Tesla testifies at Congressional hearing: The Promise of Electric Vehicles

[Norbert]

The Promise of Electric Vehicles | Blog | Tesla Motors

On May 5, 2011, Tesla Motors, Inc. was invited to testify at the Congressional hearing entitled “The American Energy Initiative: Challenges and Opportunities for Alternative Transportation Fuels and Vehicles.” Part of a multipart series of hearings on Energy issues sponsored by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Power, this hearing reviewed the status of alternative fuels and vehicles. Diarmuid O’Connell, Vice President of Business Development at Tesla Motors, provided testimony on behalf of the Electric Vehicle industry. An abridged version of the testimony paper filed with the Committee is provided below with the full copy and Webcast recording of the hearing available here.

 

[NeoDoc]

Right on, Tesla!

A conglomerate of all EV manufacturers should get together and make this a national TV ad advocacy campaign! Either that or bribe Congress like the O&G industry has done.

 

[Norbert]

Aside from the high-quality Tesla-state of the union, I think this is the main statement:

This is a model that worked successfully to spur the market for hybrid technology an income tax credit that phased out with time and as certain volumetric milestones were achieved. There is currently such an EV tax credit on the books, but it is imprecise in its methodology and does not fully incentivize the desired technology development. Its flaw is that it caps the available credit value at a battery pack size of roughly 17 kilowatt hours (KwH). In contrast, given the fact that the more KwHs of storage on board results in fewer oil driven miles, a well constructed tax credit would not cap the KwH credit and instead would reward each onboard KwH. This would incentivize the right behavior and would address the most important and currently most expensive component in the car the battery.

For quite a while, the best idea I've heard for providing a more effective incentive/support for the development of viable EVs (capable of being the primary car in a household), as well as a more effective incentive/support for those characteristics in battery technology which are currently the most critical for the success of EVs.

 

[dsm363]

If they modify the tax credit, I think it should be on estimated range, not on battery size. Putting a 50 kWh batter pack in a Ford F350 for example wouldn't get you the same range as on a small car.

 

[tdelta1000]

What a nice read!!!! Tesla Motors clearly makes the point for the continued Federal support of EVs. I think the incentive should move up stream between $500 to $1500 dollars to show stronger support.