New York

In today’s EGEB:

• A solar farm in Argentina demonstrates the dominance of Chinese solar.
• NYC’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority announces a rooftop solar initiative.
• Tanzania aims to ramp up renewable energy in a big way.
• Johns Hopkins will fulfill about two-thirds of its electricity needs through solar power.

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A settlement the New York Attorney General’s Office reached with American Electric Power is funding the use of nine all-electric delivery trucks for New York City nonprofit organizations.

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New York City Council adopted a bill Thursday that will require buildings of a certain size to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and it’s being touted as the first of its kind.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news.

Today in EGEB, Maine’s governor signifies the state is open for business when it comes to wind power. A number of developers are vying for a New York offshore wind project. And a recent poll shows Arizonans overwhelmingly support renewable energy.

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On January 3rd, New York governor Andrew Cuomo delivered a state energy storage target of 1500MW via the private market by 2025 and has put up $260 million in state money to help drive the investment.

In the annual “State of the State” address, varying proposals  – from combating MS-13, to cleaning up the Hudson River, to expanding clean energy jobs – were delivered to start the new year. The energy storage target delivered seems to be an extension or culmination of prior state legislation requiring targets be set.

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New York City announced a significant new electric car charging program today that will bring 50 fast-charging stations across all 5 boroughs.

The deployment of new stations will start next year and extend through 2020.
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It’s not all bad news for US state governments in their dealing with electric vehicles. Today New York State, headed by Democrat Andrew Cuomo announced a new up to $2,000 rebate program for all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle buyers. That means the Model 3 New Yorkers reserved just got significantly cheaper.

The rebate will help make EVs more cost competitive with gas-powered cars at purchase (they are often already much cheaper to own when accounting for gas savings) and will go into effect on April 1st…
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While the Chevy Bolt EV is currently only available in California and Oregon, it will soon make its way to the east coast thanks to a deal between GM and the city of New York. The de Blasio administration is ordering 50 all-electric Chevy Bolt with the first ones set to arrive in the spring and the order is expected to go up to 80 vehicles by the end of the fiscal year.

After a discount from GM and federal incentives, the city of New York is getting the vehicles at a very attractive price.
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We have been speculating about the “real-world” range of the upcoming all-electric (BEV) version of the Hyundai Ioniq for a while now, especially since the company confirmed it will have a 28 kWh battery pack, but now Hyundai confirmed that it expects it will achieve an EPA-rated range of 110 miles.

The Korea-based automaker was previously suggesting that the pack can enable 155 miles on a single charge, but as we discussed when Hyundai first release the estimate, it is more likely to be based on the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC), which is known to be less restrictive than the EPA standard.
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Update: A reddit user hopped over to the new Tesla location, and it looks like the company already has a sign up. See the bottom of the post for the image.

According to a report from New York real estate news site The Real Deal, a Tesla store will be the anchor for a new office conversion in Red Hook, New York City. Sources for the site say that the Palo Alto company signed a lease for a new space of roughly 40,000 square feet that will serve as an office, a service center, and a showroom for the company’s many EV offerings…

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On a recent electric road trip to upstate New York, I realized that, with the cold weather, my snow tires and a car full of kids who like to be warm, I would need over 30 more miles of electricity than my batteries could hold to make it home. Hitting one of Tesla’s speedy Superchargers would require me to veer across the Hudson River twice and add over a half hour to my trip.

Along the fastest route, according to the helpful Plugshare App, there were a few Level 2 charging stations. I can get 30 miles per hour of charge from my default Tesla cable so I figured that I could get most of the extra miles I needed while we stopped for lunch. There was also a highly rated Level 2 charger within a mile of our destination we could use as a backup (it is good to have backups!). I figured we were all set…

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Recent pictures of SolarCity’s ‘Gigafactory’ show that the solar panel plant is, at least from the outside, looking close to be ready for production. The Buffalo News managed to get a bird eyes view of the plant and compared the progress with pictures from a year ago.
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Tesla just announced details of the Battery Gigafactory to be located in the Southwest US. The location hasn’t yet been selected but will provide 6500 US jobs and, in 2020, enough batteries for 500,000 electric vehicles.

