Greenercars.org still hates Tesla

[bollar]

What the hell?

I knew someone would enjoy that part...

 

[Skotty]

Comparing it to the Nissan 370Z is eyebrow raising as well.

 

[BlueTan85]

Here. Contact 'em. Set 'em straight.



http://www.aceee.org/about/aceee-staff

 

[timf]

I found the following posting when searching on the issue that may be relevant to you. It claims that according to the LEED New Construction 2009 Guide (which may have been updated since then): “For the purposes of this credit, low-emitting and fuel-efficient vehicles are defined as vehicles that are either classified as Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV) by the California Air Resources Board or have achieved a minimum green score of 40 on the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) annual vehicle rating guide”.

In other words, any car that would be eligible for the white sticker in California would also qualify. This means both the Model S and Roadster would qualify, along with any other pure EV, despite not being ranked high enough on the ACEEE list.

Source: Green Cars: Does My Hybrid Vehicle Qualify for Preferred Parking for LEED? | Green-Buildings.com

 

[chickensevil]

I found the following posting when searching on the issue that may be relevant to you. It claims that according to the LEED New Construction 2009 Guide (which may have been updated since then): “For the purposes of this credit, low-emitting and fuel-efficient vehicles are defined as vehicles that are either classified as Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV) by the California Air Resources Board or have achieved a minimum green score of 40 on the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) annual vehicle rating guide”.

In other words, any car that would be eligible for the white sticker in California would also qualify. This means both the Model S and Roadster would qualify, along with any other pure EV, despite not being ranked high enough on the ACEEE list.

Source: Green Cars: Does My Hybrid Vehicle Qualify for Preferred Parking for LEED? | Green-Buildings.com

Oh, wow! thank you so much! I will fire this over to my parking office and see what happens.

 

[jacobp]

The US Green Building Council is a tenant in the same office building in DC as my law firm. The garage has one charger and no parking spaces that are designated or set aside for green cars. Ironic?

 

[chickensevil]

So I have typed up a very long winded letter to explain my case, which I will be submitting tomorrow, but would appreciate any feedback, because I don't want to come across as a total jerk in the letter, since it seems like my office just made a simple oversight on the requirements. Innocent until proven guilty and all that... so here it is:

Subject: LEED New Construction Guide 2009

I believe the parking office is not quite executing the LEED requirements correctly for providing parking for Low Emitting and Fuel Efficient vehicles. Per the reference document, under Sustainable Sites section 4.3 (page 8), it appears that we are operating under Option 1 which states:

"Provide preferred parking for low-emitting and fuel-efficient vehicles for 5% of the total vehicle parking capacity of the site. Providing a discounted parking rate is an acceptable substitute for preferred parking for low-emitting/fuel-efficient vehicles. To establish a meaningful incentive in all potential markets, the parking rate must be discounted at least 20%. The discounted rate must be available to all customers (i.e., not limited to the number of customers equal to 5% of the vehicle parking capacity), publicly posted at the entrance of the parking area and available for a minimum of 2 years."


Under footnote 1 it defines "low-emitting and fuel-efficient vehicles" as: "vehicles that are either classified as Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV) by the California Air Resources Board or have achieved a minimum green score of 40 on the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) annual vehicle rating guide"


Reference Document
http://www.usgbc.org/Docs/Archive/General/Docs5546.pdf


It is for this reason that I write to you, because while the vehicle I drive does not currently score a 40 on the ACEEE rating guide it is classified as a Zero Emission Vehicle by CARB.


So CARB defines a ZEV as: "a vehicle that produces no emissions from the on-board source of power. The only technologies that meet this definition are Battery Electric Vehicles and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles."
Drive Clean - Glossary of Terms


If you go to their BEV section of their site here: Drive Clean | Plug-in Electric Vehicle Resource Center


And then click the "Find Certified BEVs" link at the top, click over to the Model Year 2014 (which my car happens to be) and look for Tesla Model S (85 kW-hr battery pack) you will see my car is provided on the list. If you click into that link you will find the "Emissions Certification Standard" listed as "ZEV".


