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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“Myron Mesecke says:
August 31, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Can’t say I’m surprised. After all, one part of the government wants cars to get better gas mileage. One easy way is to make the cars lighter. But then another part of the government wants cars to be safer. One easy way is to make them heavier.”
Lighter = better gas mileage, yes, but not necessarilly less safe. Safer = heavier, certainly not. Old style mfg of cars, sometimes called “coach built” are terribly heavy and un-safe. Occupants typically behave like tomatoes in a can in a crash. Monocoque construction is much lighter and much much safer with crumple zones built-in. Mfgs did try to make cars lighter by reducing the thickness of the steel in the bodies. This resulted in lighter mass, but slightly weaker bodies, hense the installation of “intrusion protection bars” etc. This was overcome to some extent by “forming” the thiner steel parts differently making them stiffer than the “un-formed” part.
Honda did this back in 1994 when I worked for them in the old Spitfire factory site in Swindon, UK. They shaved 0.1mm off the formerly 1.0mm steel body parts and save, I think, ~30Kgs off the finished car, Civic/Accord.
“Wiglaf says:
August 31, 2010 at 4:31 pm
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.”
Well, in the UK, if you are found to be running a vehicle, on a public road, on fuel that had no duty/tax paid on it you certainly would be fined. People running older diesel engines found this out at their expense when running on used cooking oil/chip shop fat. These cars were immediately noticed because they smelled like a chip shop. Also, agricultural diesel in the UK is taxed differently and is called red diesel because of it’s colour. If you are fund to be running a car on red diesel on a public road, you are definitely fined.
Personally, I would like to see duty on fuel that covers (Like in NEw Zealand, an ACC duty) which covers road users insurance costs. That immediately resolves the issue of uninsured drivers. If you motion lotion in your tank, you are covered.
The Tesla is based on a Lotus Elise chassis. Unfortunately, due the central mass of the batteries, it handles like a plate of jelly. For around town type driving, I would get one if I was rich. Personally, I think hydrogen fuel cell is the future. There’s plenty of that stuff on this planet.
Nikola Tesla had a monumental long struggle with Edison and eventually was victorious, now a century later, its namesake has to do the same with the bureaucracy, I hope it is victorious too.
It is a great product of engineering, but further more it takes name of Tesla’s genius to media and into the wider world’s population, where the name Tesla was ignored for far too long.
“Paul Deacon, Christchurch, New Zealand says:
August 31, 2010 at 9:44 pm”
I feel for you! 70% hydro, and yet some of the most expensive power in the world. I used to live in the Wairarapa, 60 odd Kms north of Wellinton, which had the most expensive power in the country (At that time). But, you guys have been hit with a double whammy. Not only did you get an ETS, you’re GST went up from 12.5% to 15% just before. Of course, power bills, and everything else in NZ, attacts GST.
I remember the NZ$0.04c/l “Auckland tax” that was applied to fuel across the whole country in about 2000 that was supposed to be temporary to raise $NZ90mil in funds to pay for public transport projects in Auckland. It’s still applied today.
Um, I dont see what the big deal is… Tesla failed to obtain a Certificate of Compliance for the cars they sold, and they were fined for it. The text is clear: “Every class of motor vehicles introduced into the commerce of the U.S. must have a certificate of conformity, and they are valid for only one model year of production.”
Its like a building permit. Even if you’re making your house 100% green with solar panels, geothermal heating, wind power, etc, if you don’t have a building permit for all that stuff, you’re going to get fined. Thats how it works. Dont like the rules? Move to Africa.
rbateman says:
August 31, 2010 at 4:48 pm
“….The Tesla is doomed to be the new Edsel.”
True.
