With California’s cap-and-trade legislation on the ropes, zero-emissions vehicle quotas have emerged as the next piece of environmental policy up for debate in Sacramento.

A new bill, soon to be introduced by Assemblywoman Autumn Burke, D-Los Angeles, would “require that 15 percent of new vehicles be emission-free in less than a decade, a significant escalation in the state’s efforts to speed the evolution of new car technology,” according to the Associated Press. “Automakers that fail to sell enough electric vehicles would be required to make payments to rivals that do or pay a fine to the state,” the wire noted.

“Under current law, automakers accumulate credits for selling vehicles with cleaner technology and must hit annual targets. Environmental advocates say automakers have stockpiled credits for future use and won’t have sufficient incentive to sell electric vehicles at affordable prices, preventing the state from meeting its goals for greenhouse-gas reduction.”

Industry anxieties

In Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, the mood has shifted somewhat from optimism to concern, with regional opinion leaders mounting a defense of electric vehicles that allows that the rules around them may well need reform. “Despite Californians embrace of EVs, the state is in danger of not meeting its laudable goal of sales of 15 percent of all new cars by 2025, which would equate to roughly 1.5 million cars,” the San Jose Mercury News editorialized. “It’s especially worrisome that sales of electric vehicles increased by only 1.6 percent in California in 2015, and dropped by more than 10 percent throughout the United States.”

Compounding the problem, Californians with electric cars face the prospect of having their high occupancy lane access taken away — a move that would surely depress zero-emissions sales still further. “One of the most successful incentives to date has been the green-sticker program for plug-in hybrids and the white-sticker program for battery electric and fuel-cell vehicles, both of which provide high-occupancy-vehicle-lane access to these cars,” the San Francisco Chronicle warned. “Consumers have cited high-occupancy-vehicle-lane access incentives as a key consideration in their purchase of an electric vehicle. Both programs are set to expire at the end of 2018, and there are no longer any green stickers available unless the cap is raised by the Legislature.”

World watching

As always, national — and international — eyes remained focused on California’s moves in the zero-emissions market. China, whose central planners have looked to cap-and-trade champions like Gov. Jerry Brown and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for inspiration, has even formulated regulations patterned after the Golden State’s electric vehicle quota system. “The proposed rules will mandate that certain automakers produce or import new-energy vehicles in proportion to the number of fuel-burning autos they sell,” Bloomberg Markets reported, citing a draft document prepared by Beijing’s National Development and Reform Commission. “Companies that fail to achieve carbon dioxide emission reduction targets would be required to buy credits or pay fines of as much as five-times the average price of the credits, the country’s top industry regulator and policy maker said.”

But in spite of the impressive technology and social vogue powering attention and prestige around zero-emissions cars, in the U.S., electric vehicles have only really taken off along the West Coast. “Of the 13,772 cars with plugs sold last month, 7,161 went to buyers in California,” GreenCarReports noted — “exactly 52 percent, or more than the entire rest of the U.S. combined. With cheap gas sustaining a robust market for the SUVs and crossovers buyers favor — models that rarely come with plugs — sales have fallen short of expectations. 

Nevertheless, regulators have ensured that electric vehicles won’t be disappearing from showroom floors anytime soon. Automakers “know they must both meet the California ZEV mandate — which until 2018 applies only to Fiat Chrysler, Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan and Toyota — and gain experience for future years in which radically lower emissions will be demanded by regulators worldwide,” the site added. “California provides the most fertile market for those vehicles, and the ‘travel provision’ quirk in its ZEV regulations allows a car sold in that state to fulfill ZEV-sales requirements in 10 other states as well.”

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A strong majority of Californians say they support tougher limits on greenhouse gas emissions and more ambitious renewable energy goals to combat climate change, according to a statewide poll released late Wednesday.

Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said global warming is contributing to California’s ongoing drought. About half said global warming is a “very serious” threat to the state’s future, according to the poll, conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, a San Francisco-based nonpartisan research center.

“At a time when many Californians are making a connection between the current drought and climate change, there is strong support for expanding the state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Mark Baldassare, the institute’s president, in a news release.

Results of the survey — titled Californians & the environment — are based on phone interviews with 1,702 California adult residents from in July.

Of those who took part, 44 percent said they were registered Democrats; 28 percent were Republicans; and 24 percent independents or decline-to-state voters, according to the institute.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said they believe there’s a connection between the drought and global warming, while 28 percent said they saw no link.

