backtop

Print E-mail del.icio.us 52 comment(s) - last by mindless1.. on Jul 24 at 3:39 PM
GM has partnered with 30 utility companies to help with infrastructure for electric cars

Anyone who drives knows that the price we are paying for gas at the pumps is skyrocketing. Environmentalists and drivers looking to help the environment are looking to alternate fuel sources like electricity right alongside drivers merely looking to save at the pumps.

One of the most exciting plug-in electric vehicles on the horizon is the Chevy Volt. The Volt will have an all electric range of 40 miles, but has a gasoline motor that can be used to charge the batteries and allows for a much greater overall range. GM has always stressed that the Volt is not a hybrid and that the gasoline engine is merely there as a back up to allow for long trips.

GM announced that it is teaming up with 30 different utility companies in 37 different states as well as partnering with the Electric Power Research Institute to help develop a national charging infrastructure for electric cars. The lack of a charging infrastructure along with the very limited driving range for the majority of electric vehicles is the main reason plug-in vehicles are not a real alternative for the majority of drivers today.

The reason GM is teaming up with the utility companies is to find ways that will allow an already taxed electricity infrastructure to support the tens or hundreds of thousands of plug-in vehicles GM expects to take to the roads in the years to come.

GM Vice President of global product management Jonathan Lauckner says that he hopes another 50 to 70 utility companies will join the partnership by the end of 2008.

One of the hurdles that GM hopes to tackle with its partnerships is the ability for electric companies to know that what is plugged into an outlet is a vehicle according to The Wall Street Journal. This is important because it would allow the utility companies to control when the vehicle is charged and would allow for charging at night where excess capacity on the electric grid is at its highest and energy costs are the lowest.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Congress is considering legislation that would set a price on carbon-dioxide emissions and that utility companies that prove their electricity is helping to replace gasoline could get special consideration.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Think of it this way.
By William Gaatjes on 7/23/2008 1:36:49 PM , Rating: 3
Well, if i was a politician i would have used the oil prices and the global warming too to change people minds about how to not spill energy. Not every politician is about filling his or her's pocket. Because the point is in a free market the customer decides what product becomes a reality. If for example the oil prices did not stay as high as they did but went lower we would have had even bigger gazguzzling SUV's now. In the western world there is only 1 way to change peoples minds and that is through there wallet.

There are a lot of idealist people out there. But there are more people out there who do not have the time or the luxioury to have ideals any more. Some just don't have the brains for it. :)

I think it's a good thing , get people involved. Let them think.

Let's say the global warming is a non issue.

The worst that can happen is that we live in a cleaner enviroment, that our lights only produce light and have a very high effiëncy, this will be a lesser burden on the electrical grid.

That our cars don't pollute.

The only thing polluting with electric cars will be our power plants. But since power plants don't move around aka stationary, you can easily make a construction that takes care of the pollution by gathering it and re-using it or reprocessing it.

When a car pollutes you cannot capture that smoke easily.

The electric cars have high efficiëcy motors. Another win.

It is a win win situation in every way.
If the global warming is real, we will have done our job.
If it is not real, we will have done our job.

And that is making a future clean enviroment for our children and grand children and so on.

I read a lot of people comment that green products are not green because toxic chemicals are needed to manufacture those products.

Who cares. As i wrote above about the powerplants, the same goes for manufacturers. It is a building and therefore stationary, therefore easily to contstruct that any chemical can be gathered and be re-used
or reprocessed.

The trick is of making a closed circle.

And there are lot's of optimisations still to be made on many places.




RE: Think of it this way.
By William Gaatjes on 7/23/2008 1:38:52 PM , Rating: 2
woops typing errors : gasguzzling, theirs ...

exsqueeze me...


RE: Think of it this way.
By FITCamaro on 7/23/08, Rating: 0
RE: Think of it this way.
By William Gaatjes on 7/23/2008 3:12:22 PM , Rating: 1
That is capitalism baby.

We in europe have it too.

No big difference between the USA or EUrope when it comes to capitalism.

Use the free market to change the mentality of people.

If you want to change the people you can only do it through their wallets. By tax and/or grants.

Only a few people have the luxioury to choose for ideals without worring about the costs.

However i do agree that there are too many parasites in brussels. Too many people who just are some eurotician with out a reall job but with real paychecks.

But the eu is working on that.


RE: Think of it this way.
By ebakke on 7/23/08, Rating: 0
RE: Think of it this way.
By William Gaatjes on 7/23/2008 5:24:40 PM , Rating: 2
You are right.


