Electric cars are a pipe dream

[Fraggle Rocker]

. . . . transpiration is a slow process returning the H2O to the air to become rain again so the tree roots are what keeps soil erosion down, reduces flood run off etc. during a heavy rain, but any crop, sugar cane included, will do that erosion reduction.

Not all plants are equal in their power to retard erosion. I live in Humboldt County, CA (at least I do a few weeks a year when I get a vacation from my job in Washington DC), and for generations the main industry was harvesting timber. Eventually it became culturally and politically unacceptable to allow the clear-cut hillsides to erode so the lumber companies began looking for ground cover they could plant that would anchor the soil. After testing a number of species they chose the Himalayan blackberry vine, which does a truly magnificent job. Unfortunately it is so tenacious that it is out-competing our native blackberry vines, which have much more abundant and better-tasting fruit, so going out and picking berries in the summer isn't as nice as it used to be.

There aren't many plants that thrive in the soil of a redwood forest because the trees secrete acid and retard the growth of underbrush--the reason fires are so rare in redwood forests is that there's no kindling--so it wasn't easy to find one. I suppose by now the whole world knows that Cannabis sativa is another one and the three counties that contain most of the redwood forest are known as the Emerald Triangle, but for some reason the government is not keen on using it for erosion control.

 

[Billy T]

Not all plants are equal in their power to retard erosion. ...

I certainly agree in this "lack of equality" and am sorry erosion control in your area has resulted in less tasty black berries.

Highway department make deep cuts in roadway* at tops of hills and plant some vine like plants usually on ground totally without "top soil" - I assume they also apply some slow release fertilizers as usually the cut soon has vegetation. Probably as important is the fact that these cuts are in steps with the top of each step slightly sloped back to the "foot" of the next higher step.

* It is amazing (I did a crude calculation) how quickly the diesel fuel used by the earth moving equipment making these cuts is repaid in saved gasoline (assuming that the un-cut hill top is so much higher than the valley on the other side that use of your breaks going down into that valley would have been required). My analysis of a rather modest cut on simple two lane road near where I worked and drove every day showed "brake even" in energy in less than a year.

Sao Paulo state is an exception in Brazil in that it has very good hi-ways. on one I occasionally drive on, with four lanes, each way, of heavy traffic, one cut has 11 steps! I bet the energy used to make that cut is recovered every week! One does not normally think of hi-way cuts as energy conservation, but it can be with shorter energy pay-back time than any other I know of.

Personally, I think it would be nice if the hi-way people came back and planted some trees on all but bottom cut (might fall over on hi-way) but perhaps none exist that can grow without top soil?

I don't have any facts about sugar cane's ability to control erosion, but as full grown it is more than 10 feet tall with wide leaves, no rain drops would splash directly on the soil - just slowing run down the stocks. It would not be suitable for the high way cuts, of course. Also as the mechanical harvest equipment, now replacing hand cutting, (both by its better economics with Brazil's greatly increased minimum wage and by law) cannot work on steep slopes, the rolling land fields would not have much erosion even day after cane is cut as strong roots and short piece of stock are left in the ground. It is a grass, as is bamboo, and I think in general tall grasses have very strong roots.

There was small clump of bamboo on farm I bought where I did not want it to be. Cutting it down took only a few days, (couple of hours max each day), but getting the roots out took about a year - lots of tough digging followed by dozens of periodic fires burnt on the roots exposed by my digging. When finally the roots were gone, there was a hole about five feet deep, I had to fill. Thus I suspect that the short stock and cane roots left after cane is cut are still excellent erosion control.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Not much if you are repetitively turning out the same part, day after day, but humans are not economically competitive with programmed machines in doing that.

Depends, many times the operations to too difficult or the machines are to expense, especially against 3rd world labor, its the reason why most cloths are still stitched by humans.

A competitive lathe operator needs to be able to read the job's unique work request, make the part and more on to the next job work order....

Or be a 3rd world employee that told what to do and is payed very little.

No I am not saying that. I don't wiggle out of statements I have made, but do often point out you are falsely putting words in my mouth as you are trying to do here.

If I was falsely trying to put words in your mouth then I would not be asking for clarification, I'm merely interpreting what you said.

Certainly biogenic organic particles can nucleate clouds; but they are not required as there are many more aerosols (tiny particles) not from forest already exist in the air.