Spray irrigation on a field in the Imperial Valley in southern California. This type of irrigation is more efficient than flood irrigation that is popular in this region. Still, in the high temperatures of this desert region a lot of the water evaporates, leaving the salts, that are dissolved in the Colorado River water that is used, on the soil.

The institute has not asked that question in the past, said PPIC spokeswoman Linda Strean.

California is mired in its fourth straight year of severe drought. While not going so far as to say climate change has caused the drought, recent scientific studies have said global warming exacerbates the extreme high pressure systems that block rainfall in the Western United States.

PPIC’s past surveys have found strong support for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including majorities across party lines a decade ago who favored California’s landmark emissions reduction law, AB32. That law requires the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

It was signed into law in 2006 by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“A strong partisan divide has opened up since then,” the institute observed in its release.

Now, 79 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of independents favor the law compared with 46 percent of Republicans, the institute said.

The poll also found that large majorities of Californians favor new, more aggressive goals for combating climate change.

Eighty-two percent of those polled said they support a proposal to require half of California’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2030. And 73 percent favor cutting petroleum use in vehicles by 50 percent.

Those are key pieces of Senate Bill 350, a bill introduced earlier this year by Senate leader Kevin de Léon.

Other findings from the PPIC survey include:

• 88 percent of adults favor building more solar power stations in California.
• 78 percent want to boost tax credits and other incentives for rooftop solar panels.
• 49 percent favor building the Keystone XL pipeline, while 38 percent are opposed.
• 56 percent oppose increased use of fracking to extract oil and natural gas. It’s the highest level of opposition since PPIC started asking about it in 2013.
• 53 percent approve of Gov. Jerry Brown’s job performance, while 47 percent approve of the way he handles environmental issues.
• 39 percent approve of the California Legislature’s job performance.
• 57 percent approve of President Barack Obama’s job performance.
• 29 percent approve of Congress’ performance.

Contact reporter Chris Nichols at chris@calwatchdog.com or on Twitter @ChrisTheJourno

Courtesy Sen. Kevin de León’s office

As many as 7,000 low-income Los Angeles residents could eventually take part in a state-funded electric car sharing program that rolled out last week.

State and city officials celebrated the soft launch of the endeavor — which aims to improve air quality by cutting carbon emissions — at an L.A. affordable housing complex.

City officials hope to establish as many as 100 vehicles as part of the pilot program, which the state is partially funding through a $1.6 million award. The city expects to use an additional $8 million “in in-kind city resources and private operator investment in equipment and operations,” according to L.A.’s  Sustainable City plan.

The state money comes from California’s controversial cap-and-trade program, designed to curb the state’s reliance on fossil fuels. Critics call it a pollution tax that unfairly burdens large industries.

State Senate leader Kevin de León speaks at roll out of electric car sharing program in L.A.
Photo courtesy de León’s office.

“Fighting smog and climate change so that our kids can breathe clean air requires more transportation options that don’t rely on dirty fossil fuels,” state Senate leader Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, said in a press release. “This electric car-sharing pilot project offers a glimpse of the future, and represents the type of shift in policy, infrastructure, and behavior that we need.”

Officials say the project will educate residents about car sharing and transportation alternatives, install electric vehicle charging stations and introduce an electric car sharing fleet.

Specifically, it will “provide affordable last mile/first mile solutions for low-income families and other residents who do not own a car or need a second car for trips requiring a light duty passenger vehicle,” according to L.A.’s  Sustainable City plan.

“Our EV car sharing pilot is a perfect example of how our state’s cap-and-trade dollars should be put to work: providing transportation options for Angelenos in need, and helping us achieve our clean air goals outlined in my Sustainable City plan,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti added in the news release.

The program is formally called the Car Sharing and Mobility Options in Disadvantaged Communities Pilot Project. It is run by the California Air Resources Board, and originated last year after the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown signed two of de León bills, SB1275 and SB535, according to the Senate leader’s office. Those laws direct CARB to invest the state’s cap-and-trade revenue into programs that bring clean air and jobs to communities heavily impacted by climate change and poor environmental quality.