Tesla also announced a $1.6B convertible notes offering to fund the Gigafactory and other ramping.

As we at Tesla reach for our goal of producing a mass market electric car in approximately three years, we have an opportunity to leverage our projected demand for lithium ion batteries to reduce their cost faster than previously thought possible. In cooperation with strategic battery manufacturing partners, we’re planning to build a large scale factory that will allow us to achieve economies of scale and minimize costs through innovative manufacturing, reduction of logistics waste, optimization of co-located processes and reduced overhead.

The Gigafactory is designed to reduce cell costs much faster than the status quo and, by 2020, produce more lithium ion batteries annually than were produced worldwide in 2013. By the end of the first year of volume production of our mass market vehicle, we expect the Gigafactory will have driven down the per kWh cost of our battery pack by more than 30 percent. Here are some details about what the Gigafactory will look like.

Learn more about the Tesla Gigafactory

TESLA ANNOUNCES $1.6 BILLION CONVERTIBLE NOTES OFFERING http://t.co/rHkp9L1rWe

— Electrek.co (@ElectrekCo) February 26, 2014

Press release follows:
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Another Tech site reviews the Model S. Conclusion?

Should you buy a Model S? Go ahead. It’s not your only car…

If you have the money, go ahead and get a Tesla. If you can spend $75,000 on car, odds are you already have another $75,000 car in your garage already, something like an Audi Q7 diesel. That takes care of range anxiety on really long trips, that or renting a combustion engine car for the weekend. With all respect to Tesla, I think the hassles of finding fast-charging stations are still a lot to deal with. The score currently reads: US gas stations 120,000 and slowly declining, Tesla Supercharging stations 44 and growing. On the New York to Boston and back trip, it was fun, especially chatting up other Tesla owners. Do it regularly and it could be a grind. But as more Supercharging stations become available, the hassle factor falls off, and for daily driving or weekend recreation trips, the 200-plus miles of range is more than enough.

This is a car unlike no other. The same goes for the dealer network. Name one other vehicle that carries four plus cargo, that your neighbor doesn’t own except in Atherton, gets to 60 mph in as little as 4.5 seconds, has an LCD display big enough to be seen from low earth orbit, uses less than $10 worth of energy per fill-up when it’s not free, and — try this in your Porsche Cayenne — lets you slip into the HOV lane as a solo driver. You will be hooked.

I agree and I don’t think the “only car” angle is played up enough. Sure Tesla would like you to think that this can be your only car, and it probably could be if you live on the West Coast. But the reality is that most drivers have another car laying around for those trips into the Flyovers.

The NYTimes:

In an effort to spur lackluster sales of electric cars, California, New York and six other states said on Thursday that they would work jointly to adopt a range of measures, including encouraging more charging stations and changing building codes, to make it easier to own an electric car.

The goal, they said, was to achieve sales of at least 3.3 million vehicles that did not have any emissions by 2025.

The states, which represent more than a quarter of the national car market, said they would seek to develop charging stations that all took the same form of payment, simplify rules for installing chargers and set building codes and other regulations to require the stations at workplaces, multifamily residences and at other places.

Charging stations, charging stations, charging stations.

Related articles

• Coalition of States Seeks to Spur Use of Electric Cars (nytimes.com)
• Eight U.S. states band together to promote clean cars (reuters.com)
• Eight governors make zero-emission car pledge (usatoday.com)
• 8 States Vow 3.3M Zero-Emission Vehicles by 2025 – ABC News (abcnews.go.com)
• 8 states sign deal to boost electric-car sales (sfgate.com)
• California joins initiative to put 3.3 electric vehicles on the road (techi.com)
• Oregon one of eight states aiming to put 3.3 million zero-emission vehicles on the road (oregonlive.com)
• California joins seven other states to put 3.3 million zero emission vehicles on road by 2025 (mercurynews.com)