by frog
The Hive claims to be ‘at the heart of the Wellington political process’ and have links and sources that means it knows nearly everything that happens in Wellington , but actually spends most of its time linking to newspaper articles and press releases just like everyone else. So, today it linked to a Dominion Post story with a picture of a shiny red electric Tesla Roadster, which does 0-100kmh in 3.9 seconds, then lambasted the Greens for not doing more to promote electric cars.
Fine. Then let’s give government cash benefits of US$98,950 to all petrol car owners in New Zealand so they can upgrade their car to a Tesla.
Surely the Hive doesn’t seriously think the solution to New Zealand’s transport problems is to replace all the Fords and Holdens in Auckland’s traffic jams with Telsas. While electric cars are better than petrol cars in terms of climate change, they still place the same or similar demands on our roading infrastructure, our public health and road toll, our congestion and our isolated communities.
Roads need to return to being shared public spaces. Too many have become dangerous barriers that sever buildings and people from each other. Roads take up over 500 million square metres of land in New Zealand. Promoting public transport as well as active transport, like walking, skateboarding and cycling, is a more economically sensible, as well as healthier, safer and fairer way to resolve our transport problems than simply improving our car fleet.
(And, actually the Greens have a very strong record advocating improving car performance and efficiency, compared to other parties)
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Thu, April 3rd, 2008
Tags: electric car, public transport, roads, tesla roadster, the hive, transport
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
“..as well as healthier, safer and fairer way to resolve our transport problems than simply improving our car fleet…”
and those are..?
(i’m serious..!..does that glib/throwaway line have any actual substance..?..frog..?)
and could not that call to the greens from hive be just a plea to ‘do something!’..
(y’know..!..we’ve only got the solar-hotwater cylinders to cling to..so far..
eh..?..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Roads took up almost 500 million square metres of land in New Zealand when the MacLean Light Locomotive Bill was placed before Parliament in 1898. Surely you weren’t trying to imply that this amount of land is needed for roads only because of the introduction of light locomotives? Ok, so replacing the internal combustion engined light locomotive with an electric light locomotive won’t solve our roading problems but then replacing the horse and buggy with light locomotives didn’t solves most of those problems either.
“Roads need to return to being shared public spaces.” You can’t return roads to being something they never were or, at least, never since the passage of S.99 of the Immigration & Public Works Act 1876.
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Frog
This “No Roads is good roads” ideal of a time that hasn’t existed since bands of apes swung through the trees is not something I agree with. We have had roads for a long, long, long, long time. WAAAY longer than we’ve had cars, internal combustion engines or trouble with our cities. Roads go back to the invention of the wheel.
The electric car isn’t a panacea either… but appropriate development and use of the EV will prevent far greater dislocation of the landscape around the larger cities. Try to picture all the people who live out of walking distance from a station or a market trying to move into that roughly 3K circle. We may not want to build further ‘burbs and we may want higher density housing, but slamming the door on large neighbourhoods that aren’t within easy range of the station isn’t smart… and the prospects of branching the train lines through to those areas given the geography involved are microscopic… and buses USE the roads.
Sensible development will integrate shorter range EV with longer haul rail and move people quite flexibly enough. We can do this… but the “no roads” chant in the background has got to go.
BJ
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Well put, BJ…..
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The Tesla Coupe is the flagship. They are planning a four door model next, at a lower price.
As production ramps up, funded by the (old) boy racers, the production cost goes down, making these cars more affordable.
Roads are here to stay.
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While I cautiously support fully electric cars, I also wonder how we’ll deal with powering them on renewable energy given that we’re already having issues making our energy generation carbon-neutral. If we can address that well enough for at least one car per household, then maybe they’ll be worth adopting.
But I have to agree that distributing our transport load onto more public transport is going to be more efficient, and we have to relieve some of the burden on our roads if we want to make a dent in our transport emissions or our congestion issues.
The roads are certainly here to stay- we’ll need them for buses and light rail. But I think maybe that we should stop catering to the cult of the personal car so much.
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Has anyone done an assessment of how much power it would take to run the current vehicle fleet and its mileage?
As to the related issue of (via manufactured road congestion) transition management – bus and car pooling lanes?
Do the Greens have any policy in support of (cable) broadband layout across Auckland as telecommuting has a place in modernising its economy?
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SPC, With a bit of rounding for mathematical convenience the numbers are: 36.5 billion km travelled per year = 100 million km per day @ 10l/100km = 10 million litres per day.
