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.

Nearly $7 million in federal financial support is headed to five California developers working on hydrogen fuel cells, which emit only water vapor as a byproduct. Foremost among the recipients are Ardica, in San Francisco; HRL Laboratories, in Malibu; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in the East Bay; Materia, in Pasadena; and the Livermore branch of Sandia National Laboratories.

In a press release, the DOE calls the fuel cell effort “critical to the widespread commercialization of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.” 

Hydrogen technology remains limited in its applications to automobiles, as a result of its weight, size, cost and range constraints. Nevertheless, hydrogen fuel cells are back in vogue after being eclipsed by the trend in favor of electric vehicles. 

In general, the market challenges facing electric cars are even more substantial than those surrounding fuel-cell vehicles. That’s the case even though electric cars have been on the market for more than a century. Multiple auto manufacturers have labored to broaden their appeal. Government funds have been used to incentive their use.

But whereas experts recently estimated 5 to 10 percent of the market would be penetrated by electric vehicles worldwide, today optimistic estimates don’t exceed 1 percent, according to an investors’ report by Morgan Stanley Research cited by the Los Angeles Times.

No easy solutions

As supporters and critics of electric cars both know, the vehicles suffer from a short range augmented only by repeated fuel-ups at relatively rare recharge stations. Perhaps even more important, electric vehicles have failed to meet the performance and aesthetic expectations of most American consumers. Although sales are rising, they’re still so low that manufacturers and dealerships are cooling to the cars. Time magazine reports that a combination of high production costs and relatively low gasoline costs are souring analysts, dealers and customers on electric vehicles.

For automakers, that raises the stakes when it comes to hydrogen cells. Toyota, for instance, is staking a fuel-cell push on California’s so-called hydrogen highway — an undertaking began under then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that’s on track to cost the Golden State some $150 million.

Toyota’s turn to hydrogen is part of a swift pivot away from electric. Its partnership with Tesla is being brought to an end, thanks to paltry consumer interest in an electric RAV4 model. There’s just one problem: the infrastructure for fuel cell cars is only part of the equation for hydrogen success. The other part is the hydrogen itself.

Pure hydrogen, it turns out, is hard to come by. “Despite being the most common element in the universe,” observes one report, “pure hydrogen is not particularly easy to come by on Earth. The most common method of producing hydrogen involves stripping it off hydrocarbons like methane and gasoline through a process called steam reforming. That doesn’t do much to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, but other methods like bioreactors and water electrolysis are far from efficient enough for industrial scale production.”

A regulatory push

For alternative-energy skeptics, there’s a certain irony in environmental regulations pushing automakers toward a solution that keeps American drivers fossil-fuel reliant. As PBS reports, solar or wind power could theoretically be used to produce hydrogen for fuel cells — but that’s not part of current technology.

It’s all enough to leave some asking why automakers would even bother. After all, environmentalists who favor electric vehicles are criticizing Toyota, Hyundai and others for working on hydrogen fuel cells at all. “Many of them even call the new technology a waste of time, requiring a whole new network of expensive fueling stations,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “Fuel-cell cars, as a result, will jump into the market without a safety net.”

Car manufacturers are jumping in large part because they’re being pushed by state and federal initiatives. Along with seven partner states, California has pledged to ensure that 3.3 million electric or fuel cell vehicles are in use by 2025. That’s a stretch, not least because 15 percent of those cars are intended to be zero-emissions vehicles, and not just hybrids.

By Dave Roberts

Assembly Democrats, many of whom see themselves as champions of the downtrodden, instead became reverse Robin Hoods recently, robbing from the poor and middle class to give to the rich. Nearly every Democrat along with two Republicans approved AB 8 on June 27, which extends until 2024 a variety of vehicle fees that were due to expire next year.

Some of those fees, which are the same whether they are imposed on a $500 clunker or a $387,000 Lamborghini, subsidize the purchase of electric vehicles -– the kind of cars that tend to be purchased by the wealthy. The typical recipient of the state’s clean vehicle rebate earns more than $150,000 per year, according to the legislative analysis for AB 8.

Purchasers of Nissan Leafs receive a $7,500 federal tax credit and a $2,500 rebate from California taxpayers. More than 6,700 rebates had been dispensed as of Dec. 31, 2012. Nearly 450 rebates were also handed out to buyers of the Tesla Model S, which costs $70,000 for the base model and can exceed $100,000 with upgrades. As an added bonus, electric vehicle owners don’t have to pay the smog abatement fee that funds their rebate.

Subsidizing infrastructure for $200k cars

In addition, AB 8 authorizes spending $220 million from vehicle registration fees to fund the development of up to 100 hydrogen fueling stations. You’ll need to shell out nearly $200,000 to buy a hydrogen-powered car.

