It raised a quicke $240 million when the State was faced with a $15 Billion dollar shortfall. That $240 million helped save the CARB budget.

There are other government incentives for carpool that could be used to combat:

- Global Warming
- Air Pollution
- Traffic Congestion
- Us Competitiveness in the Global Economy.
- High Energy Costs
- Shortage of Remaining Oil (44 years…thats all folks)
- Oil over War

I have also said nothing to suggest a “loathing of government.” I’ve said several times that I’m not a libertarian, and that I thought Government had a role–just not selecting the technology.

California offered two permit choices. The alt fuels variant applied to all alternative fuel vehicles, not just hybrids,and included two threshhold requirements: an EPA highway rating of over 45 mpg AND a low emissions rating (ULEV, SULEV or PZEV.) There was also another permit for non-alt fuels vehicles that could meet both SULEV and ILEV. (Here’s your serving of alphabet soup for the day:
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/vr/decal.htm)

The state’s primary goals are to lower emissions and to encourage alt fuel vehicles. Much of this is motivated by the fact that California produces an abundance of smog, and that LA is one of the most polluted cities in the countries.

I see no sinister plot here, and I see no reason why government needs to avoid this. Our laws and tax codes are chock-a-block full of incentives and taxes meant to encourage some behaviors, while discouraging others. In the scheme of things, this is one of the cheaper and simpler programs that has been devised for quite some times.

It’s time to move away from political ideology as if a visceral loathing of government is, by itself, a rebuttal to whatever merits this program may have. The fact that people are talking about it and that alternative vehicles are being discussed in the mainstream is clear cut proof that it is working.

Technology initiatives fail if they fail to generate buzz, and this simple California law creates a whole lot of buzz at virtually no cost. As noted, I won’t be buying a hybrid for some time, but I have little doubt that in time, every car will be equipped with a hybrid system, all of which will be much improved over today’s systems thanks to the R&D benefit gained from the sales made to today’s consumers, who generally aren’t buying them purely for economic reasons.

That’s what this does, only better. It effectively sets a Passenger-mile per gallon limit, and if that number happens to be 40PMPGs then it is perfectly rational to exclude the Fit but allow single-occupant hybrids.

So you get the same result using a different yardstick (though dual-occupant egomobiles wouldn’t clear that bar). All in all it’s rather ingenious and clearly not worth crying over, unless you just have a thing against hybrids, which as it turns out is what this author spends most of his space decrying.

As for NP, first of all, the various govt programs–incentives, R&D– are piddling compared to what the nuclear industry has gotten. We’re talking at least an order of magnitude difference. This is one of the reasons I think gov’t should stay out of this sort of stuff. The Iraq war is another example. Promoting corn-based ethanol is another disaster, because it’s not clear you get more energy in ethanol out than the fossil fuel you put in, and because industrial agriculture is environmentally very destructive, and because having fuel compete with food raises the price of both. I would rather the gov get completely out of promoting energy sources than continue on the current course.

But as for NP vs wind, I’m talking absolute (not %age) growth in the WORLD. In other words, in the world, for every additional MW of nuclear capacity, there are four additional MW of wind capacity.

And finally, re the greenhouse effect, no, there aren’t movements to raise fuel taxes or carbon taxes yet, but the public perception of the issue is so drastically different from a year ago that I’d bet that there will be within the next five years or so.

Let’s not resort to the baby-with-the-bathwater types of arguments. The California law doesn’t allow for inefficient hybrids to receive the incentive. If you don’t like the specifics of one proposed program, it does not follow that all programs should be eliminated.

You’re not paying attention to how worried people are finally getting about the greenhouse effect.

I see no movement underway to increase fuel taxes, and inefficient vehicles still hold considerable market share in the US. When people put their money where their mouths are, I’ll start listening. Until then, I assume that they’ll follow tradition, i.e. go ballistic whenever anyone raises the possibility of increasing their taxes.

Remember what I said before, that wind is growing four times as fast as NP in the world today? That’s without much subsidy.

When you begin with a small denominator, the resulting percentage appears high. But in any case, both the federal and numerous state governments provide tax credit incentives for renewable energy development, including wind. The industry is lobbying for extensions of this tax credit.