RE: Think of it this way.
By cocoviper on 7/23/2008 11:39:41 PM , Rating: 1
You sir really must be from Europe...

Allow me to educate you a bit: capitalism = free markets = taxes and government grants.

One of these three is not like the other.

Free markets are exactly that, people allowed to freely buy or sell as their needs and situation merits. This is capitalism. I have no idea where you got the concept that taxes, grants, tariffs, other governmental interference is in any way part of free markets. This is the antithesis of a free market. It's socialism!

Keep your ignorant thoughts on economics to your own continent please, we already have enough people here that have forgotten how markets work.


RE: Think of it this way.
By William Gaatjes on 7/24/2008 4:24:54 AM , Rating: 2
As always , the truth lies in the middle.

There is nothing wrong with controlling the free market just enought that excesses which are bad for the end user (read citizen) cannot happen.

I don't know where you get this USA - commies feeling from but it shows a lack of intelligence. You give me the same feeling as those runaway enviromentalists or even worse people who do not think just act on emotions alone, do.

I am not for socialsm and i am not for a not controlled form of capatalism. Because in both extreme cases citizens are loosing. In scenario 1 some people live luxioury lifes while all other people have to work real hard for scraps.
In scenario 2 some people live luxioury lifes while all other people have to work hard for scraps.

Both scenario's feed corruption, feed crime and feed despair. If you take a capitalistic market but provide socialistic idea's aswell you get the best of both worlds.

That is a good thing in case you don't know.

Because with taxes / grants/ taxreductions here in europe people are stimulated to think about the enviroment.

Example :

We are allowed to buy sustainable alternative energy sources
(like sun boilers, solar panels. Just systems to install on the roof of your house)and we are stimulated to do so through grants/ tax reductions.

As a big plus the surpluss energy from these alternative sources can be delivered back to the electrical grid and actually saves more money on electric bills. This is a good way to change peoples minds through there wallet.
And the grid has more sources of energy.
And here comes the capitalistic nature, you have to work to be able to pay for these products.

Now different sources can supply these alternative energy products so the market is not undermind as well.

I am sure there are states in America that provide this kind of service as well.

It's a good thing. Really...


RE: Think of it this way.
By Hare on 7/24/2008 11:15:22 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
If that doesn't smack of socialism I don't know what does. If you don't already live in Europe, please move there.

How would you know? You have never been abroad and propably base your view of the world on what you see on Fox...

Comments like yours are a perfect example of what make so many people around the world believe that Americans are a bunch of self centered rednecks (which obviously is not the case).

Btw. I didn't know that we (socialists/commies) are the only ones that lie. *sigh* live and learn...


RE: Think of it this way.
By Solandri on 7/23/2008 2:45:38 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
The worst that can happen is that we live in a cleaner enviroment, that our lights only produce light and have a very high effiëncy, this will be a lesser burden on the electrical grid.

That our cars don't pollute.

It is a win win situation in every way.

You're forgetting that our current rate of economic output relies on energy having a certain cost. I don't think most people would care about a cleaner environment, high efficiency lights, and cars that don't pollute if they're living in the next Great Depression.

That's why all this progress in alternatives is happening now. Oil's dramatic rise in price has made it a moot point - sticking with oil for energy would cost as much as if not more than many of the alternatives. But before that price increase, forcing us to convert to alternatives unnecessarily carried with it an economic price, potentially a very stiff one.

Even with oil's increase in cost, it's still true. If you decide to force us into solar and wind at 10 cents - 20 cents per kWh, instead of nuclear at 4 cents per kWh, you pay for it in economic productivity. If you couple that with treaties like Kyoto which don't cap the biggest developing nations, you'll end up with a world where the biggest growing economies are the biggest polluters, while the cleanest nations have shrinking economies. Long-term that isn't going to make the world cleaner, it's just going to change who has the biggest economy.

The trick is cleaning things up without adversely affecting economies. We don't want environmental restrictions so lax that people can recklessly exploit it for their profit like in times past. But neither do we want them so strict that half the businesses have to file for bankruptcy because they can't afford to pay their electricity bills. Operating businesses with complete disregard for the environment will result in disaster. But likewise, cleaning up the environment with complete disregard for the economy will also result in disaster.


RE: Think of it this way.
By FITCamaro on 7/23/2008 2:54:18 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
cleaning up the environment with complete disregard for the economy will also result in disaster.


Something people like Al Gore don't get or care about. Well, he probably fully understands it. He's not stupid. He just doesn't care because guys like him are making a fortune telling the rest of us we're bad people for using oil and preaching about global warming.


