EV Politics

E-Yikes! Electric Bikes Terrorize the Streets of China
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703657604575005140241751852.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

"Those electric bikes just don't listen! The problem is they go too fast. They can't stop like bikes. I saw an accident just over there the other day where someone on an e-bike rushed through the intersection and plowed over someone on a regular bike," Mr. Zhao said as he tried to keep China's newest road hazard in check.... Officials were caught off guard when that environmentally appealing solution turned out to be deadly on the streets. In 2007, there were 2,469 deaths from electric-bicycle accidents nationwide, up from just 34 in 2001, according to government statistics. That's roughly 3% of China's annual 90,000 traffic accident deaths.... Pedestrians complain that e-bike riders pay little heed to the rules of the road.

The article has some info on the history of China's electric bicycle industry which make it sound like it happened by accident.

FWIW - in my opinion traffic safety is the responsibility of the operator of the vehicle. It doesn't matter whether the "bicycle" is powered or not.. It's not gonna be going faster than the scooters and motorcycles, right? Hence it's up to the e-bicycle rider to fit themselves into the flow of traffic.

How about that?

I thought bike riding would be a life changer..but at the top of the trends?

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010922.html?

Enjoy and ride.

I just wrote up this article about plans in London for massive EV adoption: Comparing London's ambitious 100,000 electric vehicle's ASAP plan to U.S. EV plans

http://www.london.gov.uk/electricvehicles/ - is the project home site, and they have a bunch of information.

The plan seems to focus on fleet vehicles and not on individuals buying their own cars. The plan document doesn't say anything about individuals buying cars, and talks at length about government and corporate fleets.

There's a bit in this discussion I want to make a separate thread: http://visforvoltage.org/forum/8071-copenhagen-wont-be-enough-only-human-movement-can-save-civilization-climate-crisis

Somewhere on my laptop I've got a paper from Transport & Environment, a European policy research company (?think tank?) that specializes in green transportation. The paper is about electric vehicles and they make a point that every time electric vehicles were popular it was due to some external influence causing people to turn to EV's.

For example times of high oil prices such as the fake oil crises in the 1970's .. (I call them fake because they were due to market manipulation by OPEC) .. or times of government regulations such as the CARB rules in California.

What strikes me is this isn't about people choosing of their own volition to adopt EV's. It's a form of force applied on the choices of individuals. This isn't the only way governments act to influence their populations. There's all sorts of tools governments deploy to influence populations into desired behavior.

Now, it seems that some people think this is (or can be) heavy handed dictatorialness. Am I understanding that right?

I suppose theoretically it can be but the CARB mandate even if it had been implemented as written was hardly dictatorial in the ways other governments implement the edicts of real dictators. Calling the typical incentive by american governments dictatorial is as much overblown hypery as the people accusing Obama of being a fascist.

On the other hand it does leave me wishing the population would choose EV's of their own volition ... if they were to choose them on their own, this whole situation would be a lot simpler. Government regulations wouldn't have to be used, instead the cars would be bought because they would be what people want. One can dream, eh?

On another hand there are other organizations manipulating the situation, and it's not the governments. I'm talking about the existing businesses that would be harmed if EV's were to be adopted. I really don't care if some companies die along the path to getting EV's adopted. But of course those companies do care if they die in the process. The companies foisting internal combustion and fossil fuels upon us are causing us huge damage in the form of increasingly worse environmental conditions not to mention the risk our civilization faces due to being dependent on fossil fuels which are at their peak of production and are very likely to meet future increases in demand.

The point I want to get at however is about making the adoption of EV's a choice people make on their own rather than it being externally imposed.

Don't really have an answer for that and am curious what everybody thinks.

A new law, effective January 2010, authorizes solar and electric vehicles on Chicago public streets where the speed limit is no more than 35 mph.

It will be interesting to know the details and repercussions from this.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/mag/article.pl?articleId=32834

http://www.bike-eu.com/news/3714/associations-disagree-on-e-bike-regulations.html

"COLIBI and COLIPED, the European associations for bicycle manufacturers, assemblers and parts and accessories’ producers, are disputing the mandate that the European Two-Wheelers’ Retailers Association (ETRA) claims to have obtained at several meetings with e-Bike manufacturers on proposals for new e-Bike regulations. COLIBI and COLIPED are also against any changes in the current European legislation for electric bicycles."

Basically the article says COLIBI and COLIPED are against any changes in European electric bicycle regulations. ETRA on the other hand is advocating for an increase in power levels, and claims to have several electric bicycle manufacturers in agreement.

This morning I spoke with Brian Wismann of Brammo on the phone about the ride they're taking across the U.S. The goal is to raise awareness of electric motorcycles (oh, and to raise awareness of the Enertia motorcycle) etc. It sounds like a great adventure they're undertaking.

The goals include increasing awareness in the general public that electric vehicles, to demonstrate the utility of the Enertia motorcycles, to demonstrate issues with electric motorcycle charging infrastructure (see Electric Vehicle infrastructure issues demonstrated by Shocking Barack ride), and they also hope to meet with President Obama when they reach DC and present him with the motorcycles.

