Clean Cars

facebook Linked_Image___705807092_a0f42c1367_o

Letting Dirty Trucks Glide Past Pollution Protections

, ,

The White House agency in charge of reviewing regulations, the U.S. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), conspired with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to circumvent important rulemaking requirements – and ram through a deregulatory giveaway to “glider” trucks, which are super-polluting diesel freight trucks created by dropping old, dirty truck engines into new truck bodies. If allowed to go forward, this loophole for the trucking industry will pollute our air and harm children’s health.

The story begins several years ago when, under the Obama administration, the EPA applied its new, cleaner emissions standards to glider trucks. When the Trump administration took power, former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt attempted to exempt glider trucks from the Obama era emission standards as a handout to the industry that makes them. The EPA’s Inspector General (IG) is already investigating the EPA’s role in this tawdry tale, but new reporting makes clear that the White House’s role in this incident needs to be investigated as well.

When Public Citizen examined the glider truck carve-out, we discovered potential manipulation of the EPA’s rulemaking process, as outlined in testimony to the EPA’s scientific advisory board in 2018, before the IG investigation was requested. From documents publicly available at the time, we found that the EPA intentionally avoided conducting certain analyses to conceal the harmful health impacts of allowing dirtier emissions from glider trucks, especially on children.

U.S. Senate Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee reached a similar conclusion in December 2018 and requested that the EPA’s IG investigate the agency’s process for repealing cleaner emissions standards for glider trucks.

Now, newly released documents show that EPA’s IG is almost certain to confirm our suspicions: that the agency knowingly refused to do numerous analyses on the harmful impacts of its carve-out for glider trucks that normally are required when taking this type of regulatory action.

Usually, an agency’s attempt to skirt analytical requirements runs into problems when the regulation is sent to OIRA, the small office in the White House that is tasked with reviewing and approving certain regulations and their accompanying analyses.

But the new documents show that OIRA acted as an accomplice, helping the EPA flout the analytical requirements. In fact, it looks like OIRA deliberately fast-tracked the glider trucks carve-out by allowing the EPA to bypass analyses that are required for exemptions from new emissions standards.

A few weeks ago, a Bloomberg Law reporter broke the story that former EPA head Pruitt received a handwritten letter from a former Republican congresswoman from Tennessee asking for the glider carve-out. One of the largest glider truck manufacturers is based in her district.

The story, based on EPA documents obtained by the reporter through a Freedom of Information Act request, confirmed strong suspicions that the EPA was lowering the emissions standards for glider trucks as a political favor to the congresswoman and the glider manufacturer.

Buried within the hundreds of pages of documents were emails from staff at both the EPA and OIRA showing both agencies colluding to rush through the glider truck carve-out by skipping the required analyses.

OIRA was created under President Ronald Reagan to review and approve the most important and impactful regulations from federal agencies. But since its founding, OIRA generally has opposed strong regulations that protect the public while favoring deregulation.

This incident is just the latest example.

The reason the EPA sent its glider trucks carve-out to OIRA in the first place is because the regulation was classified as an “economically significant” regulation. In other words, the EPA (correctly) believed that the regulation would have major economic impacts. Such rules have to be reviewed by OIRA.

When a rulemaking is classified as “economically significant,” in addition to putting it under OIRA review, it also normally triggers a requirement to assess its potential costs and benefits. And when it’s a rulemaking from the EPA, this designation also triggers the requirement to look at the public health impacts on children and minorities. All of these analyses ultimately would need to be reviewed by OIRA as it does its review of a rule.

Yet the EPA sent OIRA the glider truck rulemaking without any of the required analyses. In fact, the regulation had virtually no evidence to support it. Moreover, the EPA did nothing to refute its earlier findings from the Obama administration that exempting glider trucks from clean air standards would lead to enormous amounts of harmful pollution that would negatively impact vulnerable populations.

Normally, OIRA would have rejected the regulation and told the EPA to do the supporting analyses before allowing the EPA even to propose the rulemaking. Under the Obama administration, OIRA never hesitated to hold up regulations, often for years, while it insisted agencies provide more information and analyses to justify regulations.

As emails between the EPA and OIRA show, OIRA allowed the EPA to change the designation of the glider truck regulation from “economically significant” to merely “significant” to let the EPA propose the carve-out without having to do the various analyses required of “economically significant” rules.

