In bureaucracy, truth is often stranger than fiction. A non polluting electric car company gets slammed with fine for “non compliance” for a car that can’t produce any emissions.
That’s weird enough by itself, but even weirder is what else is in the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission report under what they cite as “risks”.
Here’s the relevant page of the report where they talk about risks, including the $275,000 fine from the EPA. Note what is highlighted under that.
They headline that with:
We are subject to substantial regulation, which is evolving, and unfavorable changes or failure by us to comply with these regulations could substantially harm our business and operating results.
That’s right, a zero emissions “green” electric car company cites this as a risk to the company’s business future:
the imposition of a carbon tax or the introduction of a cap-and-trade system on electric utilities could increase the cost of electricity;
You can see the Telsa SEC 10Q report for yourself at:
http://www.faqs.org/sec-filings/100813/TESLA-MOTORS-INC_10-Q/#ixzz0yDhK9ON3
Tesla’s crime? Failing to file for a 2009 emissions “Certificate of Conformity” from the EPA to comply with the “Clean Air Act.” until late in the year. Wait, I thought electric cars were supposed to help clean the air?
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It is a wonder that anybody would bother even trying to do business anymore where the minefield of bureaucracy looms even for popular and politically correct green companies in California.
h/t to autoblog.com
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JDN In the future, everything will require EPA approval.
Sean Peake:
Quite. It’s not up to the car manufacturer or owner to ensure the power is supplied by non-CO2 producing means.
I wonder whose responsibility that falls to, and what steps they might take if a substantial number of car owners decided to purchase all-electric vehicles?
Per the California Low Carbon Fuels Standard fuel production pathways available at http://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/lcfs.htm, Electricity for electric vehicles only reduces carbon emissions by 30% compared to gasoline. Not the 100% NGO’s want you to believe. And this value is due primarily to the low grid average CO2 emissions for California electricity. At 0.75 lbs CO2/kW-h, California has very low carbon electric power. If an electric vehicle is recharged in a state with a more common emissions rate of 1.8 lbs CO2/kW-h, the emissions associated with electric vehilce operations would more than double and be “Worse than Gasoline”!
It is funny that the NGO’s claim that coal-to-liquids is worse than gasoline when they don’t even know what the technology entails, yet the propose solutions to “problems” that are worse than the original problem itself.
Who makes the Volt. Oh ya GM. Who Owns GM? Oh ya the Government.
Well I can’t say that Tesla Motors, is at the head of my list of either green ventures, or good investments; either the Company or its car. For a start even its selection of a Corporate name seems the height of effete snobbery.
That said; this is clearly an example of a rogue Government agency without a shred of Constitutional legitimacy gone mad with the absolute power of corruption.
And this current administration is full of not very smart children trying to play at being adults. Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod for a start, are two of the most inept people to ever hold major offices in what is described as The White House.
Well they are about at the same competence level as the holder of the big office in that place.
So Tesla Motors is just seeing their tax dollars at work.
My standard question about electric cars: How many miles to the pound of coal? There has been a sucessful project by the anti-nuclear forces to hide the fact that if a substance is highly radio-active, it has a short half life and if a substance has a long half life it emits ionizing radiation at a low level. Radioactive waste isn’t the problem, anti-nuclear forces are the problem. They have tied the process in knots like getting a requirement that signs warning of rad-waste must be effective for 10K years.
You must wonder if the phrase, ” Rise up and kill them all”, was invented for this idiocy.
I can’t be bothered, frankly, to find out if this company is, ( Native ), American or some poor sucker who is putting money into your economy, and supplying jobs, presumably.
That’ll teach ’em. If it is any consolation, we Europeans are leading the way to economic oblivion, scouting for my cave as of now.
Also what do these cars use to generate heat in the winter. If we are eventually going to be forced to buy these things not all of us live in Florida or California.
Goldman Sachs are planning to make a market in ‘EPA interference swaps’, and in fact this is the mainstay of the administration’s current economic plan.
The basic idea is that business in the US moves all activity to China and India.
we cannot even go back in time and use a horse and cart as the horse belches out methene gas, are well back to the drawing board
It was never about the environment. It is about control and redistribution of wealth.
to WTF we will not be needing heaters as it,s going to be too hot we will be maid to use a hand operated fan with EPA aproval
Whatever is not approved is forbidden.
