fastcharge said:
GRA said:
Ray, I don't know if anyone had the impression that you or anyone else not signing the petition was totally opposed to QCs; if they did, they need to work on their reading comprehension.
First sentence and you are already attacking some phantom person. No one attacked Ray. He was just being polite. Why are you so ready to fight with someone on this board? Why don't you use some of that energy and go after oil companies? It is very discouraging to anyone trying to help.
As for using some of that energy to go after oil companies, see my sig. As to being ready to fight someone on the board, if I think an action will be damaging to EVs, of course I will resist it.
fastcharge said:
GRA said:
What we're against is the indiscriminate installation of QCs along all 47k+ miles of the Interstate system which the petition calls for, as opposed to the targeted installation of QCs around appropriate metropolitan areas on freeways, highways and main roads for limited range extension which we're all for.
Fair enough (although I didn't realize you talked for the whole board) but why not make your own petition instead of just attacking someone else's who is trying to help? Do keep in mind that there are people who live in smaller towns that want and deserve EV's just as much as you.
Clearly, I wasn't trying to speak for the whole board, just many of us who are against the idea of this petition, as is clear from the start of the very next sentence you quote below. As to people who live in small towns 'deserving EVs', none of us 'deserve' them, and as my sig states I don't have one, because none of them meet my performance and financial requirements yet. I need a car for out of town trips only; everything else I do by walk/bike/transit.
fastcharge said:
GRA said:
Many of us are also against having the government be involved in this. While government support was necessary to provide seed money for dem/val such as the EV project etc. in limited, selected areas, their (lack of) oversight has allowed the incompetence and inefficiency (to put the best possible interpretation on it) of Ecotality to continue for far longer than it should, and also enabled the outright fraud of 350Green in Chicago. And these government projects continue to value number of locations over number of chargers _per_ location, despite our repeated explanations (and now Tesla's demonstration) of why single QCs per site won't do.
Again, make your own petition instead of just attacking others. Keep in mind that every day that we don't do something is another day we are stuck on oil which has very real cost in dollars and in blood. I personally would rather waste some dollars on too many chargers than not do anything. Time is of the essence.
I have no intention of making any such petition, because (as should be obvious) there is absolutely zero chance of any such program being enacted in the current congress. Just as there was zero chance of President Obama's last energy budget proposal, which called for changing the federal tax credit into a rebate and boosting it to $10k, being passed; it was a meaningless gesture to his political base, costing him absolutely nothing.
I have better things to do than sign or originate petitions which have no hope of being implemented (unlike, say the one for Tesla operating without dealerships, which can influence politicians at the state level even if nothing happens at the federal level), especially when they are so poorly conceived that they will just provide negative talking points for the anti-EV crowd for the next year or two without providing any benefit to EVs. Now, petitions or lobbying of California state and local governments is a different matter, because they are normally supportive or at least neutral towards EVs, and that's where I put my efforts at the moment. Should the situation in the national government change in 2015 or subsequently, I will happily redirect some of my efforts that way.
fastcharge said:
GRA said:
In short, we have zero confidence that the federal government won't continue to waste oodles of cash through waste, fraud and abuse by their contractors, while ignoring the needs of the users.
Are you also railing against home and business EVSE tax credits?
Railing against them, no. I do believe that it's time for many of them to end, though. In the '80s I saw what happened to the solar water heating industry in California, which was totally dependent on government subsidies early on, and which had far too many companies that only existed because of them; many of them declared bankruptcy the day the subsidies expired. I don't want to see us repeat the same mistakes with EVSEs (or EVs, for that matter). Ecotality is likely to prove such a company; have a read of this topic, which is just the tip of the iceberg:
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=182350" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
With EVSE prices having dropped considerably in the past two years, partly thanks to members of this board like Phil ("Ingineer") who developed the EVSEupgrade, I can see little justification for continuing subsidies for single-family home installations. Credits for retrofitting multi-unit dwellings, public garages, workplaces and the like with L1/L2 should probably continue for a couple more years yet before phasing out, and where not already implemented it makes sense to lobby to change state or local codes to require new construction to be fitted 'for if not with'. DC, it's probably time to start phasing the subsidies out. I think Tesla has demonstrated a workable business model to finance them, and it's time for other companies to try a similar approach with CHAdeMO/CCS, or else buy a license from Tesla to use Superchargers.
Edit: It appears that someone has already begun doing so in Canada, albeit using 80A AC J1772 instead of DC. Far more affordable, albeit too slow for longer road trips. But might be okay for single en route charge trips.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=13904" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
fastcharge said:
GRA said:
We all know places where QCs are vital to provide the range extensions that we know to be valuable given the current state of the art (chant with me: Gilroy! GILROY! GILROY!), but despite many of us lobbying the appropriate entities for as much as two years, such lobbying typically has no effect. Bay Area residents still can't get to Monterey using a (single) QC; Sacramento residents still can't get to Lake Tahoe with 1.5 to 2. Other areas with similar obvious weekend destinations remain unserved by QCs. Meanwhile, single, redundant QCs continue to be put in in areas that are already well-served, wasting their potential.
Your focus is wrong. We need thousands of more chargers around the country. You should not be upset that one place has too many. You should be happy for them and continue lobbying for your own.
