Toyota and GM will both be bringing out plug-in hybrids in a year or so. A year ago, gas prices were high enough to make it cost-effective to buy a plug-in hybrid despite its higher price. Though gas prices have gone down, we all know that the world faces a shortage of gasoline and that they will go back up again after the economy recovers. At that point, plug-in hybrids will be available and people will buy them.

The question is how to deal with plug-in hybrids to get their benefits without their costs. The main environmental cost is that there will be greater VMT because of lower energy prices. The cost is only about one-quarter as much per mile for fuel, compared with the high gas prices of a year ago, largely because electricity prices are regulated and are below market price.

Plug-in hybrid also will not pay the gas tax used for maintaining roads. This means a new tax will be needed – presumably a VMT tax – giving us the opportunity to design this tax to make it more effective than the current gas tax.

Electricity for a plug-in hybrid costs one-half to one-fourth as much per mile as gas for a standard hybrid – largely because electricity prices are controlled and kept below the market price.

Of course, plug-in hybrids also do not pay the gas tax used to build and maintain roads.

So plug-in hybrids will increase VMT significantly, all else being equal. They will also require us to shift from a gas tax to a per-mile tax to pay for roads. We need to make the per-mile tax high enough to stop VMT from increasing.

Other than following the lead of the advocates and staff which backloaded the EIR instead of front loading it, causing 2 years of delay, how did Newsom stonewall the bike plan? Are you suggesting that Newsom was the intellectual author of the move to clear the Bike Plan with a GRE? Really?

Newsom is a pathetic mayor, however responsibility for the delayed bike plan lies with those who packaged it into one omnibus document and did not, according to a judge, obey CEQA.

That responsibility is a shared responsibility, not solely the province of the Mayor.

-marc

Also, despite the recent rains, we still have a serious problem in the Sierra snowpack, translating to a reduction in hydro power – which these PG & E lathered “green energy” people are really relying on. I guess Newsom will suck more electricity generated from dirty coal in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah for this. How dim can you get – really?

Archie: “Would it make you feel better if they was all pushed out of windas?”

Cars are the legacy of the horse in America, especially the west. The impetus to hit the road and get away is not a bad one.

The problem is that too many autos snarl the dense urban core and that cars facilitate sprawl.

If one cuts down on options for mobility in order to solve those problems, then one creates other problems in their stead.

I’d prefer to see tighter regulatory policies that get at those ills rather than casting a wider net. But as we’ve seen locally with affordability and parking, these are complicated policy calls with interrelated implications that have all sorts of unintended consequences and which produce counterproductive policies if all factors are not considered in formulating policy.

Of course, we’d never see any sort of groupthink that would create the consensus required to ignore valid constraints amongst our advocates.

I do not see how an electric car can be used in a shared context easily given the downtime required for refueling but electric does make sense for mid-range trips.

-marc

Disagree.

The only way e-cars could be good for us is if we raise the tax on e-cars at least as much as any respective gain we get in fuel efficiency — else we get the dreaded Jevons Paradox – increased energy consumption overall, increased carbon emissions, etc.

Suppose we had a shared car within a block or so of every residence. Increased use of shared cars is much more beneficial than limited sharing even with electric cars.

Set the fashion with electric vehicles. Make it cool to be efficient and watch the Hummers wind up as scrap. Get smaller electric cars on the streets and watch more cars use existing capacity. Get electric vehicles on the road and watch wasted night-time coal fired generation get used to power up vehicles. Get electric vehicles on the road and watch fewer oil tankers crash in SF Bay. Get electric vehicles and watch people in Bolivia make decent wages selling Lithium. Why are these bad things?

It would be harder to convince people to fight for clean air, water, and neighborhoods if folks can say “well we tried electric cars but it didn’t work.”

From a more political frame, for every electric car we plan for, how many non-electric cars will we get in the short and medium term, even if there is some sort of potential distant future of electric-only? Can electric cars really account a significant percentage of our total VMT within 10 years? Can car producers really turn on that dime? I doubt it.

Electric vehicles address one, and only one, class of these ills. Air pollution/global warming. And unfortunately, this is the easiest ill of the automobile for us to point at a number and say, “Look! this is bad!”. This is the only ill of the automobile that has gained significant acknowledgment and traction in our society at large.

A wolf in a sheep’s clothing… the electric vehicle is a good thing only if our only alternative is the gasoline-powered vehicle.