Contact reporter Chris Nichols at chris@calwatchdog.com or on Twitter @ChrisTheJourno

According to ChargePoint.com, of the top four cities in the country for electric cars, three are in California:

The San Francisco Bay Area (including San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose) led the nation, followed by Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego and Honolulu.

Equating for population differences, ChargePoint scored the cities based on the number of EVs on the road and the number of charging stations available on the ChargePoint network as of December 31, 2014. The regions are core based statistical areas as defined by the Census….

While Los Angeles had a higher overall total of registered electric cars at 57,000, ChargePoint said San Francisco’s total of 48,000 represented a greater percentage when compared to its population.

This is San Francisco’s second year in a row as the top electric-car city; Los Angeles moved up from sixth to second place.

The Bay Area also is the headquarters of Tesla Motors Inc. in Palo Alto.

However, ChargePoint noted many non-West Coast cities have made the Top 10 and could move higher. Sixth through tenth places on the list were: Austin, Tex.; Detroit, Mich.; Atlanta, Ga.; Denver, Colo.; and Portland, Ore.

Good news — so far — for California’s successful electric-vehicle maker and others in the industry. At least through last November, the low gasoline prices of recent months have not crashed electric vehicle sales.

Plug In America, which follows EV sales, charted both sales and the price of gas for recent years. “Gasoline prices have fluctuated almost a dollar during this period,” it found. “Very recently, they’ve dipped to new lows. But on average, the trend has been flat, because all the ups and downs cancel each other out.”

The chart on their site shows national gas prices jumping up and down from 2011 through Nov. 2014, from lows of around $3 a gallon to highs of nearly $4. California prices have been about 10 percent to 15 percent higher than national prices.

“The current generation of plug-in vehicles started selling in December 2010,” Plug In America also reported. “As a product category, PEVs [plug-in electric vehicles] are still in their infancy. Sales have risen year after year. The trend is rising.”

EV sales

The chart on that site shows sales of EVs steadily rising from close to zero at the beginning of 2011 to about 10,000 a month at the end of 2014. Here’s a similar chart:

However, a caution light comes from Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation. “We are now seeing gas prices far below the data for 2013 and 2014, so all bets are off in terms of the impact on hybrid and EV sales impact,” he told CalWatchdog.com.

“The auto industry is already seeing a large increase in pickup truck and SUV sales, which is widely attributed to the impact of lower gas prices,” he said. “I would be very surprised if there were not a comparable impact, in the other direction, on sales of hybrids and EVs.”

Long-term data to come out in future months will tell the story.

But USA Today reported this week:

“Sales of new cars and trucks roared off to a fast start in January, towed by Americans’ renewed love affair with trucks and SUVs as low fuel prices mean the gas-thirsty models aren’t so expensive to fill up.

“Trucks — a category that consists of pickups, vans and SUVs — were 54% of January sales; cars were the remainder, according to sales tracker Autodata.”

One detail can be noted, for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Its Chrysler division went bankrupt during the Great Recession, was bailed out by the federal government, then merged with Fiat. The picture now:

“Jeep, again, was the star, posting its best-ever monthly sales and recording a 44% increase by the compact Jeep Cherokee SUV.

“Patriot, smaller than Cherokee and on the market since the 2007 model, found new buyers somewhere, and recorded a 35.6% gain.

“Ram pickup was up 14%.

“Chrysler has become largely a truck and SUV company — 72.5% of its sales — while its cars are an almost incidental 27.5%.

“Even against the industry-wide strong, new interest in trucks and SUVs, FCA US results are dramatic.”

The future

These numbers likely only would hold so long as gas prices remain low. If the history of fluctuations once more arcs upward, then gas-powered vehicles again could come into disfavor.

The San Jose Mercury News reported today:

“Those amazingly low gas prices that soothed motorists for the past few months will soon be in the rearview mirror: Pump prices have jumped a dime or more in the past week and are expected to soar another 30 to 50 cents a gallon by April. 

“That would have California drivers paying around $3 a gallon, a far cry from today’s $2.53 statewide average mark but still well below the $3.60 price a year ago.”

California’s situation is unique because of special state fuel requirements, including the conversion, going on now, to more expensive summer fuel. And the state is working out how much the new tax for the cap-and-trade program will cost.

But gas prices are rising across the country. “[T]he most pain is being felt now in the upper Midwest, where the statewide average in Michigan soared from $2.09 on Tuesday to $2.23 on Wednesday,” the Mercury News reported. “Bay City, Michigan, led all metropolitan areas in the nation with a 29-cent overnight hike.”

