Pre-industrial CO2 levels were 300ppm. In my lifetime I saw us cross 400ppm of CO2; I may very well see it cross 500ppm before I die.
This move feels radical, but I don't see how we avert catastrophe without moves that feel radical. If we keep plodding down the course we're on we'll just sleepwalk into oblivion.
I agree. How about the radical move of deciding not to shut down a large nuclear power plant in California in 2025[1] that could power millions of these cars, carbon free. Trying to fix climate change without nuclear power is likely impossible at this point, but very few climate change activists support it.
I think you've got that a bit reversed, trying to fix climate change with nuclear is a bit impossible at this point. We can't build it!
Why is this plant shutting down? Not because of some sort of hate of nuclear technology, as many would have us believe.
No, the real reason this plant is shutting down is because, like every other thermal generation plant, extending its lifetime past the original license means complying with environmental impact laws on waste heat. Once-through waste heat systems are no longer legal [1]. So why not just build a waste heat system and keep it running? Because when the utility tried to come up with one, the cost of the cooling system alone ran into the billions of dollars!
Much better to just by a few billion dollars worth of batteries and site them on location. At current costs, today, $1B gets you 5GWh at 1.25GW, roughly. The very cheapest estimate for a cooling system was $7B and they ran to over $10B for a new cooling system [2]. So even without the inevitable cost overruns, one could purchase 35-50GWh and 9-12GW of batteries.
A 40GWh/10GW battery would be a far better grid asset for California, and massive increase reliability far beyond what Diablo Canyon could ever produce.
When the mere cooling system for nuclear is more expensive than a better battery, the technology is dead, dead, dead. We don't need it and we have better alternatives.
Personally I don't support it because the plant is on an earthquake fault, the design lifetime of that plant is near the end of life anyway, upgrade of nuclear plants has gone bad in CA before[1], and finally the upgrade resources could be better applied to renewable resources.
Operating generation two reactors makes no sense. There is a risk of a meltdown with them and it has happened multiple times which has had negative impact on the adoption of nuclear reactors. We need to shut them all down and replace them with generator 4 reactors. They are more efficient and produce less hazardous waste. Most importantly they are much safer which will help restore public opinion of nuclear power.
I agree about not shutting down nuclear but I also disagree about it being impossible without it (see: https://model.energy/ ) as well as disagree about "very few climate change activists support it."
Renewables (as well as storage) have reduced in cost (and continue to reduce in cost) much faster than has been expected by groups like the EIA.gov. While I fully support nuclear of all sorts, it's likely not to have a massive impact beyond the ~19% of electricity it provides today. It just takes too long to build, and proving a new design that'd be faster to build would also take a while, so it'd be supplemental to the energy transition, not the primary power source.
This is much different from 20 years ago when even wind power was still much more expensive than it is today, when off-shore wind was an expensive science project, when solar was literally over 10x (EDIT: more like 20x) the price as well as battery storage. At that point, yeah, I would've agreed nuclear was our only option for a rapid transition.
Every nuclear power plant in the United States has been a money pit and produced the most expensive electricity. Not a single one has opened on time or stayed within its budget, and all have required government assistance. Plus, the spent fuel has no place to go, it stays on site in concrete casks, potentially forever.
I'm not saying I completely agree with closing the plant, but to be fair to the argument they make, the agreement does seem to spell out that the plant will be replaced with greenhouse gas free energy sources, including renewables + storage.
IMO the biggest problem with nuclear is the cost and time to construct. I don't think the energy industry would be so keen to shut them down if they were cost effective.
The advances in reactor design, especially from a safety standpoint, are pretty amazing IMHO. Shut it down and and start building these newer reactors like crazy is what I say.
It would be truly radical to keep this plant running that far past its originally designed life time. In fact it will be more like suicidal. Not to mention that it is in a seismically dangerous area.
There is plenty of energy in renewables that is far cheaper and safer than nuclear.
Why is everything a whataboutist answer to nuclear fans?
Diablo Canyon is over 50 years old. It's not considered a particularly safe design. Stretching a few more years out of it isn't going to make a significant impact, certainly not relative to the auto regulation under discussion.
I mean, look, sure. I "support" extending Diablo Canyon in principle. But that takes a ton of money, and I'd like to see numbers showing that isn't better spent on a bunch of wind farms.
My understanding is that, at least depending on your goal, this isn't nearly radical enough. Some experts think we not only need to stop selling gas-powered cars _immediately_, but also actively remove existing fossil fuel cars/appliance from the economy.
15 years is nonsense because it's beyond the time horizon of political office. Future politicians won't feel obligated by their predecessors commitments and current ones will just kick the can on meaningful action.
Unless there's actual measurable promises made by politicians that can be falsified before their next election, it's mostly puffery. Make hard, publicly verifiable 6, 12, and 18 month commitments otherwise it's just fluffy words to get votes.
Also this can't be a politics-only solution. We have to dip into ye olden term of "political economy" - that second term is integrally tied to the first. The restructuring has to happen at how the politics And economy operates otherwise it doesn't work - there's no way to do anything meaningful, it's just words on paper if we only look at politics.
Personally I think profit maximization for the energy sector has to go. It's not how we run our fire, parks, library, courts, postal service and it can't be how we do energy, at least not right now. Greenhouse gas minimization has to determine things.
It's possible. The best universities for instance, aren't determined by the highest profits and the best police aren't the ones that hand out the largest fines and the best parents aren't the ones that extract the highest value labor from their children. We can restructure how energy is done as well.
> Some experts think we not only need to stop selling gas-powered cars _immediately_, but also actively remove existing fossil fuel cars/appliance from the economy.
That's targeting the wrong side of the supply/demand equation. Which is also why this initiative of California's will not work.
Just keep building better power sources!! You will never reduce demand, you can only make a better supply.
Nuclear nuclear nuclear. There's nothing else that can do it fast enough.
If California actually cared about the environment that's what they would do, instead it's only lip service.
US EPA[0] / CA ARB[1] data on emissions shares by sector:
* 28%/41% - transportation
* 27%/15% - electricity
* 22%/24% - industry
* 12%/12% - commercial & residential
* 10%/ 8% - agriculture
58% of US transportation (~16% of the US total) is passenger cars and light-duty trucks, the focus of this announcement. CA accounts for about 6-7% of US CO₂e (carbon dioxide equivalents), so this action targets roughly 1% of our national emissions, not nothing but certainly more symbolic than impactful (even considering spillover effects). electricity and industry must be tackled as well, coordinated among a majority of states.
the US, ~4% of the world's population, produces about 15% of the world's emissions (2nd to china, EU together is 3rd). this is why it's even more critical that the US, china and the EU especially come together on climate change (e.g., the paris accords) rather than giving the middle finger like we americans did recently.
You can't assume that CA's action will exist in a vacuum. In the optimistic case this will help drive the rest of the country / world towards electric vehicles.
Did not read all the comments, but it seems like many think California is first. This is not a symbolic act or something radical. This is joining in with the other countries and territories who have similar plans [0].
i wonder how much transportation & commercial emissions could be reduced solely by providing the right incentives for remote work & keeping non essential employees from driving to and from the city center everyday. covid already served as a model for this hopefully we can learn the right lessons.
as a personal bias i'd like to see schools move in a similar direction as well towards more decentralized satellites with fewer students traveling less far from home.
another elephant in the room (really it's a whole room full of elephants) is that cali's grid is already clearly beleaguered and not keeping up with demand so what does that mean when you have something like 20 million EVs that need to plug in every night?