Certainly not required to case all rain, but for this specific region they are a major cause of rain.

In fact the air richest in such particles comes from areas where there are no forest, like a desert.

Their not going to nucleate clouds and cause rain where they are because of a clear lack of moisture.

 

[Billy T]

... If I was falsely trying to put words in your mouth then I would not be asking for clarification, I'm merely interpreting what you said. ...

I had said:
"The argument that you need forest released particles to nucleate rain is nonsense. It is very difficult to super cool even a few cubic meters of water vapor in even a hyper clean lab by only 0.5 C because there are always tiny particles in normal air which do that. '' and your replied:
”
"So are you saying that biogenic organic particles can't nucleate clouds and increase precipitation? I want you to clarify so that you won't wiggle out of it later."

But is quite clear I said "forest released particles" ARE NOT NEEDED as even the clean air of a lab has so many nucleating particles that it is hard to super cool water vapor. I will now add more to that to drive the point home:

Most of the "biogenic organic particles" are hydrophobic oils, like the pine oil aerosols that give the Smoky Mountains their name.

Water vapor molecules colliding with these hydrophobic droplets normally do not remain stuck to the surface so these biogenic organic particles, so they are not very effective in making rain. Even in the forest air there are lots of hydrophilic inorganic particles, like microscopic particles of SiO2 etc. even from distant deserts etc. that, being hydrophilic, do condense the individual H2O molecules into a growing film on their surfaces.

I.e. even in the forest air most of the biogenic organic particles are nearly useless for H2O vapor nucleation as they make less than 1% of the rain drop nucleation, I would guess. That is why I said your claim that without the biogenic organic particles there would be little rain was nonsense. Note I am still not saying the words you said I would try to wiggle out of. Yes some biogenic organic particles can nucleate rain drops, it is just that their total absence would not make any significant change in the rain fall.

There is more rain fall over forest for the reasons suggested by Skeptical and discussed in post 873. I.e. transpiration of tree leaves returns H2O to the air to fall AGAIN as rain but it is the same H2O, not additional rain water. That basically comes from ocean to inland breezes.

I may have reacted strongly as I resent your inference that I wiggle out of statements I have made, especially when you, not I, have made the statement you suspect I will later wiggle out of.

 

[cosmictraveler]

This is the glamor boy of the coming EVs, and it's a plug-in hybrid. What's that, you say? Think of a Toyota Prius, but with a larger battery pack and the ability to recharge from a wall socket. Other plug-in hybrids are coming from Ford and Toyota. The Karma is as sexy as the Tesla Roadster, but with four doors and a gas engine for longer trips. Journalists haven't actually driven the Karma yet, but it's supposed to have 50 miles of all-electric range and a zero to 60 time of 5.8 seconds.




http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...6JXSAg&usg=AFQjCNEBzPGEEcTGM8U9SFcFtYqwkxiuow

 

[ElectricFetus]

I had said:
"The argument that you need forest released particles to nucleate rain is nonsense. It is very difficult to super cool even a few cubic meters of water vapor in even a hyper clean lab by only 0.5 C because there are always tiny particles in normal air which do that. '' and your replied:
”
"So are you saying that biogenic organic particles can't nucleate clouds and increase precipitation? I want you to clarify so that you won't wiggle out of it later."

But is quite clear I said "forest released particles" ARE NOT NEEDED as even the clean air of a lab has so many nucleating particles that it is hard to super cool water vapor. I will now add more to that to drive the point home:

Most of the "biogenic organic particles" are hydrophobic oils, like the pine oil aerosols that give the Smoky Mountains their name.

Water vapor molecules colliding with these hydrophobic droplets normally do not remain stuck to the surface so these biogenic organic particles, so they are not very effective in making rain. Even in the forest air there are lots of hydrophilic inorganic particles, like microscopic particles of SiO2 etc. even from distant deserts etc. that, being hydrophilic, do condense the individual H2O molecules into a growing film on their surfaces.

I.e. even in the forest air most of the biogenic organic particles are nearly useless for H2O vapor nucleation as they make less than 1% of the rain drop nucleation, I would guess. That is why I said your claim that without the biogenic organic particles there would be little rain was nonsense. Note I am still not saying the words you said I would try to wiggle out of. Yes some biogenic organic particles can nucleate rain drops, it is just that their total absence would not make any significant change in the rain fall.

