[This is a post on the status of the newswires that I find, and my opinions
thrown in based on my long history of following the newswires]
Lately, new newswire items come in starting at the end of Tuesday, and
dwindle away by Friday. Oh, there are the odd/few copy-cat/duplicates that
come in-between, but they say basically the same thing as the original news
items.
You have to understand a bit of how the media is-being-played/works,
especially with U.S. media outlets. You submit your copy, the media writes
something, and out it goes. So, what we (the public) are seeing is really
what the automakers want us to see.
So, why did automakers continue to have newswire pieces produced if they
have all but slowed to a crawl/stopped producing EVs? Its like they are
going through the motions to look good to the state's they want to sell ice
to.
Automakers really only care about achieving their mandate quota in their
more profitable regions: California, and Oregon (though really the majority
of the EV market is all of the west coast). If you think about it from their
'I do not want to make EVs' view, what they are doing (only selling/leasing
to the mandate quota, and then throttling back on their efforts), makes some
business sense. But that method sucks/bites for the consumer.
So what we (the public) do about? Continue to get on the waiting lists, and
also tell our state's Air Resources Board (ARB) that you are on a waiting
list. You see the automakers are catering their actions to ARB's. They need
their blessing to sell ice in those states. The ARB's need to know what the
public is going through, as well as their opinions.
Meanwhile, from what I can see (from sieving through all these newswires on
a continuous daily basis), is a slowing trend. We have the aforementioned
gap over the weekend, and what is pumped out during the week is 'easy copy'
(the same old thing).
We have not seen any new Production EVs. other than the extremely long
announcement period and then debut of the BMW i3 which Europe will have to
wait to get, and the U.S. & Canada have an even longer wait for ...
? What was all that i3 hoopla about anyway ?
A $40k EV that has a third more range than a Leaf, but has no real L3
charging (there are nil public Combo EVSE installed as of yet). BMW is
missing the opportunity to sell this EV on the west coast where there is the
aforementioned EV availability drought.
If they wait too long, GM's Spark EV will take up the slack. Or is that
another reason why automakers are throttling back? (leaving it wide open
for GM).
Newswire posting status: So, I limit to only posting two newswires each day
to the evdl members, but as it states in the trailer of those two, the other
items will be available on the evdl nabble archive to read. This method
satisfies those that do not want all my newswires in their intrays, and it
also makes them available to read (its a compromise).
Since it is slow on the weekends, that allows me to catch up, and post the
other items I am also making an effort to use the most current and or
interesting items as the ones that I post to the evdl members (on brucedp5),
and trying to keep the other items posted from getting too old/stale).
I prefer to post DIY and conversion items on the weekends to offset the
Production EV newswires on the weekdays (it is a compromise I hope balances
out what is being made available to read). But available DIY and conversion
news items have also slowed down too.
There are still the odd pih or fcv item that sneaks in my searches because
the media is still calling anything non-ice an Electric Vehicle or Car. The
media if going to have to stop resisting change and get with the program of
change in the public's transportation options. This includes cng as I am
seeing more of them as well. I predict in the future we will see more
combination energy sources in vehicles as well (a bi-fuel plugin hybrid. Oh,
what a headache for the media ... ).
But do know, that some media outlets that produce original news items, wait
until their subscriber have read them, before releasing them to the
newswires. This causes a delay before you could see them. That also means, I
have to be diligent in the extra effort to go back far enough in time on my
searches to find these. Some of these give a good insight into the going
pains of the incorporation of plugins into our society. That is something
that is also important, besides what new shiny hardware is now available.
Within the last two weeks, iMiev and Fiat 500e newsitems have slowed to a
trickle. I still post those Production EV newswires even though for many on
the west coast, those EVs are not available. I do this because of the
read-hits I am seeing on the archive.(its an indicator that some people
still want to read them). But the situation has changed from promoting EVs,
to posing newswires on EVs that many can not get (rather frustrating, eh?).
I will end this with a 'Thank You' to all of those that shoot me a heads-up
email of an item they have found. If I haven't really seen it, I like to add
a hat-tip-to or ht2 <user handle/initials> to give them a little
acknowledgement (this is more for them, for their efforts, as I also try to
keep it on the down-low encase they wanted anonymity).
{brucedp.150m.com}
...
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/go+through+the+motions
go through the motions
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