This move isn't as radical as I'd like, but I genuinely think it might stick. Having Ford on board is a big deal. Seems like the big auto makers feel like it's a "reasonable" timeframe. Would love to see this take effect sooner, and also include an eventual ban/restriction on used gas-powered vehicles, but it looks like we may finally be making a meaningful change.
We basically need to try absolutely everything and see what sticks.
0) Remote work as much as possible - redesign cities to minimize vehicle traffic. (When people go remote - you can make small communities with new layouts)
1) Electric vehicles.
2) Renewable energy as fast and far as we can go.
3) Nuclear power for baseline load.
4) Fusion power research.
5) Encourage movement away from animal based protein.
This does not feel radical. This feels like pandering. My unborn child will be driving by the time this goes into effect. Radical would be new vehicles must be zero emissions in 2025, which still gives even the Dodges of the world enough time to get their shit together.
Cars with new drive trains being ready for sale in 5 years for legacy manufacturers, in addition to the supply chain to produce the batteries? I think that is too ambitious.
Doesn't eel radical enough to me. It's about on par with what a lot of Europe has already committed to. Seems like with $100 billion we could get there in 10 years or sooner, not 15.
At least CA is working on it. The biggest polluters, China and Russia don't see to even acknowledge that any other country sees climate change as an issue.
Meanwhile, we are being pounded in Canada with extra taxes to discourage burning of fossil fuels even though we only emit 1.6% of the worlds GHG's. And a large part of that comes from home heating by natural gas, to which there is no viable alternative, so its not discouraging anything, its just another cash grab.
They should be making it more expensive to run gas vehicles to reflect their actual environmental damage and make it cheaper to run EV, not outright banning them. California is navel gazing at their own moral superiority on this one.
NOTE: I don't really care about downvotes and try my best not to comment on them. They are pointless without engaging the author. Please take the time to explore the simple exercise I present here and understand. If you don't, and your power is in the form of a downvote, what you are doing is becoming part of the problem and behaving in a manner that is no different from climate change deniers. Can you at least try to understand? In the years I have been talking about this I have yet to see anyone challenge the simple findings that can be had from looking at a simple graph. Interesting.
> This move feels radical, but I don't see how we avert catastrophe without moves that feel radical. If we keep plodding down the course we're on we'll just sleepwalk into oblivion.
One of the most frustrating things for me in the global warming debate is the total lack of interest in the scientific truth on BOTH sides of the issue. The truly odd scenario it sets-up is one where both sides are, well, to be kind, confused.
It's weird, deniers don't know what they are talking about --because it is most-definitely real-- and advocates are confused because they are ignoring the most basic science on the subject.
What is the truth?
There is nothing whatsoever we can do about it. Plain and simple.
This is a planetary-scale problem that cannot be solved in thousands of years even if the entirety of humanity and our technology left this planet at once.
If we all left earth immediately, at best, it will take somewhere in the order of 50,000 to 100,000 years for atmospheric CO2 levels to come down by 100 ppm.
That's the truth. And it requires everyone leaving earth right away. A consequence of this is that no partial measure anyone can cook-up can even begin to make a dent. In fact, we have years-long research findings concluding that, even if we converted the entire planet to the most optimal forms of renewable energy not only would atmospheric CO2 not go down, it would continue to grow exponentially.
And yet everyone ignores the most basic of scientific analysis that confirms this reality. Scientists don't want to speak-up because it would mean losing grants and likely having their lives and careers destroyed. Nobody wants to go against something politicians and others are too happy to use to gain votes and make money. And so, the scientific truth is suppressed and lay-people believe nonsense.
OK, so, what is this simple analysis that proves this idea that it would take 50,000 to 100,000 years for CO2 levels to come down by 100 ppm if we all left earth?
We know EXACTLY how quickly natural processes reduce atmospheric CO2 through historical ice core sample records going back 800,000 years. In case it isn't obvious, this means we know the rate of change for a planet without humanity.
Here's were you will find the 800,000 years of ice core data:
Here's a paper that explains why it is that atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise exponentially even if we switch the the most optimal forms of renewable energy world-wide:
Take that graph into your favorite image editor and fit lines to it for the decline phase in every cycle. Measure the slope for each cycle. Take the average or median, your choice. The number is in the tens of thousands of years. Not hundreds. Tens of thousands.
Then read the paper and understand how a transition to clean energy is an exercise in futility.
I challenge anyone to show how anything short of all of humanity leaving earth can produce a rate of change dramatically better than tens of thousands of years per 100 ppm. No magic hand-wavy stuff. Whatever anyone proposes must include analysis of energy and resources needed to execute a planetary scale solution that is able to force a change at a rate up to a thousand times faster than the natural "no humans on earth" rate.
This is not to say there aren't a lot of good reasons to clean-up our act. There are. Of course. We just need to stop lying to ourselves, understand reality and start talking about how to adapt for the sake of future generations. We must also free-up our brilliant scientists so they can deal with this issue factually without fear for the destruction of their careers and loss of funding. The current path will lead nowhere. Converting California to all electric vehicles in the name of climate change is farcical at best and potentially detrimental.
There isn't anyone alive who can solve a scientific problem by ignoring evidence and data.
"There's nothing whatsoever we can do about it" makes it sound like a 600ppm world and a 1000ppm world are indistinguishable. Or that carbon sequestration at less than 1000X natural processes is equivalent to none at all. Your own links dispute that.
> There is nothing whatsoever we can do about it. Plain and simple.
[citation needed]
Humans could never fly. We could never destroy entire mountains. We could never drain an entire sea or make an island. We could never split an atom. We could never walk on the moon. We could never have an international network sending live video around the world at near light speed. We could never burn so much fuel that we heat up the earth in a measurable degree.
Yet people did all of these things.
Just because it seems impossible now doesn't mean it won't be possible someday.
> I challenge anyone to show how anything short of all of humanity leaving earth can produce a rate of change dramatically better than tens of thousands of years per 100 ppm
If a single person right here, right now, could do that in an economical fashion, they'd be a trillionaire before the decade is over. Nobody in 2001 was single handedly making pocket-sized GPSes that played games, streamed video, and had AI facial recognition in the sub-thousand dollar price range either, but that changed fast. Anybody who proposed using solar panels and windmills as a main power source for cities in 1910 would've been called a kook just as well. It's incremental change.
Your comment is puzzling. It is true that there is nothing we can realistically do about the CO2 that is already in the atmosphere. Whoever lives on this planet will have to deal with it for thousands of years. But we can do something about the CO2 that has not yet been released. The question is not to go back to pre-industrial levels, but to prevent Earth to become an unlivable hell within the next 80 years.
It's not clear what "zero-emissions" should mean, but in the context of California environmental regulations it refers specifically to vehicles that don't emit any pollutants from their onboard power source, e.g. electric or fuel-cell cars.
This move is not radical. Government lags private sector. Private sector knows it can go zero-emission and have given governmnet the green light. California just likes to look like its ahead of the curve but its not.
It's literally announced 15 years in advance. Plenty of time for the public to elect politicians who will roll it back (indeed, the cynic in me assumes that is the whole reason it was able to be announced).
Debates on major topics during a campaign aren't really known for their scientific quality and attention to nuance, so I'm not really sure we should be upset if anyone's passed up on the opportunity to debate acceptable fuel emissions during campaigns. Between healthcare, immigration, criminal justice reform, etc. there isn't exactly a shortage of topics to debate and pick a side on during a campaign. And unlike (perhaps) the market, it's not like mother nature gives points for democracy either.