Oh this is all great logic and all but does it stand to actual scientific testing, Oh wait it doesn't the amazon's rainfall is significantly affected by these particles:

"Measurements and modeling of IN [Ice Nuclie] concentrations during AMAZE-08 suggest that ice formation in Amazon clouds at temperatures warmer than –25°C is dominated by PBA [Primary Biological Aerosol] particles (20). Although the number concentration of such efficient biological IN is low (about 1 to 2 L−1), they are nevertheless the first to initiate ice formation and can have a strong influence on the evolution of clouds and precipitation (21–23). At temperatures colder than –25°C, both locally emitted PBA and mineral dust particles imported from the Sahara desert can act as IN and induce cold rain formation. The IN activity of mineral dust may in fact also be influenced by biological materials, as suggested in earlier studies that include aircraft observations of ice cloud residuals (21, 24). In any case, PBA particles appear to be the most efficient IN and, outside of Saharan dust episodes, also the most abundant IN in the Amazon Basin. Moreover, the supermicrometer particles can also act as “giant” CCN, generating large droplets and inducing warm rain without ice formation (2, 21)."
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5998/1513.full

I may have reacted strongly as I resent your inference that I wiggle out of statements I have made, especially when you, not I, have made the statement you suspect I will later wiggle out of.

Come now, so someone hates you, so what.

 

[Billy T]

Oh this is all great logic and all but does it stand to actual scientific testing, Oh wait it doesn't the amazon's rainfall is significantly affected by these particles

Yes I did not consider the extreme altitude where air above the Amazon is at -25 C. At that altitude perhaps the biological aerosols (mainly tiny vegetable oil drops) are essentially solids and act like the other solids your article mentions ("mineral dust particles imported from the Sahara desert"). I too had specifically named SiO2 as the dominate rain making "mineral dust particles" and said "from distant deserts" but admit to surprise that some have even crossed the equator.There are plenty of those in the Amazon air from Africa and unlike the oil drops, remain hydrophilic at lower altitudes where the rain originates from.
I.e. at altitudes where the temperature has dropped to make the water vapor in the air have 100% humidity - much lower than where the ice crystals normally form. Of course hail does fall occasionally in the Amazons summers as it does in the US. This is not from these high altitude ice crystals quite the converse.

Hail comes from warm moist air that rises form the surface. As it rises, it cools and soon the relative humidity reaches 100% so some of the gaseous H2O becomes liquid, each gram doing so releasing 540 calories (if memory is not failing me). This heat release makes that rising chunk of air warmer than the same altitude air it displaced, so it rises more. This is the instability (one example of the Taylor instability)* that carries some of the initial ground level moisture to great altitudes in "thunder head clouds" where it is less than 0 C, but still far lower than where your article was investigating air born ice crystals.

Your article was concerned with very clean air, only a few particles per liter. The microscopic oil drops are dominate very high up as they are less dense than SiO2 micro crystals. (Hydrogen percentages also increase with altitude for the same reason.) The surface air transported up by the Taylor instability, from which cold rain and hail falls, has thousands of times higher particle density.

These permanent, air-born, ice-crystal, cirrus clouds of your article are about 5 miles up over the tropics but have little to due with falling rain. If they did it would rain in the Sahara as they are found from pole to pole 3 to 5 miles up! (lower near the poles.) They make the Halo sometimes seen around the moon on dark clear nights. (The hexagonal crystals act as prisms. All prisms refract light at least by some minimum refraction angle, which is 23 degrees for these ice crystals, again by memory. Why only the inner edge of the moon's halo is sharply defined.)

----
*The main other natural example of the Taylor instability is the warm more salty Mediterranean water flowing out into the North Atlantic (Cold deeper ocean water flows into the Mediterranean below it as replacement.) As this Med water cools to oceans surface temperatures, the higher salt content makes it sink but not as a mass. Any tiny downward "bump" of Med water has more heat exchange surface than its neighbors, so cools more rapidly and sinks ever faster. I.e. Med water sinks as many thousands of falling fingers. This plays hell with sonars trying to monitor subs going in and out of the Med. Why this Taylor instability has been well studied.

