Electric Cars

see ELECTRIC CAR 2 519

interesting that wind and electric cars seem to get more than their share of BS vitriol

target 419 on subsidy fight // solar/wind?

see tesla, musk getting tony stark cache?

---

ref guk electric car

no lnx few

Oil company records from 1960s reveal patents to reduce CO2 emissions in cars

ExxonMobil and others pursued research into technologies, yet blocked government efforts to fight climate change for more than 50 years, findings show

Exxon Mobil

The patent records were among a new trove of documents published by the Center for International Environmental Law, and deepen the public relations challenge for Exxon.

Suzanne Goldenberg

@suzyji

Fri 20May 2016

The forerunners of ExxonMobil patented technologies for electric cars and low emissions vehicles as early as 1963 – even as the oil industry lobby tried to squash government funding for such research, according to a trove of newly discovered records.

Patent records reveal oil companies actively pursued research into technologies to cut carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change from the 1960s – including early versions of the batteries now deployed to power electric cars such as the Tesla.

Scientists for the companies patented technologies to strip carbon dioxide out of exhaust pipes, and improve engine efficiency, as well as fuel cells. They also conducted research into countering the rise in carbon dioxide emissions – including manipulating the weather.

Esso, one of the precursors of ExxonMobil, obtained at least three fuel cell patents in the 1960s and another for a low-polluting vehicle in 1970, according to the records. Other oil companies such as Phillips and Shell also patented technologies for more efficient uses of fuel.

However, the American Petroleum Institute, the main oil lobby, opposed government funding of research into electric cars and low emissions vehicles, telling Congress in 1967: “We take exception to the basic assumption that clean air can be achieved only by finding an alternative to the internal combustion engine.”

This 1970 patent, assigned to Esso (now ExxonMobil), is a design for a low-polluting engine system.]

And ExxonMobil funded a disinformation campaigned aimed at discrediting scientists and blocking government efforts to fight climate change for more than 50 years, before

The patent records were among a new trove of documents published on Thursday by the Center for International Environmental Law, and deepen the legal and public relations challenge for Exxon.

“What we saw was an array of patent technologies that demonstrated that these companies had the technologies they needed and could have commercialised to help address the problem of C02 pollution,” said Carroll Muffett, president of the Ciel. “They then turned to Congress and said you don’t need to invest in electrical vehicle research because the research is ongoing and it’s robust.”

The findings echo those in the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, which explored the deliberate destruction of GM’s first electric vehicles.

Alan Jeffers, an Exxon spokesman, insisted he could not comment directly on the documents as he was unable to access the Center for International Environmental law website on which they were published on Thursday morning.

In an emailed statement, Jeffers said: “The Guardian gave us only a few hours to comment on documents from four decades ago.”

Jeffers went on: “This further illustrates the Guardian’s well-established bias on climate change issues which has been demonstrated previously through its keep it in the ground campaign.”

He said the company believed the risks of climate change were real, was researching lower emission technologies, and engaged in “constructive dialogue” with policy makers about energy and climate change.

Researchers discovered more than 20 such patents filed by oil companies from as early as the 1940s for technologies that could help in the development of electric cars.

However, Ron Dunlop, president of Sun Oil and API chairman, told a joint hearing of the commerce committee in 1967 that government funding of research into electric cars would be misplaced– because the oil companies were so advanced in their research of cleaner cars. “We in the petroleum industry are convinced that by the time a practical electric car can be mass produced and marketed, it will not enjoy any meaningful advantage from an air pollution standpoint,” he told Congress. “Emissions from internal-combustion engines will have long since been controlled.”

Muffett said the findings were the result of three years of research and were not exhaustive.[npi]

“The question is what did they do to try to commercialise these technologies, knowing what they did about climate change,” he went on.

The revelations, the second set of documents released by Muffett’s organisation, reinforce charges by campaigners that Exxon was well aware that the burning of fossil fuels was a main driver of climate change – despite its public posture of doubt.

In addition to the technologies with potential for electric cars, Exxon and other oil companies were actively researching methods to cut emissions of carbon dioxide – the main greenhouse gas.

In another historic document that surfaced last month, a Canadian subsidiary of Exxon admitted the company had the technology to cut carbon emissions in half. However, the corporate memo dating from 1977 said it would be prohibitively expensive – doubling the cost of electricity generation, according to the documents obtained by Desmog blog.

New York and 17 other attorneys general, including DC and the US Virgin Islands, are investigating whether the oil company lied to investors and the public about the threat of climate change.

Campaigners plan to further turn up the heat on the company next week when Exxon holds itsannual shareholder meeting in Dallas.

Campaigners have argued for more than a decade that Exxon bankrolled a network of front groups and conservative think tanks aimed at discrediting well-established science – confusing the public and delaying governments efforts to cut the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for warming.

Those efforts to put Exxon on the spot gathered pace after Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times reported that the company’s own scientists knew as early as the 1970s that greenhouse gases caused climate change.

Tell the truth, ExxonMobil: a low-carbon future is affordable – and necessary

This e-bike ad was too intense for French TV. Now it’s blowing up online.

By Alexandria Herr on Jul 7, 2020

A commercial for a Dutch e-bike has been censored in France. The offense? Creating a “climate of anxiety” about the car industry. The 45-second ad for Dutch e-bike company VanMoof, titled “Time to Ride the Future,” features a gleaming black car reflecting images of smokestacks, traffic gridlock, and car crashes; the car then melts away into a tar-like goo, revealing the silhouette of a sleek electric bike.

[vid] the advertisement was blocked by the Autorité de Régulation Professionnelle de la Publicité, a “self-regulatory” advertising industry group that greenlights all French advertising. According to VanMoof, the ARPP justified their decision by saying that the advertisement violated the group’s rules by exploiting feelings of fear and suffering and “creating a climate of anxiety.”

VanMoof shot back at ARPP in a blog post last week, pointing out that all the images reflected in the car’s bodywork were public domain, archival documentary footage. “If everyday footage of real world transport is going to create a ‘climate of anxiety’, maybe someone should try to do something about that world,” VanMoof copywriter Peter Gigg wrote. “Y’know… by offering alternative means of transportation. Or something.”

In an interview with French news channel Franceinfo, Stéphane Martin, the chairman of the ARPP, said, “We cannot afford to put entire sectors in a bad light. That is an important precondition for fair competition.”

The decision to block the ad comes after French President Emmanuel Macron announced an $8.8 billion plan to bail out the French car industry after car sales plummeted during global COVID-19 lockdowns. Meanwhile, bike sales are booming; VanMoof’s sales in France from February to April are nearly double that of the same period last year.

Ironically, the ARPP’s decision to censor the VanMoof ad may bring it more attention than it ever would have gotten otherwise. After a spate of articles about the controversy, the YouTube video of the ad has 1.8 million views, and counting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

...The film deals with the history of the electric car, its modern development, and commercialization. The film focuses primarily on the General Motors EV1, which was made available for lease mainly in Southern California, after the California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate in 1990 which required the seven major automobile suppliers in the United States to offer electric vehicles in order to continue sales of their gasoline powered vehicles in California. Nearly 5000 electric cars were designed and manufactured by Chrysler, the Ford Motor Company, General Motors (GM), Honda, Nissan, and Toyota; and then later destroyed or donated to museums and educational institutions. Also discussed are the implications of the events depicted for air pollution, oil dependency, Middle East politics, and global warming.

The film details the California Air Resources Board's reversal of the mandate after relentless pressure and suits from automobile manufacturers, continual pressure from the oil industry, orchestrated hype over a future hydrogen car, and finally the George W. Bush administration.

A portion of the film details GM's efforts to demonstrate to California that there was no consumer demand for their product, and then to take back every EV1 and destroy them. A few were disabled and given to museums and universities, but almost all were found to have been crushed. GM never responded to the EV drivers' offer to pay the residual lease value; $1.9 million was offered for the remaining 78 cars in Burbank, California before they were crushed. Several activists, including actresses Alexandra Paul and Colette Divine, were arrested in the protest that attempted to block the GM car carriers taking the remaining EV1s off to be crushed.

The film explores some of the motives that may have pushed the auto and oil industries to kill off the electric car. Wally Rippel offers, for example, that the oil companies were afraid of losing their monopoly on transportation fuel over the coming decades; while the auto companies feared short-term costs for EV development and long-term revenue loss because EVs require little maintenance and no tuneups. Others explained the killing differently. GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss argued it was lack of consumer interest due to the maximum range of 80–100 miles per charge, and the relatively high price.

The film also showed the failed attempts by electric car enthusiasts trying to combat auto industry moves, and save the surviving vehicles. Towards the end of the film, a deactivated EV1 car #99 is found in the garage of Petersen Automotive Museum, with former EV sales representative, Chelsea Sexton, invited for a visit.

The film also explores the future of automobile technologies including a deeply critical look at hydrogen vehicles, an upbeat discussion of plug-in hybrids, and examples of other developing EV technologies such as the Tesla Roadster (2008), released on the market two years after the film.

...

The suspects

The film features the symbolic EV1 funeral held at Hollywood Forever Cemetery as a protest to General Motors' decision to terminate all EV1 leases and crush the electric cars.

The later portion of the film is organized around the following hypothesized culprits in the downfall of the electric car:

American consumers

While few American consumers never heard of the electric cars in California, those who did were not necessarily critical mass for this new technology. Thanks to lower gas prices and infatuation with sport utility vehicles (SUVs), few people sought out this new technology. While some were fans (as chronicled in the film), many more needed time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of these new cars; whether freedom from oil or with the perceived limitations of a city car with a 100-mile range. Although allegations are made about consumers by industry representatives in the film, perhaps explaining the film's "guilty" verdict, the actual consumers interviewed in the film were either unaware that an electric car was ever available to try, or dismayed that they could no longer obtain one.

Batteries

In a bit of an unexpected turn, the film's sole "not-guilty" suspect is batteries, one of the chief culprits if one were to ask the oil or auto industries. At the time GM's EV1 came to market, it came with a lead acid battery with a range of 60 miles. The film suggests that since the average driving distance of Americans in a day is 30 miles or less, for 90% of Americans, electric cars would work as a daily commute car or second car.

The second generation EV1 (and those released by Honda, Toyota, and others) from 1998 to the end of the program, featured nickel-metal-hydride or even lithium-ion (Nissan) batteries with a range of 100 or more miles. The film documents that the company which had supplied batteries for EV1, Ovonics, had been suppressed from announcing improved batteries, with double the range, lest CARB be convinced that batteries were improving. Later, General Motors sold the supplier's majority control share to the Chevron Corporation and Cobasys.

As part of the not-guilty verdict, the famed engineer Alan Cocconi explains that with laptop computer lithium ion batteries, the EV1 could have been upgraded to a range of 300 miles per charge. He makes this point in front of his T-Zero prototype, the car that inspired the Tesla Roadster (2008).

Oil companies

The oil industry, through its major lobby group the Western States Petroleum Association, is brought to task for financing campaigns to kill utility efforts to build public car charging stations. Through astroturfing groups like "Californians Against Utility Abuse" they posed as consumers instead of the industry interests they actually represented.

Mobil and other oil companies are also shown to be advertising directly against electric cars in national publications, even when electric cars seem to have little to do with their core business. At the end of the film, Chevron bought patents and controlling interest in Ovonics, the advanced battery company featured in the film, ostensibly to prevent modern NiMH batteries from being used in non-hybrid electric cars.

The documentary also refers to manipulation of oil prices by overseas suppliers in the 1980s as an example of the industry working to kill competition and keep customers from moving toward alternatives to oil.