This was the very last change the EPA made to the regulation before OIRA ended its review of the regulation and approved EPA to propose it publicly. OIRA wanted the change in order to cover its tracks, since leaving the regulation as “economically significant” would have led to questions as to why the typical analyses that accompany “economically significant” regulations had not been done by EPA.

One of the email subject lines from an EPA staffer reads, “RE: last minute significance change request from OMB.” While the content of the email is redacted, the subject line clearly indicates that OIRA (housed within OMB) requested that the EPA change the significance designation of the regulation.

Subsequent emails dispel any doubt that this occurred.

One email from an EPA staffer to other high-level EPA political appointees reads, “we just received word from OMB that they have cleared the Glider NPRM (with the change from “economically significant” to “significant”).” In other words, OMB cleared the change in the rulemaking’s designation from “economically significant” to “significant.”

Another internal EPA email makes clear that OMB requested the change, “…given that OMB was the one proposing the change be made from ‘economically significant’ to ‘significant…’”

Interestingly, this email chain also contained an email from an EPA career staffer with the subject line, “Why the draft glider repeal NPRM is Economically Significant.” This indicates that the EPA’s career staff believed the proper classification for the glider truck exemption would be an “economically significant” regulation.

These emails should lead the EPA’s IG to conclude that agency violated basic requirements in the regulatory process in trying to exempt glider trucks from pollution standards. With OIRA’s help, the EPA deliberately mischaracterized its carve-out for glider trucks to make it look like it was complying with requirements in the rulemaking process, when in fact it was not.

This raises profound concerns about the integrity of both the EPA’s rulemaking process, which already has come under close scrutiny due to numerous lapses under the Trump administration, as well as the integrity of OIRA’s regulatory review process.

A top to bottom audit of the EPA’s rulemaking process and OIRA’s regulatory review process might reveal that this incident is just the tip of the iceberg.

door-green-closed-lock (1)

As Shutdown Drags on, Agencies Devoted to Consumer and Worker Health and Safety Unfunded and Deprioritized

, ,

In Washington, D.C., and across the nation, furloughs forced by the partial government shutdown have hit agencies with a mission to protect consumers and workers particularly hard.

The shutdown, which is in its 19th day and currently the second-longest in US history, was triggered by President Donald Trump’s insistence that the budget include $5.7 billion for a wall across the U.S. southern border. The shutdown is already impeding vital consumer and worker protection priorities.

If the shutdown is allowed to persist, the cessation of these essential consumer and worker protections threatens significant public harms, as corporate violators go unpunished and food and product safety inspections are delayed and decreased.

The importance of these functions makes even slight capacity reductions a serious cause for concern, and it is noteworthy that the majority of federal workers at unfunded agencies whose responsibilities are considered essential are required to keep working without pay.

Table: Eleven federal consumer and worker protection agencies affected by the shutdown:

AgencyTotal StaffFurloughed Staff% Furloughed
Consumer Product Safety Commission55053096%
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission2,0781,97595%
Environmental Protection Agency13,97213,16094%
Securities and Exchange Commission4,4364,15194%
Commodity Futures Trading Commission67359188%
Federal Communications Commission1,4421,19783%
Federal Trade Commission1,12486277%
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration58433157%
Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration56328551%
Food and Drug Administration17,9378,83049%
Federal Aviation Administration44,92917,79140%

Source: Agency shutdown memos submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

For information about the specific impacts due to furloughs brought on by the shutdown at 11 federal consumer and worker protection agencies, read on. More

Trump-Head-Rogers-Body-2

Mr. Trump’s Unsafe Neighborhood: 33 Ways Trump’s Cruel Policies Are Bad for America’s Kids

, ,

It’s impossible to forget the scenes of sobbing migrant children separated from their parents, placed in cages, running away from  clouds of tear gas, cooped up in a tent city and appearing in court alone.

These horrifying events show all too clearly how the chaos-creating Trump administration has turned cruelty to children into official government policy.

But President Donald Trump’s anti-child policies are not limited to immigrants. They are emblematic of an administration whose antipathy to all children is apparent on virtually every issue, and especially so for low-income kids and children of color.

From the environment to health care to education to product safety, the interests of the largest U.S. corporations are far more important to the Trump administration than the health, safety and well-being of America’s children.

