less the top car market in the country.
There's been some advances on clean passenger diesel engines--the VW Jetta is available now in the US market with their TDI diesel engine (for a $5,000 premium on the base model). I think it was the first passenger car to meet this, not sure about the other makes...
Re:The Chevy Volt is a series-hybrid? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're missing the point of my reply. AC stated that diesels excel at low end torque, which they do. S/he then went on to say that "is not what the electric generator of the Volt needs" which is frankly complete horseshit. More torque down low is actually preferable for a generator motor because it means you don't have to spin the thing as fast to generate the same power output. This means superior engine longevity (less friction) and better NVH (lower speeds mean less noise and vibration), which i'm sure everyone would agree are desirable qualities.
Now, not that I ever claimed a diesel was "best", but what actually constitutes the best engine for a case like this ultimately depends on the criteria. An engine that needs to be fuel efficient and durable, cost and weight be damned (like a big truck/boat/sub), will most likely end up a diesel. When total cost and size/weight are important factors (such as in a midsize car, portable generator, etc) then gasoline motors, which are smaller and less expensive to manufacture, are the more likely choice. But ultimately any engine that produces more torque at lower RPMs is going to have certain inherent advantages over faster spinning motors, even if they may not be the most appropriate choice for the application. Why do you think electric motors are so great? 100% torque at 0 rpm is pure amazing compared to internal combustion's offerings.
Anyways, there's the logic you were looking for. Hope it explains things for you. :)
That's because (Score:5, Insightful)
California is full of idiots who keep electing uber-idiots to office.
Sorry, this is a clear case of typical short-sightedness of politicians. They pass legislation without thinking half a thought about it (heck they pass it without reading it). The result is stupid stuff like this.
(ie: crux of the problem, the Volt's motor is NOT low enough emission for California's liking. So they totally dismiss the fact that said motor will run far less often than an average motor.)
If they passed the law based on an avg. miles per year and the waste emitted on a yearly basis, the Volt would easily make the muster. This is akin to the problem some states had with the Prius. People could not register their Prius' because they could not pass the state emission tests. Because the testing equipment was incompatible with a hybrid vehicles operation. So wait, we have a cleaner, more fuel efficient vehicle but can't register it because of EMISSIONS testing. WTF.)
Let's not even get into the fact that my Prius must run the motor for a few minutes, wasting gas, in order to warm up the catalytic converter. Thus, if I am taking a 5 minute drive down the street. I have to emit extra pollutants thanks to environmental regulations. Our government should have made an exception to having to have the catalytic converter warmed up, and allowed for a gradual warming.
Just stupidity....worse, we elected this stupidity.
Guess that makes us (Americans) stupid!
Re:The leaf is not a hybrid (Score:3, Insightful)
Obsolete? The engine can still pollute more on a cold start, and the Volt is likely to have to cold-start often. It's hard to determine what overall emissions of the Volt will be, and that's really what CARB is concerned with.
And, really, that's as it should be. The air is the public good they're concerned with. The societal costs of energy production ought to be baked directly into energy costs.
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:5, Insightful)
What if our autobahn, like the German Autobahn, prohibited passing on the right, thus making the far right lane the slowest lane and the far left lane the fastest lane, eliminating large differences in speed between adjacent lanes of traffic?
Still wouldn't work. Lane discipline (and driver awareness in general) in the US is atrocious, and an Autobahn is utterly dependent on good lane discipline to function as intended. You'd just end up with either a) miles of traffic lined up behind some fuckwit in the fast lane pottering along at 85mph awestruck at how fast they were going legally, or b) everyone breaking that law to get past the people in (a).
Incidentally, "no passing on the right" is a bad law, IMHO. "Keep right unless passing" is a much more appropriate way of enforcing lane discipline.
If the US enacted driver training and licensing standards similar to Germany's, Autobahn's might be possible there, but good luck with that.
Re:HOV is for CONGESTION not for ENVIRONMENT (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The leaf is not a hybrid (Score:3, Insightful)
So the gasoline engine is just a huge heavy lump of metal it has to drag around wasting it's range ....
Re:Why should ANY of them get an HOV lane pass? (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this straight; You think that the government could never organize something like Slug Lanes, and yet the government is the one who set up the HOV lane on the highway in the first place. The government is instrumental in the smooth functioning of slug lanes!
You should consider taking a step back from your anti-government ideology and realize that just like any large organization, sometimes things are done right and sometimes they are done wrong. Government is no different from any other large bureaucracy.
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:3, Insightful)
Stand on the side of a road in the US for five minutes. Count how many cars you can hear which have incorrect engine timings or underinflated tyres. Last time I tried this, I lost count very quickly - it was the majority of cars passing me.
I'm astonished by how important cars are to the American mindset, and yet how little care they take of the machines.
Actualy the problem is the American way of life. (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, let's see, you don't like it when we say the obvious: Mass Transportation. We hear the excuses it doesn't work there because the cities are to big.
Well, the cities are too big because most of the Americans wants a house for themselves (their family), and a grass lawn where they can make nice barbecues but take 1 ton of water a year to keep green. Come to Europe and take a look around. Practically no-one in a big city has a house for themselves, we all live in apartments. If you really want an house, well you have to move to the countryside. Where there is plenty of space and few people and you can drive your cars in normal roads. You gas is way to cheap there, and you got used to it. In fact you got so used that it's not enough to keep driving around ... you have to drive around in huge cars, or SUV's.