Car companies

The film features the "Don't Crush Campaign" protest

Crushed EV1s in a junk yard are shown in the film

With GM as its primary example, the film documents that car makers engaged in both positive and negative marketing of the electric car as its intentions toward the car and California legislation changed. In earlier days, GM ran Super Bowl commercials produced by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) for the EV1. In later days it ran "award winning" doomsday-style advertising featuring the EV1 and ran customer surveys which emphasized drawbacks to electronic vehicle technology which were not actually present in the EV1.^[4] (As a side note, CARB officials were quoted claiming that they removed their zero emission vehicle quotas in part because they gave weight to such surveys purportedly showing no demand existing for the EV1s.) Other charges raised on GM included sabotaging their own product program, failing to produce cars to meet existing demand, and refusing to sell cars directly (it only leased them).

The film also describes the history of automaker efforts to destroy competing technologies, such as their destruction through front companies of public transit systems in the United States in the early 20th century. In addition to EV1, the film also depicted how Toyota RAV4 EV, and Honda EV Plus were being cancelled by their respective car companies. The crushing of Honda EV Plus only gained attention after appearing quite by accident on an episode of PBS's California's Gold with Huell Howser.

In an interview with retired GM board member Tom Everhart, the film points out that GM killed the EV1 to focus on more immediately profitable enterprises such as its Hummer and truck brands, instead of preparing for future challenges. Ralph Nader, in a brief appearance, points out that auto makers usually only respond to government regulation when it comes to important advances whether seat belts, airbags, catalytic converters, mileage requirements or, by implication, hybrid/electric cars. The film suggests Toyota supported the production of Toyota Prius hybrid in part as a response to Bill Clinton's Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles and other U.S. Government pressure that was later dropped.

Though GM cited cost as a deterrent to continuing with the EV1, the film interviewed critics contending that the cost of batteries and electric vehicles would have been reduced significantly if mass production began, due to economies of scale. There is also discussion about electric cars threatening dealer profits since they have so few service requirements—no tuneups, no oil changes, and less frequent brake jobs because of regenerative braking.

U.S. government

While not overtly political, the film documents that the federal government of the United States under the Presidency of George W. Bush joined the auto-industry suit against California in 2002. This pushed California to abandon its ZEV mandate regulation. The film notes that Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card had recently been head of the American Automobile Manufacturers Alliance in California and then joined the White House with Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and other federal officials who were former executives or board members of oil and auto companies. By failing to increase mileage standards in a meaningful way since the 1970s and now interfering in California, the federal government had again served short-term industry interests at the expense of long-range leadership on issues of oil dependency and cleaner cars.

California Air Resources Board

In 2003, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), headed by Democrat Alan Lloyd, finally caved to industry pressure and drastically scaled back the ZEV mandate. CARB had previously defended the regulation for more than 12 years.

While championing CARB's efforts on behalf of California's with its 1990 mandate (and other regulations over the years), the film suggests Lloyd may have had a conflict of interest, as the director of the California Fuel Cell Partnership. The ZEV change allowed a marginal amount of hydrogen fuel cell cars to be produced in the future, versus the immediate continued growth of its electric car requirement. Footage shot in the meetings showed Lloyd shutting down battery electric car proponents while giving the car makers all the time they wanted to make their points.

Hydrogen fuel cell

The hydrogen fuel cell was presented by the film as an alternative that distracts attention from the real and immediate potential of electric vehicles to an unlikely future possibility embraced by auto makers, oil companies and a pro-business administration in order to buy time and profits for the status quo. The film corroborates the claim that hydrogen vehicles are a mere distraction by stating that "A fuel cell car powered by hydrogen made with electricity uses three to four times more energy than a car powered by batteries" and by interviewing Joseph J. Romm, the author of The Hype about Hydrogen, who lists five problems he sees with hydrogen vehicles: High cost, limits on driving range due to current materials, high costs of hydrogen fuel, the need for entirely new fueling compounds, and competition from other technologies in the marketplace, such as hybrids.

The price of hydrogen has since come down to $4–6/kg (without carbon sequestering) due to reduction in the price of natural gas as a feedstock for steam reforming owing to the proliferation of hydraulic fracturing of shales.^[5] A kilo of hydrogen has the same energy yield as a gallon of gasoline although production currently creates 12.5 kg CO2, 39% more than the 8.91 kg CO2 from a gasoline gallon.^[5]

Response from General Motors

General Motors (GM) responded in a 2006 blog post titled "Who Ignored the Facts About the Electric Car?"^[6] written by Dave Barthmuss of GM's communications department. In his June 15, 2006 post—published 13 days before the film was released in the U.S.—Barthmuss claims not to have seen the film, but believes "there may be some information that the movie did not tell its viewers." He repeats GM's claims that, "despite the substantial investment of money and the enthusiastic fervor of a relatively small number of EV1 drivers — including the filmmaker — the EV1 proved far from a viable commercial success."

He submits it is "good news for electric car enthusiasts" that electric vehicle technology since the EV1 was still being used. It was used in two-mode hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and fuel cell vehicle programs.

Barthmuss also cites "GM's leadership" in flex-fuel vehicles development, hydrogen fuel cell technology, and their new "active fuel management" system which improve fuel economy, as reasons they feel they are "doing more than any other automaker to address the issues of oil dependence, fuel economy and emissions from vehicles."

Responding to the film's harsh criticisms for discontinuing the EV1, Barthmuss outlines GM's reasons for doing so, implying that GM did so due to inadequate support from parts suppliers, as well as poor consumer demand despite "significant sums (spent) on marketing and incentives to develop a mass market for it." Barthmuss claimed he personally regretted the way the decision not to sell the EV1s was handled, but stated it was because GM would no longer be able to repair it or "guarantee it could be operated safely over the long term," with lack of available parts making "future repair and safety of the vehicles difficult to nearly impossible." He also claimed that "no other major automotive manufacturer is producing a pure electric vehicle for use on public roads and highways."

In March 2009, however, outgoing CEO of GM Rick Wagoner said the biggest mistake he ever made as chief executive was killing the EV1 car and failing to direct more resources to electrics and hybrids after such an early lead in this technology.^[7] GM has since championed its electric-car expertise as a key factor in development of its 2010 Chevrolet Volt, Chevy Spark EV, and the Chevrolet Bolt.

Reception...

---

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/lithium-mining-for-green-electric-cars-is-leaving-a-stain-on-the-planet/

no lnx

Lithium mining for ‘green’ electric cars is leaving a stain on the planet

Written by Nicole Karlis / Salon September 8, 2019

In 2018, the International Energy Agency (IEA) made a prediction that had the potential to disrupt the auto industry: by 2030, there would be nearly 125 million electric vehicles owned by people around the world, they said. That was a significant increase compared to the 3.1 million electric vehicles globally owned in 2017.

“The uptake of electric vehicles is still largely driven by the policy environment,” the IEA said in the report. “The 10 leading countries in electric vehicle adoption all have a range of policies in place to promote the uptake of electric cars.”

Cars and trucks account for nearly one-fifth of all carbon emissions in the United States, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Fossil-fuel vehicles emit an average of 24 pounds of carbon dioxide and other hazardous gases for every gallon of gas consumed. On the surface, emission-free electric cars might seem a significant improvement.

Yet other regions of the world will suffer as humanity transitions to electric cars. Specifically, mining for lithium — the essential element for batteries used in many electric cars, as well as other portable electronics — is wreaking havoc on the world’s deserts.

Lithium is found in the brine of salt flats. In order to obtain lithium, holes are drilled into the flats to pump the brine to the surface. This allows lithium carbonate to be extracted through a chemical process.

Last week, Bloomberg published a report detailing how the boom in lithium mining is irreversibly destroying the local environment of northern Chile’s Atacama desert. Mining for lithium means means removing large amounts of water, which means depleting the water supply for locals. According to the report, the Tilopozo meadow in Chile used to be a shelter for shepherds traveling at night, yet has become barren due to lack of grass or water. That puts a severe strain on local farmers.“We’re fooling ourselves if we call this sustainable and green mining,” Cristina Dorador, a Chilean biologist, told Bloomberg. “The lithium fever should slow down because it’s directly damaging salt flats, the ecosystem and local communities.”

Cairn Energy Research Advisors estimates the lithium ion industry is expected to grow from 100 gigawatt hours (GWh) of annual production in 2017 to 800 GWhs in 2027—not only as a result of electric cars, but also because lithium is used in batteries to power various electrical and electronic goods, including mobile phones. Much of this will be mined from the South America’s Lithium Triangle, which spans across Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, an area that is said to hold more than half the world’s supply of the metal beneath its salt flats. Another major deposit comes from Australia.

“One of the biggest environmental problems caused by our endless hunger for the latest and smartest devices is a growing mineral crisis, particularly those needed to make our batteries,” Christina Valimaki an analyst at Elsevier, told UK’s Wired.

One of the side effects of lithium mining is water pollution: the process of mining can affect local water supplies, potentially poisoning communities. Yet chemical leakage is also a major concern when it comes to lithium mining. The lithium carbonate extraction process harms the soil, and can cause air pollution. There are also concerns around how to recycle it. Eco-nonprofit Friends of the Earth notes that lithium recycling is fraught, as the metal is “toxic, highly reactive and flammable.”

“It tends to be incinerated or ends up in landfill due to very low collection rates and flawed waste legislation,” Friends of the Earth states in their lithium factsheet. “Low collection rates, the low and volatile market price of lithium, and the high cost of recycling relative to primary production have contributed to the absence of lithium recycling.” The organization recommends further social and environmental impact assessments should be made.

Yet does that mean that electric cars are equally destructive as fossil-fueled ones? Not necessarily. But the idea that electric cars, or anything with lithium batteries, is “green” might be a farce. And as demand rises, the hidden costs will become more apparent.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/the-electric-vehicle-revolution-will-come-from-china-not-the-us/

The electric vehicle revolution is coming, but it won’t be driven by the U.S. Instead, China will be at the forefront.

My research on EVs, dating back a decade, convinces me that this global transformation in mobility, from petroleum-fueled vehicles to electric ones, will come sooner than later. The shift is already happening in China, which is the world’s largest automobile market, with 23 million cars sold in 2018. As Western countries approach peak car ownership, there are still hundreds of millions of Chinese families that don’t own a car at all – much less two or more.

Many of them are buying electric cars. By 2015, electric vehicle sales in China had surpassed U.S. levels. In 2018, Chinese sales topped 1.1 million cars, more than 55% of all electric vehicles sold in the world, and more than three times as many as Chinese customers had bought two years earlier. U.S. electric vehicle sales that year were just 358,000.

A key element of an electric vehicle’s price is the cost of its batteries – and China already makes more than half of the world’s electric vehicle batteries. Battery prices continue to fall; industry analysts now suggest that within five years it will be cheaper to buy an electric car than a gas- or diesel-powered one.

Forecasts predict the Chinese producing as much as 70% of the world’s electric vehicle batteries by 2021, even as the demand for electric car batteries grows.

...

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/05/09/koch-funded-groups-still-begging-congress-kill-electric-car-tax-credit

coalition of free market advocacy groups, led by former Koch Industries lobbyist, urged Congress on Thursday not to extend the electric vehicle (EV) tax credit. In a letter rife with easily discredited and false statements, this coalition sent its plea to the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee.

Most of the 34 groups are funded by the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers’ donor network or have ties to Koch Industries. And most of the references cited in the letter have clear, demonstrable ties to Koch Industries and Koch funding.

The episode echoes a similar sequence from last September, when many of the same groups sent a comparable letter after Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and others introduced the Electric Cars Act of 2018.

The letter is further evidence of this network of Koch-affiliated groups ramping up their opposition to the EV tax credit.

“The American Energy Alliance (AEA) has organized a coalition to proclaim in one unified voice that there should be no expansion of the misguided electric vehicle tax credit,” Tom Pyle, president of the AEA and a former lobbyist for Koch Industries, wrote in a statement, first published by The Daily Caller News Foundation, which has received more than $2.6 million from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation since 2013. (That article, it’s worth mentioning, was published at 5:10 am EDT on Thursday, before the letter could have been delivered. Evidently, the Koch-funded think tanks gave the Koch-funded website an advance copy.)