Here are 33 ways Donald Trump, along with his corporate-allied cronies and ideological extremists have put America’s children at risk:

    1. Undermined efforts to improve the quality of school lunches: The Trump administration has rolled back the Obama administration’s efforts to serve more nutritious foods to students, allowing chocolate milk and other sugary, salty, fatty foods that lead to obesity and poor health. Trump’s agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, said that it “doesn’t do any good to serve nutritious meals if they wind up in the trash can.” but nutrition experts say the rules put children’s health at risk.
    2. Nixed protections for transgender students: Only a month after taking office, Trump rescinded an Obama-era position that transgender students can use bathrooms that correspond with students’ gender identity. A year later, the U.S. Department of Education said it no longer would investigate complaints filed by transgender students who are denied access to bathrooms. Most recently, the Trump administration has explored defining gender as an unchangeable biological condition, a change that would exclude transgender people from civil rights protections.
    3. Faked concern about school shootings: Trump did nothing after 17 high school students were gunned down in Parkland, Fla. Instead of action that would actually make schools safer, Trump proposed to arm teachers, and his administration set up a sham commission to study school safety issues that intentionally chose to ignore the role of guns in school violence. While Trump briefly endorsed some gun-control measures and observed accurately that that the gun lobby has “great power over” Republicans, the Trump administration has avoided the gun control issue, save for a promised ban on ultra-dangerous “bump stocks” which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire more quickly.  
    4. Repealed education standards: Early in the administration, Trump signed measures getting rid of standards for teacher-training programs and accountability rules designed to ensure that schools serve poor and minority students.
    5. Placed protections for minority students at risk: The Education Department, under pressure from conservative groups, is dismissing large numbers of civil rights complaints and evaluating whether to eliminate Obama administration’s 2014 school discipline guidance, which encourages school officials to address the disproportionately large number of students of color who are suspended and expelled, and even jailed. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called for $1 million proposed cut to the Education Department’s civil rights office, a move a House Democrat described a “slap in the face” for minority students.
    6. Separated children from their parents, put them in cages and held them in detention camps: Trump’s cruel and unnecessary family separation policy resulted in thousands of kids being  separated from their parents, placed in cages, held in a tent city in Texas and appearing alone in court. These policies were enacted over the objections of career federal officials. The Trump administration then took months to reunify families and gave out inaccurate data about how many children had been reunified. Most recently, the Associated Press reported that workers at a tent city detention camp holding 2,300 teenagers in the Texas desert did not use FBI fingerprint background checks for its workers, increasing the risk that people with criminal histories could have contact with the boys and girls between 13 and 17 years old.
    7. Used tear gas on children, and then said it wasn’t not so bad: After U.S. agents used tear gas in a confrontation with a crowd of migrants at the border with Mexico, Trump claimed that “the tear gas is a very minor form of the tear gas itself” and denied it was used on children despite photos of children running away from tear gas used by federal agents.
    8. Left undocumented children and young adults in limbo: Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced he would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has curbed enforcement of immigration laws against undocumented immigrants  who came to the United States as children. Trump claimed he supported a “bill of love” to protect the Dreamers, but didn’t support actual legislation. Instead, Trump demanded strict anti-immigrant measures such as his unnecessary border wall proposal. As a result, the issue remains unresolved, and about 800,000 Dreamers remain in limbo.
    9. Tried to deprive immigrants of social services: The Trump administration wants to deny green cards and visas to legal immigrants who use federal benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance. This cruel proposal could cause fear and uncertainty for immigrant families and result in millions of eligible children going without food assistance, health coverage and more. Immigration officials would have latitude to to reject immigrants’ applications due to low incomes, deterring immigrants from legal paths to citizenship and  causing immigrants and their family members to forego critical benefits for fear of the consequences.
    10. Discussed ending the right to citizenship for children of immigrant parents: Trump said he would issue an executive order ending the right to U.S. citizenship for children born in the United States. This unconstitutional move was even dismissed by House Speaker Paul Ryan.