RE: Think of it this way.
By omnicronx on 7/23/2008 3:34:13 PM , Rating: 2
The US economy is going to take a nosedive anyways if you continue to be totally dependent on foreign oil. While I don't agree one bit with his global warming findings, he is not too far off in regards to oil usage.


RE: Think of it this way.
By ebakke on 7/23/2008 3:54:02 PM , Rating: 2
We're dependent on oil, and will be for quite some time. The industrialized world is horribly reliant on oil. But the US economy being dependent on foreign oil is entirely do to our own choices (past, and present). If our goal is to relieve ourselves of our dependence on other nations, we could start that process immediately and we would have measurable results soon. If our goal is to relieve ourselves of our dependence on oil, that's going to take many times more resources, and it will take measurably longer.

The problem lies in the fact that our leadership (by that I mean elected officials) is split on the what the goal should be.


RE: Think of it this way.
By William Gaatjes on 7/23/2008 5:22:52 PM , Rating: 2
Every industrialized country is dependent on oil.

Common folks would maybe think only about fuel but we all
know that the plastics and the chemicals are as much as important.

We will always be dependent on oil even if we would all start driving purely electric cars.


RE: Think of it this way.
By andrinoaa on 7/23/2008 7:00:15 PM , Rating: 1
doing nothing to cleanup the economy, with complete disregard to the environment will also lead to disaster.
This I think is were Gore is coming from. You may criticise his motives but the agenda is morally sound. Unlike the boat anchors who think everything is just sweet.


RE: Think of it this way.
By William Gaatjes on 7/23/2008 3:33:34 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
That's why all this progress in alternatives is happening now. Oil's dramatic rise in price has made it a moot point - sticking with oil for energy would cost as much as if not more than many of the alternatives. But before that price increase, forcing us to convert to alternatives unnecessarily carried with it an economic price, potentially a very stiff one.


That's the point. Because now is the best time to do so. If oil is cheap nobody would think of alternatives.
Making them aware about the enviroment they live in just is something they don't care about. Nothing comes for free.

quote:
Even with oil's increase in cost, it's still true. If you decide to force us into solar and wind at 10 cents - 20 cents per kWh, instead of nuclear at 4 cents per kWh, you pay for it in economic productivity. If you couple that with treaties like Kyoto which don't cap the biggest developing nations, you'll end up with a world where the biggest growing economies are the biggest polluters, while the cleanest nations have shrinking economies. Long-term that isn't going to make the world cleaner, it's just going to change who has the biggest economy.


Very true...
I once wrote a post about a book i was shown by a friend.
Our economies have to keep expanding to make money because sooner or later we have satisfied ourself and there is no more economic growth.

Take it to the foreigners you would say. But they are developing economies too. And there is where the money lies for the us.

If we have superiour technology which we use to make a cleaner enviroment it is pretty easy to rent/lease/sell that to developing countries. Because they don't have the infrastructure yet we do. So we can effectively make them more efficiënt by selling products we make to keep the environment clean. And therefore help to keep the enviroment clean. Because of the higher efficiëncy less resources are necessary to provide energy. And it's not that those developing countries are sitting still either.

I mentioned the rubbiatron in a few posts. From what i have read only India and Japan are doing research. Maybe China too now. But we in the west don't. and that is just plain stupid.

Sooner or later some rich visionair in a certain developing country picks up the idea of the electric car. He has money to spend and ideals too.

I would really be surprised if those "green" politicians
would deny western companies to sell products that actually
provide for a cleaner enviroment. And when those products are sold, money is to be made to do more research to come up with solutions to change our own existing infrastructure.

quote:
The trick is cleaning things up without adversely affecting economies. We don't want environmental restrictions so lax that people can recklessly exploit it for their profit like in times past. But neither do we want them so strict that half the businesses have to file for bankruptcy because they can't afford to pay their electricity bills. Operating businesses with complete disregard for the environment will result in disaster. But likewise, cleaning up the environment with complete disregard for the economy will also result in disaster.


We all know the history of leaded gas.
A simple lesson :
A few people are very rich while all others have to pay more. And among those others are you and me.

Short term policies always cost more money then long term policies. Something especially greedy managers in business life cannot see.


RE: Think of it this way.
By William Gaatjes on 7/23/2008 3:37:53 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Take it to the foreigners you would say. But they are developing economies too. And there is where the money lies for the us.


Must be :

Take it to the foreigners you would say. But they are developing economies too. And there is where the money lies for us.

I mean the US and Europe.