Vehicle Energy Solutions
Story by Tom Andersen
Email Tom: ([email protected])
June;
Here is my idea for the solution to vehicle carbon emissions:
For less money than the proposed bailout, the government should buy the big three US automakers. It should replace existing management with that of Tesla, the San Carlos company developing electric cars, and develop an electric cars & light trucks with quick change battery packs, like cordless drills, only bigger. The cities of San Francisco, San Jose & Oakland recently reached agreement for electric battery stations for vehicles. The fed should mandate that nationally. Stations with solar arrays could maintain a stock of recharged batteries for exchange, for a fee, those batteries having been recharged by solar & wind power. Bays with hydraulic lifts could be set up where a car would pull in, and a tech would drop the battery and replace it with a fully charged battery.
Additionally, a cap & trade system for vehicles should be implemented modeled on that proposed for carbon emitting buildings etc. A national milage standard should be set, perhaps 50mpg. Vehicles would be required to have an annual odomoeter reading. If they got less than 50 mpg, they would pay a fee, say a penny a mile for every mile per gallon under 50, so if a car got 40mpg, and drove 15,000 miles, they would pay a fee of $1500. Cars exceeding the standard, they would get a payment using the same formula, so if a car got 60mpg and drove 12,000 miles, the owner would get a payment of $1200.
Initially, the payments would be funded by collections, as most vehicles would be under the standard. As electric vehicle production came into full force, eventually there would be more payouts than collections. At this point, the payouts should be funded by a gas tax, further making fossil fuel vehicles more expensive to operate, thereby creating a financial incentive to go to electric vehicles.
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Tom says he’s encourage by President Elect Obama’s nomination of physicist Steven Chu as energy chief. To read more about the pick, please click here