It’s a good time right now because the fires in California have put a spotlight on environmental issues.
Also you have to adapt to changing conditions and then take actions accordingly. This is true generally, and possibly even more so for politicians and governments.
None of your assertions are backed by logic. You imply that politicians can only do things that they promise on the trail, without responding to things real time. This would be disastrous. You imply that without "debate" it is likely to be reverted, which has no basis in theory or fact.
I like the idea, but there's a lot of questions that need to be answered.
The term "zero-emissions" is borderline BS when the energy is coming from a source that emits pollution way off in the distance. If I remember correctly, California has been closing more nuclear power plants than it has been opening, so it while it's nice that our cars won't be putting out smog someday, we aren't going to take climate change seriously unless we move to nuclear.
To extend off that question, I've yet to hear an explanation as to how well the grid will tolerate millions of cars being plugged in all the time. During the summer California struggles to keep the lights on, so I'm wondering whether we will be investing in electrical infrastructure this time. Nuclear can help solve that. Same with natural gas to electricity conversion(like what Bloom Energy does).
> California has been closing more nuclear power plants than it has been opening,
California has brought far more solar/ wind power online over the past 20 years than they've retired nuclear power plants. They are also slowly phasing out non-renewable power. Though the pace isn't as fast as many would like, it's happening.
> To extend off that question, I've yet to hear an explanation as to how well the grid will tolerate millions of cars being plugged in all the time.
For the typical 10,000-20,000 mile/ year driver, an electric car uses less power than it takes to air condition a California home. If you have even a small solar install—which makes tons of sense in California—the load on the grid is near zero.
> an electric car uses less power than it takes to air condition a California home.
The recent blackouts demonstrate that California doesn't have enough dispatchable power to support the current air conditioning footprint. We need to add more EVs and more air conditioning on top of that.
Also keep in mind that California now requires solar panels on all new home construction. The supply of renewable power in the state is expanding rapidly - our sources for power are not static.
One can run the numbers. Average car drives 12500 miles a year. Is ~35 miles a day. EV's get 3-4 miles a kwh. So what? consume ~12 kwh/day.
That's not much. $2 worth of electricity. And $3-4,000 worth of solar panels will produce that much a day. Compare that to the car that costs ten times as much.
And on your second point, having a large number of electric vehicles may actually help smooth out load -- it's easier to temporarily throttle charging during peak load than it is to get everyone to turn off their air conditioning. Public charging stations, like Chargepoint, already do this.
You can even imagine a future where you could tell your car to discharge its battery to power your home during peak demand and then charge back up overnight when power is cheap and plentiful.
Which is 10 years farther out than this car mandate.
I just wish people would read about France, which despite their current stupidity, rolled out 34 reactors in something like 10 years back in the 1970's. Thereby not only going energy independent, but nearly 0 emissions. Now during the past decade or so, not only are they one of the cleanest (if not the cleanest) countries in the world, they have some of the cheapest electricity in Europe, and are also the largest net exporter.
So, if anyone in politics actually had a brain about this, they would drive a similar mandate through with a < 10 year time-frame, so that rather than powering all those batteries with natural gas, they would be carbon free.
But, no, in the USA that wont happen until we get to the point that all the 1d10t politicians (and their supporters) start starving due to food production problems or massive wars.
> I've yet to hear an explanation as to how well the grid will tolerate millions of cars being plugged in all the time
Really well actually, done correctly it will actually make power production cheaper per watt for everyone.
Since cars spend the vast majority of their time idle they can charge whenever. Whenever in this case being the middle of the night when the lack of workers causes power usage to bottom out.
The power companies would prefer a flat usage line and having cars that can intelligently start charging when ideal can totally help with that.
Additionally I would point out that while zero-emissions is a bit disingenuous electric cars are the only real path forward to zero-emissions. The only other technology is hydrogen which also requires electricity to produce.
I run numbers and then years later only remember the rough result. But for a gasoline powered car 10-20% of the CO2 emissions are from manufacturing. So EV's help reduce CO2 emissions a lot. EV's emissions during manufacture are currently a bit higher than gasoline powered cars but not by much.
That said cars and the infrastructure needed to support them requires enormous amounts of resources, EV's don't change that much. But what what are you going to do?
On the other hand for California zero emission also means no NOx, SOX and PM2.5 tail pipe emissions in cities where most people live. Granted EV's produce some PM2.5 from tires and brakes. But that's a percentage of tail pipe emissions.
> The only other technology is hydrogen which also requires electricity to produce.
I am happy to be corrected, but I believe the only industrial scale production of hydrogen is splitting hydrocarbons. Using electrolysis is hugely inefficient.
If this is true, a lot of talk of hydrogen is submarine marketing for the fossil fuel industry.
To address centralized polluting, the advantage is that it's refactored out of millions of cars into one grid. As they adjust the sources in the future, all the cars keep going. Also, centralizing generation allows for easier observation.
One thing you didn't mention is efficiency. Electrics are around 60% and gas around 20%. Once you have some power at the car, you make better much use of it.
>> During the summer California struggles to keep the lights on...
That was my first thought as well. Gotta love rolling blackouts. But EV charging will likely take place at night when air conditioners are pulling less power so maybe it will smooth things out? They're still gonna have to support the peak load and do so more often.
> how well the grid will tolerate millions of cars being plugged in all the time
Glad you asked.
The typical driver drives 12k to 15k miles per year. That's about 33 to 41 miles per day, or about the range of a 1st Gen Chevy Volt.
The thing is, you can recharge a Volt overnight from a normal household outlet (the kind you already have in your living room, kitchen, or garage). In other words, it uses only about as much power (~1.5 kW) as your toaster, coffee maker, hair dryer, or vacuum cleaner. It is dramatically less power than a central AC unit (around 4 to 6 kW).
So, no, this is not going to cause a massive problem for the grid.
> During the summer California struggles to keep the lights on, so I'm wondering whether we will be investing in electrical infrastructure this time.
This is more of a PG&E problem than a California problem. LA and Santa Clara both have municipally-owned electrical utilities (including generation and transmission) that don't have a problem keeping the lights on.
There are questions that still need to be answered. I will respond to your comments as there are some inaccuracies and understanding the problems and solutions in greater detail can lead to better dialogue.
1. Zero-emissions - you are arguing semantics - if you are an EV and are sourcing your energy in CA your carbon emissions are very low.
2. CA is closing Nuclear plants and are doing alright. The loss in baseload power is getting replaced by inventive policies DR policies, energy storage, solar and some natural gas. No, the answer isn't just more Nuclear - can Nuclear be part of the solution? Maybe - Nuclear is really expensive and has some siting and health challenges.
3. The grid will tolerate a change in the overall load profile (i.e. more EVs) by dispatching new programs, new price signals and new assets that are variable.
4. California doesn't struggle to keep the lights on in the summer - it had rolling blackouts that have yet to be determined the first time in 19 years this year (19 years ago was due to illicit energy trading i.e. Enron trading). It does do rolling blackouts for risks to wild fires.
I can't find the link right now, but I read a paper recently that electric cars are about twice as efficient as gas cars, so even if we only switched to electric cars, we'd massively reduce our energy consumption.
we aren't going to take climate change seriously unless we move to nuclear.
A nuclear plant is still a steam engine, so it would require significant amounts of water to cool, which aren't that easy to come by in a land where droughts happen so often.