“Tesla Motors, a much hyped company which doesn’t so much produce cars as magazine articles about itself, got nearly half a billion in federal funding. This for a company that makes six figure sports cars assembled in the UK and powered by shopping carts full of laptop batteries that virtually no one has actually driven. Not to mention a company with an embattled leadership, embroiled in numerous lawsuits, which prior to the 465 million in Federal funds was firing its employees through text messages, because it was down to 9 million dollars in the bank.” Source: The Cost of Global Warming Greed, By Daniel Greenfield Wednesday, July 8, 2009; Canada Free Press, http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12705
Still, to progress with electric cars from a novelty to all-pervasive application and replacement of gasoline burners, far more serious problems need to be solved. Not the least of which is that tests in a neighbourhood in Amsterdam showed that if more than one out of every seven households in a neighbourhood in Amsterdam charge the batteries for an electric car, the distribution network needs to be upgraded. I will try to find the link for the study in which that was determined if anyone needs it. However, there are more serious problems than that. For that it would be necessary to do a study. I have so far not found one which addresses those problems.
Many major transmission lines are already loaded to the maximum. The more they are loaded, the more transmission losses occur. During peak-load-hours in Alberta, Canada, some of the main provincial transmission lines already cause as much as 30 percent of transmitted energy to become lost in transmission. Therefore a substantial increase in electric car sales would most definitely overload the transmission lines. There is yet another problem.
Even once the distribution networks and the transmission lines are upgraded to the tune of many billions of dollars in a province the size of Texas, there is still the problem of constructing the extra generating capacity that will be required to satisfy the demand for “clean” energy. For that there is absolutely no other affordable alternative than to build coal-fired thermal generation — and that will generate far more CO2 than we are presently producing.
It would be possible to estimate how much “clean” CO2 will be generated, but that will take a bit of work. Just roughly, it will be a bit more CO2 than is being generated by the internal combustion engines in the cars that will be replaced with electric cars.
None of the gory greenies will tell anyone that it is far more efficient to get gasoline into a fuel tank and then to burn it in an internal combustion engine than it is to get the required energy into a battery that enables an electric motor to move an equivalent vehicle equally-loaded and move it at the same speed over the same distance.
Far less energy is lost through the distribution of chemical energy from the source to the point of consumption than is lost through doing the same thing by means of electric energy. The infrastructure capacity to achieve the latter does not exist and would have to be constructed. Moreover, drilling for and refining the oil would have to be replaced with coal mining and coal-fired generation.
It seems to me that the cost of the infrastructure changeover would be so massively large that it would probably be far cheaper to generate synthetic gasoline from coal and to burn that in the cars we drive. The break-even costs for that are estimated to be in the order of $45 per equivalent barrel of oil. The cost of a barrel of syncrude produced from oil-sands is about $16.
It will be a long time before we run out of oil-sands, and at the current rate of mining coal, we will have enough of that to last 1,500 years, including the exports to Japan and China.
The Tesla is not only doomed like the Edsel, it will never make it as far as the Edsel did.
This tesla – higher cost of energy all eminates from the below scenario. Please correct me if you think I made a mistake:
We are going to lose (some of) the standard of living because the net productivity of the globe is not increasing as much as the standard of living in china, india and the rest of ’em. hence, we will get less for our £,$ or €. Taxing us up zi nose for energy is a sure bullet to reduce the spending, effetively reducing the western standard of living.
Is this a bad thing? That is pretty much indifferent as it WILL happen. We don’t have the comparable wealth we used to. The difference is made in taxes, currency value (in effect, tax) and inflation (again, in effect a tax).
The kicker:
The Climate was supposed to be the way to do it while keeping ppl positive about making the sacrifice.
Voltaire out.
Stalin would have been proud of such obfuscatory and punishing bureaucracy. Shame it’s the creation of the leader of the “free” world.
I have always thought that to lug around over a ton of batteries around was using a lot of energy when a tank of gasoline weighed about 50lbs. Hybrid cars are worse, they have a petrol engine and a ton of batteries and heavy electric motor all using energy to move. The best electric car in the UK will travel about 200 miles, on a good day with the wind behind it, and take 12 hours to recharge from the coal powered grid!!! so to travel to Spain for me, 1200 miles would take 6 days travel and 60 hours to recharge. I do it in two days in my diesel car. The other problem so often overlooked is that the batteries use nickel, mined in Sudbury, Canada, and this raw nickel is transported to China to make the batteries which are transported to the car’s manufacturing base to be fitted into the car. The batteries last about two years and cost, in the UK, about £1500. The system to scrap these batteries is not a non polluting system. In fact it is probably the most polluting recycling system available.
