Salt Lake City Removes EV Charging Fees To Encourage Use. According to Utility Dive, “Electric vehicle (EV) owners in Salt Lake City can now get a free charge, thanks to the city’s repeal of user fees at its EV charging ports. The move is an effort to encourage residents to use the stations and purchase EVs. Since the installation of 28 charging stations a year ago, customers had to pay $1 to connect and 10 cents per kilowatt hour. The city plans to install more charging stations this year. Salt Lake City leaders will monitor the use and costs of the charging stations now that they’re free, and will determine whether or not to reinstate a fee at some point in the future.” [Utility Dive, 3/7/18 (=)]

 

GM CEO: "We Are In The Midst Of A Transportation Revolution." According to Houston Chronicle, “General Motors CEO Mary Barra said Wednesday that auto manufacturers were ‘moving fast’ to increase electric vehicle production. She avoided predictions of how quickly electric vehicles sales would grow, but Barra described a fast-changing auto market where demand for zero-emission and autonomous vehicles was rising. ‘We’ll have significantly more autonomous vehicles and significantly more electric vehicles,’ five years from now, she said at the CERAWeek energy conference hosted by IHS Markit. ‘We are in the midst of a transportation revolution.’ Transportation represents more than half of global oil demand. And many within the industry are questioning whether automakers can live up to the hype around electric vehicles. ‘The important point here is that EVs are not the silver bullet that everybody is looking for,’ BP CEO Bob Dudley said Tuesday. Barra announced GM was increasing production on its Chevy Volt electric vehicle at one of its Detrot plants. She also said GM is also ‘on track’ to release an autonomous electric vehicle next year, for use in ride sharing fleets like those operated by Uber and Lyft, in which GM is an investor. ‘We feel a unique responsibility to solve the problem that have come from the freedoms cars allow,’ Barra said.” [Houston Chronicle, 3/7/18 (=)]

 

Maryland Is 290K Shy Of Its EV Goal; Can A Broad Stakeholder Process Get It There?. According to Utility Dive, “Maryland wants 300,000 electric vehicles on its roads by the end of 2025 — far higher than the 10,000 or so in the state now. But utilities and other stakeholders filed a proposal this year, laying the groundwork and building consensus for parties to work together and meet the goal. The proposal envisions the second largest EV charging network in the United States. While no one will challenge California on that front anytime soon, the $104 million plan calls for an impressive 24,000 chargers. But it remains an initial step in the state’s broader transportation electrification goals, and importantly establishes not just technical groundwork but industry partnerships as well. ‘We know Maryland has a very challenging goal for zero emissions adoption,’ said John Murach, Baltimore Gas & Electric’s manager of energy programs and services. ‘That’s a big curve. We have seen the uptake accelerate over last year, but we still have a long gap.’ Last year, the state’s utilities, environmental groups and EV industry reps, came together in a working group to tackle the problem. The outcome was a 150-page ‘Proposal to Implement a Statewide Electric Vehicle Portfolio’ that had 14 signatories. … The EV proposal would lead to statewide investment of $104.7 million, spent between the middle of 2018 and 2023. The result is expected to be 24,000 chargers ‘that will enable smart charging in residential, non-residential, and public settings.’ In the long-term, the proposal is expected to benefit the system as a whole. And the near-term monthly impact is projected to be small: Residential customers are expected to realize a peak monthly impact of: $0.35 at BGE, $0.34 for Pepco, $0.42 for Delmarva and $0.25 for Potomac Edison.” [Utility Dive, 3/7/18 (=)]

 

Shell CEO Drives An Electric Car — And Just Bought Another One. According to Axios, “The CEO of Shell, one of the world’s biggest oil and natural gas companies, drives an electric car, just bought his wife another one and is installing a charging station at his home. Why it matters: Shell’s chief executive, Ben van Beurden, is one of the most outspoken CEOs within the oil and gas industry when it comes to cutting carbon emissions and changing business strategies to do so. He’s putting some personal heft behind his rhetoric by driving an electric car and buying one for his wife. To be sure: Shell is seeking to make money off the world’s shift to lower carbon energy resources. The charging station that will be at van Beurden’s home is made by NewMotion. Shell bought that company last year. Flashback: Van Beurden first made waves about driving an electric car last summer, per this Bloomberg report. He currently drives a plug-in Mercedes company car. His more recent, personal purchase is a different brand, but he wouldn’t disclose the kind. The big picture: In a speech at the CERAWeek conference here, van Beurden called climate change the greatest question facing the industry and laid out why and how he was changing his company’s strategy and products to respond to the challenge. ‘There are plenty of questions facing our industry. The ongoing impact of shale. OPEC. The debate on LNG supplies. Geopolitical shifts. Plenty of questions. But I believe the biggest of them is climate change.’” [Axios, 3/7/18 (=)]

 

 

How Monkeys Proved To VW That Diesel Can Never Be Safe. According to Fortune, “What do 10 long-tailed macaque monkeys watching cartoons have to do with making diesel safer? Ideally nothing, but if you watched the recent Netflix (NFLX, -0.92%) documentary Dirty Money, you would see a lab outside of Albuquerque in 2014, where these primates are sitting in air-tight compartments while a Volkswagen Beetle’s diesel fumes are pumped inside. It was as part of an experiment paid for by the European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector (EUGT), a German auto industry group. But it’s actually worse than all that. The Beetle was 40 times the legal limit due to software that cheated the system. The tests proved that the VW car was polluting more than an old, 1997-year Ford (F, -0.85%) truck, and the companies decided not to publicly release the test results. … A report released by the European Parliament showed that 72,000 people in Europe died prematurely because of nitrogen dioxide pollution in 2012. Some European cities are creating zones that restrict diesel vehicles, or banning them outright. In Germany, the highest federal court issued a landmark ruling last month that cities have the right to ban diesel cars. One of those cities petitioning the court for a ban was Stuttgart, the home of Mercedes and Porsche. Volkswagen, along with the other German auto companies, also wanted to use the research to increase their diesel sales in the United States. That came to a screeching halt with ‘Dieselgate’ and VW’s emissions cheating scheme in 2015, which has cost the company more than $30 billion. … While the passenger vehicle sector is getting electrified, we cannot take our eye off diesel technology. It will be important to continue improvements to diesel engines—and especially enforcement of the rules—to ensure that their health effects continue to be reduced and their contribution to climate change is minimized. But that doesn’t require industry studies of gassed monkeys.” [Fortune, 3/6/18 (+)]