On the other hand, Citigroup economists expect the oil price decline to continue, or at least not to rise.

Rather than being mindful of the state's weak electricity grid and sky-high electricity rates, Brown's office sent out a press release announcing the six-bill package, clearly designed to prop up the weak electric car market.

Brown called it “California’s burgeoning electric vehicle market.”

“Today, we reaffirm our commitment in California to an electric vehicle future,” Brown said as he signed the bills.

But that “burgeoning electric vehicle market” is a fairy tale. Electric cars are significantly more expensive than standard combustion engine vehicles or clean diesel vehicles. The range of less than 100 miles for most of these cars is not realistic for most drivers, and sales are low. Currently electric cars make up only 0.3 percent of U.S. sales, according to nearly every news story I find.

The great green fib

While electric car manufacturers and media portray electric cars as all-clean, “zero emissions” vehicles, the cars are still polluters and can generate the emissions of a conventional car running on gas or diesel.

“The main difference is that while a conventional car’s emissions come out of the vehicle’s exhaust pipe, those created by an electric car are generated at the power station which supplies the electricity,” British consumer watchdog Which? reported. “It’s even less clear with so called ‘emission-free’ electric cars. The electricity powering them has to be generated somewhere, and that’s more likely to use fossil fuels than renewables.”

Green is bad for business

California threatened rolling blackouts this past summer due to the tapped out electrical grid. The state's residents were told to conserve electricity, and not use clothes washers and dryers and household appliances until the evening, and limit air conditioning during the hottest days.

But now the governor is propping up the electric car market, attempting to create a demand where there is none. It will add a whole new segment of electricity users in California, which is already facing an energy crisis in the near future.

As it currently stands, even if a quarter of the state's cars were already electric, the electricity grid would crash.

Additionally, the Renewable Portfolio Mandate, one of the most stringent renewable standards in the country, was passed by the California Legislature in 2011. The RPS will require the state to acquire 33 percent renewable energy for all of the state's power by 2020. Yet as of now, California has no new power plants coming online. And the San Onofre nuclear plant has been shut down permanently. With wind and solar power unreliable and intermittent, we can anticipate a state-created and mandated energy crises in the near future.

California's “burgeoning electric car market”

The media make electric cars sound as if they are selling like the hot new iPhone 5C. “After a record-setting month in August, plug-in electric car sales moderated in September while the overall U.S. vehicle market surged,” Green Car Reports reported today. “The Chevrolet Volt, the best-selling plug-in car after almost three years, registered 1,766 deliveries — little more than half the record-setting number of 3,351 sold in August.”

Compare sales of the Chevy Volt with the popular Ford F-150 pickup truck. According to a September story in USA Today, Ford Motors, up 12 percent in overall sales, reported August sales of F-series pickups topped 70,000 for the month. If Ford maintains 70,000 F-150 sales every month, the company would top 840,000 pickups sold in one year — the amount close to what Ford sold prior to the Great Recession and high gas prices.

Meanwhile, the electric car fairy tale continues. “Sales of electric cars have more than doubled in the U.S. during the first six months of 2013,” AOL Autos reported. “Americans have purchased 41,447 plug-in electric vehicles since January.”

Automakers sold 14.5 million total vehicles in the U.S. market in 2012. Auto analysts predict auto sales will likely hit 16 million units sold by year end.

The high cost of green

The Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid only goes 38 miles on electricity before its gas-powered generator kicks in. And the base cost for the car is $35,000, recently lowered $5,000 by General Motors because the cars weren't selling. Chevy also offers the all-electric Chevy Spark subcompact which can go 82 miles on a charge, for a mere $26,685. Electric cars are eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit, and a $2,500 tax credit in California.

If your tastes are more exotic, Tesla Motors also has an all-electric model. Tesla claims the car can go up to 265 miles on a single charge, but that claim was discredited by the ultimate gear head show, Top Gear, which found the expensive electric car could only make about half of the 265 mile range claim.

So, for a 133 mile electric charge range, one can purchase a Tesla for only a starting price of $71,000. But in Sacramento, some of the cars are selling for about $98,000, out-the-door.