According to LEED, my car should qualify for a green vehicle parking pass. If needed I would be more than happy to come discuss this with anyone in the office to help understand the requirements of the LEED certification since it has taken me almost 6 months of searching to trace through the paper trail on this myself and I understand why it has been overlooked for this long.


Thank you for your time, and consideration of this matter.

Also if anyone else finds themselves stuck in this predicament, feel free to plagiarize my letter to send to their parking office. While this doesn't fix the issue with ACEEE it should at the very least fix your parking office when dealing with a Tesla.

- - - Updated - - -

Here. Contact 'em. Set 'em straight.



http://www.aceee.org/about/aceee-staff

Oh, and thank you for this, I can't believe they have every employee, what their job function is, their email, AND their phone number all listed plain as day on the website... The Cyber Security guy in me is screaming that this was a bad idea for them haha! Talk about opening yourself up to phishing and social engineering campaigns...

Anyway, once I get through fighting with my parking office I will likely pursue these contacts to help fix the root of the problem, which is their flawed scoring system.

 

[Endodoc]

Please do keep us updated. I am now emotionally attached to this thread and the suspense is killing me! I hope and believe that this will be resolved in your favor. Best of luck!

 

[TexasEV]

Is there any data showing benefit from encouraging preferred parking for certain cars? Or benefit greater than the cost of the backlash against "green" cars and those who drive them?

 

[chickensevil]

Is there any data showing benefit from encouraging preferred parking for certain cars? Or benefit greater than the cost of the backlash against "green" cars and those who drive them?

Well given that getting parking in my building if you DON'T drive a green car is nigh impossible... I would say that it works quite well. But that is just my building (albeit the entire complex has probably something on the order of 6-8k people working out of it... so it is a pretty large facility...) If it does something to other areas I couldn't tell you. For us it is the difference between being forced to pay for parking in a distant garage (100$ a month or 25$ a day) and you have to still walk about 1/2 mile to get from the distant parking, or getting a garage that is attached to the building that takes all of 5 minutes to go from your car to inside. I don't know anyone who wasn't happy that they didn't drive a green car and was able to get free and close parking.

Since they don't have enough parking spaces in that garage to service but like 1/3 of the building population (if that), getting a non-marked space is pretty much not going to happen, unless you are a high ranking person in the building... like a director or some such.

Plus, at least in my area, there are just as many Prius on the road as there are anything else.

 

[renim]

I tried challenging them on their data previously. I pointed out a bunch of flawed cars on their list which scored a 40 but got gas mileage on the order of less than 20MPG. Which made absolutely no sense to me. I have yet to receive a response to my emails. I don't know that having more flawed data will really help anything.

But I do appreciate you all pointing out the other flaws in their data because this is really, really, bad.

Actually their data is quite good, it all references back to government grade sources and is akin to a real world carbon tax legislation.
Its very defensible.

defensible doesn't equate to reality.

for instance, the car category is taken from EPA classification which are based upon interior volumes and door types etc, so the Tesla becomes a small wagon and the Nissan LEAF is a midsize vehicle. Technically they are correct, but that is not reflective of the market which is more subjective.

They have modelled the LCA according to GREET, again that is the government grade standard, but still is full of massive assumptions, for instance, how is CO2 apportioned for LiCO3 production, a spodumene LiCO3 plant is effectively a sodium silicate production facility with LiCO3 as a by product, in much of the world sodium silicate is a waste, but in China its a commodity of value due to their textile industry. (ratio by mass might be 20:1) Similar issues for Nickel production. etc

 

[chickensevil]

Actually their data is quite good, it all references back to government grade sources and is akin to a real world carbon tax legislation.
Its very defensible.

defensible doesn't equate to reality.

for instance, the car category is taken from EPA classification which are based upon interior volumes and door types etc, so the Tesla becomes a small wagon and the Nissan LEAF is a midsize vehicle. Technically they are correct, but that is not reflective of the market which is more subjective.

They have modelled the LCA according to GREET, again that is the government grade standard, but still is full of massive assumptions, for instance, how is CO2 apportioned for LiCO3 production, a spodumene LiCO3 plant is effectively a sodium silicate production facility with LiCO3 as a by product, in much of the world sodium silicate is a waste, but in China its a commodity of value due to their textile industry. (ratio by mass might be 20:1) Similar issues for Nickel production. etc

I don't think they are using the latest GREET calculations, and that isn't fair to Tesla anyway, since they go out of their way to ensure environmentally friendly car and battery production through the whole chain.