    11. Explored rolling back housing segregation rules: Enduring patterns of residential segregation in the U.S. have made it difficult for low-income children to climb the economic ladder, but the Trump administration is considering getting rid of a rule requiring local governments to combat residential segregation or lose federal funding. This rule, enacted by the Obama administration in 2015, is designed to promote low-income housing in wealthier areas that have long resisted such housing. Without this regulation, housing segregation and discriminatory practices will persist, making it far harder for low-income children to advance in American society.
    12. Killed internet privacy rules: Just two months after being sworn in, Trump signed legislation getting rid of regulations banning internet companies from selling customers’ browsing histories without their permission. Without this rule, internet companies will be able to target children with ads. Federal rules already prohibit data collection from children under 13 without parental consent, but teenagers are ripe targets for invasive advertising.
    13. Signed a tax bill that shafted low-income families:  Trump and  Congressional Republicans did the bidding of big donors by enacting  massive tax cuts for large corporations and wealthy individuals. After passing these irresponsible cuts, Republican lawmakers and Trump’s top economic adviser pivoted to talk of cutting back on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and other programs claiming that the government can’t afford them.
    14. Threatened drastic budget cuts: The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened, but failed to enact, draconian cuts to federal programs that benefit kids. After lawmakers reached a bipartisan compromise budget deal that provided a huge spending boost to the military as well as social programs, Trump quickly got grumpy about the deal he had just signed. He pushed for brutal cuts to children’s health insurance, and other spending that lawmakers already approved. Thankfully, this plan failed.
    15. Failed to prevent lead poisoning: The Trump administration’s first budget proposed to eliminate two federal programs that aim to reduce children’s risk of exposure to lead paint, which impedes brain development. It then took a court order to get the administration to revise federal standards for lead paint and lead dust exposure. These new proposed rules include tighter standards for lead dust on floors and window sills but still put children at risk by failing to include tighter standards for lead in paint and soil.
    16. Ousted the top EPA official for children’s health: The Trump administration placed Dr. Ruth Etzel, director of the EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection, on administrative leave in September 2018.  Etzel, a pediatrician and renowned child health expert, told CNN she suspected that the administration objected to a major lead poisoning report nearing completion. “Maybe saving children doesn’t matter anymore,” Etzel told CNN. “If you watch their actions and not just listen to their words, you find out they’re not walking the walk that they would be walking if they really wanted to eliminate childhood lead poisoning.”
    17. Delayed an update of standards for lead in drinking water: The Trump administration has delayed new federals standards for lead and copper in drinking water. After several delays, the EPA now says it plans to release these proposed standards next year. Meanwhile, more cities are facing public health crises over lead levels in their tap water.
    18. Refused to ban a pesticide that causes brain damage in kids: Trump’s EPA refused to ban chlorpyrifos, a  brain-damaging pesticide sold by Dow Chemical Co., which contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and whose CEO met with Trump several times. Though a federal appeals court has now ordered the Trump EPA to ban the pesticide, the Trump administration hasn’t stopped carrying water for chemical companies and agriculture giants. Trump’s Department of Justice has asked for a rehearing of this case with a larger panel of judges. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue even asserted that banning the dangerous chemical would prevent farmers from using and “effective and economical crop protection tool.”
    19. Pushed to let teenage farm workers handle pesticides: The Trump administration has solicited public comment on whether to repeal an Obama-era requirement barring children under 18 from handling pesticides on farms. This limitation, enacted in 2015, is one of the few national regulations on child farm labor and is especially important because early exposure to pesticides can cause cancer and neurological damage.
    20. Dialed back protections for people who live near chemical plants:  One in three kids attends school close to a dangerous chemical facility. But the Trump administration tried to delay enforcement of rules designed to ensure communities are prepared for chemical plant disasters. Trump’s EPA even proposed to delete important accident-prevention regulations. Fortunately, a federal appeals court ruled against the Trump EPA, saying it could no longer delay disaster-prevention and safety measures to promote emergency preparedness measures and sharing of information about chemical threats.
    21. Tried to throw out a climate-change lawsuit filed by children: A group of young people between 10 and 25 sued the federal government in 2015 for failing to stop climate change, arguing that they have the right to live in a safe climate. The Trump administration tried to get the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the case before the scheduled trial date, complaining about the cost of the litigation, but the court allowed the case to proceed.
