It seems the issues raised in the following Consumer Reports article should have been addressed a long time ago:
With long charge times and charging stations few and far between, government agencies, Google, and others have gone to great lengths to maintain lists of every charging station in America and make it available via smart phones. But EV drivers have another story.
With different charging networks proliferating, some EV drivers we met this week at the 26th annual Electric Vehicle Symposium in Los Angeles (EVS26) say it’s hard to know which ones they can use. Different plug standards for DC fast-charging and chargers owned by private businesses (such as CR) whose chargers are listed, but not readily available to the public, compound the problem.
Naturally, charging networks install electric car chargers in people’s homes and in public places, such as parking lots and airports. For public chargers, they provide an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) key tag to customers to activate the charger and authenticate payment. Some charging network providers say it’s important to them to collect authentication information even if they’re providing free charging, because it helps them track where future chargers should go, what kind of electric car you have, and how to manage loads on the power grid.
Perhaps the most important reason for charging networks is to collect and aggregate payments. Unlike buying gas, when you charge up an electric car, the cost amounts to just a few dollars. Charging our Nissan Leaf test car at our test track in Connecticut, for example, cost less than $4.50. And that figure is a worst-case scenario. (Our area has among the highest electric rates in the continental United States, and that cost is based a completely drained battery, which ideally should never happen.)
At the modest energy costs for recharging, credit-card processing fees take a significant bite out of providers’ profit margins. Companies are exploring more creative approaches to ensure profitability, such as aggregating payments from different tenants in an apartment garage. This business model may evolve over time.
More likely, poor packaging in the engine compartment and exhaust routing generated excess heat. When combined with a fluid leak, that would be enough to create a fire, said Jon Bereisa, CEO of consultancy Auto Lectrification.
Bereisa was chief engineer of General Motors’ EV1 and was the systems architect for the Chevrolet Volt, so he knows his way around these sorts of complex problems.
Bereisa has driven the Karma and has nosed around the car’s inner workings. When he saw the cramped engine compartment of his test car, he was immediately alarmed.
“That engine is shoehorned into that bay, because they had to use a larger engine, because it was too heavy a car. As a result, there’s no room for exhaust routing and heat shielding to route the heat away,” Bereisa said in an interview.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a division of the Interior Department, is considering loosening regulations on the killing of bald eagles, the national bird of the United States, to accommodate the development of wind energy sources.
A draft regulation first filed in April would allow businesses to apply for 30-year permits allowing them to kill bald eagles in the course of other legal activities. The length of those permits would be a six-fold increase over the five-year window allowed under current law.
The first deepwater drilling rig developed in China is scheduled to drill a well in a part of the sea known as 43/11 block this year at a water depth of 2,454 meters, making it the deepest well in the South China Sea.
The block is being explored by China National Offshore Oil Corp, BP Plc and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. It is on a short list of sites where CNOOC, the owner of the rig, is considering using semi-submersible deepwater rig this year to drill wells.
On Wednesday, the rig began drilling its first well in an area 320 km southeast of Hong Kong and at a water depth of 1,500 meters.
The 5.3-billion-yuan ($839.9 million) rig is to drill the well for 56 days before being towed to other drilling sites in the Baiyun Depression, which encompasses 20,000 square kilometers in the eastern part of the South China Sea, said Shi Hesheng, the chief geologist of CNOOC (CHINA) Ltd Shenzhen Branch.
The Baiyun Depression contains about 700 million metric tons of crude oil and 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas, Shi said.
The company said the progress of work at each of the proposed wells will largely determine how the drilling rig is used. In general, the equipment can drill about five to six wells a year, according to Zhou Shouwei, former deputy general manager of CNOOC.
Last week, a fire badly damaged the home of a new Fisker Karma owner, and authorities are saying that the electric car was the source of the blaze.
According to Fort Bend County, Texas, chief fire investigator Robert Baker, the Fisker Karma started the fire that spread to the house.
“Yes, the Karma was the origin of the fire, but what exactly caused that we don’t know at this time,” he said. The car was a complete loss.
According to Baker, the driver arrived home in the Fisker, pulled into the garage, and less than three minutes later the car was in flames. It reportedly was not plugged in at the time of the fire and the Karma’s battery remains intact.
Right before the fire, the owner reported a smell of burning rubber.
“The car was brand-new,” said Baker. “He still had paper tags on it, so it was 60 days old at [most].”
Fisker, however, isn’t buying the homeowner’s claim and is saying the battery was not to blame for the fire.
Jeremy Gutierrez, the homeowner, released the following statement on the fire through his attorney. As you can imagine, he’s not happy with Fisker or their investigative team:
Houston, Texas, May 9, 2012 – On the afternoon of May 2, 2012, Mr. Jeremy Gutierrez’s brand new Fisker Karma hybrid electric vehicle caught fire while parked in his garage, setting fire to his home while his wife, mother, and child were inside. Thanks to the fast action of Mr. Gutierrez, he was able to evacuate his family from the home moments before portions of the house were engulfed in flames, including his child’s bedroom.
The Fort Bend County Fire Department immediately responded to the scene and as able to contain and extinguish the fire before total destruction of the Gutierrez’s family home. The fire department recently completed their investigation and determined the origin of the fire was, in fact, Gutierrez’s newly purchased Fisker Karma hybrid electric vehicle that he just took possession of two weeks earlier. Chief Investigator for the Fort Bend County Fire Marshal’s Office Robert N. Baker has concluded that the fire was accidental in nature.