Also there's so much sun there and solar panels are so cheap nowadays that waiting 7-odd years for a plant to start producing power doesn't look like a viable option.
China is leading the world in new nuclear power deployment, but still in terms of delivered GWh wind overtook nuclear there in 2012 and the gap is widening. Solar will cross that point in a few years.
If even a totalitarian state can't deploy nuclear at a pace competitive with alternatives, how is a place like California supposed to?
Many nuclear power plants suck in water from the ocean. In fact, 3 of the 4 in California are on the coast. You can see one of them on the drive between LA and San Diego.
In California we have droughts. We also have really poor water management. Lack of storage and dams. Then there's the delta smelt issue. They basically created a dustbowl in many locations because of their very poor resource management, which isn't contained to water. Hello rolling blackouts.
I like it conceptually, but isn't there missing technology still? Batteries have improved mildly, but energy to weight ratio (and energy to cost) remain problematic.
If we witnessed a jump in battery technology, we may not even need to wait for 2035 for the market to do this for us. But in the meantime we're still seeing electric cars that cost at minimum 10K more than their gas counterparts (with the low cost of oil/gas right now only making that look worse).
I'd love to own a Tesla Model 3 for example, but realistically it is a $37K car that competes with $25K gas vehicles or $27K Hybrids. When is THAT going to change? When is electric going to be affordable for the average person?
The $7.5K federal tax incentives also disappeared (and we never had state incentives here).
> When is electric going to be affordable for the average person?
The average price of a car bought in May of 2019 was $36,718. A Model 3 is $37,990. Given the offsets in maintenance and gas, I'd say the answer to that question is "now".
Just because you can spend the average amount, it doesn't you have to spend the average amount. A car can cost well under even the base model Model 3 and have 90% of the same functionality (the price disparity gets even larger if you opt into Autopilot); albeit it won't be the status symbol that is a Tesla.
From what I know, this is due to trucks and SUVs - which there are not comparable alternatives in the electric world. (A Model X is way too expensive and there is no electric truck available now or anytime soon in mass quantity)
Part of the reasoning for this move is to create an incentive for battery researchers and manufacturers to serve the massive California auto market by or before 2035.
Meh, the maintenance costs on the PGE website are highly overrated. It also assumes your insurance costs for a Tesla are going to be the same, and they aren't. You also don't get a Tesla for 27000 net of incentives, unless you make so little money that it doesn't make sense.
The fact that PG&E is clearly advocating for electric cars should give everyone pause.
Gasoline cars can be filled by gas from any company, so there's actual competition. But an electric car mandate will expand PG&E's monopoly by billions of dollars per year. Imagine how poorly they will behave when they have a lock on both electricity and transportation.
2035 is still a long way away - by this time the German manufacturers will have gone to battle stations on EVs. VW group's R&D budget is roughly comparable with Tesla's revenue, they may need a kick up the arse to get going but when they do EVs will definitely go up a gear.
I also think SUVs should possibly be banned fairly soon (Bad for cities, bad for roads, bad for parking, emissions etc.)
In Europe there are a good number of EVs you can buy today for around the €35k mark. Most countries are offering between €5k and €10k of incentives on top of that, so if you compare a similar sized ICE car the prices are not that much different.
VW ID.3 €35,574 300km
Pegeuot e208 €29,682 340km
Hyundai Kona €33,971 305km
(Prices are for base models in Germany, including taxes, excluding incentives)
The Model 3 is around €50k here, so even with the discounted price it's still going to expensive compared to other cars. Now of course it has a greater range, but I am wondering if Tesla are going to bring out a more budget model for Europe to compete.
SUVs are basically required in many parts of the US. Or at very least, it's much worse to have a sedan in the snowier and hillier parts of the country. Not to mention towing capacity or the more rural areas where off-road capabilities are important.
IIRC, the federal tax incentives phase out per manufacturer, based on the number of qualifying vehicles sold. So buyers of VW's newly-announced ID.4 will be able to claim the full credit, but buyers of Tesla's Model Y won't.
The ID.4 starts $40K base without destination charges or local taxes. Even with the $7.5K federal tax credit that's an incredibly expensive compact SUV (you can get full SUVs for $5K less, let alone compact SUVs).
You know a car without any safety features could be even cheaper. Petrol with lead and sulphur is cheaper. Houses with asbestos are cheaper. Why do you feel entitled to a certain price on cars?
That's absurd hyperbole. $25K gas vehicles or $27K Hybrids represent Toyota, not "vehicles without safety features."
Also, you're putting the cart and horse in the wrong order, nobody felt entitled to anything, we were discussing EVs making sense without states needing to push/mandate them which means competitive pricing that's affordable relative to other offerings in the existing market.
Your whole argument feels like a way to shut down discussion.
There may be cost to doing this but car prices have never factored in their environmental cost and now they absolutely have to. If you consider both the TCO of an gas vs electric vehicle and the long term cost of climate change, it's a bargain.
Yeah, I'm sure that'll work out just like the Model 3 for $35,000... There was one strippo version of the Model 3 available (as special-order-only to severely limit the number sold) for what, maybe three or four months?
It's also competing with low-mileage $12-15K used cars that you can actually take on a cross-country trip. The Tesla store here in Austin recently confirmed for me that a trip to South Florida would take more than three times as long in a Tesla as a gas-powered car, after figuring in charging stops and the twisty routes required to get to the chargers. (And that was a $100K Model S!)
And remember folks, EVs aren't zero emissions, they're just remote emissions!
> When is electric going to be affordable for the average person?
Maybe never... A lot of today's technology runs on fossil fuel. It may very well be the case that our standard of living will decrease as we won't find comparable source of energy.
I enjoy driving cars. With engines that go vroom-vroom.
One of the benefits of a carbon tax is that I could continue to drive cars with engines that go vroom as long as I want so long as I can afford to pay the tax. And there is a very realistic situation that all of my carbon can be offset for just a few hundred dollars a year, if we have the resources to invest in next gen offset technology.
But we are in a political situation where it is easier to outright ban this than simply ask people to pay for the cost.
I say this as an EV fanatic and Tesla owner, but I'm with you that outright banning ICE cars is the wrong solution.
It totally fucks anybody that can't charge at home. Do you know how many millions of people live in apartments? Do you think they're really going to shell out the cash to build EV chargers in all their parking spots?
The problem is, increasing taxes on gas will disproportionately affect the poor who can't afford to buy an EV (and again, are unlikely to live somewhere with a charger), while also having side effects of increasing the cost of all physical goods that need to be shipped. Semitrucks become more expensive to run, and while Tesla is working on a semi, it's only going to be useful for intra-city distribution, since semis used for inter-city travel are almost constantly on the road and will be driven by multiple drivers to keep moving, so they don't have time to charge.
> increasing taxes on gas will disproportionately affect the poor
People who are poor are already pay disproportionally by living in a culture that requires a car.
Having been poor most of my life, my problem has not been "I can't afford an EV". My problems have been "I can't afford to live somewhere with decent public transit options."
1) Regard apartments, the government should make funds available to add charging to existing apartment buildings. It could also do stuff like add chargers to light posts, as I believe some European countries do. Also, we can normalize running extension cords out to your car as a temporary measure :). People do this with their $100k PIH Volvos in my neighborhood.
2) This is why I like the "carbon dividend" approach some have proposed. Tax people, but let some of the money flow back to the poorer members of society so that they can still live. I also think as a society we really need to question why we accept that there are just tons of poor people. Why not raise the floor a bit? Climate change (and pollution as well!) disproportionately affect the poor as well, so delaying action to fight it will hurt them in the long run.