ALL BACAUSE SOME FOOLS ARE SCARED OF CO2. Please get real and return to real motoring with gasoline.
RockyRoad says:
“Just because the car itself doesn’t produce any pollutants, the power plants that generate the electricity for the car probably do.”
So it’s ok for the petroleum industry to use enough electricity to power an electric car about 30 miles to produce 1 gallon of gas?
Anthony Watts: “That’s right, a zero emissions “green” electric car company cites this as a risk to the company’s business future:”
That is the fallacy that many get duped into believing. Electric cars are NOT “green” . Electricity is not the primary energy source so it is absolute nonsense to talk of “zero emissions”. A Tesla in the USA will primarily be coal powered. In France it will a source of unmanageable nuclear waste.
Zero tail-pipe emissions may be more accurate. Since the regs in question probably are concerned with tail-pipe emissions, they still need to make an official declaration.
It’s no good saying “I did not work last year , so why to I need to file a tax return” and then say its lunacy if you get prosecuted to not filing your return.
Tesla screwed up , it’s that simple. Unless they figured that all free publicity and discussion about their car would make it worth the fine.
I’m sure they love the coverage.
Even if I don’t like EPA’s position on CO2 this just looks like a cheap attempt at EPA bashing. They acted correctly.
I’d prefer to see them criticised for what they get wrong.
Well???
In the light of EPA.I think ANARCHY is a better solution! 🙂
PeteB:
To charge that battery for 3.5 hours @ur momisugly 240 V x 70 A. would 58.8 KWs. In Virginia that would be just under $6 (0.10 per KW).
That would get me 4 days commuting on a single charge. However, I don’t think I could afford to buy the thing to start with since I’m not one of those ‘rich’ people. Just one of the masses or minions.
Dave Springer says:
August 31, 2010 at 8:05 pm
“The electric company that supplies me offers “green” energy for a premium price.
Thus at least some of us can recharge our Tesla Roadsters with wind, solar, nuclear, and/or hydro generated electricity if we so choose. Wind and solar are in very limited supply but we have quite a bit of nuclear and hydroelectric in the mix….”
Yes. ‘some of us’ is the key. The question is, how many of us?
It’s a good thing that you have the option of buying “green” power. Most electricity consumers do not have that option. Nevertheless, ‘some of us’, even where the ‘green option’ is not available, will still be charging batteries for electric cars. Not only that, but where all consumers of electric energy pay for subsidizing “green” power, the charging of batteries for electric cars becomes quite a bit more attractive (but not cheaper for society) for quite a few more people who choose to charge batteries.
The extra energy must be generated, transmitted and distributed to make certain it will be available where required. The extra generating capacity will only be a portion of the total costs required. The extra transmission and distribution costs for the required capacity increases in transmission and distribution networks will be close to the extra costs for transmission- and distribution-networks capacity increases.
You mentioned that, “we have quite a bit of nuclear and hydroelectric in the mix.” That is true, but that is only sufficient for existing power demands. It is not true for the extra power required for large-scale charging of batteries in electric cars. The licensing process and the time required to bring new nuclear generating plants on-line takes at least ten years and takes much longer when the greenies come into play with opposing public-relations- and lobbying-campaigns. New large-scale hydro-electric power generation is not likely to be created because the greenies will object more strenuously to that than they do to nuclear generating plants. That leaves natural gas and coal.
For that reason, and for as long as CO2 is seen as a pollutant, the charging of batteries in electric cars will in the long run cause massive increases in objectionable CO2 emissions. Of course, CO2 emissions are not all we have to worry about. Coal-fired power plants create massive SO2 emission as well as substantial heavy-metal- (e.g. mercury) and radio-active-emissions (more radio-active emissions than nuclear generating capacity causes per unit of generation). Much of that pollution can be scrubbed out of the emissions, but the scrubbing requires an increase of about 30 percent or more in construction costs for coal-fired power generation. There is no possible way we can feasibly capture and sequester all of the CO2 that the extra generating capacity will cause to be produced.
