Roughly one in five plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) owners switched back to owning gas-powered cars, in large part because charging the batteries was a pain in the… trunk, the researchers found.
-Dominick Reuter 
'It's kind of hard to beat gasoline' for public and environmental health, said study co-author Julian Marshall, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota. 'A lot of the technologies that we think of as being clean ... are not better than gasoline.'
People who own all-electric cars where coal generates the power may think they are helping the environment. But a new study finds their vehicles actually make the air dirtier, worsening global warming. The controversial study raises major questions over the future of 'green' cars. -Associated Press and Mark Prigg
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Oops, Biden
An electric bus manufactured by Proterra caught fire while charging in a southern California city that is now considering taking the electric buses off the road, according to government records.
The Foothill Transit agency, which serves the valleys surrounding Los Angeles, will decide on Friday whether costly Proterra buses purchased in the last decade are still operable. Problems cited by the agency include not only the bus that caught fire in what's described as a "thermal event," but also buses that melt in the California heat and have transmission failures.
Roland Cordero, the agency's director of maintenance and vehicle technology, says the problems with the buses are exacerbated by Proterra's inability to help with repairs...
The electric bus company, which has been hailed by the Biden administration as the future of mass transportation, has seen its stock plummet in the last month as reports pile up about problems with its product.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Oops, Waste, Biden
More than two dozen electric Proterra buses first unveiled by the city of Philadelphia in 2016 are already out of operation, according to a WHYY investigation.
The entire fleet of Proterra buses was removed from the roads by SEPTA, the city's transit authority, in February 2020 due to both structural and logistical problems—the weight of the powerful battery was cracking the vehicles' chassis, and the battery life was insufficient for the city's bus routes...
The city paid $24 million for the 25 new Proterra buses, subsidized in part by a $2.6 million federal grant...
Proterra, which had Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on its board of directors when Philadelphia pulled the buses off the streets last year, has been highlighted by the Biden administration as a business of the future.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Metaphor
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued an alert pertaining to Chevrolet Bolt owners, as the vehicles’ LG Chem battery packs could have a propensity to catch fire. On Wednesday, the safety organization recommended that the cars be left outdoors (ideally a healthy distance from anything flammable) and never left unattended while charging.
This defeats one of the largest perks of owning an electric vehicle (at-home charging), as customers will be required to buy extra-long cables and monitor their car outdoors for hours as it takes on energy.
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Obama, Oops, Energy
In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama predicted that the U.S. would have “a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.” The president backed up his prediction with $2.4 billion in federal grants to companies producing lithium-ion batteries for plug-in cars. But reality hasn’t even come close.
Despite massive federal spending on electric vehicles, which is expected to total $7.9 billion through 2019, there are currently just 286,390 plug-in vehicles on the nation’s roads today, according to the Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA).
Environmentalist, Liberal, Funny, Metaphor
Neil Young, a high-profile proponent of cars powered by alternative fuels, was recently stranded on the highway when his own $1 million biomass-powered hybrid car broke down. California highway patrol officers found the Canadian rocker stranded on the side of a road near Donner Summit, Calif. Young was on his way to an environmentalist festival in Canada.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Incompetence, Financial, Funny, Oops
The New York Post reports that the city hasn't bought a new hybrid bus in three years and is now moving to retrofit many of the ones it has with diesel engines. The MTA is reporting that it will retrofit 389 hybrid electric buses with diesel engines because the hybrid engines are too unreliable and too expensive to repair. "The electric-traction motors are burning out. They’re so expensive to replace that it’ll be cheaper to stick a diesel engine in there," a source inside the MTA told the Post.
Fisker Automotive -- the electric-car maker that was granted a half-billion-dollar federal loan and on Friday dismissed about 75 percent of its remaining workforce -- is purportedly facing a lawsuit from the same firm that sued the government-funded Solyndra company.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial
Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Government, Incompetence
Following on from the announcement that GM is looking at redesigning the Chevrolet Volt’s lithium-ion battery system in the wake of several highly publicized fires resulting from test crashes, comes further news that both the automaker and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration delayed disclosure of their original findings by months.
Democrat, Liberal, Funny, Brilliance, Oops
Romney is the only fellow in the United States who appears to think that the Volt is an idea whose time has not come. Clearly it has not come to him. The Volt is selling like hotcakes. -Rep. John Dingell (D-MI)
Funny, Oops, Lie
Then, Akerson did something really bad. Surprisingly, Akerson used Toyota as a benchmark and reportedly said that “Toyota sold about the same amount of Prius in its first year as the Volt in its first year.”
Environmentalist, Liberal, Oops
QUEENSLAND Police have been left red-faced over its choice of new "green" patrol cars.
The service boasts it is going green, taking delivery of 100 hybrid Toyota Camrys. Shame no one checked the boot size. Frontline officers say the boots of the new patrol cars are too small to carry all their essential equipment, including flak jackets and emergency equipment.
Lithium-Ion Batteries Leave Environmental And Human Devastation...
In addition to the pollution they cause, electric car owners should know about the social injustice their vehicles cause around the globe.
"The extraction of essential ingredients to make cost-effective lithium-ion batteries generally leaves environmental and human devastation in its wake," explains an article published by Green Tech Media.
Environmentalist, Oops
While the choice of fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles for sale in the U.S. continues to grow, more buyers than not are deciding against the technology when they go to buy another car. Only 35% of hybrid vehicle owners chose to purchase a hybrid again when they returned to the market in 2011, according to auto information company R.L. Polk & Co. If you factor out the super-loyal Toyota Prius buyers, the repurchase rate drops to under 25%.
Environmentalist, Financial, Oops
Buyers who choose Nissan's all-electric Leaf ($28,421) over its approximate gas-powered equivalent, Nissan's Versa ($18,640), will likely wait nearly 9 years until they break even, according to a new report by The New York Times that examines the cost of fuel efficiency. For drivers of the Chevrolet Volt ($31,767), the wait is even longer— 26.6 years.