> The problem is, increasing taxes on gas will disproportionately affect the poor who can't afford to buy an EV (and again, are unlikely to live somewhere with a charger)
But banning ICE cars is clearly even worse for those unable to afford an EV, right? Unless policy-makers think that precommitting to ban ICE cars by 2035 will lead to a sudden flurry of new EV development _that wouldn't have happened if they had just precommitted to adding large carbon taxes by 2035.
We built the infrastructure to pump stale dinosaur juice out of the ground in Saudi-Arabia, refine it, and deliver it to your gas tank. We built the infrastructure to bring potable water to every home.
Just because we don't have the charging stations today doesn't mean we'll never have them.
Its really not a big deal if that's what you're worried about. Just go out of state or get some collectable car status. I'm sure there will be plenty of loopholes for enthusiasts willing to jump a few hoops. This is about changing the retail experience.
The order seems vague enough that zero-emissions could possibly include net-zero emissions but I'm not sure we know all the details yet.
> But we are in a political situation where it is easier to outright ban this than simply ask people to pay for the cost.
You can claim this is radical, but I suspect the auto manufacturers won't be building ICE cars by 2035 anyway.
EV cars are simply WAY cheaper to build than ICE cars. For example, GM quit manufacturing the Volt because the Bolt is stupidly cheaper to manufacture.
Given the current trends with people not buying cars anyway, this is effectively inevitable.
I think that in general, liberals are under-appreciative (scared, even) of markets, and conservatives are under-appreciative (scared, even) of regulation and government. The fact that a carbon tax system is both government regulation-based and a market-based probably contributes to its lack of traction.
Use the right tool for the job. In this case, a free market solution (i.e. carbon tax) would drive carbon offset prices down, optimizing the solution without centralized control. What if moving fully to electric vehicles is only the 10th most cost-effective way of reversing climate change? With laws like this one, we're committing to a potentially sub-optimal solution, which means we have to find more dollars than we otherwise would need to solve the problem.
Note that the carbon tax (which I assume would include offsetting programs as the sources of carbon credits or the sink for tax dollars) does have some significant regulatory requirements and challenges; if you sell me an offset, how do I actually know that those 10 tons of CO2 were actually captured from the atmosphere? I think you'd need pretty strong regulation for there to be a workable international market in carbon tax credits, for example.
This is not about reducing carbon within CA's borders. This is about levering CA's market power to spur changes to the behavior of multinational corporations.
A carbon tax is only effective if everyone pays. Nevada doesn't care if California pays for carbon. However, if CA incentivizes electric vehicle production, multinational car companies can sell the same cars elsewhere.
Extinction of humans is not a possible result of global warming. Such a result is only put forward by people without political or scientific understanding. Worst case global warming (as in we continue to pump out and put every bit of buried accessible CO2 that's in the ground into the atmosphere) only returns us to an age of tremendous amounts of vegetation and coastal cities being flooded. It also causes wars and massive population movements, but it does not cause extinction. It might also cause advanced civilization to revert to an earlier stage of development, but Earth cannot become a Venus-like planet or anything close to it with current levels of buried CO2.
Granted this is a very bad experiment to run, and we should not do this, but it's not an existential crisis.
The same way that a sugar tax can price out death by diabetes.
Study after study proves that people respond to price incentives. If you set a price for carbon (even less than the cost to sequester it from the atmosphere), people will reduce their output.
And there is a lot of low hanging fruit we could start with before we start ripping cars from people.
> Clean transport transition leader Norway hit a huge 70.2% plugin passenger vehicle market share in August, up from 49% a year ago. Pure battery electrics alone took 53% of the market.
I wish these articles would also count many are primary cars (i.e. a household replacing or buying a car, meaning they don't otherwise have one), and how many are secondary cars (i.e. in addition to another car, particularly non-EVs). My anecdotal evidence from Norway suggest most people get EVs as their secondary cars. I wish I had more numbers.
As EV ownership rises gas stations are going to become rare enough to be a real hassle. That’s likely to push people to 95+% EV around 2040ish. At which point the remaining IC cars stop being a big deal.
We already went though something similar with catalytic converter requirements. Some people are going to drive 40+ year old cars, but they quickly become irrelevant.
I expect there will be other measures in the future. Heavier taxes on gasoline and such, and higher DMV registration fees, growing over time. And EV sales will grow as more people test drive the better EVs. People looking for a used car will be trying to find a good used electric. Gasoline car resale value is going to crash hard.
How I wish we could phase out cars. I know that they're necessary for some, and a huge convenience for most. But I would LOVE to be able to walk down a street and not have to worry about getting run over by a 1T steel object because the driver was reading a text.
Probably sooner. In 2034, a year before this takes place, gasoline car sales will probably be small to negligible. In 2045, it'll be a hassle to own a gasoline car when most of the gas stations are closed.
“ Following the order, the California Air Resources Board will develop regulations to mandate that 100 percent of in-state sales of new passenger cars and trucks are zero-emission by 2035 – a target which would achieve more than a 35 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and an 80 percent improvement in oxides of nitrogen emissions from cars statewide. In addition, the Air Resources Board will develop regulations to mandate that all operations of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles shall be 100 percent zero emission by 2045 where feasible, with the mandate going into effect by 2035 for drayage trucks.”
The subtitle says all vehicles sold must be zero-emissions, so that presumably includes diesel. But this seems to only target passenger vehicles, not freight carriers.
Since you posted almost exactly the same comment further up the thread. It's important to consider that ICE vehicles have been puking out air pollution and CO2 for more than a century, killing thousands, if not millions of people and contributing greatly to climate change, which is getting worse.
It frustrates me that people take umbrage at being charged money for using energy and polluting the environment.
My take is it's actually a reactive move to counter his issuing more fracking permits in 2020 than 2019. This is CA, he's vulnerable on climate issues. I do believe he (like most CA residents) are acutely worried about climate change, but I think this particular action is more about optics than change.
Because the state EPA sets the rules and the EPA is an executive branch function. State congress can overrule it by passing a law, but policy of an executive branch of government can be decided at whim by the governor.
I completely reject the validity of this as it is being done through an Executive Order. Newsom doesn't get to decide this on his own, it needs to go through the Legislature to be valid.
I'm wondering how they will replace all the gas/diesel 4WD vehicles used by ranchers and vineyard managers here in Sonoma / Napa CA. The wine / grape industry is $1.5B+ for sonoma county alone - Napa is at least that or more.
You need reliable 4x4 vehicles to access and work in the remote areas where many grapes are grown up here now.
4x4 / all terrain doesn't seem to be much of an issue for electric vehicles. Electric motors are torquier, and it's easy to design drivetrains that use multiple motors. It seems pretty likely that electric trucks will be here by then (Rivian, Cybertruck, freaked-out traditional manufacturers jumping in a few years later).
The bigger issue is probably range, for users that need to work in truly remote areas. But big trucks can carry a lot of batteries, too. I think the number of operators that genuinely need more than ~500 miles or so of range is probably pretty low.
Looks like there's an exception for certain use-cases, and extreme range requirements would probably fall into that. Fuel cells might be an option for that requirement.
On the reliability front, electric vehicles have far fewer moving parts than IC vehicles. If the world switches entirely to electric, really great electric 4x4s will appear.
I can't recall a time that I've used a cordless drill and thought to myself, "man, this thing would be so much better if it were powered by a two-stroke motor".
