This is what it might take to get everyone to stop driving gas cars
Rebates and tax credits might need a tweak to incentivize consumers to fully switch to electric vehicles – here’s what a new study found.
Electrek spoke with Brad Greenwood, professor of information systems and operations management at George Mason University’s School of Business, about his recent research, which found that EV subsidies rolled out in China – similar to the US’s new $7,500 EV tax credit – incentivized people to buy EVs as second vehicles, but they kept buying and driving gas cars as well.
Here’s what Dr. Greenwood found in his research about what subsidies need to do in order to get gas vehicles off the streets – and for drivers to switch to fully electric.
Electrek: You recently conducted a study on EV subsidies as incentives for people to switch from gas to electric. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Brad Greenwood: The goal of the paper was to examine how EV subsidies affect both EV markets and traditional vehicle markets. There’s a lot of evidence that financial subsidies can stimulate EV purchasing, but we don’t know how they influence the purchase of gas cars. To the extent that the stated goal is the cannibalization of the treated market, it’s important to examine this question.
Electrek: Did the incentives work, and how, exactly?
Brad Greenwood: Well, it depends. Like a lot of other studies, we see that EV sales rise sharply when financial subsidies are offered. This, of course, makes sense, because you’re essentially lowering the price.
The concern is that the market – that is, both EVs and gas cars – expands overall, and there’s no observed decrease in traditional vehicle purchasing. Instead, it looks like consumers are either buying an additional vehicle, or buying a vehicle when they otherwise would have relied on alternate transportation options.
Electrek: Is there a way for incentives to be more effective to get people to fully switch from gas to electric cars?
Brad Greenwood: What’s pretty striking is that we see that the impact of the subsidy is strongest in cities with really poor air quality. But consumers don’t react heterogeneously in cities with higher fuel prices. That’s surprising, because consumers are reacting to a monetary incentive – the subsidy – but they don’t react more when prices for operating a traditional vehicle are higher – that is, when there’s a real financial advantage to having the EV.
Electrek: What do you think would make subsidies more effective?
Brad Greenwood: That’s a matter of speculation. What appears to be critical, though, is mandating abandonment of a gas car when purchasing the EV – that is, the gas car needs to be traded in, at least in the emerging stage of the market. We’re obviously going to need a lot more research to substantiate the factors that increase or decrease the efficacy of subsidies, but that’s the direction we’re pointed in now.
Brad Greenwood is a professor of information systems and operations management at George Mason University’s School of Business with expertise regarding the consequences of innovation and the intersection of modernization, business, technology, and social issues.
Read more: This is where electric vehicle adoption is headed between 2022 and 2025
Photo: Tesla
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The storm hit. The power’s out. With all the damage around you, it looks like you might be without power for a few days (at least). But you planned for this. You have a home backup battery. What happens now?
If you’re considering a home backup battery, or you already have one and haven’t needed it yet, you might be wondering what you’re supposed to do when the inevitable happens. The good news is: you probably won’t have to do much at all.
Whether you’ve got an industry standard like the Tesla Powerwall, one of the new GM Energy Storage Bundles, or any of the other excellent home battery systems on the market, from your point of view they’ll function in pretty much the same way.
Step 1: do nothing
Modern home batteries are paired with an automatic transfer switch. That’s a switch, usually installed near your home’s electrical panel, that allows you to go from grid power, to battery, and back. And, because it’s automatic, you don’t have to do anything at all.
The instant the grid goes down, the automatic transfer switch recognizes the loss of power and automagically disconnects your house from the grid, seamlessly connecting it to your backup battery instead. Your lights stay on, the refrigerator keeps humming, and whatever else you’ve chosen to back up just keeps on keeping on. In some cases, the transition to battery power happens so smoothly that you might not even realize the neighborhood’s lost power, not noticing the neighbors’ dark windows until you step outside.
When the power comes back, that side of the switch gets energized, and it does its thing again, only in reverse – switching you back from battery to grid power and intelligently re-charging the battery in anticipation for the next blackout.
How long will my battery last?
Unfortunately, this is one of those questions that doesn’t have an easy answer. In the simplest terms, if you have a small battery and try to keep the AC running, you might run out of juice in a few hours. On the other hand, if you have great big battery and save its electrons for just the barest essentials (a few lights, a laptop, and a phone or radio, for example) you might never run out of power.
