GM, Ford, auto suppliers and electric companies have been scratching their heads at a meeting in Detroit this week—why haven’t many people been clamoring for electric vehicles yet? Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus reports.
TRX1: The Rocky Mountain Institute’s Matt Mattilla has been promoting plug in electric vehicles nationwide. He wants to see quality first, before quantity.
AX1: “You know we’ve got a goal of 1 million vehicles on the road in the US by 2015. People say a million is good but it’s not really a lot. If we have 250 million vehicles out there it’s less than one half of one percent. Our view is that these are the most crucial million. If you don’t get these right, if you don’t get people excited about them and the people who spend a lot early on evangelizing early on saying they’re having great experiences then it’s not gonna take off. There’s not gonna be that positive word of mouth.”
TRX2: GEM cars are plug ins, owned by Chrysler and made in North Dakota. They go 25 mph and have a range of 30 miles. The Tessla Roadster is made in California and costs about $100,000. The Chevy Volt is due out a year from now and will be made in Michigan. Mike Ligett is a North Carolina utility executive. His company will benefit from new charging stations and charging decks built for new plug ins. But Ligett says, just focus on the product.
AX2: “We do not need a smart grid to make this work. So it’s as simple at the basic level of finding the customer that has a 110 outlet, selling him a car and let him take it home and plug it in. I know that’s an oversimplification. But the worst thing we can do is confuse our customers and make it too complicated.”
TRX3: Portland, Denver, Raleigh, Houston and Indianapolis are part of the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Get Ready Project. Local government officials want to be able to deliver clean air to their citizens. Enid Joffe is co owner of a company called Clean Fuel connection and a former mayor of Sierra Madre California. Joffe thinks plug hybrid gas electrics will ride the first wave.
AX3: “the plug ins I think are gonna be the first wave of vehicles. The more we can encourage their use, especially this makes sense in the city center where people are doing limited driving, we want to encourage those zero emission miles. So the more opportunity to plug in, the more reduce greenhouse gas emission miles we’ll have.”
TRX3: What should city officials do to get ready for plug in electric cars and trucks? Mike Ligett, the utility executive says, again. Take it one step at a time.
AX4: “these cities and towns want to go out and buy charging stations and they’ve got some stimulus money or grants perhaps. They ask us what should we buy? That’s not the first question. The first question is where do you want to put it, how many do you want, who’s going to use it, who’s it going to serve. So we have to walk the cities and towns through all those questions first.”
TRX5: The US Dept of Energy’s Pat Davis agrees. Sell the vehicles then worry about infrastructure. But Davis says even when the first wave of hybrid electric plug ins arrive, they won’t help the environment much.
AX5: “If we assume that ending petroleum is important and carbon mitigation is important, there are really only a few vehicle configurations that do so: pure electrics that run on renewable power or nuclear power, plug in hybrids that run on cellulosic bio fuel or renewable power and finally cellulosic hydrogen fuel cells.”
TRX6: This conference is called the business of plugging. Many speakers have said the United States is not plugged in with either market demand or infrastructure. Some say Michigan cities are even further behind. Kristin Helsel used to work for General Motors and live in suburban Detroit. The California company she now works for makes home and street charging stations. Business in China and India could boom because people are used to many kinds of transportation.
AX6:AX6: “You see so many scooters, bikes and alt modes of transportation. That’s the difference no matter where you are in most of these countries you see a multiplicity including public transportation which is also a natural for EV’s.”
TRX7: So scooters, buses, trains and human feet will help sell cars in the future. The third world is teaching Michiganders a lesson. If we fail to use other modes of transportation, we could be worse off than them.