In other words, government is doing the very thing you oppose to prop up the development of your favored course of action. Should I assume that you’ll be writing your congressman to eliminate the renewal energy tax credit that provides the equity to build wind projects that would otherwise never be built without them? (Without the tax credits, wind farms don’t generally make much economic sense.)

You’re grossly overstating what is happening here. The state provided a one-time incentive to a limited pool of drivers to motivate them to experiment with a low-emissions vehicle. Nobody in California told anyone that they couldn’t utilize other technologies if they so choose. It’s ultimately much ado about nothing.

I’m not grossly overstating anything. These kinds of hybrid incentives are being considered all over the country. And in MA, for example, unlike CA, such incentives would apply even to gas guzzling hybrid trucks. If it were just this one incentive in Calif, I woiuldn’t worry about it. But in your insistence that I’m overstating, I can’t help thinking you’re finally agreeing its a problem.

As for added fuel taxes, carbon taxes, etc., those have about zero chance of ever being imposed in the US. The US is far too opposed to any form of added fuel tax to ever allow that to fly. People are already paying over $3 per gallon, and the last thing that the electorate will accept is higher fuel prices imposed by the government. The power to hand out stickers is one thing, the power to tax is quite another…

You’re not paying attention to how worried people are finally getting about the greenhouse effect. When people like one of the Alaska senators (I forget which one, but this happened earlier this year) start worrying about it publicly, a total about face for this former denyer, fuel and carbon taxes are moving intot he realm of the possible, or even the probable.

As for nuclear power, despite huge gov’t subsidies, in the US it only represents about 15% of electricity, give or take a bit, and electricity is only around the same % of total energy use. Had the money that went into nuclear gone into renewables, they would be MUCH further along. They didn’t put much of anything into renewables. Besides huge R&D subsidies, the nuclear industry has a huge insurance subsidy. Ever hear of the Price Anderson Act? If a nuclear power plant accident were to render your house inhabitable, you’d have no recourse.

jRemember what I said before, that wind is growing four times as fast as NP in the world today? That’s without much subsidy. It’s a far less complex, less expensive technology.

I’m no fan of nukes, but somehow the French (who aren’t exactly known for their lack of governmental involvement) managed to create a situation in which most of the country’s power is derived from nuclear plants. Meanwhile, in the US, where much of this is handled by the private sector, the whole thing has been a dud.

If anything, nuclear power is a good example of something that could be better executed if the government gets involved and leads the way. By allowing the automakers and oil companies to become the de facto managers of the US’ energy policy, the result is exactly what you’d expect a private sector driven by short-term profits to deliver: congested multilane roads that are getting slower by the year.

It’s a myth to believe that the private sector is a cure-all of all of mankind’s ills, when many of today’s problems are due to a lack of planning and excessive reliance on the private sector to fix problems that the private sector was never meant to fix.

Why should the gov decide the policy and not the technology?

You’re grossly overstating what is happening here. The state provided a one-time incentive to a limited pool of drivers to motivate them to experiment with a low-emissions vehicle. Nobody in California told anyone that they couldn’t utilize other technologies if they so choose. It’s ultimately much ado about nothing.

As for added fuel taxes, carbon taxes, etc., those have about zero chance of ever being imposed in the US. The US is far too opposed to any form of added fuel tax to ever allow that to fly. People are already paying over $3 per gallon, and the last thing that the electorate will accept is higher fuel prices imposed by the government. The power to hand out stickers is one thing, the power to tax is quite another…

I have no objection to their setting performance goals and leaving it to the engineers/market to figure out which will work the best to meet the goals, because they don’t have the info to make those predictions. Even the engineers can’t predict that sort of thing, but when you have a lot of people working on different approaches, eventually one wins. As for your 90 mpg prius, that would be a huge step forward but I’ll believe it when I see it. If it’s going to be that good though, I don’t think it needs gov’t help. And if it’s not, let it duke it out with other technologies.

And by the way, you were talking about a rich man’s toy re highways, not roads, and now, you’re saying roads. Well, as for the roads, it was the bicycling community that first lobbied heavily to get decent roads.

