US Utilities Have Finally Realized Electric Cars May Save Them (qz.com) 297
Pity the utility company. For decades, electricity demand just went up and up, as surely as the sun rose in the east. Power companies could plan ahead with confidence. No longer. From a report: This year, the Tennessee Valley Authority scrapped its 20-year projections through 2035, since it was clear they had drastically underestimated the extent to which renewable energy would depress demand for electricity from the grid. But there is a bright spot for utilities: electric vehicles (EV), which make up 1% of the US car market.
For years, that market barely registered on utilities' radar. As EVs find growing success, utilities are building charging infrastructure and arranging generous rebates. Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and New Jersey's PSE&G have partnered with carmakers to offer thousands of dollars in rebates for BMW, Nissan, and other brands. Now utilities are asking Congress for help as they attempt to keep tapping into EV demand. A collection of 36 of the nation's largest utilities wrote a letter (PDF) to congressional leadership on March 13, asking for a lift on the cap on EV tax credits. The signatories' include California's Pacific Gas & Electric, New York's Consolidated Edison, the southeast's Duke Energy Company, and others covering almost every state. At the moment, Americans who buy electric vehicles receive a $7,500 federal tax credit (along with some state incentives) for each vehicle.
For years, that market barely registered on utilities' radar. As EVs find growing success, utilities are building charging infrastructure and arranging generous rebates. Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and New Jersey's PSE&G have partnered with carmakers to offer thousands of dollars in rebates for BMW, Nissan, and other brands. Now utilities are asking Congress for help as they attempt to keep tapping into EV demand. A collection of 36 of the nation's largest utilities wrote a letter (PDF) to congressional leadership on March 13, asking for a lift on the cap on EV tax credits. The signatories' include California's Pacific Gas & Electric, New York's Consolidated Edison, the southeast's Duke Energy Company, and others covering almost every state. At the moment, Americans who buy electric vehicles receive a $7,500 federal tax credit (along with some state incentives) for each vehicle.
End of Petroleum Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of us around the world pay taxes on every liter or gallon of petroleum our cars consume. In some countries it's a pretty high tax. If electric vehicles start making up a larger and larger % of vehicles on the road will there come an end where to be fair you need to drop the tax on fuel and instead tax electricity- take a certain % of your electricity usage and put it towards maintaining roads and public transportation?
We all benefit from roads and bridges, even those that don't drive.
Obviously we're still at the stage where most governments are still trying to encourage more electric vehicles, but eventually if electric takes off like planned, it's going to become unfair to place all the burden of taxes to maintain roads on drivers of ICE vehicles. Especially since it will most likely be the poor and impoverished who will be the last to adapt to the new electric-vehicle age.
Re:End of Petroleum Taxes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:End of Petroleum Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
While fuel is taxed, it doesn't come close to covering all road costs (at least in the jurisdictions where I know the details). Most road construction and maintenance funds come out of general funds raised by property and income taxes. So while the EV driver (an the cyclist) do pay less in taxes towards the road, it's certainly not accurate to say they don't share at least some of the burden.
Given that an 18-wheeler requires about 1,500 times the road maintenance one car does [lrrb.org], the amount of maintenance required to maintain a road for a year if it were used only by cyclists could probably be paid for by the sales tax you paid on your donut this morning.
Because from eyeballing the charts in that document, it looks like the damage a vehicle does to a road is proportional to about the third or fourth power of the weight of the vehicle - which means the damage a cyclist does to a road is literally negligible.
Cyclists are paying a lot MORE than their share of road maintenance.
Road damage is pretty much entirely caused by trucks, unless there are lots and lots of cars and almost no trucks.
Re:End of Petroleum Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost makes me wonder if the taxes should be on tires, relative to their expected lifespan and predicted road damage. Then you're taxing the object that directly does the damage. If someone does something that will increase the road damage - driving aggressively, carrying large loads, etc - they'll correspondingly burn out their tires faster. Kind of silly that a person can drive around on studded tires (which are very popular here) but pay the same road taxes per unit distance as someone driving around in the same vehicle on soft tires.
