Yes, a fact which will make any bus rider want to reach for his bazooka. Man, there is nothing more irritating than being stuck in the HOV lane in a bus in a traffic jam consisting entirely of teslas and leafs.
They should not call it the "HOV lane" since they allow non high occupancy vehicles (e.g. hybrid car, electric car, motorcycles).
My understanding was the HOV lane's purpose is to encourage car pooling (i.e. high occupancy). Allowing single occupant motorcycles and electric cars sort of defeats this purpose.
As always, the trick is to remember the purpose of the HOV lane: keep traffic moving. That's part of the reason motorcycles are allowed. It's considered safer to let a motorcycle stay in motion than be in stop and go traffic [1]. And having been stuck in the Dallas MixMaster since the I-35E N HOV was shut down, I can say holding a motorcycle half clutched for half an hour is dang near painful. This is also the reason motorcycles are allowed to ride the line in traffic jams (also air-cooled engines need to stay in motion in summer).
Plus, if you don't have a passenger seat, the bike's at full occupancy, which ought to be at least near high occupancy!
The naming is historical baggage. In practice, "HOV lanes" today serve two (intended) purposes: (1) reduce gridlock; (2) reduce pollution. As originally conceived, (2) could only be achieved by actual high occupancy vehicles being used to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. Now it can also be achieved by low- or zero-emission vehicles, hence the exception.
You seem to be assuming that HOV lanes are the result of some rational regulatory process. In fact, they have been shown in every study to disrupt traffic with little effect on carpooling.
HOV lanes are nominally intended to encourage more ecological use of transit resources, with congestion relief as a coincident effect (fewer cars on the road -> less pollution, lower energy usage, reduced rate of needing new transit infrastructure).
Since electric cars serve many / most of the same purposes, it makes sense to append them to a reward system which has already proven effective at driving adoption and retention of preferred behaviors.
If it's spare HOV capacity, then I agree. But if adding the electric cars to HOV lanes increases the congestion in HOV lanes, it might degrade their effectiveness in incentivizing the behaviors they currently incentivize. For example, the attractiveness of either carpooling or riding the bus declines if HOV lanes get slower. Carpooling in particular needs enough of a delta in the regular v. HOV trip times to make up for having to pick up the other carpool members (unless you live in the same place).
One solution is to allow a capped number in, to incentivize purchase but only up to a threshold that doesn't overly degrade HOV trip times. I believe that's what California did for hybrids, allowing HOV usage for the first N purchased.
NorCal still has a couple things that they can do to alleviate congestion in carpool lanes. They can extend the hours to the carpool lane, or even make it HoV for 24 hours a day (SoCal does this).
My guess is that in a couple years we will see 24 hour carpool lanes in NorCal.
Do you ever worry about running out of juice while driving? This is the only thing that prevents me, it's the situation where you don't have any juice but need it somehow. It would be great if you could put gasoline in it to generate electricity. It wouldn't even be used frequently (otherwise no point in saving money by using electricity only), just for emergencies.
The BMW has a range extender which is a gas engine that powers the battery. It gives you an extra bit of range, but I think you need it running over a long time, IE I don't think it can recharge as fast as you can drain the battery.
Did you even think this through before you posted or are you being spergy and pedantic on purpose?
If I run low on gas I can pull into any service station and get my entire 336 mile range back in 2 minutes. I would need hours to charge an electric car and the only place I could do that is at my house.
If I wanted to go down the shore for a day (60 miles each way) the Leaf would get me there, but then I'd only have 15 miles of range left and no place to charge, effectively stranding me.
Also, it seems every second car in the HOV lane in the SF bay area it's a Leaf...