Governments and Electric Cars

Government incentives for plug-in electric vehicles have been established by several national and local governments around the world as a financial incentive for consumers to purchase a plug-in electric vehicle. The amount of these incentives usually depends on battery size and the vehicle all-electric range, and some countries extend the benefits to fuel cell vehicles, and electric vehicle conversions of hybrid electric vehicles and conventional internal combustion engine vehicles.

Government Subsidy Over the World

            Several countries have established grants and tax credits for the purchase of new electric cars depending on the battery size. The U.S. offers the federal income tax credit up to US$7,500, and several states have additional incentives. The UK offers a Plug-in Car Grant up to a maximum of GB£5,000 (US$7,600). The U.S. government also pledged US$2.4 billion in federal grants for the development of advanced technologies for electric cars and batteries. As of April 2011, 15 members of European Union States provide economic incentives for the purchase of new electrically charged vehicles, which consist of tax reductions and exemptions, as well as of bonus payments for buyers of all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, and some alternative fuel vehicles.

United States

First the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008, and later the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 granted tax credits for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 also authorized federal tax credits for converted plug-ins, though the credit is lower than for new PEVs.

            The Clean Vehicle Rebate Project initially funded with a total of US $4.1 million by the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Resources Board, which was established in order to promote the production and use of zero-emission vehicles, including plug-in electric and fuel cell vehicles. The program was created from Assembly Bill 118 that was signed by Governor Schwarzenegger in October 2007. The funding is provided on a first-come, first-served basis, and the project is expected to go through 2015.

References

"Notice 2009-89: New Qualified Plug-in Electric Drive Motor Vehicle Credit". Internal Revenue Service. 2009-11-30.

Paul Hudson (2010-02-28). "£5,000 grant to buy plug-in electric cars". London: The Daily Telegraph.

"Ultra-low carbon cars: Next steps on delivering the £250 million consumer incentive programme for electric and plug-in hybrid cars". Department for Transport. July 2009.

Woodyard, Chris (2010-07-14). "Obama pushes electric cars, battery power this week". USA Today.

Paul Hockenos (2011-07-29). "Europe’s Incentive Plans for Spurring E.V. Sales". The New York Times.

"Overview of Purchase and Tax Incentives for Electric Vehicles in the EU". European Automobile Manufacturers Association. 2011-03-14.

"Consumer Energy Tax Incentives: Plug-In Hybrid Conversion Kits". U.S. Department of Energy.

"Clean Vehicle Rebate Project". Center for Sustainable Energy.

External link

http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13418559

Appreciation for our pioneers

The history of the electric vehicle began in the mid-19th century. An electrical vehicle held the vehicular land speed record until around 1900s. The high cost, low top speed and short range of electric vehicles, comparing to later internal combustion vehicles, led to the worldwide decline in their use. At the beginning of the 21st Century, interest in electrical and other alternative fuel vehicles has increased due to growing concern associated with hydrocarbon fueled vehicles that including damage to the environment caused by their emissions and the sustainability of the current hydrocarbon-based transportation infrastructure.

First practical electric cars

English inventor Thomas Parker, who was responsible for innovations such as electrifying the London Underground, overhead tramways in Liverpool and Birmingham, and the smokeless fuel coalite, built the first practical production electric car in London in 1884, using his own specially designed high-capacity rechargeable batteries. Parker's long-held interest in the construction of more fuel-efficient vehicles led him to experiment with electric vehicles. He also has been concerned about the malign effects smoke and pollution in London and tried to develop it.

France and the United Kingdom were the first nations to support the widespread development of electric vehicles. The first electric car in Germany was built by the engineer Andreas Flocken in 1888.

William Morrison of Des Moines Iowa developed the first American electric car in 1890 to 1991; the vehicle was a six-passenger wagon capable of reaching a speed of 14 miles per hour, which is 23 kilometer per hour. It was not until 1895 that Americans began to devote attention to electric vehicles, after A.L. Ryker introduced the first electric tricycles to the U.S. From that point, Europeans had been making use of electric tricycles, bicycles, and cars for almost 15 years.

2000s to present: Modern highway-capable electric cars

The global economic recession in the late 2000s led to increased calls for automakers to abandon fuel-inefficient SUVs, which were a symbol of the excess that caused the recession, in favor of small cars, hybrid cars, and electric cars. California electric carmaker Tesla Motors began development in 2004 on the Tesla Roadster, which was first delivered to customers in 2008. The Roadster was the first highway-capable all-electric vehicle in serial production available in the United States. Since 2008 Tesla has sold more than 2,100 Roadsters in 31 countries through December 2011.

The Roadster was also the first production automobile to use lithium-ion battery cells and the first production all-electric car to travel more than 200 miles (320 km) per charge. Tesla expects to sell the Roadster until early 2012, when its supply of Lotus Elise gliders is expected to run out, as its contract with Lotus Cars for 2,500 gliders expired at the end of 2011. Tesla stopped taking orders for the Roadster in the U.S. market in August 2011, and the 2012 Tesla Roadster will be sold in limited numbers only in Europe, Asia and Australia. The publishing of next generation is expected to introduce in 2014.

References

Bellis, M. (2006), "The Early Years", The History of Electric Vehicles, About.com, retrieved 6 July 2006.

"World's first electric car built by Victorian inventor in 1884", The Daily Telegraph (London), 24 April 2009.

Halwart Schrader: Flocken. In: Deutsche Autos 1885 – 1920. First edition 2002, p. 182.

