Has anyone received a CA Green HOV Sticker yet?

I was talking about the section from the 110 to the 5, seems to clear up after the 5, but that could just due to it being later by the time I get there.

I guess that all depends on whether or not you're willing to pay it, and if you make that drive daily or just once in a while. If it was my daily drive, at $20 times 5 days a week times 50 weeks (assume 2 weeks vacation) you are paying $5000 per year (I'll go ahead and assume that's $20 round trip).

If you consider gas money for $5000, that buys you about 1250 gallons (assuming an average of $4/gallon over the year), which gets you about 62,500 miles (assuming 50mpg). Considering that's just one year's worth of tolls, I wouldn't pay for the express lanes, but then again I bought my Prius's to save money in the first place.

 

That is a good point...I'd only be doing it once in a while.

 

Yeah.. I think traffic just sucks for those of you in SoCal in general.

The PiP is a tech flagship for Toyota though. It's not certain whether Chevrolet sinks comparable levels of R&D into even their hybrid and post-hybrid cars that Toyota has. We certainly didn't pay anything remotely under invoice for our PiP, and Toyota has historically seemed to mark up their vehicles to match their reputation of reliability.

Adding another 15k - 20k greens to the existing 40k seemed sensible. 45k more seems a way bit much...

 

...wow PiP heaven!!!
I wonder why some of those AZ folks on PriusChat aren't calling you for a PiP? Their complaint is no PiPs for sale in AZ, but OK how about go to CA?

 

Perhaps they don't like to pay CA prices? I recall a friend saying his mom would make a 1-way plane trip out of CA out to AZ to buy a new car and drive it all the way back since the price difference was a few k, the difference presumably being not just regional differences in incomes but also state-specific vehicle standards.

 

The last couple weeks have been bad between the 110 and 5.
Im thinking of going back to taking the 405 home.

 

Not sure how that would work since a new car registered in CA would be subject to the same standards.

Also not sure how express lanes, which add even MORE vehicles to the HOV lane (but ask those additional vehicles to pay a toll), would actually reduce congestion in the HOV lane.

 

I assumed the purpose was to reduce emissions in the aggregate by having more vehicles with cleaner emissions than those same number of vehicles otherwise would be, not reducing congestion in HOV lanes themselves.

 

Correct.

 

While that's true, it seems they don't care as much as I would have thought about ensuring they maximize the number of clean-air miles driven. My commute is between LA and OC, with the daily driving being somewhere between 100 and 110 miles depending on the day, and feel like I took advantage of a loophole since the majority of my miles are NOT electric. And yes, I do charge nightly and do charge once during the day...but that means only ~24 out of my 110 miles are electric miles...which makes me an "unclean" PHEV driver, no?

I would have liked more electric miles, but the other PHEV's didn't make sense for me. I could be wrong, but I feel pretty sure that if they put a minimum on # of EV miles on a charge to qualify for a green sticker, Toyota would quickly find a way to produce a PHEV that gets 25 miles (or more) per charge.

 

I'm in the same boat except no charging at the office, and other way around (OC to LA). Considering the daily traffic, it's still a bit cleaner than a regular hybrid. And they did put a minimum, it was set based on battery capacity instead of electric range at a 4.4 kWh battery. Guess what capacity the Plug-in Prius battery has?

 

I actually can't currently charge at work, but do so at the gym I go to (that shares a parking lot with some big corporations).

My favorite part was the day when I used one of the six chargers for only an hour and an all EV-driver (likely a Leafer with limited range) put a nicely worded note on my car addressed to "Hybrid car driver" asking me to stop using the public chargers and to charge at home instead, leaving the 6 spaces for electric-only vehicles... (...but that's digressing from the topic of this thread)

 

I guess that means I must give up my seat at a restaurant when someone skinnier and hungrier comes in.

 

Just received green sticker number 40814 issued on 4/30/14.

 

I just got my green HOV decals in the mail -- was hoping I'd have a serial number like 39,999 but mine's in the 42,000s. go figure.

 

ARB finally shows "As of May 9, 2014, 40,000 "green" stickers have been issued."

Earlier, there was some speculation that the green stickers issued to dealerships are not counted until the car is sold. Now we know that this is not true since even now, some dealerships still have green stickers remaining for unsold cars.

 

I did get that "loophole" feeling too. However, since most of my current work is all local and personal, the vast majority of it is in-town and EV. Right now, HV is back up to slightly over half of our driven miles thanks to 2 longer road trips during days.

On one of those trips, the sticker would have come in handy but haven't had it affixed yet. It occurred to me that, without the sticker, I was spending much more time in traffic and thus contributing to it than getting where I needed to go. It's a very marginal amount, but I was spending that much additional time contributing to both traffic and that slight extra emissions.

One might argue that's an almost negligible amount, but consider that having an HOV lane emptier by 1 car that is sitting unnecessarily in the remaining lanes doesn't actually benefit the state.

 

Update on AB2013, to issue 45,000 more green HOV stickers: Passed the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee today 9-2 and referred to the Appropriations Committee. This is the first actual vote on the bill since it passed the House on May 1.

 

Well if it passes, CA will sell one heckuva a lot of Plug_ins in 2014. I calc'ed CA sold 59% of all US PHEV for the first quarter,

 

AB2013 has been amended to reduce the total from 85,000 to 70,000 stickers. So now it would add 30,000.

And significantly, the urgency provision was deleted. So even if passed, it won't go into effect until January 1, 2015. Looks like the momentum to fast-track this has evaporated. But it still looks good for enactment, especially since now it just needs a majority vote, not 2/3.

DMV has said they are keeping applications on file. So presumably people who apply in 2014 will get stickers in early 2015, assuming this goes through.

Now that Toyota's moving their headquarters to Texas, taking thousands of jobs from the district of the bill's sponsor, maybe the pressure is off. And I wonder if Tesla will push the governor to veto this bill. It's hard to predict Jerry.