    22. Deleted a mention of the impact of climate change on children:  Trump’s EPA deleted warnings about climate change from rules on power plant carbon emissions. Another Trump EPA regulation on greenhouse gases in cooling units eliminated language noting that children, the elderly and the poor are “most vulnerable to climate-related health effects.”
    23. Worked to weaken rules for mercury emissions from power plants: The Trump administration is reviewing whether to undermine protections that reduce mercury, arsenic, lead and other air pollutants from power plant emissions. Mercury pollution is particularly hazardous to kids, damaging the nervous system of children and fetuses.
    24. Ignored the health benefits of environmental rules: The Trump argument has argued, absurdly, that the government shouldn’t even consider health benefits — such as curbing soot in the air — when deciding whether to go ahead with federal rules, arguing that these benefits are an unintended effect of the rule.  Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, seemed oblivious to the real public benefits to the health of vulnerable populations like children and the elderly, calling such benefits “fuzzy math.”
    25. Closed a federal office that focused on children’s health: The EPA closed the National Center for Environmental Research, which provides millions of dollars in grants each year and runs fellowships to study the effects of chemicals on children’s health. Though EPA officials claimed the research grants would still be funded, staffers at the center were reassigned.
    26. Cut off funding for a teen pregnancy prevention program: The Trump administration defunded a program that uses evidence-based initiatives to reduce teen pregnancy rates, but then was blocked from doing so by a federal judge.
    27. Tried to get rid of families’ health care:  The White House and Republican lawmakers spent months trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The 2010 health care law benefited low-income children tremendously, spurring parents who were newly eligible for health care to sign up their children for existing health care programs and use more preventive care. Thankfully, the Trump administration failed in its effort to repeal Obamacare, but has still worked to harm children and families by slashing spending on advertising for Obamacare signups and trying to sabotage Obamacare by getting rid of the mandate that Americans carry health insurance. Under Trump, the Justice Department even declined to defend the law’s ban on denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions or charging them higher rates.
    28. Allowed health insurers to sell skimpy insurance plans: Children and families will be harmed by the Trump administration’s decision to allow health insurance companies to sell junk health care plans that lack coverage for such essentials as prescriptions and quality maternity care. Those with these plans may find themselves responsible for significant expenses, forcing them to go into debt and even bankruptcy. While these inexpensive plans could target healthy young adults who use little healthcare, but children and families tend to use healthcare more often and would be harmed.
    29. Undermined efforts to encourage breastfeeding: Despite the consensus recommendation of public health experts and doctors, the Trump administration sought to dilute a World Health Organization resolution favoring breastfeeding over the use of infant formula, helping out the infant formula industry.
    30. Failed to ensure food safety in trade negotiations: The new North American trade deal’s includes restraints on domestic food safety and inspection programs and requires the U.S. to accept food imports that do not meet U.S. safety or inspection standards. The trade pact also maintains limits on food inspection at the border and adds new rules limiting audits of countries’ food safety programs. It also fails to fix rollbacks of U.S. food labeling policies that previously were challenged by Canada and Mexico, including country-of-origin labels for meat and dolphin-safe labels for tuna.
    31. Appointed an opponent of product-safety regulations to run government’s product safety watchdog: Trump’s acting head of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Anne Marie Buerkle, is a former right-wing congresswoman with a record of opposing strong mandatory health and safety regulations. Another CPSC commissioner, Dana Baiocco, spent her professional career defending corporations in product safety cases.
    32. Reached a weak settlement over stroller problems: The CPSC sued a maker of jogging strollers over reports that the front wheel could detach suddenly and injure parents and kids. The agency reached a settlement requiring the stroller manufacturer, Britax, to repair defective strollers but still avoid calling these repairs a recall. Two Democratic commissioners were highly critical of this arrangement, writing that “an agreement that provides relief without anyone being fully alerted to the nature of the relief is pretty much no relief at all” and expressed concerns that other companies will seek similar treatment.
    33. Put young nursing home workers at risk:  The Trump administration has proposed to repeal  a  policy that protects 16 and 17-year-old nursing assistants from getting injured in nursing homes and health care jobs. Trump’s Labor Department apparently has no problem with young workers operating dangerous patient lifts on their own, without training or assistance from an adult worker. However, occupational safety experts have concluded that most youths do not have the ability to properly assess the risks of using this equipment.

