The Archuleta Board of County Commissioners are scheduled to meet with the Pagosa Springs Town Council at noon today, February 25, for a friendly chat about the future of Pagosa Springs. This will be the first joint meeting of these two local government boards in quite a while. A few years back, they began meeting on a monthly basis to discuss mutual ‘strategic priorities’, but following the election of County Commissioner Alvin Schaaf, the monthly meetings stopped happening, for a number of reasons.
Today’s agenda looks like this:
I. BROADBAND UPDATE AND 2020 PLANS
II.DISPATCH CENTER RELOCATION/UPDATES
III.SHORT TERM RENTALS
IV.ALTERNATIVE REVENUE SOURCES
V.ADOPT A ROAD PROGRAM
VI.OTHER ITEMS OF MUTUAL INTEREST
I have no idea what issues might be discussed under “Other Items of Mutual Interest”. Electric vehicles? Affordable housing? More government buildings?
You might think electric vehicles would be a subject worthy of discussion, in 2020, in an automobile-centric community like Pagosa Springs — perhaps considering the fact that many countries around the globe are planning to prohibit the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2030. And considering plans, currently under consideration at Town Hall, to install a municipally-owned “fast charging” station in Centennial Park, behind the old and mostly abandoned County Courthouse.
I spent some time yesterday, watching YouTube videos and visiting various websites, trying to get a better picture of just where America might be headed, in terms of Electric Vehicles. EVs. That’s how I learned about William Morrison.
Morrison was born in Scotland in 1855, attended local schools there and studied chemistry in college, and immigrated to the US in 1880. From Wikipedia:
Morrison was a tall, husky well-groomed man with dark hair. A vegetarian who kept to himself, he often found himself out of place with the locals and was known as a bizarre electrical wizard…
Morrison had become fascinated with the chemistry of electric batteries, and established a secret laboratory in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, where he constructed a battery-run electric motor capable of propelling a carriage. He reportedly tested his first “electric carriage” in downtown Des Moines in 1887.
We might stop and imagine downtown Des Moines in 1887 — at the time, Iowa’s largest city, with a population of nearly 50,000 people. The streets are bustling with pedestrians, people in horse-drawn wagons and carriages, and people riding horses. The municipal street sweepers have their work cut out for them, with all that horse-driven traffic.
Down the street comes a rather ordinary-looking carriage, except that the driver is holding a steering wheel, rather than the reins of a horse. There is no horse, no harness, no shaft. The carriage moving as if by magic. I can imagine little children running after the carriage, laughing and screaming at the remarkable sight.
Morrison continued refining the design of his carriage, and according to Wikipedia, he sold one of his electric carriages to Harold Sturgis of the American Battery Co. for the price of $3,600. (Equivalent to about $100,000 in 2020 dollars.) Sturgis’ “horseless buggy” was completed in November 1891 and shipped to Chicago by rail December 5, 1891, taking ten days to arrive — the very first sale of an American automobile, it would appear.
American and European inventors were falling all over themselves in the 1890s, creating horseless carriages driven by electricity, steam, and gasoline. The steam and gas models were incredibly noisy and smelly, compared to horse-drawn carriages. But the electric cars (short for ‘electric carriages’) were wonderfully quiet and non-polluting. By 1912, there were over 30,000 electric cars registered in the US, far outnumbering the number of gasoline cars. (The dominance of electric vehicles would come to an end with the development of Henry Ford’s mass-produced and affordable Model T.)
But according to Wikipedia, Morrison — trained as a chemist — built his electric cars not because he loved cars, but because he loved batteries. His vehicles were built mainly to demonstrate the power of his battery designs.
Which brings us to 2020, and Gigafactory 1
The following information is taken from Wikipedia:
Tesla’s production facility Gigafactory 1 — also known as Giga Nevada — is a lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle sub-assembly factory near Reno, Nevada, owned and operated by Tesla, Inc. to supply the battery packs for its electric vehicles and stationary storage systems. When the facility is completed — possibly this year — Tesla founder Elon Musk claims it will the the largest building in the world, measured by building footprint, and the second largest measured in building volume.
Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval estimated that Nevada would enjoy $100 billion in economic benefits over two decades from its construction and operation.
The factory started limited production of Powerwalls and Powerpacks in the first quarter of 2016 using battery cells produced elsewhere, and began mass production of cells in January 2017. When finished, the factory will be capable of producing more lithium ion batteries in one year than were produced in the entire world in 2013. As of May 2019, Gigafactory 1 has achieved a 24 gigawatt-hour output, according to Kazuhiro Tsuga, president of battery partner Panasonic. At the end of 2019, Panasonic had 3000 US workers and 200 Japanese technicians at Gigafactory 1, producing at a rate of 30 GWh/year — about three million battery cells per day — and occupying more than half of the factory.
The factory has also been designed to become entirely energy self-reliant. Tesla intends to power the structure through a combination of on-site solar, wind and geothermal sources.
Tesla has also built Gigafactory 2, making solar tiles and vehicle chargers in Buffalo, New York, and has begun car production at Giga Shanghai in Shanghai, China, with plans underway to build a Gigafactory Europe near Berlin, Germany.
Grants and tax abatements for Gigafactory through year 2034
- $120 million: Investment-dependable transferable tax credits, mostly from film tax (9%)
- $75 million: $12,500-per-job transferable tax credits (6,000 jobs) (6%)
- $725 million: 20-year 100% sales tax abatement (56%)
- $332 million: 10-year 100% property tax abatement (26%)
- $27 million: 10-year 100% modified business tax abatement (2%)
- $8 million: Discounted electricity rates for eight years (1%)
According to Tesla founder Elon Musk, in order to maintain and preserve the electrical power for one day, for all the human population, there will be a need for 100 factories like Gigafactory 1.
Just this month, Musk reportedly Tweeted “Giga Texas?” … and changed his location to Austin,TX causing speculation that Tesla would announce a new Gigafactory in Texas.
Dude… is Pagosa next in line?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.