Danny King (11 January 2012). "Tesla continues Roadster sales with tweaks in Europe, Asia and Australia". Autoblog Green. Retrieved 2012-01-13.

"Tesla Motors Moving Quickly to Commercialization of an Electric Car". GreenCar Magazine. 9 July 2009.

Chris Woodyard (3 August 2011). "Tesla boasts about electric car deliveries, plans for sedan". USA Today. Retrieved 2011-10-04.

Josie Garthwaite (6 May 2011). "Tesla Prepares for a Gap as Roadster Winds Down". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-05-07.

Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield (12 January 2012). "Tesla Updates Roadster For 2012. There’s Just One Catch...". Green Car Reports. Retrieved 2012-01-16.

Mark Tisshaw (26 October 2011). "Tesla plans all-new Roadster". Autocar. Retrieved 2011-10-29.

External Link

http://www.14november1940.com/names/parker/p45/p45biography.html

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Flocken

http://www.electricvehiclesnews.com/History/historyearlyIII.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telsa_Motors

Real benefits? and is it real?

Talking about the new modern technology, which is 100% electric powered car, is pretty common these days if you are the person who is interested in the tech news. Many scientists and engineers have already proved about the benefits of the electric cars comparing to the internal combustion engine vehicles in environmental and energy efficient phenomenon.

             Electric cars contribute to cleaner air in the cities because they produce no harmful pollution at the tailpipe from the onboard source of power, such as particulates, volatile organic compounds, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, ozone, lead, and various oxides of nitrogen. The clean air benefit is usually local effect because depending on the source of the electricity used to recharge the batteries; air pollutant emissions are shifted to the location of the generation plants. The amount of emitted carbon dioxide depends on the emission intensity of the power source, which is being used to charge the vehicle; the efficiency of the vehicle and the energy wasted in the charging process. This is referred to as the long tailpipe of electric vehicles. For the main electricity, the emission intensity significantly varies per country, and within a particular country, it depends on demand. The availability of renewable sources and the efficiency of the fossil fuel-based generation used at a given time. Charging a vehicle using renewable energy yields very low carbon footprint.

            In addition, Internal combustion engines are relatively inefficient at converting on-board fuel energy to propulsion as most of the energy is wasted as heat. On the other hand, electric motors are more efficient in converting stored energy into driving a vehicle, and electric drive vehicles do not consume energy while at rest or coasting, and some of the energy lost when braking is captured and reused through regenerative braking, which captures as much as one fifth of the energy normally lost during braking. Typically, conventional gasoline engines effectively use only 15% of the fuel energy content to move the vehicle or to power accessories, and diesel engines can reach on-board efficiencies of 20%, while electric drive vehicles have on-board efficiency of around 80%.

            From the contents above is the absolutely beneficial fact of electric car, but there are some problems that scientists, engineers, and governments have to figure out such as popularization, practicality, and realization.

            From New York Times, the recent news of the electric powered cars mentioned about some practical solutions about these problems using the major U.S. electric car company Telsa as an example.

            Tesla Motors said on Wednesday that it planned to invest about $2 billion in a large-scale factory to produce cheaper batteries for a mass-market electric car within three years. Tesla said the factory would allow it to develop and cut the costs of its batteries for its vehicles more quickly, in part by producing finished batteries from metal ore instead of from components. Sales of its Model S sedan, which costs $70,000 and higher, has been constrained by a battery shortage, the company has said. By building its own factory, Tesla would have more control over the supply and cost of its batteries.

The automaker expects to reduce the per-kilowatt cost of its battery packs by more than 30 percent by the end of the first year of volume production for its third-generation electric vehicle. At full production, the factory, known as the Gigafactory, would produce enough lithium-ion batteries for about 500,000 cars annually by 2020, more than suppliers worldwide produced last year. The potential uses for mass-market Tesla vehicles go far beyond transportation and could help redefine the relationship between consumers and their cars.

Mr. Musk is also chairman of the residential solar power company Solar City, which is already moving in that direction, using Tesla battery packs for solar customers to store power from their rooftop arrays for use at night, as well as a system for businesses to help them reduce their need for power from the grid. Other car manufacturers are experimenting as well. Last year, Ford Motor announced a partnership including Sun Power and Whirlpool to demonstrate how families can reduce their electricity bills by using electric vehicles in conjunction with home appliances.

Though electric vehicles and the kind of technology needed to use them as miniature mobile power plants, have been slow to catch on, analysts say that the market for them will grow, especially with gas prices remaining high. In January, Navigant Research predicted that by 2022, there would be more than 35 million of them on roads worldwide. Tesla said it would partly finance the factory by issuing $1.6 billion in convertible senior notes in a public offering.

Reference

Shah, Saurin D. (2009). "2". Plug-In Electric Vehicles: What Role for Washington? (1st ed.). The Brookings Institution. pp. 29, 37 and 43.

Sperling, Daniel; Gordon, Deborah (2009). Two billion cars: driving toward sustainability. Oxford University Press. pp. 22–26.

“CO2 Intensity”. Eirgrid. Retrieved 2010-12-12.

Clark, Duncan (2009-07-17). "Real-time "CO2 intensity" site makes the case for midnight dishwashing". London: Guardian. Retrieved 2010-12-12.

External Link

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/automobiles/tesla-plans-5-billion-battery-factory-for-mass-market-electric-car.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As%2C%5B%22RI%3A9%22%2C%22RI%3A14%22%5D