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If the goal is to account for road damage then you assess fees based on weight and mileage. Light vehicles do virtually no damage, it's all done by trucks and buses. Of course, some damage is simply weather-related, but heavy trucks would still wind up paying the bulk of the fees in a fair system. These fees would be passed on to the consumer, and then the people who actually buy the goods would wind up paying for the road maintenance indirectly. There is already some of this baked into the system, with reg
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What matters for road wear is weight.
When you register your vehicle, just tax based on miles driven the previous year times the third or fourth power of vehicle mass (can't find the actual reference right now, but I'm pretty sure road damage is proportional to the third or fourth power of vehicle mass). Motorcycles would be almost free, and the commercial trucks that causes most of the damage would actually pay for it.
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On the first glance, that obviously looks like a good idea.
The drawback would be that e.g. in my case my tires hold like 4 - 5 years, because I don't drive much. ...
A new set of tires is like 600EUR
If I have to pay an extra 1000EUR or 2000EUR tax on that, people would consider to postpone buying new tires.
That is not what we want ...
Actually the insurance costs are tied to the amount of km you drive per year, or you could have a mandatory 2 year check (we have it anyway for car safety/damage) and settle tax
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While it is true that trucks do significantly more structural damage than cars and bikes, this point is generally both misunderstood and overstated. Firstly, the damage is done by the load on the vehicle. This is generally accounted for in what are known as Equivalent Single Axle Loads, where a single axle is defined as a full dual wheel axle (four tires) loaded to the traditional legal maximum axle load of 80kN/18kips. The 1,500 times more damage comes from using an exponent of 4 on the load, which is g
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Most of us around the world pay taxes on every liter or gallon of petroleum our cars consume. In some countries it's a pretty high tax. If electric vehicles start making up a larger and larger % of vehicles on the road will there come an end where to be fair you need to drop the tax on fuel and instead tax electricity
It is an interesting situation. You have home electricity, vehicular electricity, and there is always the wild card - self produced electricity. My guess is that there will eventually be a fee in their somewhere for car owners. And that's okay, we do need the road upkeep, and toll roads aren't the answer.
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A number of states simply add a fee to the registration of EVs to cover the loss of the gas tax. The problem is, they usually seem to set this at a punitive rate which equals 30k miles per year in a 20mpg truck or something. Despite this, it is an easy solution so will probably spread.
Logically, however, more tax should be paid by the trucking industry since road damage is related to the 4th power of the relative loads; a single loaded truck will cause more damage than 9000 passenger cars. Politically this
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Oh, I think trucks are an important part of our infrastructure. I also think that they should not essentially be subsidized by other road users; if they paid their fair share, it may be that bulk rail would expand, for example.
I also think that many truckers are going to be replaced / experience lower demand due to automation over the next ten years or so. If I were a truck driver I'd be looking into specializing, like concrete trucks or something.
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Raising road taxes on trucking raises the cost of goods they carry.
Really simple, just remember - as the individual taxpayer, you pay for it all. Eventually.
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Sure, but I don't have a problem with paying the true cost of goods. If my grocery bill goes up $1 in response to the damage the truck caused, it's fair.
If you were designing a truly rational transportation system in the future you could balance the weight of the load over multiple lighter autonomous vehicles, and size them to be in the sweet spot for the least possible damage for a given efficiency.
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We don't live in a vacuum. In the real world, the value of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Nickle and diming the parts can have a detrimental affect on the whole. A simple example is fiber to the f
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True cost is what you will pay. Period. It changes, sometimes rapidly, and not always for reasons you can readily discern.
This is most visible at the gas station or grocery store.
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If we are lucky enough to get enough electric vehicles on the road where tax policy becomes more than an interesting speculative topic, well that would be a huge win.
I can think of many ways to tax electric cars: raise registration fees, base registration fees on mileage, install toll booths or license plate readers, tax tires, install express lanes with a toll that varies by traffic conditions and use that to finance the "free" side of the road as well, etc.