To put some numbers to that, a 31 cu. ft. Samsung RF32CG5400SRAA stainless steel refrigerator is rated at 785 kWh/year. That works out to about 2.15 kWh/day. Factor in 20-40% higher energy needs for warmer temperatures, a few daily door openings, defrost cycles, inverter losses, etc. and you’re looking at 18-22 kWh of usable battery capacity to keep that thing running for a full week on battery power. Now do that same math for every appliance you deem a “must have,” then do the “nice to haves,” and on down the line.
That doesn’t even address the other form of “last,” and whether you’re looking for a ten- or twenty- year battery solution.
What you need to do, in other words, is talk to the experts. Let them know what appliances you need to keep running, how long you want to prepare for, and let them do the math to help determine which battery solution is right for you.
I’ve included a video that covers the process of picking a solar battery from EnergySage (a trusted affiliate partner), below, and invite you to share some of your own backup battery-picking experiences in the comments.
How to pick a solar battery
Original content from Electrek.
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Just days after Chevrolet beat the mighty Ford Mustang GTD’s Nürburgring track record with their Corvette ZR1 and ZR1X, Ford went back to the ‘Ring to reclaim some glory. They didn’t bring a Mustang along, though – they showed up with an electric van, and record-setting hot shoe Romain Dumas behind the wheel.
* it’s not your typical van. It’s a SuperVan.
Ford took back a fair bit of Chevy’s headline-grabbing glory this week when LeMans-winning driver Romain Dumas lapped the 12.9 mile Green Hell in just 6 minutes and 48.393 seconds – a blazing performance that makes the 2000 hp Ford SuperVan 4.2 the ninth fastest car to ever blast around the storied German racetrack.
Dumas is no stranger to the Nürburgring’s Nordschleife. He was first overall at the 2007 24 hour race there. He also holds the outright Nürburgring track record for EVs, which he set back in 2019 behind the wheel of the Volkswagen ID.R, completing the circuit in 6 minutes and 05.336 driving the Volkswagen ID.R.
The new ‘Ring-record comes just a few weeks after Ford beat out every other supercar at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK with its all-electric SuperTruck, crushing the “competition” with their 1,400 hp prototype EV silhouette racer.
No word yet on what track record Ford plans to snatch with an EV next.
Electrek’s Take
If there were still Ford guys and Chevy guys, I like to think I’d be a Mopar guy – but even from the sidelines, I can tell that Chevy’s been having a rough couple of weeks, performance-wise. Not only did their top-shelf ZR1X get beaten by a Ford van (even if it is a SuperVan), but their clean sheet, future-thinking, pie-in-the-sky concept Corvette got beat to the hypercar headlines by a Chinese rival with 1,000 extra hp.
Take my advice, GM: it’s time to drag Warren Mosler back home from the Virgin Islands, figure out where Rod Trenne’s hiding, and get them to build you a proper, 900 kg electric ‘Vette. Y’all let me know if you need help setting that up.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Ford.
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EV drivers who use the Pennsylvania Turnpike just got a jolt of good news: Two Applegreen DC fast charging stations have come online, adding to the growing network of over 60 EV chargers along the 360-mile toll road that links Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia.
The new 400 kW Applegreen Electric charging stations are at the PA Turnpike’s North Somerset (MP 112.3 westbound) and South Somerset (MP 112.3 eastbound) Service Plazas. Each site includes two DC fast chargers for a total of four charging ports, with two NACS and two CCS plugs at each service plaza. The PA Turnpike says the sites are equipped to be expanded.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike plugged in its first EV charger in April 2014. A decade later, more than 60 charging stations are online at eight of its service plazas, giving EV drivers a reliable boost across the state. And thanks to a new partnership with Applegreen Electric, 80 new universal EV chargers are on the way. By 2027, all 17 service plazas will feature DC fast chargers.
“We are pleased to offer our EV customers convenient access to the latest, fastest technology – without leaving the PA Turnpike,” said Director of Facilities Operations Keith Jack.
The EV chargers at North Somerset and South Somerset, along with an EV charger at the Hickory Run Service Plaza scheduled to open this fall, were funded with grants from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Driving PA Forward program. The chargers at nine service plazas scheduled to open in 2027 are being funded through grants from the Biden administration’s federal National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program.
Applegreen Electric chief executive Eugene Moore noted that the PA Turnpike’s fast charger rollout “marks a key step in building a connected corridor with Pennsylvania as a vital part of the seamless network that now spans New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Delaware. With more to come soon in Ohio and Massachusetts, we’re accelerating the rollout of reliable, accessible EV infrastructure across the region.”
Applegreen is deploying fast chargers on the New Jersey Turnpike, with which it now has an exclusive agreement – it’s taking over from Tesla.
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