John from CA says:
August 31, 2010 at 5:09 pm
that air cars are a viable alternative and that “Charging the car with air is fairly easy-it takes four hours using a household electric outlet or three minutes using special compressed air stations that MDI sells for about $100,000.”
The energy that must be pumped into air-cars is pretty much as much energy as must be put into batteries for equivalent numbers of electric cars. The energy for compressing air and for charging batteries comes from a power generating station, via the transmission network and the local distribution networks. That requires capacity increases for generation, transmission and distribution that are similar to those required for massive market penetration with electric cars.
Unless someone can invent a pollution-free, sufficiently cheap, efficient and safe method of mobile power generation for installation into mobile units for consumption of energy, production and distribution of chemical energy by means of gasoline (or diesel) is the only viable alternative for getting energy into vehicles.
Just in case anyone should wonder, I have absolutely no conflict of interest and own not even a single share of stock in Big Oil. However, I have had close to four decades of involvement in the business of the Rural Electrification Associations and *know* that governments see taxes on energy as a very desirable source of revenues. In Alberta, the provincial government even toys with the idea of using energy taxes as a replacement for provincial income-taxes. I have had a government official tell me that the idea can be made palatable to the public by promoting the idea that increased energy taxes can be used, amongst other things, to provide “free” health care for all.
The Soviet Union had “free” health care for all. There is no doubt in my mind that one of the consequences of that was that average life expectancies in the Russian Federation, for example, were 59 years for men and 72 years for women.
None of those energy-tax-revenues go into sinking funds for upgrading the capacity of generation, transmission and distribution. All of the costs for required capacity increases are being amortized by adding them to consumer rates. The more energy costs increase, the more revenues government collects, because revenues from energy taxes increase accordingly — without the government having to spend a cent on capital investment.
I’m a retired geology professor and several years ago I was invited to attend a groundwater hydrology conference. The main thrust of the conference was how to comply with massive new EPA groundwater regulations. What this mainly consisted of was how to fill out the EPA paperwork. And the volume of paperwork was stupid beyond belief. Toward the end of the conference I asked what I thought was a good and innocent question, “With the new regs will the groundwater be less polluted?’. Everyone looked at me as if I was freakin insane. No one cared if the water quality was better, only that the paperwork was filled out properly. Yep, go after the regulators and bureaucrats first. And as soon as possible to save this country.
Slightly off topic. What is the opinion on the Fisker car? I hope the
Fisker people learn the EPA/Tesla lesson. The EPA is bureaucracy, and
mainly interested in self-perpetuation.
Fisker is located near me and is considering offering me a job. The car is a
series hybrid — like a Tesla but with a GM 4 cylinder engine to keep the car
moving after the batteries drain down in the first 50 miles. It is very nice
to look at and very nice to drive, but is nowhere near inexpensive.
“I’m sure you’ll find a way to comply Mr. Rearden, you always have before”
Tesla has other problems too.
I was in Palo Alto Feb. 24th of this year. This was “all the buzz”…
http://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/three-tesla-executives-die-in-plane-crash-in-palo-alto-ar85180.html
Sadly, the cause of the crash was probably “pilot error”. It was a “zero/zero” day. I.e., zero ceiling and virtually zero forward visibility.
A simple wait of 2 to 3 hours for the “fog to lift” and these people would still be alive.
“Get there itus”…the most fatal of all private pilot diseases.
The next thing the new Congress needs to do after they repeal Obamacare, is to scrap the EPA and start over. They alone have done more to ship jobs overseas than any other government agency. Perhaps their paychecks should be pegged on GDP? Then I think we’d see a different EPA.
I read an article last year or year before (darn if I can remember). Anyway a balance was done between a Prius and a Hummer. When factoring in the total environmental impact from mining ore to disposal of the car when scrapped, the total fuel use over life of the vehicle and life of the vehicle, transportation cost etc. The Hummer is more green then a Prius. Major factors are the environmental waste land nickel mining costs, disposal of batteries vs. steel, life of a Hummer is ~20yrs with a Prius 10-15 (we still really don’t know this one but a hummer might go 40yrs).
As for regulators like the EPA, the CEO was just quoted in an article. He said everywhere but in the US a new fab cost 4 billion to build, that same fab cost 5 billion in the US. The extra billion is due to complying with regulations and taxes, any wonder manufacturing doesn’t want to stay in the US.