Right now the best-selling electric cars cost abo
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To replace motor fuel taxes the governents will have ti tax the vehicles on miles driven and the weight class of the vehicle.
Some countries already do this for heavy commencial vehicles.
Of course electricity generating companies shoulg be taxed on CO2 emissions - that will be passed on to the consumer - that should put coal out6 of business
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" you need to drop the tax on fuel and instead tax electricity-"
Hardly. We'll get a gizmo to pay by the mile, no matter what vehicle you use.
Even those who run on canola oil with their Diesels.
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California already piloted a program to address (Score:2)
About a year or so ago California ran a largeish pilot program testing various ways of addressing this coming change to cars that don't use gas and thus don't pay gas taxes.
I participated in this pilot, and just had to report my mileage periodically by taking a photo of my odometer with a smartphone app. and then pretend to pay a fake bill. They had several other reporting and payment methods available, including GPS devices, bringing your car in to have the odometer read, etc. It's definitely a workable pr
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or you can replace it with straight up taxes on other things
Like the single tax, the most fair and effective tax that exists: a progressive income tax.
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Like the single tax, the most fair and effective tax that exists: a progressive income tax.
I know we're wandering off topic a little here but- I prefer a tax on purchased goods and services. The rich have always found ways of circumventing income taxes. Most of the mega-rich end up paying a lower % of their earning on taxes than the average person (despite theoretically being in a high tax bracket).
Goods and services (exclude non hospitality food items) is a better idea because you pay more based on the more you consume. I would also suggest a progressive tax-bracket for items too to tax luxur
Taxation (Score:2)
I know we're wandering off topic a little here but- I prefer a tax on purchased goods and services.
Which is inherently regressive. Plus you don't want to put all your eggs in a single taxation scheme. Doing that causes all sorts of problems when the economy inevitably has a downturn. You want a mixture of taxation mechanisms and whenever possible you want them as closely related to what they are funding as possible. I understand the appeal of what you are proposing but it's fatally flawed.
The rich have always found ways of circumventing income taxes. Most of the mega-rich end up paying a lower % of their earning on taxes than the average person (despite theoretically being in a high tax bracket).
Only because we as the voting public allow it. Until we collectively stop screwing ourselves it is a problem tha
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Many of the problem can be solved by taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income.
See this post [slashdot.org].
You also could solve a lot of problems by taxing businesses on revenue rather than profits
Which doesn't denote productivity: businesses chain productive activity together through the supply chain (fancy that), until it's eventually worked in finality by the last laborer (wages) and bought by the consumer (with wages). Each productive activity generates wage or profit, and we tax that: if you make a table and the effective tax rate across all entities involved for all time invested is 30%, the tax collects 30% of the price of a table, thus you are collecting enough for the Gove
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So, you're essentially asking me to believe that a millionaire, with an income approaching 5-10 times mine, either directly causes 2-4 times the road wear I do, or what?
I doubt the 1%ers ram the roads that much more than I do, and their service providers those housekeepers, landscapers, accountants, managers, etc, all collectively do, but these also pay taxes.
You want the 1%ers (by income*) to be USING their income to either live better than us or invest so that we can live better than we are. Job creation,
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Job creation
Jobs are created exclusively by consumer spending, where everything you buy has an underlying cost in labor time, and that labor earns a wage based on time (salaries generally assume 40-hour work weeks). Price competition only drives profit margins down so far as to include the cost of risk and the cost of payroll (every supplier is also labor, profit, and supply, and so "supply" keeps expanding to more labor and profit).
As such, when consumers have greater buying power, their purchasing requires the ac
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Liked most of your post, but don't forget that corporations don't really pay taxes either. They pass any tax they pay on to the purchasers of their goods - that's us or an intermediate company which marks their own prices for the things they sell up to cover the cost of what they're buying, inflating the end price balloon farther the further the end product is away from the raw materials.
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Oddly enough, we tax the corporation on distributed dividends (at 35%--it's 21% now, but I'm going to repeal that stupid tax cuts and jobs act) and then tax the shareholders on any dividends at capital gains (at 15%). It makes sense.