“Clean” cars are not all created equal

,

A recent report by the University of Houston details how the fourth largest city in the nation can reduce air pollution by replacing old, polluting vehicles. (Full disclosure: the report was funded in part by Public Citizen and the Healthy Port Communities Coalition.) By 2040, the eight-county Houston region will have 30-50% more cars on the road and 40-80% more trucks. A business-as-usual scenario for those vehicles would lead to 122 additional deaths in Houston. In contrast, replacing pollution intensive vehicles with electric and clean tech vehicles could save 246 lives.

Houston has battled air pollution—particularly ozone—for decades. Air quality is complex in Houston, with pollution contributions from cars and trucks, energy generation, and one of the largest concentrations of petrochemical manufacturing facilities found anywhere in the world.

Scientists are increasingly appreciating the role that transportation plays in air pollution. Diesel trucks are some of the worst offenders, and the best thing Houston can do to fight pollution from the transportation sector is to replace our oldest and dirtiest trucks.

This turns out to be true whether those trucks are replaced with electric vehicles or so-called “emissions controlled” vehicles. Newer diesel engines can be up to 90% cleaner than their older cousins. This fact, combined with the low-cost and familiarity of diesel engines, means that regulators looking for cheap and easy solutions to clean the air often turn to diesel vehicles first.

But there are a number of reasons why electric vehicles (EVs) are a better alternative to “clean combustion” vehicles. Let’s look at a few of them now.

Electric vehicles save money. If you purchase an electric car or truck today, you will spend more than if you purchased an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. But that doesn’t mean EVs cost more. In fact, over the lifetime of ownership of a vehicle, you will save money if you purchase an EV. The first saving comes in fuel costs—it’s more expensive to fill a gas tank than to plug in your car at home or at work. The next savings is in maintenance cost. EVs have fewer moving parts, so the long-term maintenance cost of an electric vehicle is significantly less than an ICE vehicle. And with EV prices declining rapidly, even the initial cost will be less than that of an ICE vehicle within about seven years. Sometime between now and then, we are likely to see a tipping point, as vehicle purchasers begin to appreciate how they can save money with EVs.

Electric vehicles are inherently cleaner. EVs never have tailpipe emissions—they are truly zero emissions. They do pull energy from the electricity grid, and most of the energy on the grid comes from fossil fuel sources today. But Texas’ grid is getting cleaner by the year. Which means that the air pollution EVs are indirectly responsible for will continue to decrease.

Clean tech does not always work. “Clean diesel” vehicles, unlike EVs, still emit pollution. And the amount of pollution they emit is highly dependent on how they are used and how frequently they are serviced. Diesel trucks rely on something called a diesel particulate filter (DPF) to reduce air pollution. But DPFs only work at certain operating temperatures. Vehicles that idle for long periods of time, such as drayage trucks operating at the Port of Houston, often fall outside of those temperatures, rendering the DPF ineffective. Vehicle emissions controls also only work if vehicles are continuously maintained (this is why you have to get an emissions test on your car every year). As “clean diesel” trucks age, they stop being so clean.

These are a few of the reasons why we advocate for replacing today’s transportation fleet with electric vehicles—the fleets of the future. Texas has $209 million dollars in Volkswagen mitigation funds to spend on clean transportation in the coming years. Cheap, “clean” diesels may seem like a bargain, but they are not. As we propel Texas and Houston toward a cleaner future, we should embrace the best technologies available. Our lives depend on it.

Drive Electric

,

UPDATE:  Yes the Austin Drive Electric Event is still happening on Saturday 9/15/2018 (as of 9/14/2018 3:30 PM)

Guest submission by Michael Osborne, founding member and current Texas Electric Transportation Resources Alliance (TxETRA) board Chair. 

There is something to driving electric that is more than the sum of its parts.  Sure, they are faster (generally), they are quieter, you don’t have to breath dangerous chemicals to make them go, and there is some comfort in the fact that if you accidentally fall asleep in your car while parked in the garage, you actually will wake up.

Most electric cars are smarter than their smoking hillbilly cousins and they are definitely cheaper to drive.  Want to pay a dollar for gas… drive electric.  Want to never spend $129.00 dollars on an oil change, oil filter, and air filter again… drive electric.  Tired of waiting for your car as your mechanic finishes that brake job on your 3 year old car…drive electric.

Plus, you might experience what I experienced several months ago.  I was driving east on Hwy 290, a little faster than the speed limit, when this huge “dually” truck  (four tires on the rear axel) comes roaring around me.  It’s a real fancy black truck with shiny dual vertical chrome exhaust pipes running up on both sides of the cabin. There was probably some stickers that I didn’t read but I suspect that the long haired driver was a member of a political class that rhymes with bumper.