 

[Stoniphi]

...and a new electric auto company that I never even heard of before this week has just located its headquarters a couple of miles from here. They are contracted to supply delivery vehicles for the US postal service and will be producing them right here.

No doubt, this is going to get extremely interesting as these electrics and hybrids start taking over the roads. The improvement in air quality alone will be worth the hassle IMHO, just as it was with removing lead and asbestos.

 

[ElectricFetus]

...and a new electric auto company that I never even heard of before this week has just located its headquarters a couple of miles from here. They are contracted to supply delivery vehicles for the US postal service and will be producing them right here.

No doubt, this is going to get extremely interesting as these electrics and hybrids start taking over the roads. The improvement in air quality alone will be worth the hassle IMHO, just as it was with removing lead and asbestos.

My bet is 10 years from now most of these start-ups will be dead and few will be household names.

 

[Billy T]

later by edit: Bloomberg changed the photo. Earlier one had pretty Chinese lady by one car.

"... Auto sales in China may outstrip the U.S. for a third consecutive year in 2011 as the world’s largest carmakers Toyota Motor Corp., General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG estimate sales will grow by as much as 15 percent. ... “I would anticipate nothing less than that and we will grow together with the market,” Soh {of VW} said in an interview at an auto conference in Guangzhou, China yesterday. VW’s growth would be limited by a shortage of capacity, he said. ... To meet demand in the nation, VW has said it will spend 10.6 billion euros ($14 billion) through 2015 as part of a plan to add two factories to its current nine and raise production to 3 million cars annually. ..."

From: http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aYojPmdyUtDw&pos=13

Billy T comment: Part of why peak oil, (defined as price of barrel > $222 current value dollars), is only a couple of years away. As dollar will soon collapse get four cinder blocks now to put your gas powered car up on. Better still trade it in for a new Leaf, while it still has value, and Federal government can still afford to pay for part of it.

Chinese car sales are limited by manufacturing capacity in steadily growing richer China, not by demand as in the US. They will have the funds to buy oil when the US will not. They have already lock up decades of supply at today's low prices - For example for only 10 billion dollars, paid "up-front" about two years ago, Brazil's PetroBras will be sending 200,000 barrels/ DAY for the next 20 years, and much greater supplies will be coming from Venezuela for up to 3 decades. US will soon lose the ~12% it now gets from Venezuela to China.

 

[adoucette]

First Volts delivered.

http://www.evwind.es/noticias.php?id_not=8990

http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/aut...chevy-volt-gets-average-mileage-for-a-hybrid/

Arthur

 

[ElectricFetus]

So then we are all in agreement that is is far passed pipe dream? Sure I can understand some believe this won't be very popular or has a long time to go before dominating the car market, but a "pipe dream" has no chance of even making it to market, I think the electric car has at least passed that hurdle.

 

[jmpet]

The future will have electric cars, goddammit- and those cars will get their energy from wind turbines and solar arrays and nuclear power plants.

There is no way around it- there is nothing else that has the return-on-energy as oil does. So when the oil dries up we're gonna need something to sustain us. And there is no way around this argument... peak oil either has already hit or will hit in the next 5, 10, 20 years.

The majority of our travel is within a 50 mile radius which accommodates 90% of our needs for energy (home chargers) but just as gas stations popped up everywhere in America within a 20 year period, so will electric charging stations. It's an inevitability.

The future, I suppose, will consist of swapping depleted batteries for new ones at the local electric station- to keep on going down the road.

I am standing up and proclaiming that electric cars are the only viable means of transportation for the next generation.

 

[ElectricFetus]

There is no way around it- there is nothing else that has the return-on-energy as oil does. So when the oil dries up we're gonna need something to sustain us. And there is no way around this argument... peak oil either has already hit or will hit in the next 5, 10, 20 years.

Not quite true, yes in the old days when oil was sucked up from wells just a few meters deep and energy input/output ratios of 1:50 and even 1:100 were being achieved, but all those reserves are long since gone. With today's oil supply reliant on pumping in water for back pressure or worse for canadian oil sand having to literally wash tar out of rocks with hot water, energy ratios are as low as 1:2, many biofuels can do better then that, Billy much touted sugarcane for example do as high as 1:8, though of course biofuels have infrastructure scaling ceiling problems. We could replace most of todays cars with EVs and PHEV and with smart metering charge them all without a single new power plant! Of course EVs and PHEV with smart girding work perfectly with intermittent renewable energy sources, as the EVs can be told to charge when the renewables are at peak production, thus functioning as both transportation and as a grid energy storage system, killing two birds with one stone!