I considered taxing dividends at full income rate... up until I realized we already do that. With the above, we actually tax dividends at 44.75%, first from the business's profits (35%), then from the shareholder's capital gains (15% of the remaining 65%). I've considered a
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For instance, why would you ever "buy" a boat? You probably can't use it year around no matter where you live and then you need to store it and maintain it and all a boat does is lose value. If you want a boat you lease it and you get a maintenance contract with the lease. Cars? Unless you are a collector you lease your car, and how many Astin Martins can one person buy?
Sales taxes apply to leased items, there's no free ride there. Also, I'm confused as to why you'd suggest a leased boat has no costs associated with storage and maintenance? You lease a boat for, say, three years. What do you do with it in the off season? You don't send it back to the factory at their cost, or expect the leasor to store it for you without charge. Also, the leasee bears the cost of maintenance. Go out and lease a Toyota tomorrow, and I promise you pay for every oil change during the lea
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Wow, you are one confused or uneducated motherfucker. A tax on goods and services is very regressive. People who make very little money spend everything they make on goods and services; people in the 1% spend a fraction of their income on goods and services and invest the rest to make more money. You would not be solving the inequality problem; you'd be making it worse than it already is, which is quite a feat.
That's why you don't tax non-hospitality foods or goods. If the rich aren't consuming, and truly reinvesting- I'm all for that money not being taxed as it is going back into the economy.
The moment they buy a $500,000+ house or a $50,000 car or a suit over $100, or a $20 restaurant meal, etc- kick in the taxes. Poor people buy cheap food and cheap clothing and certainly don't spend $500,000 on a house or $50,000 on a car.
Necessities shouldn't be taxed, but luxuries should.
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That's why you don't tax non-hospitality foods or goods. If the rich aren't consuming, and truly reinvesting- I'm all for that money not being taxed as it is going back into the economy.
The "reinvesting" thing usually cites stock market and other securities or bonds investments, which are basically just moving money around to speculate. Companies issue stocks or bonds to raise funds; then secondary securities traders take those same securities and pass them around, speculating whether they'll be worth more or less in the future and leveraging their belief against the market's. If they think a bond will be worth 2% less in a short term, they sell it on the assumption that the market is o
Re:End of Petroleum Taxes (Score:4, Informative)
income tax (which primarily impacts lower and middle classes)
So, a 20% tax on someone who makes $10,000 is $2,000. It's a big part of income (which is why there's a $6k/$12k 6.2% bracket and a following $10k-wide 16.2% bracket), but it's small in dollar amount. Because it's so small, making the system progressive by lowering taxes on the lower income classes doesn't much impact revenue at all; however, lowering income taxes on the middle-income classes impacts revenue massively, and is tricky.
As you move toward the upper income classes, the impact of an income tax increases in terms of raw dollars. The impact on their standard-of-living is smaller, so a progressive tax increases that because it's safe. Part of that is because upper income earners tend to store more in savings--and so you can take some of that without impacting them, unless you take so much as to deprive them of a stabilizing emergency fund.
This is important.
The difference is, they can't hide as easily from a consumption based tax as they can from a income tax.
By keeping your money in savings (and investments), you effectively evade any and all sales tax. This means your effective tax rate falls immensely.
A sales based tax (especially if placed on non-essentials only) means that we don't have this ridiculous system we have now where the poor and middle class pay a higher percent of their wages than the rich do
In 2014, the top 1% earners paid an effective income tax rate of 27.16%, carrying 39.48% of total income taxes paid. The top 5% paid a rate of 23.61% and carried 59.97%. The top 10% (income above $133,445) paid 21.25% and carried 70.88%. The top 25% ($77,714) averaged 17.83% and carried 86.78% of the total taxes paid.
Altogether, the top 50% (above $38,173) averaged an effective tax rate of 15.52%, carrying 97.25% of the tax load. The bottom 50%, meanwhile, averaged a rate of 3.45%, and paid 2.75% of all income taxes.