The route is not nailed in stone but is determined by the need to recharge. They're usually stopping at strip malls and getting permission from the businesses to plug in. Each one is turning into a mini-impromptu-town-hall on electric vehicles and whatnot.

ShockingBarack.com

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Wasn't quite sure where to post this but thought this was the closest representative forum topic...

I work for a large state educational organization in Florida. We now have a new department in our organization "Environmental Sustainability" etc. A work colleague and friend of mine is heading that up. He is currently looking for grants, resources, etc. for possibilities of converting our fleet of gasoline pickups/vans/cars to electrics. Anybody know of any financial incentives/resources/grant programs that would be available to state agencies in this regard or other organizations that would be a resource to us in helping us find out the feasibility of this? Thanks in advance for any replies...

Gus
Florida

Republished from:- http://www.examiner.com/x-14333-Green-Transportation-Examiner~y2009m9d17-Planning-for-the-coming-wave-of-electric-vehicles

Are you ready for the electric vehicles which will soon be commonplace? Maybe you're only vaguely aware they are coming, but government leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area are very aware of this and are working with a broad ranging public-private partnership to get ready. This week on Sept 16, 2009 was the third in the series of meetings involving representation from around the Bay Area. The topic of discussion was the electric vehicles being promised by the car companies, infrastructure needs, regulatory changes required, the needs of the utility companies and power grid, in short the tremendous number of changes which will be required for this to be successful. If it works out the consumer experience of buying and owning electric vehicles will be smooth and easy, if it flops it could be a disaster, and in this case disaster would be very bad.

The vision is a higher quality of live while spurring clean jobs. The SF Bay Area has some unique resources that indicate likely successful adoption of electric vehicles. The local population is very environmentally aware evidenced by the broad adoption of hybrid vehicles. There are several local organizations with national impact on electric vehicle research such as Plug In America, the Electric Auto Association, CalCars, and EPRI, not to mention the businesses making electric vehicles or electric vehicle components such as Tesla Motors, Coulomb Technologies, Project Better Place, Electric Motorsport, Zero Motorcycles, Green Vehicles and more. Hence the local electric vehicle resources to draw upon are nothing short of phenomenal.

At the meeting, the government agencies brought a message of simplifying the permitting process for installing electric vehicle charging, and other uses of government resources to improve the infrastructure. An example which repeatedly arose is the long and difficult process to legally install electric vehicle service equipment (a.k.a. a charging station). Present at the meeting was Enid Joffe of Clean Fuel Connections, the company who oversaw most of the charging station installations 10 years ago during the previous era of electric vehicle interest, and who is now seeing more business overseeing charging station installations today. Her long experience shows the existing requirements for charging station installation make the process take at least 30 days, and involve at least 12 major steps. Clearly successful sales of electric vehicles means a streamlining of the process, but on the other hand safety requires that some form of building and electrical inspections and permitting must be performed.

The message here is that buying an electric vehicle isn't as simple as buying a gas powered vehicle. While electricity is everywhere, safely recharging an electric vehicle requires equipment which isn't widely installed.

The car companies for their part brought a different message. The first message is that the cars are coming, that it is T-15 months before the Nissan LEAF launch and that success means having an infrastructure ready for the car owners to use. There has always been a chicken and egg problem between installing electric vehicle infrastructure and selling electric vehicles. Prospective EV owners are unlikely to buy a car if there is no charging infrastructure, and prospective infrastructure owners are unlikely to install electric vehicle service equipment if there are no cars. The car companies gave a list of desired enablers which includes vehicle purchase incentives, charging infrastructure, opportunities for charging, reduction of EV owner operating expenses, education of prospective EV owners, policy assistance, HOV access, and free public parking.

The utility companies for their part brought a hopeful message. On the one hand the utilities believe they can easily handle the aggregate power load increase. A statistic shown was that even with 1 million electric vehicles on the road it would represent only a 0.5% aggregate increase in electricity use. However the concern they voiced repeatedly is the neighborhood level electrical grid. For example if a given neighborhood has several people who all buy electric vehicles, they'd all be connected to the same transformer possibly making it blow up. Nobody likes it when the lights go out. Part of the 30+ day installation process outlined above is to verify with the utility companies whether the neighborhood transformers can handle the load for that neighborhood.

See also: Some Nissan LEAF questions answered, Coulomb and GridPoint unveil smart grid enabled charging station for electric vehicles, Battery industry projects in the $2.4 billion electric vehicle initiative, Nissan supports electric vehicle & infrastructure deployment project

Further information:

Alternative Fueled Vehicle Proceeding

CPUC TO CONSIDER POLICIES RELATED TO ALTERNATIVE FUELED VEHICLES

Bay Area Air Quality Management District

Bay Area Council

Silicon Valley Leadership Group

Bay Area Climate Change Collaborative

California Energy Commission: Alternative and Renewable Fuel & Vehicle Technology Program

Clean Cities

Ford: Environmental Vehicles

GM: Electric Vehicles

Nissan: Zero Emission and LEAF Electric Car

Mitsubishi: iMiev

Tesla Motors

Aerovironment

Better Place

Clipper Creek

Coulomb Technologies

eTec

Clean Fuel Connection, Inc.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)

PG&E: Electric Vehicles

Plug In America

EV Charger News

Electric Auto Association

CalCars