As someone stated, the current law in CA does not necessarily single out hybrid technology, it specifies an emissions requirement (SULEV and ILEV). Certain hybrids (not all of them) just happen to be the only vehicles that qualify under those rules. So in essence, they’re doing exactly what’s being suggested, but with emissions rather than mileage.

You’ve provided no sound reason why the government should be technology agnostic, you simply restate the position as if its reasonableness is self-evident. But ultimately, this position of yours is an ideological one — you just don’t happen to like government taking a position on such things — rather than qualitative.

I see no reason why the state of California shouldn’t create an incentive for hybrids if it chooses to, and there are logical reasons to hold such a position. California has longstanding goals to improve fuel economy and reduce emissions, and hybrids appear not only to do both (which is logical, given that a hybrid’s primary operating principal is that the internal combustion motor is used less than it otherwise would), but have much more potential for upside.

The next Prius is supposed to get more than 90 mpg, something no diesel could ever hope to accomplish. Unlike hydrogen fuel cells, the hybrid technology is with us today, which allows us to get a more immediate solution on the road while allowing the marketplace to provide plenty of testing data that can be used to improve the breed. Unlike standard IC motors, the gains appear to be revolutionary (50% increases in one generation), not snails-pace evolutionary (less than 2% per year.) Unlike pure electrics, the issues of range and refueling are irrelevant.

Between the market awareness created by them and the benefit to R&D created by putting more test mules on the road, there is absolutely no good reason why the state should sit on its hands and pray that the “free market” (whatever that means — the economy and government are co-dependent and related, not wholly independent) fixes it, when a few stickers can broaden consumer awareness and encourage more end users to experiment with the technology.

By the way, rather than being rich men’s toys until there were highways, affordable cars go all the way back to the Model T, and Henry Ford’s revolutionary idea that he could sell more cars if his workers could afford to buy them.

Henry Ford would never have been able to sell that many cars and automaking would have never become such a substantial business if no one bothered building roads to drive on. Ford needed volume sales, volume required demand, and demand required cheap roads and cheap fuel. Like it or not, it’s the extensive degree of government involvement that made a mass-market auto industry possible. Not many would bother making driving such a substantial part of their lifestyles if there were no roads to drive on…

I never said I was against gov’t intervention. I am absolutely not a libertarian. What I am against is gov’t trying to pick technologies, rather than supporting whatever the goal of the technology is. It is entirely appropriate for the gov’t to mandate safety standards and gas mileage standards, and/or taxes that wouild encourage people to buy fuel efficient cars, and/or to have incentives. What I object to is the gov’t specifying a particular technology to meet the goal. But gov’t has made some terrible errors about specific technologies. Like nuclear power. And promoting cheap oil.

As for hybrids, I have nothing against them. They may well prove to be the best way to reduce automotive GH emissions consumption for the next 20-30 years. But then again they may not. (You obviously haven’t read about the MIT technology for improving ICE efficiency, which also may or may not prove a winner, but which is probably just one interesting alternative out there.)

I don’t see what’s wrong with promoting gas mileage rather than a technology on the CA HOV lanes (assuming you thikn it’s a good idea to give that kind of advantage on a HOV lane). Can you explain to me why CA should specify a specific technology rather than a level of fuel efficiency?

By the way, I don’t know what you’re trying to prove by insisting that there were highways all over in the ’50s. I can remember, for example, crossing connecticut largely on a four lane divided road with traffic lights just about every mile for part of the way. And various dinky two lane non-divided roads for other parts of the trip. There was at that point no big program to create highways, and prior to the NJtpk, it could take 5-6 hrs to go from one end of the state to the other, compared to about two hours today. ANd even in the west, where you would often have one road going a few hundred miles because there just wasn’t much out there, when you did reach a town, you went right through the main street.

By the way, rather than being rich men’s toys until there were highways, affordable cars go all the way back to the Model T, and Henry Ford’s revolutionary idea that he could sell more cars if his workers could afford to buy them.

