abasile said:
GRA said:
Sure, we're buying time, but we're also making the most efficient use of our money to hasten the transition, while making the largest improvement now.
With respect to higher-mileage ICE vehicles and hybrids, it's not really "our money" unless you count the auto industry bailouts. For the most part, public funds aren't really involved in making the ICE more efficient. Government mandates have been a part of this, however.
In that particular case, I was using 'our' in the widest possible sense, including both individual choices as well as government loans, bailouts, incentives etc.
abasile said:
GRA said:
As long as battery prices stay high it's more cost effective to switch people to hybrids, because that will have the largest effect soonest.
It is probably true that if the federal and state EV subsidies were cancelled and the funds were instead used to subsidize the purchase of a larger number of hybrids, with a total subsidy per car of perhaps $2000, the overall, short term reduction in petroleum usage would be greater.
On the other hand, the current EV subsidies and mandates do seem to be stimulating the development of EV and battery technology and pushing the envelope further than we'd see with plain old hybrids. Pure R&D by itself isn't good enough; to really push the technology forward, we need to continue getting real EVs on the road. The goal is to hasten the day when EVs are far and away the most cost effective choice, without subsidies. And that, combined with cleaner electricity generation, will make a bigger difference than hybrids ever will.
No major argument with any of this, although I do think that government subsidies that encourage production and sales are generally a poor choice as they distort the market far too much, leading to boom and bust cycles when technologies that are only marginally marketable _with_ subsidies, suddenly lose them.
Now, government subsidies for R&D, I'm all for. I think most of us here agree that we need to get off fossil fuels eventually, the question is what is the best way to do that that we can realistically afford? I have great difficulty supporting the current federal tax credit for EVs, as the way it's structured it essentially subsidizes people to buy a niche gimmick car, when the vast majority of them have sufficient income to afford them without subsidy. It really needs to be changed to a straight, means-tested rebate. Of course, judging by the informal polls taken here, it appears that even among those most committed to buying EVs, perhaps 50% of them would balk at buying one if they had to pay full freight. To me says that BEVs and to a lesser extent PHEVs are still far too expensive for what they provide, and our money and emphasis should for the moment be directed more towards high mileage ICEs and HEVs. For instance, this article:
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1081452_one-third-of-all-u-s-hybrids-live-in-just-15-city-areas" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
indicates that we've still got an enormous way to go before HEVs reach mainstream acceptance. I think it's far more important to us as a nation and as a member of the world community to boost our average mpg in ICEs and HEVs significantly in the next few years, than it is to sell tiny numbers of BEVs through massive government subsidies and perks. In short, a case of the best being the enemy of the good.
Of course, whenever I think that HEVs, PHEVs, BEVs or what have you are going to make a significant dent in GHGs and other pollution, I remember that China has been bringing online an average of just over
1 MW [
Edit: should read "1 GW"] of coal-fired electricity _every week_ for the past three or four years running, and I'm realize that ultimately nothing we do here is going to matter in the slightest if we can't get them to clean up their act.