So this guy passes me, then abruptly slows down in front of me. Then, with the flick of some switch, he zooms off leaving a huge noxious black cloud of smoke in his tracks, with me in those tracks; I mean thick black smoke like a locomotive in a western movie.

I had been “smoked”.

And yes, that is a thing.

Surely, I deserved it in his eyes, I was driving the fastest, smartest car on the road in my judgment, and he needed to communicate his unhappiness with that. It was a first amendment thing.

So watch out for those smokers.

Personally, I’m on my second electric car.  The one I have now is all electric, and the one I had before was a plug-in hybrid. The plug-in hybrid went about 40 miles on electric fuel, and then if I needed to travel, the on-board generator would kick in.  There was zero range anxiety and as a cultural transition vehicle, it is pretty smart.  A plug-in hybrid embodies the 80/20 rule quite nicely.  With 80% of trips under 40 miles, then make those emission free trips.  When you drive to Memphis, do that with gas.

I don’t have that option with my “S”.  If I’m traveling out of town, I need to do a little planning.  Fortunately, the computer makes that easy.  One night I got down to about 25 miles before I pulled into the high-speed charger behind the discount mall at mile 202.  Within a few minutes, I had 120 miles again, and Austin was only 30 miles away. Most of the time I charge overnight and wake up to a car that is almost always full and ready to go.

But electric driving is different.  You don’t think of getting a fill-up.  You think of getting home.  Because, unlike a gas car, you get most of your “go” at home.

Electric Car sales are gearing up so to speak.

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, “cumulative passenger EV sales worldwide are set to hit 4 million this week.  Including electric buses, the 4 million threshold has already been reached. At the end of June, there were more than 3.5 million passenger EVs sold globally and about 421,000 electric buses, bringing the total number of EVs sold to 3.97 million.

Sales were driven in large part by China, which is responsible for around 37 percent of passenger EVs sold around the world since 2011 and around 99 percent of e-buses.”

Bloomberg goes on:

Setting e-buses aside, we expect cumulative passenger EV sales to reach 4 million units before the start of September 2018. There are several new EV models that we expect to come to the market before the end of 2018, which should help increase sales numbers globally.

The next million EVs will take just over 6 months. We expect the five-millionth EV to be sold in March 2019.

 

There is a professor at Texas A & M who considers himself an electric car expert.  He doesn’t believe that we will ever replace the advanced gasoline cars of today because they are just so good.

He also doesn’t drive an electric car.

He also doesn’t believe that climate change is a transcendent problem. That in order to get the carbon out of our world, we will need to run our cars on wind and solar.  And with enough electric cars, we will have enough stored energy to do it.

Driving Electric is more than the sum of its parts, because electric transportation is the building block to a carbon-free world.

September is a good a time to start because it’s Drive Electric Week from the 8th to the 16th.  Here in Texas, there will be events in Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, and Austin.  The Dallas event is in Grapevine on Sept 8th, and the Austin event is on the 15th.

Join us in Austin on Electric Drive Saturday, September 15th, and climb into the driver’s seat of the newest electric vehicles available. There will also be the latest scooters, motorcycles, mopeds, buses, skateboards and bikes. Grab lunch from one of our food trucks and enjoy the live music, workshops and activities for kids!

Sponsored locally by Public Citizen, the Texas Electric Transportation Resources Alliance (TxETRA), Austin Energy, and SmartCharge America, it might be your opportunity to become part of the solution.

Hopefully, it will help keep us all from getting “smoked”.

Michael Osborne led the Plug-in Partners effort to develop the 10,000-plus  soft orders that led to the production of GM’s Chevy Volt.  In the 1980s, Osborne saw the potential of Texas’ vast wind and solar energy resources. He co-founded the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Alliance (TREIA) and The Wind Coalition, both of which successfully advocated policies that helped make Texas the No. 1 wind energy producer in the nation and fifth in the world for wind energy production.

The Texas Electric Transportation Resources Alliance (TxETRA) is a nonprofit organization composed of electric energy vehicle manufacturers, industry leaders, developers, distributors, producers, utilities, and environmental and transportation equity groups. Their mission is to guide and accelerate the adoption of electrical transportation in all its forms, in the most cost-effective way, providing maximum benefit to the citizens of Texas.

Load More