You're entitled to your opinion, just as I'm entitled to mine. But why do you think that so many members of this board, many with far more experience of the early stages of EV and EVSE introduction than you appear to have, are unwilling to sign this petition? Is it due to selfishness on their part, i.e. they've got theirs and the hell with everyone else? Or is it more likely that based on their experience they see this petition as a bad idea, one that is more likely to hurt than help the adoption of EVs?
fastcharge said:
GRA said:
And then we have this well-meaning but entirely wrong-headed petition that would have the federal government paying to install (undoubtedly single) QCs every 50 miles (too far, in many cases) along interstates
Actually the petition doesn't say who should pay. It definitely does not say it should be single QCs. Why do you assume that? Why do you read a petition from someone trying to help in the most negative way possible? Also, when you say 50 miles is too far, you are assuming that chargers will be installed tomorrow and that the Leaf can't drive that far. It is likely that the range of cars will increase by some amount before construction would begin on the first charger.
Excuse me, but who else is going to pay for all these chargers, when the private sector has with very few exceptions been unwilling to pay for them themselves, even in areas with far more traffic than will be the case if these things are installed on rural interstates?
As for them being single QCs, well, if the federal government and the various companies that have been installing them under federal contract have been willing to ignore our feedback up till now, what makes you think that they'll suddenly start listening to us? All the contractors care about is putting the systems in and collecting their government money, not building a system that will be of maximum utility. Only Tesla is doing that, and it's not an accident that they're not doing it as part of a government contract.
As to 50 miles range being too far, sure, BEV ranges will increase, but you have to design for the lowest common denominator which will include a variety of cars operating with various loads, in various conditions, and with degraded batteries. We're against putting this system in NOW because almost all the BEVs extant won't be able to use it for much of the time. Once large numbers of BEVs can go 100 miles at the freeway speed limit with a battery at the end of its life, while fully loaded and with the heater/defroster or A/C, lights and wipers all on max in any temp, and once the QC standards war is settled, THAT will be the time when putting QCs every 50 miles along interstates will make financial sense. Not before, because we risk stranding far too much capital (see the remaining small and large paddle inductive chargers from the last time BEVs were the 'coming thing'). Many of us would agree to putting some QCs on rural interstates once a significant quantity of BEVs could drive for one hour at freeway speeds in the above conditions, and we're a long way from that yet. The only current BEVs that can possibly be practical in such areas now are built by the one company that's installing their own dedicated QC network.
fastcharge said:
GRA said:
The sheer fiscal stupidity of any such project that installs QCs in the areas mentioned in paragraph #1 AT THIS TIME should be obvious to any EV user who is familiar with the real capability of QCs used with current limited-range BEVs. The problem is that the general public is unaware of most of the factors that make any such move a bad idea, and given that they are most likely to retain that information that is shouted the loudest, i.e. that from the anti-EV blogosphere, this poorly thought-out petition just provides abundant ammo for the anti-EV crowd.
Someone has an idea, creates a petition, writes on this board for help and you call his idea stupid while offering no action of your own. Kind of shameful in my book. Should't we all be working together?
I call it stupid because that's exactly how I perceive it. How about I start a petition saying that the federal government should buy anyone who wants one a Porsche 918 PHEV? At $845k each (plus tax, license etc.) it may seem a bit steep to some, but hey, if it means we'll increment the number of PEVs by just a couple of hundred, let's do it - the technology will undoubtedly improve, even though it will probably take 50 years before that kind of performance is affordable by the average person. If someone calls such a petition stupid, well, I think that's shameful. Shouldn't we all be working together? Who cares if this will drive the blogosphere into a froth, not to mention the more legitimate media who will also be pointing out the financial irresponsibility of this, in a time when the government's in the red and operating under a sequester - after all, it's not as if any of them have any effect on public perceptions. A billion wasted here or there, who's to notice?
fastcharge said:
Everyone knows the limits of EV's today but I think Tesla has proven that the technology can do better if we demand it from Nissan, GM and others. By the time this network was put in, range is likely to increase but that is still not the point. The petition, as the author states, is about extending city driving, not long distance trips.
Pity that's not how the petition's worded, then, don't you think? As I've said, a better written petition would garner far more support. As it is, not even the majority of people here who are most supportive of EVs (which they've proved by voting with their wallets), are willing to sign it.
fastcharge said:
GRA said:
most likely to retain that information that is shouted the loudest, i.e. that from the anti-EV blogosphere, this poorly thought-out petition just provides abundant ammo for the anti-EV crowd.
Read your own post, you have become the "Anti-EV crowd." I am sure you have put in more than your fair share of energy fighting for chargers and other things to help the movement but I think you have lost your way at least temporarily. Reach out and help instead of try to tear people and/or ideas down. If we are going to convince a real % of the country to get of gasoline, we can't do it by fighting each other.
Spare me the Rodney King, please. I'll support pro-EV efforts that make sense, not meaningless petitions designed to make us feel good about ourselves (especially if the likely result of them is to damage EVs). I don't wear plastic 'cause' wristbands either. And that's the last thing I have to say about this mis-guided petition. Sign, don't sign, it's still a mostly free country (obligatory nod to the NSA).