People between $133,445 and $188,996 income paid 13.73%, while people with income above $188,996 averaged a 23.61% rate. As you span down the middle class, the effective tax rate falls dramatically. Between the top 10% and 25, the average tax rate was 10.37%. Between the top 25% and the top 50%, the average rate was in fact 7.48%.
You seem to be operating on a false premise.
It gets better.
For all income levels below roughly $118,500 up to 2016, we can add an extra 6.2% by considering the OASDI FICA tax directly on incomes. This ignores the additional backshifting of the 6.2% payroll tax into lower wages. That means our 10.37% number becomes 16.57%.
With that logic, implementing a Universal Dividend at just 12.5% would bring the net effective tax rate at $6,300 in 2016 to -94.04%: the Government is paying this person $5,924. That is for a single earner, not a joint filer--who is getting roughly $11,000 instead.
The earner at $97,000 sees an effective tax rate drop of about 1.33%, while the earner at $196,000 sees an increase of 0.11%. We can easily adjust that increase out: the earner at $420,000 sees an effective tax rate decrease of 0.37%, and the top tax bracket falls to 36.2% from 39.6%. Obviously, that 3.4% marginal cut is going to decrease the effective rate cut on the wealthiest, and adjusting it back out will thus leave them with taxes no lower than whence they began, while allowing us to adjust the upper-middle-class back to a net-positive outcome.
We can move the OASDI payroll tax to the top to keep retirement and disability benefits funded--and solvent. Altogether, this produces a 42.2% top tax bracket, plus any adjustments to patch up that slight dip in the upper middle class and generally smooth out our effective tax rate progression. Alternatively, we can just wait, as that dip all but vanishes by 2017, and is net-positive well before 2020.
In case you're curious, we can fully fund univers
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The rich also find ways to escape sales taxes. Numerous cases of the rich buying art, boats, etc outside of NY to escape NY tax. Some get caught but how many succeed. I imagine it is quite hard to find short of doing an inventory of their penthouses.
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The moment they buy a $500,000+ house or a $50,000 car or a suit over $100, or a $20 restaurant meal, etc- kick in the taxes. Poor people buy cheap food and cheap clothing and certainly don't spend $500,000 on a house or $50,000 on a car.
Necessities shouldn't be taxed, but luxuries should.
Your idea of what constitutes a 'luxury" is seriously broken.
- A $500,000 house in NJ is middle class.
- A suit over $100 is typical department store.
- A $20 restaurant meal? Is that an over $20 entree or the total bill? Most chain restaurants have entree prices in the mid teens. I don't see why $20 is your idea of luxury living.
The $50,000 car is the only one I'd say is at the higher end nationwide, but not by a lot, especially if you need room for a large family.
Why are you so enamored with taxes?
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The only thing fair is a head tax. That would be a painful transition, but is really the only thing that is going to reign in spending. We're almost to the point - if we haven't crossed it this year - that the majority of the citizens of tax paying age don't actually pay taxes at the federal level. That's one reason politicians get away with promising things they won't ever be able to deliver and why they keep getting elected. Charge each citizen the same and people might actually care how wasteful governm
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Better would be to give every politician a 30% pay cut and no ability to vote themselves raises during a deficit
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It's not fair in of itself, but it helps to balance out other unfairness in the economic system. If we removed the other unfairness, then we wouldn't need a progressive income tax. Right now, the rich have overwhelmingly dominant influence in policy and also make vast amounts of passive income through rent seeking.
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Reliable odometer readings are increasingly being baked into the software. While many states no longer track mileage for title purposes on cars >10 years old, this is a simple change, and then registering your car would just include a mileage statement and fees based on miles driven.
This could also be a quarterly assessment, with appropriate penalties for misstating the mileage during the year, collected annually, via inspection. An OBDII read might do this.
And you need penalties, because, you know, taxe
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I think this is why Texas is moving toward a toll road approach. It recenters the price back in relationship to the cost, regardless of how you are powering your usage of the road.