The future, I suppose, will consist of swapping depleted batteries for new ones at the local electric station- to keep on going down the road.

I think battery swapping is a nice solution on paper but it will be hell to implement, it will increase costs with all these extra batteries and how to manage who owns them if they are in continues circulation will be a true nightmare. No I think long term Zinc-air or metal-air flow cells will be the way to achieve that: instead of swapping the batteries just swap the electrolytes! Zinc paste is in theory cheap and safer to handle then gasoline, just fuel up with fresh metal paste (at the same time pumping out oxidized paste) could be as fast as fueling with gasoline and better still you could still home charge by running the flow cell in reverse (though you will need proper ventilation for your car's garage as oxygen gas could build up). Lithium-air batteries have potential energy densities as high as diesel fuel (without counting the weight of diesel engines!) so you can see the potential of a metal-air battery and flow cell is very high!

I am standing up and proclaiming that electric cars are the only viable means of transportation for the next generation.

For personal transport probably, really its going to be a combination of biofuels and electrics to cover all transportation systems.

 

[Billy T]

The future will have electric cars, goddammit- and those cars will get their energy from wind turbines and solar arrays and nuclear power plants.

Certainly, with world's largest wind farms and largest solar electric generation* (not to mention world's large hydro-electric dams) much of the energy required for electric cars will come from renewable sources IN CHINA, but just to be sure there is power for the demand, China is now in process of ordering 245 new nuclear power plants at just over half a TRILLION dollars cost. More details at: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2657306&postcount=334

I am standing up and proclaiming that electric cars are the only viable means of transportation for the next generation.

Perhaps you should sit down while saying that? I bet for at least the next decade more US cars (and taxis, buses, etc.) will be powered by natural gas than electric batteries - certainly more are now, even though here too the US is far behind others in switching from gasoline**

Natural gas is falling in price and huge supplies are likely to come on line and reduce price more (assuming the EPA does not too greatly limit what can be used for the hydro-fracturing of gas shales). In contrast, price of electricity is going up*** and Li for Li-ion batteries for at least a decade will be significantly more costly in US than in China.

--------------
* Not true this year, but with in two years - I. E. Non-fossil energy is coming on line much faster than the electric cars are to use it. They don't yet have much of the Chinese market despite the Government paying a much higher percentage of the cost than the US government does (and slightly more in actual dollar value).

BTW China is already bringing on line about 8 new nuclear plants each year but the US has started to also: Southern Electric just a couple of months ago broke ground for a pair on new nuclear units - so US installment rate is 2 in about 38 years when they come on line.

**

"... Only roughly 150,000 of the 8.7 million CNG vehicles worldwide are in the U.S., including aftermarket conversions.
The nation’s only light-duty, factory-produced CNG vehicle in production, the Honda Civic GX, has been on the market for 12 years. Though these vehicles are selling out faster than they are made and production is expanding, no other automakers are currently manufacturing CNG vehicles in the U.S. ..."
From: http://www.cngnow.com/EN-US/Vehicles/Pages/default.aspx

*** later by edit, For example:
"... Georgia utility regulators have approved a 10 percent rate
hike for customers of Southern Co's Georgia Power utility starting in
January, a company spokeswoman told Reuters on Tuesday. Bills for the
average residential customer using about 1,000 kilowatt hours per month will
increase by about 10 percent, or about $10.76 a month. ..."

 

[X-Man2]

The future will have electric cars, goddammit- and those cars will get their energy from wind turbines and solar arrays and nuclear power plants.

There is no way around it- there is nothing else that has the return-on-energy as oil does. So when the oil dries up we're gonna need something to sustain us. And there is no way around this argument... peak oil either has already hit or will hit in the next 5, 10, 20 years.

The majority of our travel is within a 50 mile radius which accommodates 90% of our needs for energy (home chargers) but just as gas stations popped up everywhere in America within a 20 year period, so will electric charging stations. It's an inevitability.

