Forums: Electric Cars

Marc Korchin thought he had found his mission in life: to benefit the environment and save his fellow Bay Area residents money by selling zero-emission all-electric cars. Two years later, after burning through his life savings, he was forced to close his Berkeley dealership. And Korchin is not alone. The Bay Area's independent electric car dealerships are in perilous shape, even as electric cars are being hailed as the next big thing by major auto manufacturers. A number of dealerships, including Zap of Concord, Davis Electric Cars in Davis and EcoMotors in Santa Rosa, appear to have closed within the...

Are you paying for renewable energy, or just a bunch of hot air? snip . . . Consumers need to understand that the electricity "is not going from the windmill on the ridge to your toaster," says Pacific Power spokesman Tom Gauntt. Michael Gillenwater, a Princeton researcher who codeveloped the EPA's carbon emissions tracking system, says it's more like donating to a cause. "What you are doing is subsidizing the market for renewable energy."

Just how electric vehicles will change the world is an evolving debate, but one new analysis says that EVs and connected industries could be a $300 billion business by 2020 and create over a million jobs globally along the way. In the U.S., somewhere between 125,000 and 300,00 jobs could be created, with the higher number only being reached if the U.S. adopts more "concerted and aggressive efforts" to promote EVs. These predictions come from global management consulting firm PRTM and are based on widespread adoption of the recently-released Electrification Roadmap that ambitiously foresees BEVs and PHEVs making up a...

Dorgan, who chairs the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, announced a $457,000 federal Energy Department grant to study the feasibility of a new oil refinery in North Dakota. What I’ve never understood is why the Rural Electric Co-Op is getting an earmark to study an oil refinery. And on top of that, why are we spending almost a half a million of our grandchildren’s as-yet-unearned tax dollars on studying the feasibility of an oil refinery in the state ? Plus, we already have one refinery in the state and there’s another one in the works... Other than the fact...

Paradigm smasher This guy is going to ruin everything for the global warming/carbon tax crowd. Non-polluting cars that are high performance and fun? Tell me it ain't so Big Al (Gore). How are we supposed to wallow in "inconvenient truths" if trouble-makers like this mess things up by smoking the car companies with superior home brew engineering? Remember, the personal computer was the creation of a bunch of unfunded individuals, not the military-industrial complex.