Which Koch-Tied Groups Signed the Anti-EV Letter?

The letter fails to disclose that most of the signatory groups depend on funding from the oil and gas industries, or specifically from the Koch brothers’ petrochemical refining businesses — industries that electric cars threaten the most.

DeSmog laid out the Koch connections to many of these signatories last September. Some notable additions to this coalition are failed Federal Reserve Board nominee Stephen Moore and Wayne Winegarden, the author of a Pacific Research Institutestudy that is often cited in attacks on electric cars.

Here’s the full list of signatories:

Tom Pyle, American Energy Alliance
Bethany Marcum, Alaska Policy Forum
Lisa Nelson, ALEC Action
Phil Kerpen, American Commitment
Rick Manning, Americans for Limited Government
David T. Stevenson, Caesar Rodney Institute
Andrew F. Quinlan, Center for Freedom and Prosperity
Jeffrey Mazzella, Center for Individual Freedom
Isaac Orr, Center of the American Experiment
Mark Mathis, Clear Energy Alliance
David McIntosh, Club for Growth
Caleb Rossiter, CO2 Coalition
Stephen Moore, Committee to Unleash Prosperity
Myron Ebell, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Matthew Kandrach, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy
Craig Richardson, E&E Legal
Mandy Gunasekara, Energy 45 Fund
Annette Meeks, Freedom Foundation of Minnesota
Jason Pye, FreedomWorks
George Landrith, Frontiers of Freedom
Tim Heulskamp, The Heartland Institute
Tim Chapman, Heritage Action for America
Amy Oliver Cooke, Independence Institute
Brett Healy, The John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy
Kory Swanson, John Locke Foundation
Seton Motley, Less Government
Jason Hayes, Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Harry C. Alford, National Black Chamber of Commerce
Kirk Uhler, National Tax Limitation Committee
Wayne Winegarden,Pacific Research Institute
Bette Grande, Roughrider Policy Center
David Williams, Taxpayers Protection Alliance
John Tintera, Texas Alliance of Energy Producers
Kevin Roberts, Texas Public Policy Foundation

The Koch-Funded Citations in the American Energy Alliance EV Tax Credit Letter to Congress

The letter pushes many variations of the same debunked talking point — that the EV tax credit only benefits the rich. To support this claim, they cite four studies or reports and one poll. Three of those studies were funded by Koch money, and the poll was paid for by the American Energy Alliance, and conducted by a Koch lobbyist.

One by one:

Citation: American Energy Alliance, ”New Survey: Voters (Still) Find Vehicle Subsidies 'Unfair'”

Quote: “Subsidies for electric vehicles are unpopular.”

Reality: This classic push poll was commissioned by the Koch-funded American Energy Alliance and conducted by MWRStrategies, a lobbying firm with clients including Koch Industries and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers. See DeSmog’s earlier coverage of this poll.

Citation: Pacific Research Institute, “Government Electric Car Subsidies Are ‘Costly Subsidies for the Rich,' Finds New Study”

Quote: “Subsidies for electric vehicles overwhelmingly benefit the rich. A recent study found that 79 percent of electric vehicle tax credits were claimed by households with an adjusted gross income of more than $100,000 a year.”

Reality: This “recent” study relies solely on data from 2014 to make the claim, and doesn’t factor in the roll of leased electric cars, which outnumber sales, rendering the findings essentially meaningless. For more background on this deceptive study and talking point here, check out this Koch vs Clean EV Facts page.

Citation: Manhattan Institute, “Short Circuit: The High Cost of Electric Vehicle Subsidies”

Quote: “Electric vehicles are not cleaner than modern internal combustion engines. As explained in a recent study from the Manhattan Institute, new internal combustion engines combined with low-sulfur gasoline emit barely any pollution.”

Reality: By cherry-picking data, disregarding greenhouse gas emissions, and conducting analysis based on discredited assumptions, the study's author Jonathan Lesser actually claims that widespread adoption of electric cars would increase air pollution and have a negligible impact on the global climate. DeSmog has more on this often-debunked study.

Reference: NERA, “Economic Impacts of Eliminating the Manufacturers’ Cap on the Plug-In Electric Vehicle Tax Credit”

Quote: “Expanding the electric vehicle tax credit will be a net harm to consumers.”

Reality: This “study” was literally commissioned by a subsidiary of Koch Industries called Flint Hill Resources. (NERA also produced a key report defending the tobacco industry, paid for by Phillip Morris, in the 1990s.) DeSmog covered this study’s release last November.

To recap: a bunch of groups funded by the Kochs' petroleum refining fortunes are fighting against the policy that poses the biggest threat to petroleum refining, using references to reports and studies and polls also paid for by the Kochs' oil money.

Let's hope Congress remembers to check the references and consider the sources.

Right-wing outlets like The Wall Street Journal editorial page are touting a deeply flawed new study attacking electric vehicles.
Trump Fed pick Stephen Moore repeatedly said that he liked working at Fox News because he met "a lot of beautiful women" there. Moore has also praised slave-owning Confederate general Robert E. Lee and hates climate science so much that he even attacked Ivanka Trump.
Tucker Carlson's wild new talking point is that abortion is somehow a tool of "corporate" oppression.
A Fox host blamed bank regulation for high tuition and the student loan crisis.

---

ref

Wall Street Journal *published an editorial on April 23 that derided electric vehicles in Germany as "dirty," based on a recent study that has been called into question by a number of experts and mainstream German news outlets. The *Journal's editorial board, which has a history of climate denial, has attacked both German energy policy and electric vehicles (EVs) before.

The dubious study has also been hyped by climate deniers and right-wing outlets in the U.S., including Infowars and The Daily Caller.

Experts point out major flaws in German study on electric vs. diesel cars

The study was conducted by the Ifo Institute, a Munich-based think tank, and argued that a Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle driven in Germany is responsible for more carbon dioxide pollution than a Mercedes C220d diesel vehicle. The study, which was released in German on April 17 and has not yet been translated into English, finds that the Tesla emits between 156 and 181 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, compared to 141 grams of CO2 from the diesel Mercedes. The study attributes roughly half of the Tesla's emissions to the vehicle’s production process, including its battery, which the authors assume will only last 10 years or 150,000 kilometers. The other half of the Tesla’s estimated emissions in Germany come from electricity used to charge the car, some of which is generated by burning coal.

English-language summaries of the study include a press release from the Ifo Institute and a Brussels Timeswrite-up.

Soon after the study's release, German-language outlets started pushing back on its findings and methodology, including Der Spiegel, the highest-circulation news magazine in Europe, and WirtschaftsWoche, a weekly business news magazine. Articles in both publications highlighted miscalculations and faulty assumptions, and pointed to a number of other studies on EVs that had come to opposite conclusions.

One English-language debunk of the study came in a Twitter thread from Netherlands-based energy researcher Auke Hoekstra. Hoekstra noted that the study's claims about the diesel Mercedes' emissions are wrong -- the Mercedes emits closer to 220 grams of CO2 per kilometer, rather than 141, he argued. He also highlighted how the authors used an extremely low number for how long an electric vehicle battery lasts. He stated, “even Tesla's from the olden days can drive 600 000 km before the battery reaches 80% capacity.” He summed up his criticisms:

To summarize: EVs only emit more CO2 if you make unrealistically negative assumptions for battery production, battery life and electricity mix while making unrealistically positive assumption about diesel consumption.

Correct ANY of these and the tables are turned. Bigly.

— AukeHoekstra (@AukeHoekstra) April 22, 2019

Hoekstra also argued that the analysis should not be presented as an academic study. Instead, he characterized it as “the opinion of three people, … none of whom have any background” in EVs or batteries. One of the authors, Hans-Werner Sinn, has been criticized for using dubious assumptions in energy studies before: Sinn received strong pushback on a 2018 paper he wrote claiming that energy storage requirements ultimately limit the expansion of renewable energy. Sinn has also argued that criticism of Volkswagen over its role in the Dieselgate scandal has been exaggerated, and placed much of the blame for the scandal on U.S. efforts to regulate diesel engines.

Another debunk of the Ifo study came from Fred Lambert, chief editor of the electric transportation news site Electrek. He noted:

One of the biggest mistakes they are making is that they are comparing the full production and lifecycle of an electric vehicle, including the emission from the electricity uses, against the production and lifecycle of a diesel car without accounting for all the energy used to produce the diesel and supply it to the cars.

Lambert also called out the study’s authors for falsely assuming a battery life of 150,000 kilometers and for failing to note that Germany is planning to rapidly decarbonize its electricity system, which would greatly improve the carbon footprint of EVs in the near future.

Another criticism of the study has been its focus solely on Germany's energy grid and the authors' failure to take into account the overall mix of the larger European energy market that Germany is a part of. German carmaker Volkswagen, which manufactures both EVs and diesel vehicles, responded to the study by defending EVs. In an English-language article by Deutsche Welle, a German international broadcaster, Volkswagen noted that with Germany's current electricity mix, its Golf EV would have a similar CO2 output as a diesel car of the same type -- 142 grams per kilogram compared to 140. However, “using the European energy mix for calculations, which includes large amounts of nuclear energy from France and water power from Norway, the e-Golf's carbon footprint would be down to 119 g/km” -- far below the CO2 output of a diesel car.

Other analyses have disproved the claim that EVs are not environmentally friendly. In 2018, the Union of Concerned Scientists found that a U.S.-based EV is equivalent to a conventional gasoline car that gets 80 miles per gallon. Unlike the German study, it looked at all of the emissions from fueling and driving both vehicles. It also found that EVs will get cleaner over time as electric grids get cleaner, noting that its 2018 estimate was an improvement of 7 mpg from 2017. And a 2017 report from the Transport & Environment group, a Brussels-based transportation policy group, found that EVs emit fewer greenhouse gases than diesel cars even when EVs are powered by the most carbon-intensive electricity.

Right-wing outlets in the U.S. promote Ifo’s study to disparage EVs

Although the Ifo study is specific to Germany’s electric grid and has been widely criticized, climate deniers and right-wing outlets in the U.S. have picked up on it and are using it to disparage EVs generally. Steve Milloy, a notorious denier and frequent Wall Street Journalcontributor, tweeted about the study on April 19. On April 22, extreme right-wing outlet Infowars wrote about the study, and far-right conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson tweeted about the Infowars piece. The right-wing website Zero Hedge wrote about the study too, and a tweet pointing to that post was retweeted by Mandy Gunasekara, a former Trump EPA official and current Fox News contributor.

After The Wall Street Journal wrote about the study, still more right-wing outlets covered it, including The Daily Caller, which has a long record of inaccurate reporting on climate and energy issues, and The Western Journal, a conservative news outlet with a history of deceptive climate claims.

The Wall Street Journalhas a long track record of misleading on climate and energy issues

The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages have spread misinformation about climate change for decades. A Media Mattersstudy found that from January 2015 to August 2016, one-third of the paper’s climate-related opinion pieces contained climate denial or other inaccurate statements about climate change. We’ve also found that the paper's opinion section is ExxonMobil’s chief apologist for its climate change lies, and it has defended the fracking industry against accusations that it contaminates drinking water. According to a recent article in Current Affairs,the Journalhas shifted in recent years from denying climate change to downplaying it, but still remains an impediment to clean energy and climate action. The Wall Street Journal has always been a pro-polluter, pro-industry paper, so it’s no surprise that it would overlook flaws and publicize questionable research that disparages a direct threat to the fossil-fuel industry.

Posted InEnvironment & Science, Climate Change, Energy

Network/OutletWall Street Journal, The Daily Caller, Infowars, Western Journal

PersonSteve Milloy, Paul Joseph Watson

Stories/InterestsClimate Change, Electric Vehicles

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/business/tesla-gm-electric-car-tax-credit/index.html

(CNN Business)

General Motors and Tesla sales could get a boost if a bill introduced this week by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to expand the electric car tax credit passes Congress.