This advantage is especially clear in the case of a 4x4: one need not include viscous couplings and fancy differentials.
>electric vehicles have far fewer moving parts than IC vehicles
Not true. You still have the suspention system which has a lot of moving parts. there are also the moving parts of the brakes. Then the steering system. In theory you don't need a transmission, but in practice you do.
There are a few less moving parts, but not substantially less. The moving parts you lose are mostly in a controlled environment with plenty of lubrication and no dirt (though there are other acid combustion byproducts).
> I can't recall a time that I've used a cordless drill and thought to myself, "man, this thing would be so much better if it were powered by a two-stroke motor".
I have a cordless chainsaw and weed whip. Both would be better with an IC engine. Batteries are much heavier than gas, and this is really noticeable when using them for a while. These are new Dewalt 60 volt systems, not some old technology. Of course there are advantages to battery - I won't got back to gas, like I would have 20 years ago when I first used a battery weed whip. I like the low noise and there is plenty of power. However the gas engine would be lighter.
I've also seen gas powered drills and I'm sure that the same applies, batteries are good, but the extra weight to get the same power is a factor. Most drills are used indoors of course so gas was never a real option and that is why battery drills become popular as soon as they worked at all.
The press release only mentions passenger vehicles, not farm equipment. Within a couple of decades I think there will be some good choices for electric off road vehicles. Polaris already sells an EV side by side [1]
Maybe there will be a special class for certain niche applications, like off-road motorcycles and light trucks used in rougher applications in remote areas.
I would love to have a diesel-powered 4x4 light pickup with a 5-speed.
"light trucks used in rougher applications in remote areas."
I am sure there will, indeed, be special carve-outs and I am sure the auto manufacturers will find a way to exploit those carve-outs such that every dude in the state can continue to pretend they're a rancher (as they drive their quad cab 1.5ton to and from their apartment building every day).
EV models of such vehicles are starting to be produced in "demo" models now, so it doesn't seem like a technical barrier to have them in mass production by the time this takes effect.
I've driven over 30k miles this year across 3 vehicles. Mostly on road trips. Almost 5k of that was on unpaved roads in a 4x4 full size lifted diesel truck. I carry between 35 and 100 gal of gas at a time to do those kinds of trips. Seems like fantastic business opportunity for out of state registration via a llc or something.
That depends - The vast majority of 4x4s never go far enough off road that the advantages of gas matter. For the tiny number of people who do that, the ability to bring extra gas with is important. Note that batteries are so heavy that it isn't an option to bring batteries with - the weight is a negative in many 4x4 situations even if the truck could handle it.
Readit News
This move feels radical, but I don't see how we avert catastrophe without moves that feel radical. If we keep plodding down the course we're on we'll just sleepwalk into oblivion.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant
Why is this plant shutting down? Not because of some sort of hate of nuclear technology, as many would have us believe.
No, the real reason this plant is shutting down is because, like every other thermal generation plant, extending its lifetime past the original license means complying with environmental impact laws on waste heat. Once-through waste heat systems are no longer legal [1]. So why not just build a waste heat system and keep it running? Because when the utility tried to come up with one, the cost of the cooling system alone ran into the billions of dollars!
Much better to just by a few billion dollars worth of batteries and site them on location. At current costs, today, $1B gets you 5GWh at 1.25GW, roughly. The very cheapest estimate for a cooling system was $7B and they ran to over $10B for a new cooling system [2]. So even without the inevitable cost overruns, one could purchase 35-50GWh and 9-12GW of batteries.
A 40GWh/10GW battery would be a far better grid asset for California, and massive increase reliability far beyond what Diablo Canyon could ever produce.
When the mere cooling system for nuclear is more expensive than a better battery, the technology is dead, dead, dead. We don't need it and we have better alternatives.
[1] https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article...
[2] https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/ocean/c...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_...
It's supported by the official 2020 Democratic Party platform: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/08/23/after-48...
Renewables (as well as storage) have reduced in cost (and continue to reduce in cost) much faster than has been expected by groups like the EIA.gov. While I fully support nuclear of all sorts, it's likely not to have a massive impact beyond the ~19% of electricity it provides today. It just takes too long to build, and proving a new design that'd be faster to build would also take a while, so it'd be supplemental to the energy transition, not the primary power source.
This is much different from 20 years ago when even wind power was still much more expensive than it is today, when off-shore wind was an expensive science project, when solar was literally over 10x (EDIT: more like 20x) the price as well as battery storage. At that point, yeah, I would've agreed nuclear was our only option for a rapid transition.
IMO the biggest problem with nuclear is the cost and time to construct. I don't think the energy industry would be so keen to shut them down if they were cost effective.
There is plenty of energy in renewables that is far cheaper and safer than nuclear.
Diablo Canyon is over 50 years old. It's not considered a particularly safe design. Stretching a few more years out of it isn't going to make a significant impact, certainly not relative to the auto regulation under discussion.
I mean, look, sure. I "support" extending Diablo Canyon in principle. But that takes a ton of money, and I'd like to see numbers showing that isn't better spent on a bunch of wind farms.
Dead Comment
My understanding is that, at least depending on your goal, this isn't nearly radical enough. Some experts think we not only need to stop selling gas-powered cars _immediately_, but also actively remove existing fossil fuel cars/appliance from the economy.
I found this podcast helpful in understanding the level of effort needed to decarbonize in the near future: https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/8/27/21403184/saul-griffit...
Unless there's actual measurable promises made by politicians that can be falsified before their next election, it's mostly puffery. Make hard, publicly verifiable 6, 12, and 18 month commitments otherwise it's just fluffy words to get votes.
Also this can't be a politics-only solution. We have to dip into ye olden term of "political economy" - that second term is integrally tied to the first. The restructuring has to happen at how the politics And economy operates otherwise it doesn't work - there's no way to do anything meaningful, it's just words on paper if we only look at politics.
Personally I think profit maximization for the energy sector has to go. It's not how we run our fire, parks, library, courts, postal service and it can't be how we do energy, at least not right now. Greenhouse gas minimization has to determine things.
It's possible. The best universities for instance, aren't determined by the highest profits and the best police aren't the ones that hand out the largest fines and the best parents aren't the ones that extract the highest value labor from their children. We can restructure how energy is done as well.
That's targeting the wrong side of the supply/demand equation. Which is also why this initiative of California's will not work.
Just keep building better power sources!! You will never reduce demand, you can only make a better supply.
Nuclear nuclear nuclear. There's nothing else that can do it fast enough.
If California actually cared about the environment that's what they would do, instead it's only lip service.
* 28%/41% - transportation
* 27%/15% - electricity
* 22%/24% - industry
* 12%/12% - commercial & residential
* 10%/ 8% - agriculture
58% of US transportation (~16% of the US total) is passenger cars and light-duty trucks, the focus of this announcement. CA accounts for about 6-7% of US CO₂e (carbon dioxide equivalents), so this action targets roughly 1% of our national emissions, not nothing but certainly more symbolic than impactful (even considering spillover effects). electricity and industry must be tackled as well, coordinated among a majority of states.
the US, ~4% of the world's population, produces about 15% of the world's emissions (2nd to china, EU together is 3rd). this is why it's even more critical that the US, china and the EU especially come together on climate change (e.g., the paris accords) rather than giving the middle finger like we americans did recently.
[0]: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas... [1]: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/ghg-inventory-data
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...
I would guess CA would still have a very large number of ICE vehicles in 2060 with this legislation.
As a nation, we're not making radical moves. Most of our proposed policies are slow-walked or rolled back before they ever make a difference.