Petrol gives about 30 Mega Joules of heat energy per litre, which is about 5 or 6 MJ of useful mechanical energy, or just under 2KWh.
Ergo, 20,000,000kWh per day.
Assume one quarter of this consumption occurs between 7am-9am = peak load of 2,500,000kWh during each of these two hours.
Of course I could be completely wrong with the energy conversion factors.
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Frog, Best suggeston you’ve made so far. Just two small flaws.
1) Where would the government find $250 billion?
2) Tesla isn’t Ford or Holden’s. It can’t supply 2.5 million cars for immediate delivery. In fact Ford and GM would probably need to divert their entire UK production to manage that target, and it would still take them up to a year to get the job done.
But there is an alternative that will achieve half the benefits of going electric at one-tenth the cost. The government could refund the money it has collected in Crown petrol taxes since their introduction in 1975. That’s about $3,500 per registered vehicle. Enough to convert them all to EuroV diesels. It might take a year or two to get the job done but that is decades faster than building light rail. It doesn’t discriminate against town and country dwellers in the same way that public transport oriented investments do. Everybody’s carbon footprint gets reduced not just the one-third who live in cities. By George, Frog, I think you’re on a winner.
Now if you can just think of some way in which catching up with Europe can be touted as “leading the world” then you could even get Her Republican Highness’ support.
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Electricity forecasts:
http://www.electricitycommission.govt.nz/pdfs/opdev/modelling/security-demand/Security-of-supply-medium-term-demand-forecast-in-2007.pdf
This suggests a peak demand of about 6.5GW and an annual demand of about 40,000GWh in 2008, i.e. about 110GWh per day. Kevyn’s estimate of 20GWh per day would therefore add a bit under 20% to our current demand.
This might add 1% to our electricity growth over the next decade or more. To meet this additional growth in demand, we would need to add around 50MW of new geothermal plant or 120 MW of intermittant generation on top of the 2% of additional generation needed to meet other causes of growth in electricity use.
The peak load value Kevyn mentions isn’t relevant for battery-powered vehicles because it is the charging time that counts, not when the vehicle is driven. However trams and railways draw power when they are driven, and so would buses which can be recharged at bus stops.
Trevor.
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Oops – dropped a factor of 2. That should be 1% (50MW) for a couple of decades or 2% for one decade.
Trevor.
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Changing tack slightly, it’s good to see that someone else who thinks that ‘The Hive’ is a load of nonsense.
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Ari raised an interesting question about getting enough power for electric vehicles. New Zealand is blessed with ample renewable resources with not only hydro, geothermal and wind but also wave and tidal flow (as well as solar of course). Wave and tidal flow resources are still new technology, so it will take a while before we can buy enough suitable plant to make a significant contribution. Hydro resources are largely developed, although the peak generation could be enhanced. The main new renewable generation will come from geothermal and wind, which are both off-the-shelf technology. The problem may well be that the shelf may be empty! Other countries may be willing to pay more than we are for the wind turbines or geothermal plant when they get desperate for energy.
I would suggest that it is in New Zealand’s interests to put in orders for more wind and geothermal plant while we can, while also investing more than just $4 million in wave and other marine power. If we don’t then we may find that we have plenty of resources that we can’t use.
Trevor.
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I agree that electric cars isn’t the whole solution, it is a part that is dependent on the greater whole of power generation. Power generation needs to evolve or we are just moving the footprint cars have to the source, making the powerplant’s footprint bigger. Solar panel efficiency is increasing dramatically (I think they are up to 25% total conversion now), couple solar panels with nanotube ultra capacitors and you have your self a very efficient power system.
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Fantastic Post dear.
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electric cars, as the technology exists now, do more harm to the environment than modern day fossil fuel reliant vehicles: from the gathering of the (rare & finite) raw materials needed to produce them, the production methods involved in producing them to the diffulty of recycling what’s left of them when they eventually die(an ordinary car is more recyclable than an electric car at the moment). So yes while we need to end reliance on fossil fuels but as technology stand right now we just can’t do it. While we wait for the release of this technology, and i say release ’cause someone’s got it but as it stands now there is too much $£$£ to lose if they release it too early, we just cut down on how much we use our modern conveniances. we need everyone who condemns the corporations et al for killing the environment from the comfort of their home, with the heating turned up and every light on etc etc, to join the fight and start to cut back instead of contributing 5 mins of armchair activism…
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