And the Tesla isn't as green as some say it is. “The total effective CO2 emissions of an 85 kWh Model S sedan are 547g per mile — considerably more than a large SUV, such as a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which emits 443g per mile!” reported Anthony Watts, a former meteorologist who operates a weather technology and content business, and the website Watts Up With That?

Yet, the Chevy Cruze, a standard internal combustion engine vehicle, of which 23,909 vehicles sold in August, costs only $16,569, gets 25 miles per gallon in the city, and 39 mpg on the highway.

What 'green' really looks like

Chevy also makes the Cruze Clean Turbo Diesel, which costs $17,170. The Cruze Clean Turbo Diesel can travel approximately 717 highway miles, or more than 10 hours of driving, on one tank of diesel fuel.

The Chevy Cruze Clean Diesel is proof that the electric car technology isn't ready for prime time, but clean diesel engines are.

“Experts at Which? compared the carbon dioxide created by charging electric cars with that emitted by the most efficient diesel models and concluded: 'Sometimes there’s not a great deal of difference,'” The UK Daily Mail reported. “And the gap is narrowing as 'conventional' cars up their game to cut emissions.”

The Which? report noted, “The common manufacturer claim that electric cars produce ‘zero emissions’ ignores the fact that most drivers use a conventional electricity supply to charge them, which has a carbon cost from burning fossil fuels.”

Information about the six electric car bills can be found on Gov. Jerry Brown's official website. 

By John Seiler

I’ve seen a couple of Tesla cars tooling around Orange County. They’re neat, as we said in the 1960s. And they’re made in California. They also survived where other electric car companies, such as Fisker, have crashed.

The problem with the Tesla and all these cars is the short range before recharging. The Tesla Model S is supposed to go 300 miles under ideal conditions. But as the New York Times found out in its test, that means you have to stop for an hour full charge after about 250 miles.

So a 500-mile trip would add another hour to the time. By contrast, filling up a typical sedan takes less than 10 minutes.

Tesla just paid back its government loan nine years early. But the Wall Street Journal also revealed where the money is coming from:

The decade-old Tesla debuted its first product, the Roadster, in 2006. With a base price of $109,000, it was discontinued before it hit 2,500 sales. Tesla introduced its Model S a year ago and had sold an estimated 9,650 at a bargain $70,000 through April. By contrast, Ford sold 168,843 F-series pickup trucks in the first quarter alone.

Tesla wouldn’t have sold even that many cars without the extraordinary help of government. In 2009 the company received a $465 million Obama loan guarantee, supplemented last year by a $10 million grant from the California Energy Commission.

That money has underwritten Tesla’s engineering and manufacturing, but federal and state governments also subsidize the purchase of Tesla products. Any U.S. buyer of a Tesla car qualifies for a $7,500 federal tax credit, while states like Colorado throw in up to $6,000 more in state income-tax credits. Taxpayers pay first so Tesla can build the cars and again to help the wealthy buy them.

These subsidies are important enough to Tesla that its website features an “Incentives” section directing buyers where to look for their states’ electric-vehicle benefits—rebates, free parking, exemptions from state sales tax, use of high-occupancy lanes, and the like. Buyers from states that offer no incentives get this Tesla message: “Want to help make EV [electric vehicle] incentives a reality in your area? Encourage your local or state representative by calling or sending them a letter.”

Tesla’s biggest windfall has been the cash payments it extracts from rival car makers (and their customers), via its sale of zero-emission credits. A number of states including California require that traditional car makers reach certain production quotas of zero-emission vehicles—or to purchase credits if they cannot. Tesla is a main supplier.

A Morgan Stanley MS +0.41% report in April said Tesla made $40.5 million on credits in 2012, and that it could collect $250 million in 2013. Tesla acknowledged in a recent SEC filing that emissions credit sales hit $85 million in 2013’s first quarter alone—15% of its revenue, and the only reason it made a profit.

Take away the credits and Tesla lost $53 million in the first quarter, or $10,000 per car sold. California’s zero-emission credits provided $67.9 million to the company in the first quarter, and the combination of that state’s credits and federal and local incentives can add up to $45,000 per Tesla sold, according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Times.

It’s all just another government scam aiding special interests. Crony capitalism at its worst.

Cost of gas

By the way, gas-powered cars really are not costing more to drive, despite higher gasoline prices. I just saw the 1974 movie “The Sugarland Express,” starring cute Goldie Hawn and directed by Steven Spielberg. It was filmed in 1973. I noticed that gas prices then were 31.9 cents per gallon. The film was made entirely in Texas, including San Antonio.