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824431240/trump-administratio...
400ppm is actually a level when it starts having measurable effects on humans (generally dumbs you down slightly).
Meanwhile, we are being pounded in Canada with extra taxes to discourage burning of fossil fuels even though we only emit 1.6% of the worlds GHG's. And a large part of that comes from home heating by natural gas, to which there is no viable alternative, so its not discouraging anything, its just another cash grab.
We can't make everyone happy and keep the world habitable for life as we know it.
The time to make tough decisions was yesterday at least this is better than tomorrow.
Plenty of other countries already discuss bans for 2030.
> This move feels radical, but I don't see how we avert catastrophe without moves that feel radical. If we keep plodding down the course we're on we'll just sleepwalk into oblivion.
One of the most frustrating things for me in the global warming debate is the total lack of interest in the scientific truth on BOTH sides of the issue. The truly odd scenario it sets-up is one where both sides are, well, to be kind, confused.
It's weird, deniers don't know what they are talking about --because it is most-definitely real-- and advocates are confused because they are ignoring the most basic science on the subject.
What is the truth?
There is nothing whatsoever we can do about it. Plain and simple.
This is a planetary-scale problem that cannot be solved in thousands of years even if the entirety of humanity and our technology left this planet at once.
If we all left earth immediately, at best, it will take somewhere in the order of 50,000 to 100,000 years for atmospheric CO2 levels to come down by 100 ppm.
That's the truth. And it requires everyone leaving earth right away. A consequence of this is that no partial measure anyone can cook-up can even begin to make a dent. In fact, we have years-long research findings concluding that, even if we converted the entire planet to the most optimal forms of renewable energy not only would atmospheric CO2 not go down, it would continue to grow exponentially.
And yet everyone ignores the most basic of scientific analysis that confirms this reality. Scientists don't want to speak-up because it would mean losing grants and likely having their lives and careers destroyed. Nobody wants to go against something politicians and others are too happy to use to gain votes and make money. And so, the scientific truth is suppressed and lay-people believe nonsense.
OK, so, what is this simple analysis that proves this idea that it would take 50,000 to 100,000 years for CO2 levels to come down by 100 ppm if we all left earth?
We know EXACTLY how quickly natural processes reduce atmospheric CO2 through historical ice core sample records going back 800,000 years. In case it isn't obvious, this means we know the rate of change for a planet without humanity.
Here's were you will find the 800,000 years of ice core data:
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical...
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html
Here's a paper that explains why it is that atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise exponentially even if we switch the the most optimal forms of renewable energy world-wide:
https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...
Take that graph into your favorite image editor and fit lines to it for the decline phase in every cycle. Measure the slope for each cycle. Take the average or median, your choice. The number is in the tens of thousands of years. Not hundreds. Tens of thousands.
Then read the paper and understand how a transition to clean energy is an exercise in futility.
I challenge anyone to show how anything short of all of humanity leaving earth can produce a rate of change dramatically better than tens of thousands of years per 100 ppm. No magic hand-wavy stuff. Whatever anyone proposes must include analysis of energy and resources needed to execute a planetary scale solution that is able to force a change at a rate up to a thousand times faster than the natural "no humans on earth" rate.
This is not to say there aren't a lot of good reasons to clean-up our act. There are. Of course. We just need to stop lying to ourselves, understand reality and start talking about how to adapt for the sake of future generations. We must also free-up our brilliant scientists so they can deal with this issue factually without fear for the destruction of their careers and loss of funding. The current path will lead nowhere. Converting California to all electric vehicles in the name of climate change is farcical at best and potentially detrimental.
There isn't anyone alive who can solve a scientific problem by ignoring evidence and data.
[citation needed]
Humans could never fly. We could never destroy entire mountains. We could never drain an entire sea or make an island. We could never split an atom. We could never walk on the moon. We could never have an international network sending live video around the world at near light speed. We could never burn so much fuel that we heat up the earth in a measurable degree.
Yet people did all of these things.
Just because it seems impossible now doesn't mean it won't be possible someday.
> I challenge anyone to show how anything short of all of humanity leaving earth can produce a rate of change dramatically better than tens of thousands of years per 100 ppm
If a single person right here, right now, could do that in an economical fashion, they'd be a trillionaire before the decade is over. Nobody in 2001 was single handedly making pocket-sized GPSes that played games, streamed video, and had AI facial recognition in the sub-thousand dollar price range either, but that changed fast. Anybody who proposed using solar panels and windmills as a main power source for cities in 1910 would've been called a kook just as well. It's incremental change.
I think you can get something like 3 tons of CO2 per acre per year with switchgrass. There's around 1 trillion excess tons of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Let's say we use around 200 million acres of land, that works out to:
(1 trillion tons / 3 tons per acre per year) / 200 million acres = 1512 years.
But that's just the US. If other countries help with land, we could probably get 1 or 2 billion acres involved, so that drops it to 150 years.
That's a lot, but not as bad as your picture.
Dead Comment
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/about/glossary
Also you have to adapt to changing conditions and then take actions accordingly. This is true generally, and possibly even more so for politicians and governments.
The term "zero-emissions" is borderline BS when the energy is coming from a source that emits pollution way off in the distance. If I remember correctly, California has been closing more nuclear power plants than it has been opening, so it while it's nice that our cars won't be putting out smog someday, we aren't going to take climate change seriously unless we move to nuclear.
To extend off that question, I've yet to hear an explanation as to how well the grid will tolerate millions of cars being plugged in all the time. During the summer California struggles to keep the lights on, so I'm wondering whether we will be investing in electrical infrastructure this time. Nuclear can help solve that. Same with natural gas to electricity conversion(like what Bloom Energy does).
California has brought far more solar/ wind power online over the past 20 years than they've retired nuclear power plants. They are also slowly phasing out non-renewable power. Though the pace isn't as fast as many would like, it's happening.
> To extend off that question, I've yet to hear an explanation as to how well the grid will tolerate millions of cars being plugged in all the time.
For the typical 10,000-20,000 mile/ year driver, an electric car uses less power than it takes to air condition a California home. If you have even a small solar install—which makes tons of sense in California—the load on the grid is near zero.
The recent blackouts demonstrate that California doesn't have enough dispatchable power to support the current air conditioning footprint. We need to add more EVs and more air conditioning on top of that.
That's not much. $2 worth of electricity. And $3-4,000 worth of solar panels will produce that much a day. Compare that to the car that costs ten times as much.
Will most people be plugging in their cars during the day, though? Or will they be charging at night, at home?
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/8/31/1779909...
EDIT:
And on your second point, having a large number of electric vehicles may actually help smooth out load -- it's easier to temporarily throttle charging during peak load than it is to get everyone to turn off their air conditioning. Public charging stations, like Chargepoint, already do this.
You can even imagine a future where you could tell your car to discharge its battery to power your home during peak demand and then charge back up overnight when power is cheap and plentiful.
I just wish people would read about France, which despite their current stupidity, rolled out 34 reactors in something like 10 years back in the 1970's. Thereby not only going energy independent, but nearly 0 emissions. Now during the past decade or so, not only are they one of the cleanest (if not the cleanest) countries in the world, they have some of the cheapest electricity in Europe, and are also the largest net exporter.
So, if anyone in politics actually had a brain about this, they would drive a similar mandate through with a < 10 year time-frame, so that rather than powering all those batteries with natural gas, they would be carbon free.