In a normal city, public transportation works. If you can't have metro everywhere, you get bus lines. But of course, that only works, if people actually live together, not if the house are so big and so separated that the BUS has to stop every 10 houses to pick up and drop people. Also, if you see in Europe, even in big cities, like Amsterdam, Madrid, Paris or even London (although London seems to be the least of the bunch), people actually live in the centre of the city. The centre is not just shops/restaurants/cinemas, no, there is people there ... but again, people living in apartment blocks.
That is the real problem you have. No mater how good are the cars, how good are the roads. If you continue building your cities this way, you will always need more and more roads and have more and more cars because it will be impossible to provide mass transportation to everyone.
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:2, Insightful)
1) 99% plus people here in the US do not know how to drive. We take tests that test the absolute basics of driving skill and call people proficient if they pass. Trust me, your not...
2) To few care enough to improve their skills. Driving is just a means of getting around for to many.
3) To many buy cars that are not suited to highway driving and drive them on the highway anyway.
4) People treat the law enforcement here as a joke, usually able to get a lawyer to fix any ticket they get to not accrue points. The police here also treat traffic law enforcement here as a joke.
5) People here don't care about anyone else on the road and it shows.
6) People here don't care about their cars, every day I see and hear cars burning oil, low tires, ect.
7) People think once they pass some tests that driving is more than a privilege, and law enforcement does little to challenge that.
If I had my way driving laws here would be much more like they are in Germany. Our roads would be much safer that way. Unfortunately to many of my countryman would scream bloody murder if you even started enforcing the laws currently on the books, much less enacting more strict laws...
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:4, Insightful)
You shouldn't be. One of the perks of living in America is that getting your license is so cheap and easy, I don't think people appreciate it. Public transit in non-existent in the majority of the country, so most people have to own a car to get anywhere. Throw in that most folks are just told, "Get the oil changed every X,000 miles, and you're good." Where X=any value in set {3,5,7,10}.
There's just no perceived value... But "We created the car!" So us Americans are proud of our machines that we can just ignore and swap out every 2-5 years
All apologies to Karl Benz for how we've taken credit for, and completely abused your invention.
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:3, Insightful)
Incorrect engine timings? When is the last time you could adjust that?
To most Americans, cars aren't "machines". They are just little appliances that get you from here to there. When a little light comes on, you take it to get fixed. There is nothing inherently wrong with this - not everyone is a tinkerer.
Re:GM Must Be Freaking Right Now (Score:2, Insightful)
Love the thrown in "it causes cancer" debate. The risk in people that WORK with diesel was shown to be a small increased risk, much akin to many other "potential" things in life that might increase ones risk of cancer, like lets say sitting on a battery while driving perhaps?
Love it when a person argument breaks down to "but it might make you sick".
Re:The leaf is not a hybrid (Score:3, Insightful)
So the gasoline engine is just a huge heavy lump of metal it has to drag around wasting it's range ....
Yes, just like the air conditioner and the heater and the radio and the bumpers and the windshield. There are lots of features cars have that are only sometimes necessary or useful and waste fuel the rest of the time.
Re:I'm puzzled (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:HOV is for CONGESTION not for ENVIRONMENT (Score:3, Insightful)
Studies indicate [that HOV] increase congestion even more by reducing the number of lanes available for most drivers and doing little or nothing to change carpooling habits.
A car is a personal vehicle, not a bus. I drive my car to where I want and when I want. I don't want to negotiate my plans with someone else.
For example, you took your neighbor to work in your car. Then your wife calls and tells you that you need to do an errand after work. Will you take your neighbor on a ride in a wrong (for him) direction and waste an hour or two of his time? If not, he has to take a taxi and spend 10x money on that ride than he'd spend on fuel for his own car.
Or even worse, it's not your wife who calls, it's the neighbor's wife. So will you volunteer your time, your fuel and your car's resource to go out of your way to some remote store to let him buy a bauble that you can't possibly care about?
California's HOVs are a tool to reshape public transportation habits. It doesn't work because these habits are what they are not because people are lazy, but because those habits make sense. If the city will provide a personal air taxi that can be summoned by a cell phone to any location, costs about as much as the personal car ride, and is always available, personal cars will largely disappear. But buses and trains, as they are, don't even come close to that.
Re:The leaf is not a hybrid (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't stand the idiocy of giving HOV passes to hybrids, electric cars, or any other type of vehicle. The purpose of HOV lanes is and should be to encourage people to ride-share, the primary goal of which is to reduce the need for additional highway capacity. Someone cruising along alone in their electric car is just as bad in this respect as someone cruising along alone in their Hummer.
Re:GM Must Be Freaking Right Now (Score:3, Insightful)
California and green have little to do with each other. I just moved out here to take a job, and I was thinking I'd like to buy a diesel as my next vehicle, since to my way of thinking a diesel is far greener than a moderate hybrid like the Prius (the Volt is a different animal). Plus the low-end torque is great, as is the possibility of converting it to alternative fuels. Much to my surprise, I learned that you can't even buy a diesel car out here.
From what I can tell, California is about regulations that make people who don't know much feel good.
Wow, I'd better go tell my brother who just bought a new Jetta TDI that it is impossible for him to have done so.
Yes, it is true, diesel passenger cars were not available in California for a couple of years because of tightened particulate emission standards (and relatively high-sulfur fuel available here being incompatible with the cleaner diesels offered by many manufacturers). These issues have been largely resolved, and now you can buy diesel BMWs and VWs at least (not sure what other manufacturers offer diesels - Mercedes?).