According to SanAntonioGasPrices.com, you can buy gas there now for $3.19 a gallon — by conicidence, that’s exactly 10 times the price in 1974.

But there’s been a lot of inflation since then. The Labor Department’s CPI Inflation Calculator shows that 31.9 cents in 1973 = $1.67 today. So that’s about half today’s actual price. And cars’ fuel efficiency now is about twice that of 1973.

So the cost of running a gas-powered car is about the same as in 1973.

Some day electric cars, which have been around a century, will be more efficient and make sense without taxpayer subsidies. That day is decades off.

By Joseph Perkins

Mary Nichols was in Detroit this week for the Society of Automotive Engineers annual World Congress. The chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board told attendees that her agency wants to have better relations with the auto industry.

“If we can collaborate,” said Nichols, “we can be successful together. If we don’t, the consequences can be something we don’t want to talk about.”

Indeed, there has been little love lost over the years between CARB and the nation’s automakers over the Golden State’s auto emission and fuel economy standards, which historically have been considerably more onerous than federal standards.

“We do this in California not to drive you crazy,” Nichols told gatherees at the Motor City’s Cobo Center, “but to address our unique air quality problem.”

Thus, CARB’s mandate that one in seven new vehicles sold in California by 2025 be an electric car or some other zero-emissions vehicle.

Nichols, head cheerleader for electric cars, has convinced herself that CARB’s goal is achievable within the next dozen years. But for her fantasy to become reality, automakers will have to sell more than 40 times as many electric cars in 2025 as they did in 2012.

At least one CARB board member, Sandra Berg, thought the regulatory agency unwise to force automakers to sell electric vehicles California’s car buying public clearly does not want. She attested that she owned an EV herself, a Nissan Leaf, and understood the public’s reticence to abandon its conventional gasoline-powered vehicles for battery-powered flivvers.

Indeed, EVs are considerably more expensive than conventional cars. It takes roughly eight hours to fully charge an EV, whereas a conventional car can be gassed up in a matter of minutes. And the average EV has a driving range of only 100 miles (which is reduced when demands are put on the battery, such as cold weather, not weather or air conditioning).

“Early adopters (of EVs) are willing to go without heat to save the miles they need to get to their destination,” said Berg. “But that is not going to help grow the consumer base.”

Demand

The most Nichols is willing to concede about the underwhelming demand for EVs is that it was quixotic of her, and others, to think that much-hyped start-up electric car companies like Anaheim-based Fisker Automotive and Palo Alto-based Tesla Motors would be pioneers of California’s next great industry.

Now she thinks growth in the electric car market, such as it is, will be driven by  same automakers that have dominated California new car sales for years: Toyota, Honda, Ford, GM, Nissan and Chrysler (with Hundai/Kia moving up fast).

Yet, those market-dominating automakers are not nearly as confident in demand for EVs here in the Golden State increasing to the point that they account for 1 in 7 new car sales by 2025.

CARB “can make us sell a minimum amount of cars,” Kevin Kinnaw, Toyota’s U.S. Manager of Regulatory Affairs, told the Wall Street Journal, “but, unfortunately, they can’t make people buy them, or even get our own dealers to order them from us.”

Meanwhile, Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Chrysler, which debuted its battery-powered Fiat 500e at the Los Angeles Auto Show, estimated that the automaker will lose as much as $9,000 on each of the EV it sells.

None of that matters to Nichols. She just wants to see so many electric cars on the Golden State’s freeways and roads — even if automakers have to give them away.

“In its push to get electric vehicles on the road, the Obama administration has partnered with a company in dire financial straits that is also under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider trading,” the Heritage Foundation wrote.

I have never seen a car parked and using a charging station. Apparently no one else has either, and ECOtality has the numbers to show for it. But I really laugh when I see charging stations on college campuses. What college student can afford an expensive Chevy Volt?

Despite receiving the $115 million from the federal government,  ECOtality reported a net loss of more than $12 million in just the first six months of 2011.

Where is the money going? If you build it, they don’t come.

It’s not going to operating expenses because the ECOtality website newsletter is gone.

Read the Heritage story, and stay tuned.

MAR. 23, 2012