Michigan Democrats Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Sen. Gary Peters and Rep. Dan Kildee joined with Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander and Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins to propose the legislation, which they say would increase production in electric vehicles and create jobs.

Currently, customers who buy electric cars receive a $7,500 tax credit. But it phases out after an automaker sells 200,000 vehicles.

Tesla (TSLA) was first to hit the cap last year, and responded by cutting the price of its cars by $2,000. GM (GM) exceeded 200,000 vehicles sold earlier this year, and has warnedthat sales of their plug-in cars, like the Chevrolet Bolt and Volt, could drop as the tax credit phases out.

GM's plug-in tax credit set to expire

The proposed legislation would raise the cap, so that another 400,000 vehicles sold by each manufacturer will be eligible for a $7,000 tax credit. It would start phasing out after 600,000 vehicles are sold.

"At a time when climate change is having a real effect on Michigan, today's legislation is something we can do now to reduce emissions and combat carbon pollution," Stabenow said in a statement.

"Our bill will help create American jobs and cement Michigan's status as an advanced manufacturing hub," she added.

Alexander applauded how far the electric car industry has come over the past decade.

"Investing in American research and technology for better electric vehicles is one way to help our country and the world deal with climate change," he said.

The proposal could get pushback from the Trump administration. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in December that the president wants to end the electric vehicle tax credit, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"As a matter of our policy, we want to end all those subsidies," Kudlow said.

The comment came days after Trump threatened to end subsidies for GM, in response to the automaker's announcement that it would but cutting thousands of jobs.

Trump and Big Oil Want to Pull the Plug on the Electric Car Market.

Trump's proposed budget for 2020 would eliminate the federal tax credit for buyers of electric vehicles. The oil industry is backing the proposal, as well as a bill to impose a "user fee" — that is, a tax — on drivers of electric vehicles and trucks.

Big Oil is panicked by the looming end to the domination of the U.S. transportation system by the internal combustion engine. The fear is justified.

A few years ago, the oil industry was shrugging off the threat of electric vehicles, predicting that EVs would reach only 5 percent of global market share by the mid-2030s. Other analysts were far more bullish, projecting that EVs would have up to a third of the market by that time.

According to EnergyWire, EV sales in the U.S. grew by more than 80 percent last year. Energy Innovation expects EVs to make up to 75 percent of sales by 2050 — more than 15 million electric cars and trucks a year. Big Oil may be trying to slow the shift but can read the writing on the wall: Oil companies are investing heavily in startups building electric vehicle charging stations.

EVs are already cheaper to drive than gas guzzlers. Comparing a fully electric Chevy Bolt to a car that gets 25 mpg at $2.50 per gallon, the Illinois Citizens Utility Board found that the Bolt would cost almost $800 less to drive per year than the conventional car.

And they're going to get much cheaper to buy. The price of batteries for EVs dropped by 80 percent from 2010 to 2017.As that trend continues, Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts the costs of buying and operating an EV will be cheaper than comparable gasoline-powered cars by the middle of next decade.

That's a win-win for the climate and for public health. Here's why.

EVs are essential for fighting climate change.According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), almost one-fifth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions comes from cars and trucks — 19 pounds of emissions for every gallon of gas burned. To head off the worst impacts of climate change, we must not only switch to renewable energy sources to generate electricity but also slash tailpipe pollution. UCS says an electric vehicle is responsible for fewer emissions than a car that gets 80 mpg.

EVs save lives. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, vehicles kill 53,000 people annually prematurely from particulate or microscopic soot pollution. The California Energy Commission says putting five million EVs on the road — about one-third of the vehicles currently on the road in the state — would save $640 million in health costs from reduced air pollution.

The oil industry and other supporters of ending the EV tax credit say they're only trying to level the playing field. But compare the EV tax credit, which currently totals about $400 million per year, to federal subsidies to the oil industry, which total $4.6 billion a year. Let's end taxpayer handouts to the likes of ExxonMobil and Chevron instead of penalizing car buyers who want to save money, lives and the planet.

Why Aren't School Buses Electric? These Coloradans Are Sick of Diesel

By Corey Binns

Before her two kids returned to school at the end of last summer, Lorena Osorio stood before the Westminster, Colorado, school board and gave heartfelt testimony about raising her asthmatic son, now a student at the local high school. "My son was only three years old when he first suffered from asthma," she said. Like most kids, he rode a diesel school bus. Some afternoons he arrived home struggling to breathe.

Osorio and her family live just north of Denver, where children are at particularly high risk for respiratory illnesses. Air quality there ranks among the worst in the nation, according to an American Lung Association report.

That evening at the school board meeting, Osorio stood alongside a Spanish translator working with Protégete, the Latino outreach arm of the environmental nonprofit Conservation Colorado. The group runs a Clean Buses for Healthy Niños campaign, an initiative of the League of Conservation Voters, which advocates across the country for states to trade in their diesel school buses for electric ones, particularly in communities of color and low-income areas, which suffer disproportionately from air pollution.

In Colorado, more than 4,000 yellow school buses run on diesel. They carry 42 percent of the state's school kids and spew out nearly 50,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year. Each electric school bus can save districts nearly $2,000 a year in fuel and $4,400 a year in maintenance costs, according to a report by the Colorado Public Interest Research Group (CoPIRG) Foundation, Frontier Group and Environment Colorado.

Colorado school districts may now apply for state funding for a new fleet of electric buses via the Volkswagen diesel emissions cheating scandal settlement, as Osorio explained. That settlement resulted in more than $4 billion being split among 44 states plus Washington, DC and Puerto Rico for use in environmental mitigation and to promote adoption of zero-emissions technology. "It is our responsibility to clean up our contaminated air," Osorio told the board members.

Thanks in part to the efforts of Conservation Colorado, CoPIRG, the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project and NRDC, Colorado has earmarked $18 million of its settlement funds to replace about 450 trucks, school buses, shuttle buses and other vehicles with alternative-fuel or electric vehicles. Another portion of the funds will pay for charging stations, a necessary part of the electric vehicle infrastructure.

Advocates say that improvements in our transportation sector—one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases across the nation—are key to addressing both our changing climate and public health challenges. CoPIRG director Danny Katz noted that Denver puts out ozone alerts to urge residents to stay indoors on bad days, something he calls incongruous with the state's reputation as a destination for nature lovers. "Air pollutionis literally impacting our ability to live an active outdoor lifestyle that is central to our quality of life here," he said. "This is especially bad for the 343,000 Coloradans with asthma, but ultimately this impacts everyone."

Still, the momentum for change has been slow to build. For example, in Westminster, the school board has so far deemed the program impractical for its district's use. "Given [our] size—9,500 students—and the fact that we replace, at most, one vehicle a year, the electric bus program does not make sense for the district," said its chief communications officer, Steve Saunders. And while nearby Denver Public Schools has been in conversation about alternative fuels and electric school buses and their benefits, the district has made no purchase plans. But on the northern side of the Denver metro area, Adams County School District 12—which serves about 39,000 students across five municipalities—has applied for grants for eight buses.

Meanwhile, environmental advocates are eagerly awaiting leadership on the issue by the state's incoming governor, Jared Polis, who was endorsed by Conservation Colorado for his record on fighting for clean air and climate action. They are also waiting for the technology itself. Blue Bird—North America's top school bus manufacturer—delivered its first electric buses to districts in Ontario and California only this past September. (In December 2016, the corporation received $4.4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy for research and the development of a zero-emissions electric school bus using vehicle-to-grid technology by 2019.)

Despite the modest pace of the transition, however, analysts see promise: Bloomberg New Energy Finance(BNEF) estimates that in the second half of the 2020s, electric buses will take off even faster than electric vehicles, filling 84 percent of the market by 2030. As Colin McKerracher, lead analyst on advanced transportation for BNEF, noted in May, "Developments over the last 12 months, such as manufacturers' plans for model roll-outs and new regulations on urban pollution, have bolstered our bullish view of the prospects for EVs."

Those prospects could be further improved if fleet managers and school districts partner up with electric utilities. As NRDC senior attorney Max Baumhefner explained, utilities are increasingly looking to use the big batteries in electric school buses to lower the cost of managing a grid with large amounts of variable electricity generation like wind and solar. "Putting kids in zero-emission buses is motivation enough," he noted, "but when those buses are stationary (which is most of the day and all night), they can be charged when wind or solar generation is abundant, and [school districts] can get paid to put that electricity back onto the grid when it is most needed."

Grassroots groups are poised to play a big role in electric bus adoption in Colorado. During the past two years, Protégete has worked hard to bring attention to the issue in the Latino community in Denver. Juan Pérez Sáez, one of the group's community organizers, led a team in collecting comments from Latino residents and bringing people to the state's public hearings. Some described how high housing prices forced them to live, work and play in the city's industrial outskirts, next to highways and near factories and refineries, where dirty air is a daily fact of life and asthma rates are high.

In fact, as Pérez Sáez noted, asthma is a leading cause across the U.S. for absenteeism in schools. "It means children are not having the opportunity to be educated in an environment that is safe for them," he said, "and that should be a priority for everyone."

In July, Pérez Sáez traveled with fellow community members and environmental justice leaders from Nevada, Arizona and Colorado to the Rally for Clean Air in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a state that has seen increasing air pollution yet little progress on electric school buses or other climate action under the outgoing Republican governor, Susana Martinez. Under Martinez, the New Mexico Environment Department has argued that electric buses wouldn't be a cost-effective use of its VW settlement funds, despite the fact that 1 out of every 11 of the state's children has asthma.

The rally took place as Martinez and other state lawmakers were gathering for an annual meeting of the National Governors Association. Protégete joined forces with the League of Conservation Voters, Chispaactivists, Moms Clean Air Force, Juntos and other organizations to demand justice for communities disproportionately affected by asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Pérez Sáez marched alongside a crowd of parents and students, with some kids wearing surgical masks and dressed in yellow school bus costumes.

We should change the narrative of the environmental movement, Pérez Sáez said. "If you want to be an environmentalist, you can be an environmentalist. You don't need to have the money to buy your own electric car, but we can all advocate to get public transit, to get electric zero-emission school buses. And that will impact everyone at the same level."

Who are the groups fighting the electric vehicle tax credit?

The letter was organized by the American Energy Alliance, the advocacy wing of the Institute for Energy Research, both of which are led by former Koch Industries lobbyist Tom Pyle. The AEA has been consistently vocal in its opposition to the electric vehicle tax credit, and in June released a deceptive push poll that relied on demonstrably false data and leading questions to allege that Americans don't support the tax credit.

The “Action” arm of the Koch-funded corporate bill mill the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was another notable signatory. Another is Americans for Prosperity, the massively influential network of state chapters that coordinate the Kochs' political advocacy.

Other groups that signed the letter to Congress include the following:

The American Consumer Institute (ACI) is best known for opposing net neutrality efforts while being funded by a major internet service provider (ISP) lobby, as journalist Lee Fang detailed for VICE. More recently, its President and CEO Steve Pociask has turned his attention to attacking electric vehicles, writing on Forbes that “the science on electric vehicles does not support continuing California’s waiver” to set its own vehicle emission standards.

Less Governmentis an “organization dedicated to reducing the power of government and protecting the First Amendment from governmental assault.” It was founded and is run by Seton Motley, who is also listed as a Policy Adviser to the climate science-denying Heartland Institute. Though Motley and his Less Government org have their roots in telecom and media issues, he has in recent years engaged more on climate and energy, signing some anti-wind energy letters organized by the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and writing a bit on electric vehicles.

