Jalopnik 
Enter your username and password.
Detroit, 2:01 AM
Wed Nov 11
30 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
tips@jalopnik.com
Editor-in-Chief:
Ray Wert | Email | AIM
Road Test Editor:
Wes Siler | Email
Weekend Editor:
Murilee Martin | Email
Associate Editor - Houston:
Matt Hardigree
Associate Editor - Detroit:
Ben Wojdyla
Editor-at-Large:
Mike Spinelli
Contributors:
Mark Arnold
John Krewson | Email
Andy Didorosi
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
02/03/09
God they are so freaking brain dead.
Who is running that company? Squirrels?
02/03/09
02/03/09
02/03/09
1. Smart meters in your house. Shows you the current price of electricity. Utilities jack up the price of your electricity when demand is high, and you subsequently turn down the AC/turn off the electric car. Self policing through economics.
2. Ever go to Europe? In my house in Italy, you a fixed wattage, something like 5000W, period. Above that, and your government-installed breaker trips.
3. Buy an electric car, get a free block heater timer. Set it to turn on at midnight.
02/03/09
4. At times of high demand the power company can tap electricity in plug-in car batteries instead of firing up a dirty "peaker" plant. Then customers get to jack up the price to the utility! You could be your own energy trader à la Enron.
(I considered time-of-day pricing for the Net Energy Metering I got with my solar panels, but I don't have a lot of excess generation to sell back to the power company on hot afternoons so it wasn't worth it.)
02/04/09
02/03/09
Hmmm...
Does your house have electricity? Check.
Does it have power outlets? Check.
Looks like you're 'Plug-in Ready'.
Want faster charge times with a 220V outlet? Do you have an outlet for your dryer? Check.
These "challenges" are largely fictional.
If we have the capacity to run an A/C unit in every home during the day, then we have the capacity to recharge an electric car in every home at night.
And if peak loads get to be too much, the solutions are simple:
-get people to turn off the A/C
-get people to ditch the incandescent bulbs
-build another power plant
-Give people incentives to put solar panels on their Roofs and/or windmills in their back yards
-get people to convert to gas stoves and dryers
-get more people to dry their clothes using clothes lines instead of always using dryers... just like our parents used to.
02/03/09
02/03/09
and now it is on the passenger side? Driver side seems odd place for charging on the streetside.
02/03/09
02/03/09
02/03/09
Perhaps GM isn't as inept as we thought they were
02/03/09
02/03/09
02/03/09
Seems like what happened was that many businesses touted LCD monitors over CRTs as a way to save on power. LCDs have a nearly absolute advantage over CRT monitors in efficiency.
However, with TVs, it's just about equal on a square-inch basis. But since most people are buying larger LCDs than their old CRTs, it's a net increase in power consumption for most households.
And plasmas use the most power of all three.
02/03/09
02/03/09
02/03/09
Don't take us down with you when the Green Gestapo come to take you away.
02/03/09
02/03/09
Sort of like the study that says a H2 has less enviromental impact than the Prius over their lifetimes.
02/03/09
The brightest people who have addressed this basically say "it depends on how far you live from the power plant, as well as the method of that plant's production."
So it'd be ironically hilarious to make some rural Colorado hippie cry because he's 100 miles from a coal-burning plant, therefore his car has a higher carbon footprint than an urban gas-guzzler near a hydro plant. He'd probably lock himself inside his geodesic dome for a week.
02/03/09
[www.pacinst.org]
[www.thecarconnection.com]
[www.mailonsunday.co.uk]
And as far as pollution output, there are some studies out saying coal fired plants are some percentage better (can't recall) even taking into account the transmission losses due to a centralized and much more effective scrubbing system.
02/03/09
02/03/09
02/03/09
02/03/09
02/03/09
02/03/09
hy·poc·ri·sy (hĭ-pŏk'rĭ-sē) n.
1.The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
2.An act or instance of such falseness.
and using the arguement that "honda makes some cars here" doesn't make up for the fact that 80% of automobile parts made in the united states go to domestic automobile production, and the money you give by purchasing an american car goes to a country who's best intrests lie in the United States... buy local, buy american, that includes your car.
02/03/09