Every time I've seen that idea get raised it turned out to boil down to politicians wanting to be able to hand friends, family and/or faithful party donors a piece of public road so they can exorbitantly tax the public whilst sinking the minimal possible amount of money into maintaining the road.
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Bingo. The argument for toll roads has validity. But it inevitably turns into a form a graft for the private sector.
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This argument can be used for virtually any service government could provide. For instance, healthcare, which the government does not and should not provide in the US, but somehow has managed to compel us to purchase in advance, just in case.
Though that is going away, slowly, since it didn't really work out well. Like so many services the government enables the private sector to deliver in an essentially compulsory manner, like college student loans...
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I think this is why Texas is moving toward a toll road approach. It recenters the price back in relationship to the cost, regardless of how you are powering your usage of the road.
I recall back in the 80s when I was a child, we visited Switzerland and my father had to buy a road pass at the border. I was small so I don't remember the details but I think it was some sort of toll pass for all of the roads in the country.
In fact, I just looked up the Motorway charge sticker. [admin.ch] It still seems like tbe best idea ever.
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I recall back in the 80s when I was a child, we visited Switzerland and my father had to buy a road pass at the border. I was small so I don't remember the details but I think it was some sort of toll pass for all of the roads in the country.
In fact, I just looked up the Motorway charge sticker. [admin.ch] It still seems like tbe best idea ever.
Sounds great for most places. It would hurt me personally. I have to live about 30 miles (road distance not as crow flies) from my place of work because house prices in any desirable location near where I work are way too high. This would drive up prices even more around where I work. I'll always have an hour+ commute if I want to continue working there- I'll never save up enough to live nearby.
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It is an unlimited road pass that lets you drive on any roads you like so it would not hurt you at all.
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I used to live in a part of Orlando, FL, where most of the highways were toll roads.
If you lived there, you bought the transponder and forgot about it. Basically, it turned into an automatic "cost of living in this area" tax. (They even had full-speed lanes where locals could skip having to stop/slow at every damn toll booth just to pay up.)
But if you didn't live there, or lived on the other side of town (where you didn't need those highways 75% of the time), then it was a constant burden and/or annoyance.
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Why GPS? Odometers are a century-old technology that you can read at each inspection, and every car already has one.
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Read the odo, base registration fees on it, and then offer monthly billing for people who can't afford the lump-sum. Way cheaper and the infrastructure already exists.
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I didn't mention privacy, which is a whole can of worms in itself. My main concern is the cost-benefit of having the government develop a massive new infrastructure to accommodate the collection of this data, and then having a system in place for billing and disputes. I think the cost-benefit for exactly measuring usage vs. the "good enough and cheap" method of using statistical models to decide where people drive comes out in favor of the latter.
A lot of what you list as potential benefits have other solut
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When you plug in your EV to charge, is there some hitherto unknown technological impediment to collecting a little data via the same connector? Even a powerline network would do this.
And you can be sure the manufacturers will implement this, logically to diagnose and require service when they want you to, and secondarily to be part of the loop. As EVs take over, the GM lesson with the EV-1 will be learned all over. EVs require a LOT less maintenance, at least until they devise much higher capacity, and ther
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Your individual usage doesn't matter, because we can pool your behavior and work out fair payment using statistical models. Money is fungible, so NV doesn't care if it gets your exact dollar or not - it only cares whether or not it gets the right number of dollars in total.
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Currently you have the opposite trend. People lease the panels rather than buying them, and this depresses the value of the house since potential buyers don't want to deal with the burden of the long-term contract.
Mine wants to charge me more (Score:2)
I pay $0.0725/kWh for 100% solar-hydro-geothermal-wind. BGE wants to give me a coal-oil-nuclear supply deal: $0.215/kWh during the day, $0.0955/kWh during the evening and night when I'm charging my EV. That doesn't include the transmission costs and customer fees.
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Solar is a game changer in that it places the means of production squarely in the hands of the consumer.
