> From: "EVDL Administrator" <[email protected]> > > On 5 Apr 2014 at 16:46, Jan Steinman wrote: > >> until I see incentives for >> conversions, or other ways of retiring the existing petro-car fleet, I can >> only feel bittersweet over such developments. > > Much as I hate to say it, I don't think incentives for conversions will have > much effect, either. There are very few of us who think that way. They > think in terms of "trade it in on something else."
When incentives are offered, magic happens. During the Carter years, incentives for solar hot water heating covered 90% of the cost. Overnight, a network of installers appeared, and tens of thousands of people put in solar hot water heating. Yea, there were some charlatans, but it did inspire an entire small industry to develop. Then it was "Morning in America," and Reagan did away with all renewables incentives. Surprise! All those solar water heater installers went back to plumbing or carpentry or whatever they had been doing. The same could happen for electric car conversions. Have an incentive to get bad petro-engines out of circulation. For example, if your vehicle fails air emissions tests (as required in most major cities), pay up to 90% of the cost of electric conversion. Overnight, you'd see mechanics who would be performing emissions tune-ups changing their signs and offering EV conversions. Standardized kits would develop, and prices would come down. Of course, this may annoy free-market types. To them, I say let's remove the heavy fossil sunlight subsidies. Then, there might actually be money available for an "electrons for clunkers" program. I don't have a lot of faith in the "conformance EVs" being produced. They're designed just for staying in the California car market. With sub-1,000 production, they're never going to have any traction in the market. Nor are "serious" EVs (like the Tesla) that cost well beyond the normal car budget. Target people who *need* a new vehicle with a reasonably-priced EV conversion, and things just might take off, no? :::: According to farm scientists at Cornell University, cultivating one hectare of maize in the United States requires 40 litres of petrol and 75 litres of diesel. The amazing productivity of modern farm labour has been purchased at the cost of a dependency on oil. Unless farmers can change the way it's grown, a permanent oil shock would price food out of the mouths of many of the world's people. Any responsible government would be asking urgent questions about how long we have got. -- George Monbiot :::: Jan Steinman, EcoReality Co-op :::: _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