Since the date of this incident, Mr. Gutierrez has been fully cooperative with public safety officials, as well as insurance adjusters and the vehicle manufacturer’s investigators. In fact, Mr. Gutierrez fully accommodated the precise and somewhat peculiar demands of Fisker Automotive, who sent their self-proclaimed “SWAT Team” of engineers and inspectors (that included their own forensic cause and origin investigator) to the Gutierrez home within 24 hours of the fire. They descended upon the Gutierrez home in alarming numbers and immediately demanded a 24-hour lock-down of his home, including the remains of the Fisker Karma vehicle. They also cordoned off portions of the Gutierrez home with non-transparent tarps to block the view from the public. Fisker even had access to eyewitnesses, who were interviewed by Fisker investigators and those investigators were shown video footage of the Fisker vehicle on fire before and other part of the garage. Mr. Gutierrez accommodated every request with the hope of have a full, fair and open inquiry into the cause of the Fisker vehicle fire that set his house ablaze and endangered his family.
Despite the fact public safety and law enforcement officials have determined Mr. Gutierrez’s home and vehicles are not a crime scene, Fisker Automotive released a public statement on May 8, 2012 implying fraud or malicious intent were open questions. The family is stunned by this implication. The Gutierrez family has afforded every accommodation to Fisker and access to all evidence that public safety and law enforcement official examined. Fisker’s statement is a grave disappointment, especially in light of the damages the family suffered and continues to suffer.
The Gutierrez family has suffered enough. They are temporarily displaced from their home, and have lost three vehicles. They value their privacy and wish to have this investigation completed immediately so they can return to their home. The law firm of Johnson, Trent, West & Taylor, L.L.P., a Houston-based law firm, has and will continue to represent the Gutierrez family during this time. Please direct all inquires on the matter to our firm; do not contact Mr. or Mrs. Gutierrez directly. Attorneys for the family, Lori Hood or Rafe Taylor, can be reached at (713) 222-2323.
We’ll update when more information becomes available.
Our taxpayer-financed Alarmist-in-Chief writes in today’s New York Times:
Game Over for the Climate
If Canada exploits the oil in its tar sands, civilization will be at risk.
GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”
If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.
Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.
That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.
If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.
We’re doomed, I say! Doomed! And this…
President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.
Give him time. Maybe the president will “evolve” into the species Homo Hansenius before the planet is cooked?
But don’t worry, this is the best way for taxpayers to get their money back. Crain’s Detroit:
Detroit-based Ally Financial Inc., the auto lender majority-owned by taxpayers, has received U.S. Treasury Department approval to put its Residential Capital unit into bankruptcy as the government seeks to recover bailout funds.
Treasury will support directors at Ally and ResCap if they decide that filing for court protection from creditors is the best course for the mortgage unit, said an Obama administration official who asked for anonymity because the arrangements haven’t been made public. The approval is conditioned on a review of terms, the person said Monday.
“Treasury wants its money back,” Jody Lurie, a corporate credit analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia, said in a telephone interview. “This sign-off is an indication that Ally has a good enough plan to prove they can eventually pay back the government. The only feasible opportunity for them to get their money back is to split up or sell Ally.”
CEO Michael Carpenter is working to repay bailouts exceeding $17 billion that left the U.S. with a 74 percent stake in Ally. Officials concluded that addressing ResCap’s mortgage losses will put taxpayers in a better position, the person said Monday. President Barack Obama vowed in 2009 to recover “every last dime” of bailout money.
Carpenter, who once predicted that a pending initial public offering could value Ally at $30 billion, later said the sale won’t happen until progress is made to resolve the mortgage unit.
Ally, formerly known as GMAC Financial Services, confirmed last month that ResCap is considering bankruptcy and said Ally’s loss tied to the action could be $400 million to $1.25 billion.
In battleground Michigan, the Obama campaign and its media cronies are ever-eager to exploit the auto bailout. The latest? A fact-challenged Associated Press report claims that “Mitt Romney (has) re-ignited the bailout debate by suggesting he deserves ‘a lot of credit’ for the recent successes of the nation’s largest car companies. That claim comes in spite of his stance that Detroit should have been allowed to go bankrupt.”
The news here is that Romney has suddenly taken to using the Obama Personal Pronoun “I” to suggest that he deserves credit for the sun coming up in the morning. Shame on him.
“I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet,” Romney said in an interview with a Cleveland TV station on Monday. “So, I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back.”
The difference between Romney and Obama is that Obama took GM and Chrysler into a Chapter 363 bankruptcy to protect the United Auto Workers with a massive infusion of taxpayer cash. Romney would have preferred that GM and Chrysler to go into managed Chapter 11 bankruptcy with so-called debtor-in-possession financing – from the government if necessary, given the tight financial markets at the time.
“Romney opposed taxpayer help,” writes AP reporter Steven Peoples. Wrong.
“The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk,” wrote Romney in the very same 2008 New York Times op-ed that the Obama Administration and its AP mouthpiece caricature as a call for Detroit to die.
What’s more, in numerous queries by this reporter, Romney has consistently hewed to a flexible line, saying that the federal government would have done what was necessary to keep GM and Chrysler – and its suppliers – alive while they worked through bankruptcy.
In an interview withThe Detroit News editorial board in February, Romney said: “I would never have allowed the auto industry to disappear.” The GOP frontrunner continued to reference that line in the interview, adding that – at a time when capital markets were frozen – “if government financing was needed, fine. In a managed bankruptcy process, government could have provided guarantees, financing, and DIP financing.”
Romney opposed taxpayer help? AP is ignoring the facts. Romney’s nuanced position has made him no friends on the libertarian Right where conservatives have taken a more Darwinian line. Fair enough. But because Romney’s views do not conform with Obama’s leftist, bondholder-busting, UAW bailout, the Obamedia are distorting his views. This caricature is absurd given what we know of Romney’s moderate political background.
This may be a good politics to win Obama Michigan and Ohio. But it’s lousy journalism.