The future, I suppose, will consist of swapping depleted batteries for new ones at the local electric station- to keep on going down the road.

I am standing up and proclaiming that electric cars are the only viable means of transportation for the next generation.

Yea I was just reading the weakest link or the biggest obstacle at the moment for EV's are lack of charging stations and changing stations.I believe this field is ripe for Entrepreneur types who have investment capitol for start ups.The one's(especially younger people) who can open a chain of these will be handsomely compensated later.

 

[Stoniphi]

...a "pipe dream" has no chance of even making it to market, I think the electric car has at least passed that hurdle.

Yes, I think that we can agree on that point.

There are a lot of candidates for implementation of this paradigm as well, from energy generation to storage and recharge. I highly suspect that one of our entrepreneurs will indeed come up with a novel solution to each of these if we continue to be motivated to find an alternative to petroleum.

The advances just in the last decade have been impressive, I am most anticipatory to see what is in the pipes now that we are unaware of.

Side note: if IC auto exhaust indeed turns out to be contributory to inducing autism as is now suspected, there will be a lot more pressure to clean that up quickly.

 

[Billy T]

“Part of post 895: ... I bet for at least the next decade more US cars (and taxis, buses, etc.) will be powered by natural gas than electric batteries - certainly more are now,* ..."

More of why:
" … In the short term, we have more than ample supplies of natural gas, and the technology is well established to use it* as a transportation fuel (where the vast bulk of oil consumption goes). We need to start making that transition as soon as possible. The reasons for doing so go far beyond just the trade deficit, but that reason alone should be more than enough. If left unchecked, the trade deficit will eventually lead to national bankruptcy. …”

{Billy T comment: Importing Li-ion batteries from Japan, S. Korea or China, will not be good for the balance of payments and US made ones are at least a decade away. I think the Volt's will come from S. Korea.}

Quote from: http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/44964/What+I+Expect+in+2011

--------------------
* "... Only roughly 150,000 of the 8.7 million CNG vehicles worldwide are in the U.S., including aftermarket conversions. ..." -from link in post 895. Also see photo there of the only regular-production, (for 12 years) US-made natural gas powered car.

Almost all of the taxis in Sao Paulo run on CNG and at least 10% of all filling stations will sell it to you cheaper than any other fuel per mile driven. Why taxis have been using it for more than a decade - that is "proven technology" with only a couple of months required for the conversion** to CNG to pay off for a taxi (with ~18 hours per day of use by two drivers). There is zero conversion cost for the Honda Civic GX as it comes from the factory designed for CNG. See photo of that nice-looking four-door car in post 895. Eventually this US made CNG car could be a US export, but currently they cannot keep up with US demand even with expanding their factory. (Only one in the USA that is expanding production capacity, I think.)

** More than 35 years ago, a lab technician in my group at APL/JHU who lived up on the Susquehanna River and made 10 trips /week to&From work in Howard County MD, made his own conversion to CNG. I am almost sure, he compressed his home heating gas so it was free of taxes, which are most of the car fuel cost and it paid off for him even in the cheap gasoline era.

PS: Sugar cane alcohol is best for Brazil as it has lots of cheap land, sunshine and fresh water / rain and advanced cars and alcohol production technology, but not much Natural Gas (yet?) - It has a long term "take or pay" contract and major pipeline importing NG from Bolivia.

 

[Stoniphi]

I fully agree with that........under the condition that we do not just allow the oil companies to go ahead and frack freely and without any serious supervision. As much as I value my car, I value my drinking water quality more. I also do not need natural gas seeping out of my water pipes or into my basement.

As a fuel though, NG is the berries and we have lots of it.

 

[adoucette]

Yea I was just reading the weakest link or the biggest obstacle at the moment for EV's are lack of charging stations and changing stations.I believe this field is ripe for Entrepreneur types who have investment capitol for start ups.The one's(especially younger people) who can open a chain of these will be handsomely compensated later.

http://www.ecotality.com/companies/theevproject.php

ECOtality North America is partnering with Nissan North America to deploy up to 5,700 Nissan LEAF zero-emission electric vehicles and General Motors to deploy up to 2,600 Chevrolet Volt Extended Range Electric Vehicles, along with 15,085 charging systems to support them, in 15 strategic markets in six states, including Arizona, California, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.