Yeah, to a certain extent. But for me, and lots of others, home solar isn't a great option due to space and tree cover. Even if there were no costs associated with installation and maintenance, I would have a hard time finding room to get enough solar to cover my use. I'm going to be grid connected (even if it's just to a local solar farm in a former cornfield) for quite some time.
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There will still be a role for a power grid to redistribute power over space and time to match supply and demand even if a significant amount is produced, stored and consumed locally. It will need a much more sophisticated pricing, quality of service and regulatory model, but it will still be very much essential infrastructure.
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Why are they a nightmare? Cars are perhaps the most recycled thing on the planet. You need raw materials, but it's not like mining for rare earths and lithium is particularly bad compared to petroleum extraction. Battery production has some negative local effects on the environment, but nothing like an oil refinery. Batteries can be an environmental hazard when not disposed of properly, but nothing compared to leaky gas and oil tanks and people improperly disposing of engine oil.
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That's because it's fictional. They're not mentioning the risk of Winnie the Pooh mauling campers either, for the same reason.
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Just ignoring that most manufacturers are installing or already have installed solar roofs to power their operations..
link [pinimg.com]
This has been studied extensively, yet the myth that "battery manufacturing energy means that EVs pollute more" just won't die. And even the current studies based on current data are way too pessimistic, as the energy used in manufacturing keeps dropping.
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How about we make the public first (Score:2)
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The exceptions, like TVA, prove the rule.
Who knew? (Score:2)
So at some point, will they even slow the rate of new installs? I suspect that will be exactly the case.
So the wild card here is indeed electric transportation. Will it save the utilities? I dunno. I've thought about an EV with a home solar charging station, and I bet a lot of others have as well. Then again, I'm still toyi
Car rental companies would be next (Score:2)
At
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Something targeting EV owners would have subscription of 25$ a month, allows one whole day of car/van/truck per month, accumulate upto 7 or 10 or 14 days. Drive to rental lot in EV, park, put the EV on charge, check out the IC engine rental. For off home base use it is regular rental at airport, bus/train terminals.
But I Don't WANT One. (Score:2)
Not as flexible as gas or diesel.
Shorter Range.
Tied to a credit card.
And they sound like vacuum cleaners.
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Yeah, but you'll be in a nursing home soon. (Score:2)
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Easier to tell when something goes wrong if you can hear it...
I could get by with an electric car, not that it would help the environment much my power is provided by coal. I would need to buy solar panels or a wind turbine (if they weren't illegal).
Re:But I Don't WANT One. (Score:4, Informative)
I have no clue what you mean from that. You can charge an EV from any source of power, delivered from any socket, anywhere. The comfort of your own home. A campsite. A farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. You name it.
Model 3 LR goes further in city driving than its performance and size equivalent from BMW, the 340i. Furthermore, unlike gasoline vehicles, EVs start every day "filled up". A gasoline vehicle at any point in time will average only slightly more than half a "charge", and some days you'll start out with very little "charge" remaining at all.
Huh? One, every charging network has its own payment method, and two, how do you pay for gasoline? Are you still one of those cash people who walks into the station every time?
Now I have to doubt that you've ever even been in an electric vehicle.
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Not as flexible as gas or diesel.
They are different from gas or diesel but that does not make them less flexible. With a gasoline powered car, you must stand next to the thing for your entire fill time. On the other hand, with electric it takes longer but you don't have to stand there waiting for it. You can charge overnight and if you are on the go you can do something else while you charge. Here in Montreal, we are starting to see malls and restaurants add charging stations so you can shop / eat while your car charges. In many ways t
Re:But I Don't WANT One. (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I've always used gasoline-powered phones (the vibration on them isn't that loud, manufacturers have gotten good at muffling it). I just drive down to the store at regular intervals and wait outside while they fill it up, it doesn't take long. You'd think it'd be annoying having to go out of your way to fill it up your phone, but you get used to it. People say, "Oh, but you can't charge in the comfort of your home, like you can with a battery-powered phone", but I can't see why that's so appealing.