And the example cars that been listed here really shows how flawed their calculations must be when we know how most of these cars are made and what their stats are. This is probably why a carbon tax has never been put in place because the second they did, they would end up incorrectly classifying some cars as "not green" and would make the same terrible assumptions about non-green cars and call them "green".

 

[JST]

Actually their data is quite good, it all references back to government grade sources and is akin to a real world carbon tax legislation.
Its very defensible.

defensible doesn't equate to reality.

for instance, the car category is taken from EPA classification which are based upon interior volumes and door types etc, so the Tesla becomes a small wagon and the Nissan LEAF is a midsize vehicle. Technically they are correct, but that is not reflective of the market which is more subjective.

They have modelled the LCA according to GREET, again that is the government grade standard, but still is full of massive assumptions, for instance, how is CO2 apportioned for LiCO3 production, a spodumene LiCO3 plant is effectively a sodium silicate production facility with LiCO3 as a by product, in much of the world sodium silicate is a waste, but in China its a commodity of value due to their textile industry. (ratio by mass might be 20:1) Similar issues for Nickel production. etc

I still don't understand the small wagon reference. The EPA portion of my window sticker compares the MPGe rating of the Tesla to other "large cars," which is in line with how I'd expect it to be classified.

 

[wart]

I don't think they are using the latest GREET calculations, and that isn't fair to Tesla anyway, since they go out of their way to ensure environmentally friendly car and battery production through the whole chain.

And the example cars that been listed here really shows how flawed their calculations must be when we know how most of these cars are made and what their stats are. This is probably why a carbon tax has never been put in place because the second they did, they would end up incorrectly classifying some cars as "not green" and would make the same terrible assumptions about non-green cars and call them "green".

This is why the correct way to do a carbon tax is to just tax extraction of carbon from the earth as close to the point of extraction as possible. Then the cost of the tax automatically gets baked into any products which use that carbon.

 

[Hodginator]

Keep us up to date on your progress chickensevil. Reading this thread increased my blood pressure substantially.

 

[flashflood]

This is why the correct way to do a carbon tax is to just tax extraction of carbon from the earth as close to the point of extraction as possible. Then the cost of the tax automatically gets baked into any products which use that carbon.

+1. Policy debate aside, if you support a carbon tax of some kind, taxing at the source is far simpler than cap and trade, which would require the entire rest of the economy to start measuring and reporting and certifying and buying credits -- and dealing with carbon audits of political enemies by an EPA/IRS hybrid Frankenstein monster.

 

[Skotty]

I can believe that they are using metrics and data sourced from the government. Government sources have been skewed by anti-EV powers that regularly spew misinformation, dishonest research, and FUD about EVs. The evidence lays right here before us, when a high utility Tesla Model S BEV scores the same or less than a low utility 19/26 MPG Nissan 370Z. Anyone who can't see that is obviously wrong has been drinking far too much EV Haterade.

 

[chickensevil]

I can believe that they are using metrics and data sourced from the government. Government sources have been skewed by anti-EV powers that regularly spew misinformation, dishonest research, and FUD about EVs. The evidence lays right here before us, when a high utility Tesla Model S BEV scores the same or less than a low utility 19/26 MPG Nissan 370Z. Anyone who can't see that is obviously wrong has been drinking far too much EV Haterade.

In fairness, GREET comes from Argonne National Laboratory, which is known for being a pretty decent place of science... just saying...

But yeah, something just seems fishy in the way they are pulling metrics...

 

[chickensevil]

Well, the email has been sent... hopefully I don't end up ruffling the wrong feathers and someone gets upset because I am "challenging" them... it would be just my luck...

 

[karmamule]

Well, the email has been sent... hopefully I don't end up ruffling the wrong feathers and someone gets upset because I am "challenging" them... it would be just my luck...

They have no reason for ruffled feathers. Your response was polite, well-reasoned, and fact-based. No histrionics or ad-hominem attacks. If they do have ruffled feathers it's due to their personality rather than your approach. Well done!