The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) is part of the network of front groups funded by the Koch brothers and their donor network through the Center to Protect Patient Rights (now called American Encore), and Freedom Partners. As the Energy and Policy Institute has described, “TPA essentially exists as a shell for its advocacy, based on its own IRS form 990s: ‘The Taxpayers Protection Alliance has given control of the management duties and the daily activities of the organization to MLM Consulting, LLC (MLM). MLM will be responsible for managing the organization and work to support the exempt purposes of TPA. The President of TPA, David Williams, is the sole owner of MLM Consulting LLC.'” TPA has fought clean energy policy in the past using the website SolarSecrets.org and has published white papers arguing against solar energy tax credits.

Consumer Action for a Strong Economyis run by Matthew Kandrach, and has been linked to a number of coalition efforts stemming from the FreedomWorks organization, which was born of a merger between the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) and Empower America.

American Commitmentis run by Phil Kerpen, a former Vice President of Americans for Prosperity. The organization was founded by Sean Noble, a right-wing operative with close ties to the Koch brothers who also runs the Center to Protect Patient Rights (American Encore), a major funnel for Koch donor network money to front groups.

FreedomWorkswas, as mentioned above, born of a merger between the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE)and Empower America, though it has no known Koch ties at present. The group was described in a 2012 article in Mother Jones as “one of the main political outfits of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the tea party.” It pushes free market policies and has questioned the well-established science linking human activity to a warming planet.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a conservative advocacy group dedicated to “economic freedom” that has received funding from ExxonMobil, Texaco, and the family foundations of the Koch brothers.

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is an anti-tax group that has received funding from the oil and gas lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute, along with various groups in the Koch network such as the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation and the Center to Protect Patient Rights, as well as DonorsTrust.

Frontiers of Freedom, run by George Landrith, has received significant funding from Exxon, the Koch brothers, and dark money organizations like DonorsTrust. In 2015, Landrith launched the Energy Equality Coalition to battle against the federal electric vehicle tax credit. The coalition also includes David Williams of the Taxpayer Protection Alliance and Horace Cooper, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute. Landrith is also a directorof the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR).

The Center for Freedom and Prosperitywas once funded by the Charles Koch Foundation and has actively lobbied for more liberalized tax laws, and for less scrutiny towards offshore tax havens.

Familiar Attacks from Koch-funded Interests

Many of the free-market, conservative groups that signed the letter also signed an April letter to Scott Pruitt, then-administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, urging the agency to strip California of its right to set stricter greenhouse gas limits for personal vehicles.

The federal electric vehicle tax credit has been in the direct cross-hairs of some Koch-funded groups — including those who signed last week's letter — for at least two years. For instance, the Energy Equality Coaltion, which, as mentioned above, was launched in late 2015 as an offshoot of Frontiers of Freedom with the express purpose of fighting the tax credit.

Notably, eleven of the Energy Equality Coalition's 28 total tweetsfrom its long-dormant Twitter account were posted in the three days following the release of the AEA's anti-tax credit letter, suggesting that the group might be ramping up efforts to fight against the $7,500 tax incentive.

https://www.ecowatch.com/koch-fueled-attack-on-electric-buses-2598163369.html

Koch-Fueled Attack on Electric Buses Picks Up Speed

By Dana Drugmand

Electric buses are replacing existing diesel-fueled fleets at an accelerating rate, and the transition to battery-powered buses is outpacing even the most optimistic projections. In this light, it should come as little surprise that commentators and organizations with ties to the Koch network and the oil industry are attacking a transportation option that yields fewer fossil fuel profits and cleaner, healthier air for people and planet.

A string of recent commentaries published in the conservative Washington Examiner have relied on a handful of critical reports about the rollout of electric buses in individual municipalities, which the commentators use to portray electric buses, as a class, as uneconomical and unreliable.

Despite these efforts by Koch affiliates and oil industry consultants, the electrification of bus transit is firmly underway. These high tech buses are already being widely deployed throughout China, which, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), is adding about 9,500 electric buses every five weeks. As China leads the way and North American and European municipalities follow suit, analysts expect this momentum to accelerate and predict 80 percent of the global municipal bus fleet to be electric by 2040.

That is bad news for the oil industry. Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts that switching from internal combustion engine transport to electric vehicles will displace 7.3 million barrels of oil a day.

According to Bloomberg, this year electric buses already will lower diesel consumption by 233,000 barrels a day.

Who's Behind a Series of Drive-by Attacks on Electric Buses in the Washington Examiner?

As more cities and states move toward this electrified mass transit option, it cuts into the demand for conventional diesel fuel—and into fossil fuel industry profits. A Washington Examiner article from Dec. 12, 2017 explores the rise of electric vehicles with a particularly telling headline: "Rise of electric vehicles threatens oil industry."

More recently, the Washington Examiner has run a series of opinion pieces criticizing electric buses. The main arguments are that they are expensive and unreliable, prone to breaking down. These pieces share arguments, and their authors share affiliations, with the Koch brothers and other oil industry funders.

For example, one commentaryby Philip Wegmann looks at a new electric bus fleet on Martha's Vineyard, pointing to the cost of the vehicles and the fact that they experienced technical problems early on. The piece neglects to mention any benefits of these buses to the environment or public health, nor does it reference the fact that the Vineyard Transit Authority's slow rollout of the buses was expected and that they plan on doubling the size of the electric fleet by next summer.

Wegmann has been closely tied to the Koch network since the beginning of his career. He started his writing career as a fellow of the Koch's America's Future Foundation writing program. Wegmann is currently a fellow at the Steamboat Institute, a right-wing think tank affiliated with the Koch-backed State Policy Network. This year, he was awarded the Steamboat Institute's Tony Blankley fellowship, which came with a $10,000 stipend and a host of other benefits.

Prior to joining the Examiner as a staff writer, Wegmann worked for conservative media outlet The Daily Signal, which is published by the Koch network-funded Heritage Foundation and which also features work by fellow America's Future Foundation alumnus Michael Bastasch.

Another Examiner piece by Wegmann slams electric buses in Los Angeles. "They don't run, they are expensive, and they're Chinese," Wegmann wrote. LA's neighbor Santa Monica is also converting its buses to electric, and Wegmann again attacks that move in another commentary. He again played the cost card, and claims, without statistical evidence, that "basically no one" rides the new buses.

Wegmann continues to rail against the electric bus in the Examiner, as recently as last week commenting on Atlanta, Georgia's purchase of a fleet from the Chinese company Build Your Dreams (BYD). "One expects cities like Albuquerque and Los Angeles to drop millions on the novelty environmental fleets, not a deep red state in the South that traditionally votes Republican and cares more for business than green pipe dreams," he writes.

Ross Marchand echoes this criticism in another Examiner opinion piece. Marchand is director of policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, which is basically a front group funded in part through Koch-connected channels. Previously Marchand interned for the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), both part of the Koch network.

Marchand's argument is primarily based on expense, but he even claims that electric buses could "prove dirtier than conventional fleet depending on which energy sources America relies on in the future." He backs that statement with a link to a piece by Jonathan Lesser, president of the consulting firm Continental Economics. Lesser has an antagonistic record towards clean energy policies, and he has "submitted expert testimony and reports on behalf of major utility and fossil fuel interests like Exelon, Occidental, Duke Energy, and FirstEnergy," according to the Energy and Policy Institute.

Lesser is also frequently contracted by the Manhattan Institute, a think tank that has received millions of dollars in funding from foundations in the Koch donor network.

Electric Bus Myths, Debunked

The claims laid out by electric bus antagonists use limited views and dog whistles of "communism" and "environmental zealotry" to attack the electric vehicles, especially when compared to "cleaner natural gas-burning buses." The unreliability argument is backed, for instance, by an investigative story in the LA Times from May that looks at problems with range and quality encountered by the Chinese e-bus manufacturing company BYD.

The Times article raises legitimate concerns about the products delivered by BYD, and the company responded with a statement saying that glitches are to be expected with "any groundbreaking technology." However, the article referred only to BYD buses, and not the electric bus industry as a whole.

"That was an article about a company, but the headline was about a category," Ryan Popple, CEO of electric bus maker Proterra, told GTM. "I hope that people don't paint a broad brush over the whole category." While the BYD buses struggled on hills—a major focus of the LA Times article—competitor Proterra's electric buses have been tested, for instance, in the mountains around Park City, Utah, to the satisfaction of local municipal transit planners, who ordered six units to serve the local bus routes.

Had he wanted, Wegmann could have looked even closer to find a counterpoint to the problematic BYD buses in Los Angeles. Foothill Transit, which serves 22 cities from downtown LA to the east, first tested Proterra buses in 2010 and is still using them.

"The technology is very robust," Doran Barnes, Foothill's executive director, told the Seattle Times. "We've had very few problems." Foothill Transit now operates 17 Proterra electric buses, and recently ordered 13 more, including a new set of all-electric double decker buses. Foothill Transit has pledged to serve its hilly region with an exclusively electric fleet by 2030.

So despite the early performance and mechanical issues from at least one manufacturer, as these issues are resolved and technology continues to improve, municipal transit authorities across the U.S. continue to order more of the buses from BYDand other major electric bus manufacturers like Proterra and New Flyer.

As for the cost argument, it is true that electric buses cost more up front than their diesel-powered counterparts. However, those costs are falling, and when considering the entire life cycle of the vehicle—purchase price, fuels, operational and maintenance expenses—electric buses prove to be cheaper than their diesel counterparts.

Moreover, according to BNEF, the projected decline in battery costs likely make electric buses cost-competitive with diesel at the point of purchase by 2026. By then, the number of electric buses on the road is expected to more than triple and make up nearly half of the worldwide city bus fleets.

There are solid reasons behind this trend. Electric buses are better for public health (reducing local air pollution from burning diesel), better for the climate (increasing efficiency and reducing reliance on fossil fuels), and make economic sense in terms of their full cost of moving passengers, when factoring in maintenance and fuel cost-savings. These various benefits are explained in a May 2018 report from U.S. PIRG and Environment America.

In terms of public health, there is no question that electric is better. Diesel exhaust is classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a likely carcinogen, and it is internationally recognized as a cancer-causing agent that is also responsible for respiratory and other illnesses. Chicago estimates that its electric buses will result in $55,000 in healthcare savings annually per bus, while a Columbia University analysis for New York City pegs it at $150,000 per bus.

Another obvious benefit of shifting from diesel to electric buses is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector. In the U.S. alone, converting transit buses to electric could save over 2 million tons of emissions each year, a clear win for the climate.

Electric buses also have lower operating and maintenance costs. As with other electric vehicles, there is no fuel cost. Chicago Transit Authority estimates it saves $25,000 annually in net fuel costs for each bus.

Furthermore, the U.S. PIRG report states that:

"According to studies of electric buses currently in operation, electric buses save at least $0.19 per mile in lower maintenance costs. Over the lifetime of the bus, an electric transit bus can avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars in operating costs over an equivalent diesel or natural gas bus, from lower fuel and maintenance costs."

While the e-bus costs more upfront, the fuel and maintenance cost-savings make up the difference, usually within 10 years.

Improved models and better battery technology are moving toward solving reliability issues, too. The newer electric bus models apparently can travel up to 200 miles or more on a single charge. Proterra makes e-buses designed to go 200 to 350 miles, for example. Electric buses also have fewer parts than diesel buses, which would theoretically require less maintenance.

Given these considerations, many cities are now announcing transitions to electric bus fleets. New York City announced in April its plans to electrify its fleet by 2040. Los Angeles is committed to an entirely zero-emissions fleet by 2030. Seattle is purchasing 120 e-buses by 2020 and has committed to electrifying its entire fleet by 2040.

Electric buses are moving toward the mainstream, despite attacks from oil industry apologists.

Calif. and N.Y. put big money on charging infrastructure

By David Ferris in Energywire 7:00 AM EDT

Two states yesterday made record-setting bets on electric transportation, with California regulators approving utilities to spend $738 million and New York's governor pledging up to $250 million.