End All Subsidies (Score:2)
As an aside, I think ALL larger roads should be toll roads, where the users are the ones who pay. Again, it (the market) would resolve everything on its own versus people paying for bridges they'll never see. It's ac
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As an aside, I think ALL larger roads should be toll roads, where the users are the ones who pay.
Yeah, but this would be terrible without some sort of standardized fast-pay system. And with a fast-pay system, there will be a lot of people hacking it to evade payment. Secondly, roads are geographic monopolies. If someone decides to overcharge you, you are shit out of luck. Sure, you can go around, but that would suck.
Charging for what people use makes sense when the cost of compliance is relatively small. Otherwise, you are better off with a socialized cost.
Charged on solar (Score:2)
Why the snark? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pity the utility company.
Why the snark?
Humans work for utility companies, and humans own stock in them.
Why shouldn't those humans be concerned about making enough money?
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My local Energy co-op buys power from the grid. The last few years though they've been installing solar panels by the thousands. Hundreds of acres of land that once grew cotton now have solar panels on them. In South Georgia it gets hot and humid for most of the year and peak power demands used to strain the system. Now when it's at it's hottest the solar panels deliver the maximum electricity so they don't have to buy more power to cover the peak season. My price per Kwh hasn't gone up in a decade.
EV Tax Credits and Local Utilities (Score:2)
My experience with EV Vehicles and Local Utilities in San Diego:
- State EV Vehicle rebate -- State controller says he is out of $ and won't pay out the rebate to any taxpayer making a decent income.
- Federal EV Vehicle rebate -- fine, fair enough and I'm happy to hear that it will be winding down over the next few years.
- Utility Rates and Discounts -- Pricing has gone up from 18 cents/KWH to 24.5 cents/KWH on average for my home. Time of use plans are estimated to cost me more, even with the EV vehicle.
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It does not scale with the price of the car. Any fully-electric car is eligible for the full $7500. A plug-in hybrid like a Volt only gets about half.
Maybe what you are thinking of is not everyone pays $7500 in tax, so they would only be able to take the credit up to their tax liability. With this particular credit, you cannot carry over the credit to the next year, so you use it or lose it.
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The US system is such a mess. Soon the credits will expire on Tesla and GM, but continue for other EV manufacturers (mostly foreign), so the US will be giving foreign competitors a significant tax advantage relative to domestic manufacturers.
I like our system here. There are no rebates or anything like that. Rather, we have high sales taxes on vehicles, but electric vehicles are exempt from the taxes. So nobody feels that EV buyers are getting "paid" to get an EV. One could argue that it's still cuttin
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That's one way to look at it. Another way is that all manufactures receive the same benefit, but some stretched it out over more years than others. One way or another, GM and Tesla get exactly the same amount of total money as Toyota and Volkswagen.
I guess it depends what you want... are you trying to create an incentive for a first-mover benefit, or are you trying to be sure that every manufacturer develops an electric car?
In any event, I share your distaste for rebates... they have too many undesired cons
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Qualified Plug-in Electric Drive Motor Vehicle This is a new vehicle with at least four wheels that: Is propelled to a significant extent by an electric motor that draws electricity from a battery that has a capacity of not less than 4 kilowatt hours and is capable of being recharged from an external source of electricity, and Has a gross vehicle weight of less than 14,000 pounds.
The Gen 1 Volt battery has a presented/usable capacity of something on the order of 10.3 kWh, but the battery pack itself is on the order of 16 kWh, as it changed from introduction to the end of
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My bad - next time I'll google before trying to sound smart :)
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Qualified Plug-in Electric Drive Motor Vehicle This is a new vehicle with at least four wheels that: Is propelled to a significant extent by an electric motor that draws electricity from a battery that has a capacity of not less than 4 kilowatt hours and is capable of being recharged from an external source of electricity, and Has a gross vehicle weight of less than 14,000 pounds.
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Right. Power generators are idiots and you, who don't work in the power industry, know oh so much better than them.
Electric utilities have idle capacity at night. Being able to sell more power without having to build more infrastructure is a massive boon for them.
And FYI, you're confusing "solar" with "all renewables". Wind tends to be strongest in the night.
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