This might be a good place for this topic. Everyone’s (alarmists anyway) concern is for CO2. How about removing the catalytic converters on cars. Let’s go back to CO. Since CO2 is so dangerous why not a little more carbon monoxide instead. On a serious note, how about changing the catalytic converters to change the emissons to something other than CO2?
Electric vehicles are not necessarily “emission free”. They may emit chlorine gas from batteries (historically a major risk in electric submarines) or produce ozone and nitrogen oxides from sparking (sniff around a few electric locomotives or tube trains). So it is actually quite reasonable that they should be required to obtain certificates of conformity (if other cars have to).
“Zero tail-pipe emissions may be more accurate. Since the regs in question probably are concerned with tail-pipe emissions, they still need to make an official declaration.”
Does the Tesla HAVE a tailpipe ?
There are many angles to this story, but it seems a waste of test and declaration when the real question is the thing’s draw on the “grid”.
Electric cars don’t eliminate carbon emissions, they just move the carbon footprint to another area ie. Electric power plants. In addition if electric cars are the answer what are we going to do when we can generate enough electricity to support our demand? We already have rolling blackouts, and conservation efforts in place. What happens when 50% of the state is trying to charge up their cars? Did any of the greenies ever think of that? You know what the largest source of poultion in the world is…. human beings. 6 billion and counting. You want to help the world people start with population control. The more people, the more food needed the more housing, water, electricity ect, and the more poultion that is generated as a result. Think about it………
_Jim says:
August 31, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Gail Combs August 31, 2010 at 5:37 pm
…BTW, did see I ‘bankers” mentioned anywhere in your post? By gosh there is … bankers “living in the old noggin rent-free” as they say huh …
______________________________________________________________
Jim, don’t you get ill defending the bankers all the time? They are ripping off most people for over 50% of their wealth, yet you always ding me without ANY data or references to back you up! Oh, excuse me I forgot you also believe in CAGW, do you believe in a totalitarian world government run by an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in the past centuries? too???
I suggest you read the above article by Richard C. Cook a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. He has independently come to the same conclusions I have and certainly even meets you “high criteria” as an authority.
So what has the Fed done to the USA and the money supply?
In 1976, a typical American CEO earned 36 times as much as the average worker. By 2008 the average CEO pay increased to 369 times that of the average worker. – http://timelines.ws/subjects/Labor.HTML
Inflation from fiat currency has stolen much of American working classes wealth.
In 1959 gold was $ 35.25/oz , Money supply was 50.1 billion, minimum wage $1.00
In 2009 gold was $1,020.28/oz, Money supply $1663 billion, minimum wage $5.85
In 1959 an hour of minimum wage labor was worth 0.0284 oz of gold. In 2009 an hour of minimum wage labor was worth 0.00573 oz of gold or 20% of what the 1959 minimum wage dollar was worth, the rest of the wealth went into the pockets of the bankers who printed the extra $1613 billion fiat dollars out of thin air and traded for the products and labor of the American worker.
The Grace Commission report to an American president states point blank states:
“90 percent of all personal taxable income is generated below the taxable income level of $35,000”
“100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal Government contributions to transfer payments….
Mr. President, you have been so correct in resisting attempts to balance the budget by increasing taxes. The tax load on the average American family is already at counterproductive levels with the underground economy having now grown to an estimated $500 billion per year, costing about $100 billion in lost Federal tax revenues per year.
The size of the underground economy is understandable when one considers that median family income taxes have increased from $9 in 1948 to $2,218 in 1983, or by 246 times. This is runaway taxation at its worst…..”
January 12, 1984 – PRESIDENT’S PRIVATE SECTOR SURVEY ON COST CONTROL
Henry chance says:
August 31, 2010 at 2:59 pm
alGore said electric cars are the key to a carbonfree America.
Henry, I would have to ask you (I know alGore would never answer), what produces more carbon dioxide – burning oil (gasoline) or coal? The electricty for these cars has to come from somewhere, and with the moratorium on Nuclear, that leaves only coal.