---

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/25/america-rising-squared-report-bashes-evs-using-same-rare-earth-metals-gas-powered-cars

no link

A GOP-tied group devoted to promoting alleged hypocrisy among climate action advocates just released a new report that “exposes the horrible human and environmental costs” of solar panels and electric vehicles. The group, America Rising Squared (AR2), as DeSmog has previously reported, launched last year and pays activists to follow and film climate advocates in their everyday lives. The newly published white paper, the group’s first such formal report, attempts to paint a dirty picture of “clean energy,” claiming that the “environmentalist left” ignores the downsides of rare earth minerals that are used in solar panels and electric vehicles.

Here’s what the white paper doesn’t mention:many of the very same rare earth minerals that the AR2 report bashes are critical components of cell phones, computers, cameras, military and defense equipment, and even traditional gas-powered vehicles. What’s more, the petroleum refining process is critically dependent on some of the same rare earths that AR2 lambasts in this white paper.

Rare earths are plagued with problems…but that’s an economy-wide issue, not unique to clean energy

To be sure, the mining and production of rare earth minerals has some serious human rights and environmental problems. Few, if any, solar or electric vehicle advocates would argue that. Environmentalists have been raising red flags about rare earths for at least a decade now, as they have become such an integral part of the digital economy, like the computers that the AR2 white paper was created on. In 2013, Yale Environment 360 ran a deeply reported article on the environmental challenges posed by rare earths mining. Last year, Amnesty International published an even more startling report about cobalt mining, which coincided with a Washington Post investigation on the same issue, to feed lithium-ion battery demand. Technically, cobalt isn’t a rare earth mineral—a distinction the AR2 report fails to make (see chart below)—but criticisms of its production are still valid. This isn’t a problem that is – or can be – ignored by environmentalists and clean energy advocates.

But to claim that these problems track to electric vehicles and solar panels alone is just plain deceptive.

As even Kenneth Green of the conservative and fossil fuel-friendly American Enterprise Institute put it:

Rare earths are critical components in many applications. Fighter jet engines, satellite communication systems and underwater mine detection equipment all require rare earth elements. So do medical devices, hybrid-vehicle engines and wind turbines.

And yet you don’t find AR2 calling out the “horrible human costs” of fighter jet engines or satellite communication systems or medical devices or underwater mine detection equipment.

Gas-powered cars rely on rare earths too

Much of the white paper is devoted to the particular rare earths and other materials that electric vehicle batteries depend on. And it’s true that the lithium-ion batteries that power many EVs are dependent on some troublesome materials, including graphite, which is not a rare earth metal but has some particularly troubling health impacts in the areas it is produced, as illustrated in this Washington Post article that AR2 cites. (Note the article’s headline, though: “In your phone, In their air.” Or the web-heading: “China pollution caused by graphite mining for smartphone batteries.” Again, this isn’t just an EV problem.)

It’s also true, however, that traditional internal combustion engine vehicles—those that run on gas and diesel—also rely on rare earths, both in the vehicles themselves, and through the very production of the gasoline and diesel that power them.

...

Re: the Aug. 27 pro and con columns "Should California extend its 'Tesla rebates'?

H. Sterling Burnett's response to the question of Tesla rebates was well written but full of what I suspected were really arguments against electric vehicles in general. This led me to research more about the author and the organization that employs him. My suspicions were confirmed when I checked the Center for Media and Democracy's website and found that the Heartland Institute is a right-wing libertarian think tank and and according to The Economist is one of the most active "climate denier" organizations in the U.S. which receives the bulk of its funding from the petroleum industry, the Koch brothers and other climate change denier groups. In essence the arguments put forth by Burnett are just reformatted and regurgitated arguments that argue that climate change isn't real and that we don't need to worry about it.

---

biz

Summary

California "Tesla Bill" has been reduced to a study and for all practical purposes is dead.

The Company is now facing a huge competitive ASP headwind due to expiring federal subsidies.

We believe that even 200K per year demand for Model 3 could be a stretch once the Company exhausts its reservation queue.

On Friday, California Senate effectively scrapped AB-1184, a bill for EV rebates that was infamously dubbed the “Tesla Bill”.

The bill, which was watered down heavily last week, has been further watered down, stripped of reference to funding, and reduced to a study. The essence of the revised bill now boils down to the following paragraph:

“SEC. 2.(A) On or before January 1, 2019, the State Air Resources Board, pursuant to Section 9795 of the Government Code, shall submit to the Legislature a report regarding the operation of the vehicle incentive programs that includes both of the following:

(1) The funding levels necessary to support continuous, year-round operation of each of its zero-emission vehicle and near-zero emission vehicle incentive programs.

(2) Changes to the zero-emission vehicle incentive programs that are necessary to increase market penetration of zero-emission vehicles.

(B) The State Air Resources Board may contract with a third party for the preparation of the report required pursuant to subdivision (A).”

In effect, what would have been monstrous rebates in favor of Tesla (TSLA) have now disappeared. To be sure, the death of the rebate is not that significant to Tesla given that earlier revisions already reduced potential benefits.

However, there should be little question that, as the bill was originally written, Tesla management was hoping that this bill will help the company ride out the federal credit phase out. The failure of the bill shows a big challenge that Tesla faces as the federal $7500 rebate is set to phase out in 2018.

For reference, IRS defines the phase-out language as follows:

“The new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicle credit phases out for a manufacturer's vehicles over the one-year period beginning with the second calendar quarter after the calendar quarter in which at least 200,000 qualifying vehicles manufactured by that manufacturer have been sold for use in the United States (determined on a cumulative basis for sales after December 31, 2009) ("phase-out period"). Qualifying vehicles manufactured by that manufacturer are eligible for 50 percent of the credit if acquired in the first two-quarters of the phase-out period and 25 percent of the credit if acquired in the third or fourth quarter of the phase-out period. Vehicles manufactured by that manufacturer are not eligible for a credit if acquired after the phase-out period.”

In the case of Tesla, assuming management guidance for the Model 3 ramp holds, the rebate phase-out timeline could be as follows:

$7,500 Federal Tax Credit through 03/31/18

$3,750 Federal Tax Credit 04/01/18 through 09/31/18

$1,875 Federal Tax Credit 10/01/18 through 03/31/19

No Federal Tax Credit after 03/31/19

However, we are skeptical Model 3 ramp will go per management guidance. Instead, we expect the ramp to be slow and the rebate phase out schedule to be as follows:

$7,500 Federal Tax Credit through 06/30/18

$3,750 Federal Tax Credit 07/01/18 through 12/31/18

$1,875 Federal Tax Credit 01/01/19 through 06/30/19

No Federal Tax Credit after 06/30/19

It should be noted that none of Tesla’s competitors are ramping BEV production as aggressively as Tesla and are not facing a similar rebate phase out timeline. Consequently, Tesla is likely to be at a relative subsidy disadvantage compared to other EV manufacturers.

General Motor’s (GM) Bolt and Nissan Motor’s (OTCPK:NSANY) Leaf, in particular, are significant competitive threats to Model 3.

The following table represents our estimate of the relative disadvantage of Tesla compared to other manufacturers....

https://www.ecowatch.com/the-climate-group-cop23-2509098433.html

elect cars

tesla batteries PR

---

https://www.ecowatch.com/easyjet-electric-planes-2490546223.html

---

https://www.ecowatch.com/uk-ban-petrol-diesel-2465723145.html

The UK has followed France in banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2040, as part of its plan to tackle chronic air pollution in cities. The government has been coming under intense pressure to act, with an estimated 40,000 people dying prematurely a year from air pollution.

A government spokesman told the press, "Poor air quality is the biggest environmental risk to public health in the UK and this government is determined to take strong action in the shortest time possible.

"That is why we are providing councils with new funding to accelerate development of local plans, as part of an ambitious £3bn [$3.9 billion] program to clean up dirty air around our roads."

But critics have said the ban is already "too little too late," with many highly critical of the proposals.

"Air pollution is poisoning our children and leading to causing avoidable deaths across the country," said Jenny Randerson, opposition Liberal Democrat shadow transport secretary. "Instead of properly fighting this silent killer, the government has flip-flopped, offering tax breaks for cars that they are now banning. The government's feeble attempts to tackle air pollution are too little too late.

"The Liberal Democrats have called for all new diesel sales to end by 2025 and a scrappage scheme to help drivers convert to greener vehicles. We are serious about fighting air pollution, this government is not."

Former Labour leader Ed Milliband tweeted this morning, "Fear that new car petrol/diesel ban in 23 years time is smokescreen for weak measures to tackle 40,000 deaths a year from air pollution now."

Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas also tweeted, "Welcome start but need urgent plan to cut air pollution *now*—proper clean air zones, funded diesel scrappage, invest in public transport."

Areeba Hamid, the clean air campaigner at Greenpeace, added, "The high court was clear that the government must bring down toxic air pollution in the UK in the shortest possible time. This plan is still miles away from that."

The Government plan will be released on Wednesday after it was forced in the courts to release its clean air strategy after months of legal in-fighting. A judge had ruled that the government's original plans were so bad as to be unlawful.

...

https://www.ecowatch.com/future-electric-cars-2457903804.html

https://www.ecowatch.com/koch-brothers-electric-cars-2456866524.html

Koch Brothers Launch Attack to Kill Electric Cars

By Ben Jervey

Fueling U.S. Forward, the Koch-funded campaign to "rebrand" fossil fuels as "positive" and "sustainable," has released a new attacking the Dirty Secrets of Electric Cars, signaling a possible strategic pivot from straightforward fossil fuel cheerleading to electric vehicle (EV) and clean energy bashing.

The video and accompanying Dirty Secrets of Electric Cars web page feature blatant factual errors, misleading statements and glaring omissions (all of which will be debunked thoroughly below), while essentially attacking electric cars for using the same materials needed to manufacture cell phones, laptops, defense equipment and gas-powered cars, and which are even a critical component of the very oil refining processes that form the foundation of the Koch fortunes.

When Fueling U.S. Forward launched last August, the organization's president Charles Drevna:{ described the campaign as an effort to rebrand fossil fuels by focusing on the "positive" aspects of coal, oil and gas. This }:{ seems to further confirm investigative journalist }:Peter Stone's reporting from last spring:{that the Kochs were "plotting a multimillion dollar assault on electric vehicles."}:

How do we know that Fueling U.S. Forward is this Koch-funded campaign? First, Charles Drevna, who is leading the effort, developed the concept while serving as a distinguished senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, a pro-fossil fuel think tank that was partially founded by Charles Koch and that is run by a longtime lobbyist for Koch Industries. Second, and more concretely, Drevna told DeSmog's Sharon Kelly that he was working with Koch Industries' board member (and longtime Koch brothers' confidant) James Mahoney on the campaign and that it was funded by "one of the brothers."

Echoes of America Rising Squared

Fueling U.S. Forward and America Rising Squared (or AR2) have no public affiliation. Yet within a few weeks in June, both groups launched attacks on electric vehicles using the same misleading arguments and nearly identical language. While the former group is a known Koch-funded campaign to promote fossil fuels, the latter has close ties to the GOP establishment, and has invested heavily in promoting alleged hypocrisy among climate action advocates, even paying "trackers" to follow around the likes of Tom Steyer and Bill McKibben.

In June, as DeSmog reported, AR2 published a white paper that purports to reveal the "human and environmental costs of 'clean energy,'" taking electric vehicles and solar panels to task for their reliance on rare Earth metals. As we wrote at the time:

Here's what the white paper doesn't mention: many of the very same rare Earth minerals that the AR2 report bashes are critical components of cell phones, computers, cameras, military and defense equipment, and even traditional gas-powered vehicles. What's more, the petroleum refining process is critically dependent on some of the same rare Earths that AR2 lambasts in this white paper.