No bureaucrat ever got fired or a bad review by following the rule book no matter how stupidly it’s enforced, nor how many people are harmed because of it.
If the electric car companies had to list out all the toxic materials their cars are made from (between the batteries, magnets, electronics, electric motor components) the greenies would have heart attacks….
Sean Peake says:
August 31, 2010 at 3:19 pm
The problem is that the car will not be a source of taxes–no CO2, no revenue
The more taxing problem is if there is no need for gasoline, then no gasoline tax. I remember hearing that CHIPS pulled over a car that ran on cooking oil and ticketed him for having non-taxed fuel in a vehicle that is not tax exempt.
I wish I knew the inside story on what this severe administrative penalty was really about. Don’t ever discount the possibility that a thin-skinned government bureaucrat hunted high and low for an excuse to slam this company because someone felt dissed. Governments are filled with low self-esteem people don’t know how to create but they sure know how to destroy.
Gee, could it be this whole charade was never about global warming, but to bring about socialism?
Is this concerning the battery/energy storage in the Tesla car? (Considering the recharge losses, since battery charging is always less than 100 percent efficient for instance …)
(If it’s about ‘the grid’, I thought we beat the horse senseless regarding the efficiency of wholesale generation, transmission and distribution …)
.
I thought Tesla motors was a bad company to start but was backed by -I think Nancy Pelosi. I’m surprised that the EPA would do this if the Nancy is backing this company. I guess I may have confused the company with another.
A breakthrough in fusion energy is what we need. It will happen.
Green Energy – the amount of power required to smash a startup company into a brick wall of regulations, which includes the power & resources necessary to construct the brick wall with taxpayer money. If this keeps up, Tesla will be sprouting flowers & weeds at it’s abandoned factory in the next 5 years. The $$ and effort required to slog through the swamp of beaurocracy is greater than any profit margin to be realized.
The Tesla is doomed to be the new Edsel.
Does anyone have any idea how polluting it is to (a) manufacture an electric car with its batteries that have to be periodically replaced/reycled, and (b) keep those batteries charged using coal fired power plants?
Where’s the EROEI analysis for the Tesla?
I had the good fortune to be given a demo in one of the two Tesla Roadsters in Australia by Rudi Tuisk who was just back from a rally in Europe. I was impressed with both the performance and the engineering. The machine accelerates like a motorcycle and the position of the batteries mean it is balanced like a mid engine sports car. The force of the regenerative braking was surprisingly powerful pumping 90 amps back into the batteries even without the use of accumulators. The key to it’s performance seems to be the thermal management system for the batteries. A liquid loop runs from the batteries to large fan forced radiators at the front of the car. Battery temperature is computer controlled for best charge/discharge without cell damage. One of the fun things about driving electric is the sound, it feels like being in a science fiction movie.
Robert of Ottawa says: August 31, 2010 at 3:46 pm
“Tesla, the car that runs on coal!”
But in France that could read “Tesla, the car powered by the Atom” 🙂
This is confusing.
“How may I obtain the Certificate of Conformity for a vehicle?”
http://publicaccess.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/publicaccess.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2637&p_created=1151090143
“The first is to determine if the vehicle is excluded by the Act from meeting Federal emission requirements. If it is excluded, you should follow the instructions given in the section “Excluded Vehicles.”
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/imports/factmna.htm
“For 2004 and later model years, only fuel cell and electric vehicles are unregulated.”
“Importer must file with U.S. Customs, upon entry, an EPA Form 3520-1 declaring code “Y”.”
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/imports/factmnb.htm
“THESE VEHICLES MAY BE IMPORTED BY ANYONE
WITHOUT EPA APPROVAL OR BOND.”
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/imports/impflow.htm
” tarpon says:
August 31, 2010 at 3:22 pm
And here I thought electricity came out of the magic wall plug.”
It doesn’t??? But that’s where I stick the thingy with the 2 or 3 prongs.
Robert of Ottawa says:
August 31, 2010 at 3:47 pm
“JDN In the future, everything will require EPA approval.”
Even dying? Probably…