This actually proves my point. The combination of low-cost fuel and cheap and free highways (whether Interstate or otherwise) create an incentive to drive. That’s an obvious example of government intervention, which serves as the foundation of my point — you don’t really object to government intervention, just so long as it supports your favored activities. But because hybrids rub you the wrong way, you resort the anti-government shtick, as if ideological arguments are a substitute for an objective consideration of the topic at hand.

As for the incremental nature of ICE improvements, these were done without a lot of incentive.

Without government involvement, we got virtually zero improvement. Again, you’ve actually offered an argument in favor of government intervention — left to its own accord, the free market won’t do much of anything about it.

Gains of less than 2% per year are wholly unimpressive, and in light of the political outcomes seen today, were clearly inadequate.

The next generation Toyota hybrid system is allegedly going to deliver performance that is a good 25 mpg / 50% better than an equivalent turbodiesel, while delivering lower emissions. If a few stickers from the state of California help to create consumer awareness of the benefits, I can’t see a single good reason why to oppose laying the groundwork for more of that.

Nonsense. My parents, who were not exactly rolling in dough when they started out, got their first (used) Studebaker in ‘48, about six years before the interstate program got started, and about four years before the NJtpk was built. They drove it from Boston to DC (about 450 miles today on the interstates) for their first jobs after college. And they commuted from what is now the middle of Silver Spring to downtown DC (probably about 10 miles each way) every day. My father drove the car from Boston to Seattle via Denver in ‘52, when he got his first university job (my mother and older brother flew). My first memories, probably from 1954, are in Studebaker #2. Maybe you’re young, but I assure you there were plenty of cars back then.

Actually, your allusion to the highway program is quite irrelevant to what I was saying (although you certainly are correct about the subsidy inherent in the highway program, which is pernicious in many ways). I’m saying that in pursuing goes such as automotive efficiency, the gov’t should make sure its incentives are technology-neutral. I don’t care how promising hybrid technology may seem. If it’s that good, it will survive in the market, but you as a non-expert are not in a position to make an educated guess (and neither am I).

As for the incremental nature of ICE improvements, these were done without a lot of incentive. Stiff carbon taxes or gas taxes (either of which would be technology neutral) would unleash a lot of creativity. There is a lot of interesting and potentially far more than incfremental work going on in ICEs. (Look up the most recent auto issue of the Boston Globe Magazine for a good example).

That’s actually far from the truth. Government policies and programs facilitate what the engineers are hired to do in the first place.

Here’s a nice example of “artificial incentives” — the highway network If the government hadn’t built highways, the automobile would have been nothing more than a rich man’s toy, because there would have been nowhere to drive them. Creating the highway infrastructure made the market possible, and gave the engineers a marketplace to sell to.

If we’re going to be honest with ourselves here, we should accept that the highway program provides a nice fat subsidy for the automakers, trucking industry and a whole host of other businesses. It’s just libertarian ideology to ascribe everything that the government does as “artificial,” when what it does is both quite real and can have an enormous impact, whether good or bad, on the lives of its citizens.

Since then (1970) the efficiency of ICE has about doubled.

I would dispute the amount. But even if you are correct, a doubling of efficiency over a period of 37 years would equate to an compounded rate of less than 2% per year. Improvement that small, by any measure, is “incremental” at best.

If Toyota’s announcements to be believed, the hybrids will be delivering far more than that, in both relative and absolute terms.

You are so missing the point. The engineers come up with their best shots, and the market decides which of those best shots are really the best. Provided the politicians don’t interfere with artificial incentives. As for what you said about ICE having been around for 100 odd years and improvements are likely only to be incremental, someone could have said the same thing in, say, 1970. Since then the efficiency of ICE has about doubled. It’s just that the efficiency has been applied largely to improve power rather than fuel efficiency.

If so, well, I’d still like to see a larger statistical sample (from both you and the DOT).

And I would really like to know what Toyota makes of this. I was taken aback by their silence.

They did not wish to deny or refute the DOT’s findings.

Yes, I understand that. I don’t know why Toyota didn’t want to go on record, but it matters little, because I can deny and refute it from the personal experience of myself and many others who frequent the various Prius forums.