The new video from Fueling U.S. Forward echoes the AR2 talking points, almost to the word. (For a closer analysis of the AR2 report, see the original DeSmog article).

Debunking the New Fueling U.S. Forward Electric Car Attack Video

The Fueling U.S. Forward video (which is still unlisted on Youtube, but available to be shared and viewed by anyone with the link) is short enough that we can walk through it line by line.

"This is an electric car/ Car companies say it's a clean alternative/ But electric cars are more toxic to humans than average cars."

This depends on an exceedingly narrow definition of "toxic." If you only consider the materials that go into the batteries of electric cars versus the batteries of "average" cars, then this is maybe defensible. But if you consider the materials that go into the entire vehicle, as well as the fuel used to power the vehicle, than EVs are far cleaner and less toxic.

First, there's the fact that gas-powered vehicles require some of the same "toxic" rare Earth metals that the video criticizes. (More on that below). Then there's the even bigger issue that tailpipe emissions—including ozone, particulate matter and other smog-forming chemicals—are the dominant source of ground level air pollution, and nearly one half of all Americans live in areas that don't meet federal minimum air quality standards. In fact, emissions from road transportation cause roughly 53,000 premature deaths every year in the U.S., according to MIT researchers.

"Their batteries are made of rare Earth metals/ Like cobalt, lithium…"

First, a fact check: cobalt and lithium aren't rare Earth metals. This isn't to say they aren't problematic—cobalt mining in particular is plagued by some very serious environmental and labor problems, as documented in in-depth reports by Amnesty International and the Washington Post. But these problems are economy-wide. Cobalt is used widely in the lithium-ion batteries that power most cell phones and laptops. (See the subheadline of the very Washington Post article that the FUSF video cites: Tracing the path from deadly hand-dug mines in Congo to consumers' phones and laptops). There's no question that lithium-ion battery manufacturers have to clean up their supply chains, but that's something that Apple and Panasonic and Samsung are as responsible for as Tesla and Ford and General Motors.

"…and cerium"

Actually, cerium is used in nickel metal hydride batteries that are common in hybrid motors, but isn't used in the lithium-ion batteries that have been utilized in plug-in vehicles in nearly a decade.

But cerium oxides are also found on every catalytic converter fitted into an internal combustion vehicle. That's right—every gas-powered car relies on this rare earth metal that Fueling U.S. Forward criticizes.

"That are extracted mostly overseas/ From countries like China/ And Congo/ Where pollution is rampant/ And children are forced into oppressive labor."

Again, electric vehicle manufacturers must do their part to clean up the mining of these metals. But so do the cell phone and laptop makers, companies that supply communications and combat equipment to the Department of Defense, satellite communications system operators, medical device manufacturers, and so on.

"These metals are scarce/ Their extraction is dangerous/ And many of the batteries end up in landfills"

This last point is simply untrue. First of all, very few electric vehicle batteries have even run through their usable lives. Once they do, companies are already lining up to start recycling them, either for use on the electric grid or to be disassembled and the materials reused.

"This makes electric cars toxic/ For both people and the planet."

Some of the components of electric car batteries have localized health and environmental impacts. But compared to the alternative—internal combustion vehicles spewing carbon and other air pollution—electric cars truly are much cleaner from cradle to grave.

https://www.ecowatch.com/volvo-electric-cars-2453719182.html

Volvo Announces 'Historic End' to Combustion Engine, All Cars Going Electric

Volvo Cars announced Wednesday that every car it launches from 2019 will have an electric motor, marking a "historic end" to the internal combustion engine.

This makes Volvo the first traditional carmaker to fully embrace electrification.

"This is a clear commitment towards reducing our carbon footprint as well as contributing to better air quality in our cities," Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive, said. He then stated goals of selling 1 million electrified cars by 2025.

The company will still produce older Volvos with pure combustion engines after 2019, but its latest move signals its eventual phasing out conventional gas guzzlers. As the New York Times noted, other major car manufacturers have introduced EVs or hybrids to their line but none have entirely ditched making new cars powered solely by gasoline or diesel fuel.

"This is about the customer," Samuelsson added. "People increasingly demand electrified cars and we want to respond to our customers' current and future needs."

The automaker is based in Sweden but is owned by China's Geely Automobile Holdings, which produces electric vehicles for China, a major market for battery-powered cars.

Volvo said it will launch five fully electric cars between 2019 and 2021. The rest of its fleet will comprise of plug-in hybrid cars and mild hybrid cars.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-94-year-old-genius-may-save-planet

...Goodenough announced in early March that he and his team at the University of Texas at Austin had invented a glass-based battery that blows away the performance of every previous kind of battery, including lithium-ion batteries—which were invented in the 1980s by…him. So right now, Goodenough’s technology is powering your smartphone, laptop, electric toothbrush, Tesla and any other rechargeable electronic thing you own. Lots of inventors claim they’re working on breakthrough types of batteries. Goodenough is the only one who can also say he’s done it before.

End of Gas-Powered Cars?

Goodenough’s new battery can store three times more energy than a comparable lithium-ion battery, according to the very serious Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). The new battery also solves some other lithium-ion troubles. Like, it won’t catch fire, so a hoverboard won’t suddenly melt your kid’s Vans as she scoots across the playground. The IEEE also reports that Goodenough’s batteries seem to be able to soak up in minutes as much charge as a lithium-ion battery gets in hours.

---

http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-auto-emissions-standards-2303524715.html

The oil industry and its "deep state" allies in the Trump administration have lured U.S. auto companies into a potentially fatal political trap, chumming Detroit by tapping into the deeply embedded penchant of the Big Three for chasing short-term market trends at the expense of long term value.

Excited by the arrival of a Big Oil ally, Scott Pruitt, to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the auto industry asked the Trump administration to undo the recent Obama Administration rule locking long term, reliable standards for emissions and fuel economy. The industry argued that the standards, which it agreed to back in 2009 as part of the auto bail-out, were now too onerous because consumers were shifting to buy SUV's again with lower oil prices. The argument is utterly bogus. The 2009 rules set separate, if ambitious, standards for each size class of vehicle, so while more SUV sales do drive up average emissions and oil consumption, they do not require the companies to make a single vehicle to a higher standard than they agreed to.

What's really at stake here is the pace of vehicle electrification. Meeting the 2009 standards for each vehicle class was always dependent on a significant portion of those vehicles being zero-emission electric drive. That's an existential threat to the oil industry—and in many ways to Detroit's dealers, who make most of their money repairing the drive trains of internal combustion cars. Electric drive vehicles (EV) have a fraction of the maintenance costs of gas or diesel.

But a rapid deployment of electric drive cars is vital to the long term global viability of automobile manufacturers. Whatever happens in the U.S., global auto markets are going electric and the Big Three need a major U.S. EV market to compete in the 21st century.

A few days before the Trump administration announced that—surprise, surprise—it was giving the auto industry everything it had asked for and more, not only waiving the post 2022 economy standards but also seeking to strip California of its historic right to set its own vehicle emissions rules, I attended a high level strategy session in New Delhi devoted to the future of India's auto fleet. If Detroit had been listening it might have realized the folly of resuming its servile junior partner status with oil.

The message could not have been clearer. Minister after Minister—roads, industry, rail, urban development—proclaimed India's urgent need for "transportation without oil." The government of India's top planners made clear that they were uniformly committed to an all electric vehicle economy by 2030, a step which would dry up the oil industry's biggest remaining growth target. It would also shut off the world's fastest growing automotive market to U.S. manufacturers if they continue to rely on internal combustion engines.[partner w/ electriccar co)

...

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/04/electric-cars-coal-power-plants-climate-change

The United States leads the world in the number of electric vehicles on the road, but the count is still tiny: about 350,000. That's less than 1 percent of all passenger cars and trucks in the country. Recent market research suggests that number will climb steadily over the next several decades. But will it climb fast enough? When it comes to fighting climate change, that could turn out to be one of the most important questions of the next few years.

On April 22, world leaders gathered in New York City to sign the Paris Agreement on climate change, in which they vowed to keep global temperature rise to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, a limit the world is already more than halfway toward exceeding. Meanwhile, energy experts have begun to map out the fine-grain details of what meeting that goal would actually require. And it's becoming increasingly clear that electric vehicles have a indispensable role to play.

It turns out that one of the most immediate societal changes for average Americans in a climate-savvy future would likely be the electrification of just about everything. In other words, the hope of the planet could lie in a force—electricity—we've known about for hundreds of years.

How much do you really know about what's under your hood? Would you really notice if your basement held an electric heat pump instead of a gas furnace?

That might sound strange, given that electricity production is the number-one source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Coal- and gas-burning power plants are still our main sources of electricity, and in some parts of the country the power grid is so dirty that electric vehicles might actually cause more pollution than traditional gas-guzzlers.

But thanks to the explosive growth of solar, wind, and other renewable energy technologies, electricity is getting cleaner all the time. Over the last decade, the share of total US electricity production from renewables (including hydroelectric dams) rose from about 9.5 percent to more than 14 percent, with year-to-year growth getting faster all the time. So there's a good case to be made for phasing out the other types of fossil fuel use in our daily lives—particularly gasoline for cars and oil and gas for heating buildings. We should be using electricity instead—even if that means using more electricity overall.

That's a key finding of the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, an international consortium of energy researchers that produced a detailed technical study of how to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2050—the change necessary if Americans hope to do their part to stay within the two-degree limit. The report found that it's technically possible for the US to meet that target, at an annual cost of about 1 percent of GDP, without sacrificing any "energy services." That is, the report assumes we'll still drive and have houses and operate factories the same as we do today. But to do so will require a major boost in electrification—which will in turn require that the US produce about twice as much electricity as it currently does—while reducing the carbon emissions per unit of energy down to just 3 to 10 percent of their current levels. In other words, at the same time we're electrifying everything, we need to continue to clean up the electric grid and double down on energy efficiency, especially in buildings.

"You can't get to a level of emissions that's compatible with 2C or less unless you do all three of those things," said Jim Williams, one of the report's lead authors and chief scientist at the private research firm Energy and Environmental Economics.

We get energy from fossil fuels in two basic ways: Either burning it in a power plant to create electricity that gets used elsewhere, or by burning it directly where it's needed—i.e., your car's internal combustion engine or a gas-fueled stove. Williams' basic idea—which has also been advanced by other leading energy economists, particularly Stanford's Mark Jacobson—is to axe that second category as much as possible, while simultaneously "decarbonizing" the electric grid by replacing fossil fuels with wind, solar, and other renewables....

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/02/13048/kochs-go-after-electric-car-subsidies

http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/19/koch-brothers-war-on-evs/

...

an effort to strike back at record-breaking EV sales, the fossil fuel industry is allegedly funding a new organization that will spend $10 million a year to push petroleum-based transportation fuels and attack government subsidies on EVs, refining industry sources told the Huffington Post.

According to HuffPo, a Koch Industries board member and a veteran Washington energy lobbyist will be involved in the purported EV-squashing initiative.

“I think they (are) approaching all the major independent refiners,” one industry source explained to HuffPo.

The mission of the still-unnamed group will be to “make the public aware of all the benefits of petroleum-based transportation fuels,” the source said, adding that “the current administration has a bias toward phasing out” these fuels.

“(The Kochs are) worried about state and community subsidies,” the source said. “In 20 years, electric vehicles could have a substantial foothold in the U.S. market.”

Oil baron brothers Charles and David Koch of are two of the four richest Americans according to Forbes, holding more than $80 billion combined in net worth. It’s an open secret that the conservative oil barons have funneled eye-popping sums of money to curry influence in their favor, including nearly $1 billion to GOP candidates for the 2016 presidential election as well as vicious campaigns against climate change and renewable energy.

“The Kochs have invested heavily in a pugnacious defense of fossil fuel consumption,” a conservative energy analyst told HuffPo. “They’ve done this in the electricity sector, and as the debate shifts to transportation they’re behaving true to form.”