Sticking poor and middle class Californians with the tab in order to give hundreds of millions of dollars to benefit rich Californians was one of the concerns raised by Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, before the floor vote:

“This bill is going to cost taxpayers $2.3 billion over the next eight years. What are we doing creating a hydrogen highway that a handful of Californians are going to use, but we’re taxing every single driver? Every single Californian that is on their way to work right now is going to have to pay for something they may never use, may never be able to afford to use it. And we don’t have enough money in California to subsidize hydrogen vehicles for everybody. Maybe I shouldn’t give you any ideas.

“This is a terrible idea. It is a regressive tax. It is a tax that is going to hit the hardest working, most vulnerable, lowest income people where it hurts the most. The cost of fuel is continually going up. And every time we pile more taxes on those who drive an automobile, we are taxing progress. We are taxing the people who say, ‘Hey, I’m not just going to sit around and collect a check. I want to go to work.’ And we are creating an obstacle to them bettering themselves by their own efforts.”

Several Democrats defended the extension of the vehicle fees, arguing that the money is necessary to reduce air pollution.

“Californians suffer from the worst air pollution in the nation with over 90 percent of residents living in counties with unhealthy air,” said the bill’s author, Henry Perea, D-Fresno. “While great progress has been made in improving air quality, California has two of the most polluted regions in the nation: the South Coast air basin and the San Joaquin Valley. AB 8 seeks to expand California’s clean air and clean vehicle incentive programs in order to meet clean air, public health, climate and economic development goals.”

“Let’s not burden our constituents again and again and again”

Don Wagner, R-Irvine, acknowledged “that there are some good things to like in this bill.” But he argued that the cost is too high.

“What we are doing here is raising $250-$275 million each year on your constituents,” said Wagner. “And there’s no good reason for that. You can’t keep going back to the tax well over and over and over again. At some point we’re going to have the cleanest air in the world because we will have driven everybody out of the state. This is not the way to go. Let’s not burden our constituents again and again and again.”

A Senate version of the bill, SB 11, has been referred to the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water. SB 1455, which was nearly identical to AB 8, passed the Assembly last year but failed to gain the necessary two-thirds support in the Senate.

By JOSEPH PERKINS

Wouldn’t you know it: No sooner did General Motors start shipping its Chevrolet Volt toCalifornialast month before the automaker decided to halt production of the low-emission vehicle.

Californiacar buyers must be bummed. To bribe them to purchase the $40,000 (and up) sedan, the state not only offered a $1,500 taxpayer-funded rebate, but also its blessing to Volt owners to drive solo in H.O.V. lanes. And the federal government kicks in a $7,500 tax credit.

GM sure expected to sell a lot of its electric flivvers here in the GoldenState. “The Volts with the low emissions package are certain to be a strong draw for California commuters looking to travel the state’s notoriously congested freeways in the carpool lane,” Chris Perry, VP of Chevy Marketing, told the Detroit Free Press.

But then came the automaker’s announcement this past Friday that it is shutting down its Volt assembly line until April to maintain “proper inventory levels.” That follows a similar shutdown that began back in December that didn’t end until last month.

Chevrolet sold only 8,000 Volts in 2011, 20 percent below GM’s overly optimistic forecast. That was due at least in part to the bad press the EV got after two battery fires in crash tests.

Downside

But the bigger issue is that, to most of the car-buying public, the upside of owning a Volt, or most any other electric vehicle, is outweighed by the downside.

Yes, state (and federal) rebates are appealing. Yes, a sticker entitling a solo driver to use the carpool lane certainly is valuable. And, yes, there is a certain satisfaction for some Californians in doing their part to arrest climate change.

Yet, most of us do not consider those incentives, that satisfaction, sufficient to abandon our gasoline-powered cars and SUVs for electric flivvers.

We prefer the lower purchase price for our old-school cars. We like that we can fill our gas tanks in just a few minutes, whereas it takes as many as eight hours to fully charge an electric vehicle. We like that even the most-guzzling car can make a roundtrip between Sacramento and San Francisco, or Los Angeles and San Diego, with no sweat, while the average electric vehicle has driving range of less than 100 miles.

That’s why Chevy Volt sales have been so disappointing that GM has halted production of the electric vehicles twice in the last four months.

That’s why there is less than zero chance that Fisker Automotiive, the Anaheim startup, will generate annual sales of 115,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2015, as it guaranteed when it was awarded a $529 million federal loan.

That’s why Tesla Motors, the nine-year-old Silicon Valley company, has manufactured little more than 2,000 of its much-hyped roadsters, the first fully electric sports car — and at a $109,000 base price that is far beyond the means of the 99 percent of us that are not Hollywood actors, professional athletes or lottery winners.

There may come a day when there is a viable market for electric cars. Not one artificially created by government subsidies (like $1,500 to buy an EV), incentives (like carpool privileges for EV owners) and mandates (like the California Air Resources Board requirement than one of seven cars sold in 2025 must be plug-in hybrids or fully-electric).

But until EV prices are comparable to gas-powered vehicles, until EVs can be fully charged in minutes rather than hours and until the driving range of fully-charged EVs is comparable to at least the most fuel inefficient gas guzzler, that day is a very long way off.