One thing I had forgotten to mention was that I did see a slight dropoff of fuel economy (about 2 MPG) when I replaced my original Goodyears with Michelin Hydroedge tires. But that was a smart decision, because I live in a state that sees heavy rains.

It still goes back to my personal experience, with one car. Low gas mileage (in my personal experience with my car) is most often due to one or more tires with low pressure.

Restoring the pressure restores the gas mileage. This is cause-and-effect, and cannot be attributed to a battery losing its effectiveness if my mileage is restored EVERY TIME I pump up the tires.

And the second most common reason (again, in my own personal experience, with my own personal car) is my heavy right foot. Sometimes I could swear I’m wearing one of Iron Man’s boots!

Again, it’s cause-and-effect. Lightening up on the pedal always restors gas mileage, unless the tires are also in a low-pressure condition.

Even though it is my own personal experience here, I believe it’s safe to say that fuel economy in the Prius does NOT decline after 10,000 or 15,000 miles.

So yes, I’m calling this “report” a myth.

Internal combustion technology, both gas and diesel, have been with us for over a century. There’s no reason to believe that there is any radical transformation on the horizon in conventional gas or diesel motors, and it’s completely reasonable to expect future changes to be generally evolutionary at best.

Hybrid technology makes sense because it works on a negative principal — it allows the internal combustion engine to do less work, and therefore burn less fuel. The premise accepts the inherent constraints of internal combustion while also harnessing its primary advantages over electric motors: (a) the distribution network for the fuel is already in place and (b) the refueling process is a matter of minutes, rather than hours. These factors effectively give internal combustion motors near-unlimited range, which is something that can’t be said or expected of pure electrics. (If the engineers can figure out how to recharge a car in a matter of a few minutes, this might change. But being that they can’t even do this with my cordless phone, I can’t see how they’ll ever accomplish this with a car…)

I see no reason why diesel engineers, whom nobody elected, are in a better position to facilitate this than some officials whom I did elect and who are simply temporarily allocating a bit of unused carpool lane capacity to further a goal that, in the final analysis, is worth attaining. We didn’t wait for the free market to create the Manhattan Project, and in the final analysis, there’s no reason to believe that we should have.

Is that an expert’s assessment? I don’t know about diesels, but there is a very exciting new concept coming out of MIT which could boost petrol engine efficiency by something like 25%. Who’dathunkit? I’m absolutely NOT a libertarian, but I don’t want people in government determining which technology we’re going to use. They can specify mpg goals, or mandate carbon taxes to spur sales of high mpg cars, but which technology wins needs to be up to the combo of the market and the engineers.

Building highways instead of mass transit and creating an oil-based economy are also forms of government involvement.

I think that we need to wake up from our libertarian fantasies and come to the realization that everything that the government does and doesn’t do is a form of social engineering.

When The Gov’mint decides to plow an eight-lane behemoth through a neighborhood, constructing a concrete vehicular canal that produces smog and noise in a given locale, and maintaining a foreign policy doctrine that is centered on preserving access to the lifeblood of that system (read: oil), those are just as much forms of government involvement as are building a mass transit line or constructing a green belt. In each instance, the state is using its powers and cash to either affect some sort of change or to defend the status quo. The realistic question becomes not whether government should be involved — it will be by default — but what involvement should it have, and how its conduct will be managed.

California’s HOV hybrid concept makes perfect sense, assuming that you believe in the veracity of the underlying technology. The idea here is to create a critical mass of demand that will eventuall spur the use of this technology into the mainstream. It’s a temporary limited incentive that can used to further that objective.

Which is fair enough. As I am the classic late adopter, you won’t find a hybrid in my driveway for quite some time, but I applaud the early adaptors and innovators who are serving as the test mules of the technology today so that it can be refined and improved for tomorrow.

Hybrids offer far more upside potential than do diesels, and the oil burners need to accept that diesel has rather limited potential for improvement. Unlike hybrids, which promise considerable upside as systems and batteries are improved, diesel is a mature technology that cannot be expected to offer anything more than incremental improvements going forward. Betting big on that horse is doomed to result in losing the race, and given my fondness for winning, I’m inclined in this race to favor the upstart.