One source claimed that the new Koch-backed organization “may be doing work that’s now being done by the Institute for Energy Research.” The Institute for Energy Research (IER), registered by Charles Koch and energy expert Robert L. Bradley Jr., pushes for deregulation of utilities, climate change denial and claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless, according to SourceWatch.

Incidentally, the IER is behind an attack on Tesla’s Powerwall, Autoblog reported. The IER claims that it will take nearly 40 years to pay off. Tesla responded, calling the report “elementary, at best, and completely misses the value of the Powerwall.” The IER also responded to Tesla.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk—who believes electric cars “are the future”—breathed digital dismay over news of the Koch’s latest assault, tweeting “Sigh … ” and linking the HuffPo report.

Sigh …https://t.co/VelOzAKIW6

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 19, 2016

Musk followed with another tweet of a UK GUARD URL report that shockingly revealed $10 million a minute from global subsidies goes to fossil fuel companies, according International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates.

“Worth noting that all gasoline cars are heavily subsidized via oil company tax credits & unpaid public health costs,” Musk wrote.

Worth noting that all gasoline cars are heavily subsidized via oil company tax credits & unpaid public health costs https://t.co/4li5E013Dj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 19, 2016

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Elon Musk Shows His Love for Dramatic Tesla Video With Powerful Message

Greenpeace Asks Hillary Clinton to Say No to Fossil Fuel Money

Harvard Study: U.S. ‘Likely Culprit’ of Global Spike in Methane Emissions

Warning to Fossil Fuel Investors: Coal and LNG Markets Shrinking Due to Competition From Renewables

But the auto dealers — knowing their business model is flawed, antiquated and imperiled — are not going down without a fight. Dealer associations are aggressively protecting their turf using their powerful state lobbies to pump legislators and governors either to shut Tesla down or hobble it so it can't become a threat. Many states already have laws stating that automakers can’t sell cars directly to the public and compete with the independent dealerships that sell their brands. But now, dealers want statehouses to rewrite those laws to apply to automakers that don’t have dealers, like Tesla.

Last month, Iowa became the latest state to challenge Tesla Motors’ right to sell its cars directly to consumers. The state’s Department of Transportation told the electric-car manufacturer that it must stop offering test drives in the state, because it isn’t registered as an auto dealer there. The state's DOT ordered Tesla to halt its test drives only after it was tipped off by the state’s Automobile Dealers Association, according to the Des Moines Register.

Iowa joins Arizona, Maryland, New Jersey, and Texas in restricting the direct sales of Teslas. The only states to formally approve of Tesla's direct-sales model are California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Virginia.

Tesla’s ability to sell cars directly is being vigorously challenged across the country. According to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing the 12 largest automakers,dealers have pushed 33 bills in 26 states so far this year. Auto dealers have also tried to challenge Massachusetts laws allowing Tesla sales operations there, taking their case to the state's courts; however, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court recently ruled in the car maker’s favor.

Why Are Dealers Afraid of Tesla?

---

see tesla http://www.alternet.org/environment/chris-christies-tesla-ban-challenged-nj-legislators

---

California Joins 7 Other States to Put 3.3M Zero-Emission Vehicles on Road

May 29, 2014

(Mercury News)

California leads the nation in electric vehicle sales, and now is joining forces with Oregon and several Northeastern states to put 3.3 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025.

Gov. Jerry Brown and his counterparts in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont signed a set of agreements Thursday that includes adding zero-emission vehicles to public fleets and harmonizing building codes to make it easier to install electric-vehicle charging stations.

"This is not just an agreement but a serious and profoundly important commitment," Brown, long a champion of electric vehicles, said in a statement. "From coast to coast, we're charging ahead to get millions of the world's cleanest vehicles on our roads."

...

Lawmakers in Virginia touched a nerve last year with a new $64 annual tax on the state’s 91,000 hybrid owners, 90 percent of them from the northern part of the state near Washington, D.C. Objections, immediate and loud, spurred a petition that garnered more than 7,700 signatures.

Hybrid owners felt singled out for a double whammy, because hybrids using both gas and electric power are still subject to gas taxes when they fill up. Additionally, some bigger hybrids use more gas — paying more fuel tax — than new, highly efficient gas-powered cars that were not covered by the new fee, said Democratic state Del. Scott Surovell, who spearheaded the repeal petition. It was akin to charging non-smokers for not paying their fair share of tobacco taxes—“taxing people for doing the right thing,” he said. The legislature repealed the tax this year.

“The takeaway is, don’t start taxing energy efficient behavior that you are trying to encourage,” said Surovell. He said governments instead should figure out how to subsidize clean vehicles until they are widely affordable.

Virginia, however, did retain its annual tax on vehicles using solely electric power, raising the previous $50 fee to $64.

The notion of a fair-share tax resonates with many people for electric-power cars. North Carolina and Colorado this year joined Washington and Nebraska in charging electric vehicle owners annual fees -- $50 in Colorado, $75 in Nebraska and $100 in North Carolina and Washington. Drivers of hybrids so far have been spared in those states....alternet

alternet: 2. After Electric Automaker Tesla Becomes A Success, Fox Forgets Its Federal Loan.

Fox News and Fox Business hosts and pundits alike attacked Tesla Motors after the green technology company received federal loans to begin to produce electric automobiles. Once Tesla turned a profit, however, these conservative media figures developed amnesia [6] about the company's federal loan, even trying to use the company to dismiss the need for clean energy subsidies.

3. Bill O'Reilly Smears Tesla, Falsely Claims It Had Net Losses.

Fox News aired mixed messages about Tesla, offering the company praise and then disparaging it, all within the same week. Host Bill O'Reilly called the company a failure and claimed that it posted net losses. O'Reilly's statement, however, was untrue [7]. In fact, just days earlier, Fox News had heralded Tesla as a "success story [8]" after the company turned a profit [9].

4. WSJ Editorial Board Member: New York City's Bike Share Program Part Of "Totalitarian" Plot.

With a straight face, Wall Street Journal Editorial Board member Dorothy Rabinowitz said [10] that bicyclists were the "most important danger" facing New York City, and raged against bike share programs that are pursued by the "all powerful" "bike lobby" emboldened by "totalitarians." She emphasizes that "the city is helpless" before the driven ambitions of its "autocratic" mayor. Rabinowitz's overly hyped attack of a bike-share program attractedcriticism [11], notably from Comedy Central's The Daily Show [12]. However, Rabinowitz stuck by her attack, saying the bike racks are "instruments of aesthetic torture [13]" and told a bicyclist who asked her a question to instead ask "the therapist we hope this biker is consulting [14]."

5. Fox News: Wind Turbines May Cause "Devastating" Health Effects.

Fox News did not shy away from reporting on easily debunked allegations as if they were true, namely that clean energy was responsible for causing the dubiously named Wind Turbine Syndrome [15] among a handful of residents in a small Massachusetts town. In February, Fox News hyped [16] the "devastating" effects of wind turbines on a few residents in Falmouth, Mass. For all of Fox's reporting on the horrors of Wind Turbine Syndrome, the outlet failed to note that no evidence supports that this condition even exists, and multiple studies [17] have suggested that the array of health effects may simply be an effect of hypochondria. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection even concluded[18] in 2012 that "There is no evidence for a set of health effects from exposure to wind turbines."

6. Right-Wing Media Falsely Claim Energy Efficiency Responsible For Super Bowl Blackout.

When the lights went out inside the Super Bowl, fans and television personalities alike were initially baffled. The Drudge Report and conservative media figures on Fox News were quick to spin [19] their own narrative about why the blackout occurred, blaming the energy efficient LED lighting [20] outside of the stadium, despite the fact that the LED lights outside the stadium never [21] went out.

7. Fox News: Solar Power "Might Be Tanking Our Economy."

In February Fox News hosts used the misfortune of one solar company to admonish the entire solar industry, going so far as to say [22] that this sector is "tanking our economy," despite the fact that solar actually has helped to grow the U.S. economy. After California-based solar panel company, SoloPower, laid off employees and had trouble meetings requirements for its federal loan guarantee, Fox News hosts surmised that the solar industry and the nation's entire economy was in peril as a result. However, solar industry jobs have grown [22] in recent years, and dropping prices are driving record [23] installations.

8. When Fox Couldn't Point To Actual Facts To Smear Tesla, They Made Some Up.

In May, Fox Business reporter Elizabeth MacDonald was thinking on her feet when making disparaging comments about Tesla Motors. She claimed that the Tesla Model S "conks out after about 16 miles," when in fact [24] the car's battery boasts a battery range of 265 miles, making it the longest-range [25] electric automobile battery on the market at the time. The next day she said [26] that she "gave incomplete information," suggesting she was referring to the range if you charged the car for only half an hour using a mobile connector.

---

http://freebeacon.com/greentech-not-jolting-mcauliffes-campaign/ hit job

---

ev 100K US

---

Just recently in my home state of North Carolina, a legislative proposal was unanimously approved by the State Senate's Commerce Committee that could make it illegal for Tesla to sell to NC state residents, or at the very least sell in any way other than via the established dealer network. The irony of lawmakers trying to ban the sale of an American-built, Motor Trend Car of the Year that sources from over 30 manufacturers in NC makes me shake my head and wonder.

---

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/05/13/north_carolina_tesla_ban_bill_would_prevent_unfair_competition_with_car.html

From the state that brought you the nation’s first ban on climate science comes another legislative gem: a bill that would prohibit automakers from selling their cars in the state.

The proposal, which the Raleigh News & Observer reports was unanimously approved by the state’s Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday, would apply to all car manufacturers, but the intended target is clear. It’s aimed at Tesla, the only U.S. automaker whose business model relies on selling cars directly to consumers, rather than through a network of third-party dealerships.

The bill is being pushed by the North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association, a trade group representing the state’s franchised dealerships. Its sponsor is state Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Republican from Henderson, who has said the goal is to prevent unfair competition between manufacturers and dealers. What makes it “unfair competition” as opposed to plain-old “competition”—something Republicans are typically inclined to favor—is not entirely clear. After all, North Carolina doesn’t seem to have a problem with Apple selling its computers online or via its own Apple Stores.

Still, it’s easy to understand why some car dealers might feel a little threatened: Tesla’s Model S outsold the Mercedes S-Class, BMW 7 Series, and Audi A8 last quarter without any help from them. If its business model were to catch on, consumers might find that they don’t need the middle-men as much as they thought.

Incidentally—not that he would be in any way swayed by this—I couldn’t help but notice that Apodaca received $8,000 in campaign contributions from the North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association last year, the maximum amount allowed by state law. I’ve reached out to the senator for further comment and will update this post if he replies.

Tesla’s vice president of corporate and business development, Diarmuid O'Connell, told me he’s hopeful that the state legislature will amend the bill so that it doesn’t prohibit Tesla from doing business there. He said the company has already sold 80 cars in North Carolina, mostly through the Web, and has about 60 more orders in the works. It also has plans to build its first showroom in the state next year. The Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle in particular appears to be a hotbed of Tesla interest, O'Connell said, which makes sense given its similarities to Silicon Valley.

In its current form, North Carolina’s bill would be the harshest of a handful of anti-Tesla regulations around the country. In Texas, the company is fighting a law under which the employees of its “showroom” in Austin are not allowed to sell any vehicles, offer test drives, or even tell customers how much the car costs. But at least Texas still lets people buy the car online, which North Carolina’s law would prohibit.

Tesla’s O’Connell rejects the idea that laws prohibiting automakers from selling their cars are designed to protect consumers, as trade groups like the North Carolina dealers’ association claim. He says the franchise-dealer model might work fine for giant automakers, but not for a startup like Tesla—especially since Tesla’s products represent a challenge to the traditional auto industry on which dealerships rely. “How do you sell the future if your business depends on the present?” he asked.