But, no, in the USA that wont happen until we get to the point that all the 1d10t politicians (and their supporters) start starving due to food production problems or massive wars.
Really well actually, done correctly it will actually make power production cheaper per watt for everyone.
Since cars spend the vast majority of their time idle they can charge whenever. Whenever in this case being the middle of the night when the lack of workers causes power usage to bottom out.
The power companies would prefer a flat usage line and having cars that can intelligently start charging when ideal can totally help with that.
Additionally I would point out that while zero-emissions is a bit disingenuous electric cars are the only real path forward to zero-emissions. The only other technology is hydrogen which also requires electricity to produce.
That said cars and the infrastructure needed to support them requires enormous amounts of resources, EV's don't change that much. But what what are you going to do?
On the other hand for California zero emission also means no NOx, SOX and PM2.5 tail pipe emissions in cities where most people live. Granted EV's produce some PM2.5 from tires and brakes. But that's a percentage of tail pipe emissions.
I am happy to be corrected, but I believe the only industrial scale production of hydrogen is splitting hydrocarbons. Using electrolysis is hugely inefficient.
If this is true, a lot of talk of hydrogen is submarine marketing for the fossil fuel industry.
One thing you didn't mention is efficiency. Electrics are around 60% and gas around 20%. Once you have some power at the car, you make better much use of it.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/10/electric-car-myth-buste...
That was my first thought as well. Gotta love rolling blackouts. But EV charging will likely take place at night when air conditioners are pulling less power so maybe it will smooth things out? They're still gonna have to support the peak load and do so more often.
Glad you asked.
The typical driver drives 12k to 15k miles per year. That's about 33 to 41 miles per day, or about the range of a 1st Gen Chevy Volt.
The thing is, you can recharge a Volt overnight from a normal household outlet (the kind you already have in your living room, kitchen, or garage). In other words, it uses only about as much power (~1.5 kW) as your toaster, coffee maker, hair dryer, or vacuum cleaner. It is dramatically less power than a central AC unit (around 4 to 6 kW).
So, no, this is not going to cause a massive problem for the grid.
> During the summer California struggles to keep the lights on, so I'm wondering whether we will be investing in electrical infrastructure this time.
This is more of a PG&E problem than a California problem. LA and Santa Clara both have municipally-owned electrical utilities (including generation and transmission) that don't have a problem keeping the lights on.
1. Zero-emissions - you are arguing semantics - if you are an EV and are sourcing your energy in CA your carbon emissions are very low. 2. CA is closing Nuclear plants and are doing alright. The loss in baseload power is getting replaced by inventive policies DR policies, energy storage, solar and some natural gas. No, the answer isn't just more Nuclear - can Nuclear be part of the solution? Maybe - Nuclear is really expensive and has some siting and health challenges. 3. The grid will tolerate a change in the overall load profile (i.e. more EVs) by dispatching new programs, new price signals and new assets that are variable. 4. California doesn't struggle to keep the lights on in the summer - it had rolling blackouts that have yet to be determined the first time in 19 years this year (19 years ago was due to illicit energy trading i.e. Enron trading). It does do rolling blackouts for risks to wild fires.
A nuclear plant is still a steam engine, so it would require significant amounts of water to cool, which aren't that easy to come by in a land where droughts happen so often.
Also there's so much sun there and solar panels are so cheap nowadays that waiting 7-odd years for a plant to start producing power doesn't look like a viable option.
China is leading the world in new nuclear power deployment, but still in terms of delivered GWh wind overtook nuclear there in 2012 and the gap is widening. Solar will cross that point in a few years.
If even a totalitarian state can't deploy nuclear at a pace competitive with alternatives, how is a place like California supposed to?
EDIT: That one is being decommissioned
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?msa=0&mid=1t0te1lvPsMd0...
Use this thing software and market. All of the cars can delay charge or buy when price is at particular point.
Weird tho Tesla avoids grid capability. CHAdeMO is in every EV in Japan (including fuel cell one). Can't find the stats how widely they are used tho.
If we witnessed a jump in battery technology, we may not even need to wait for 2035 for the market to do this for us. But in the meantime we're still seeing electric cars that cost at minimum 10K more than their gas counterparts (with the low cost of oil/gas right now only making that look worse).
I'd love to own a Tesla Model 3 for example, but realistically it is a $37K car that competes with $25K gas vehicles or $27K Hybrids. When is THAT going to change? When is electric going to be affordable for the average person?
The $7.5K federal tax incentives also disappeared (and we never had state incentives here).
The average price of a car bought in May of 2019 was $36,718. A Model 3 is $37,990. Given the offsets in maintenance and gas, I'd say the answer to that question is "now".
https://www.edmunds.com/industry/press/new-vehicle-prices-cl...
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Gasoline cars can be filled by gas from any company, so there's actual competition. But an electric car mandate will expand PG&E's monopoly by billions of dollars per year. Imagine how poorly they will behave when they have a lock on both electricity and transportation.
I also think SUVs should possibly be banned fairly soon (Bad for cities, bad for roads, bad for parking, emissions etc.)
VW ID.3 €35,574 300km
Pegeuot e208 €29,682 340km
Hyundai Kona €33,971 305km
(Prices are for base models in Germany, including taxes, excluding incentives)
The Model 3 is around €50k here, so even with the discounted price it's still going to expensive compared to other cars. Now of course it has a greater range, but I am wondering if Tesla are going to bring out a more budget model for Europe to compete.
Also, you're putting the cart and horse in the wrong order, nobody felt entitled to anything, we were discussing EVs making sense without states needing to push/mandate them which means competitive pricing that's affordable relative to other offerings in the existing market.
Your whole argument feels like a way to shut down discussion.
If the technology was already there to replace cars with no price premium, we should be outlawing ICE cars today.
And remember folks, EVs aren't zero emissions, they're just remote emissions!
Maybe never... A lot of today's technology runs on fossil fuel. It may very well be the case that our standard of living will decrease as we won't find comparable source of energy.
One of the benefits of a carbon tax is that I could continue to drive cars with engines that go vroom as long as I want so long as I can afford to pay the tax. And there is a very realistic situation that all of my carbon can be offset for just a few hundred dollars a year, if we have the resources to invest in next gen offset technology.
But we are in a political situation where it is easier to outright ban this than simply ask people to pay for the cost.
It totally fucks anybody that can't charge at home. Do you know how many millions of people live in apartments? Do you think they're really going to shell out the cash to build EV chargers in all their parking spots?
The problem is, increasing taxes on gas will disproportionately affect the poor who can't afford to buy an EV (and again, are unlikely to live somewhere with a charger), while also having side effects of increasing the cost of all physical goods that need to be shipped. Semitrucks become more expensive to run, and while Tesla is working on a semi, it's only going to be useful for intra-city distribution, since semis used for inter-city travel are almost constantly on the road and will be driven by multiple drivers to keep moving, so they don't have time to charge.
People who are poor are already pay disproportionally by living in a culture that requires a car.
Having been poor most of my life, my problem has not been "I can't afford an EV". My problems have been "I can't afford to live somewhere with decent public transit options."
2) This is why I like the "carbon dividend" approach some have proposed. Tax people, but let some of the money flow back to the poorer members of society so that they can still live. I also think as a society we really need to question why we accept that there are just tons of poor people. Why not raise the floor a bit? Climate change (and pollution as well!) disproportionately affect the poor as well, so delaying action to fight it will hurt them in the long run.
But banning ICE cars is clearly even worse for those unable to afford an EV, right? Unless policy-makers think that precommitting to ban ICE cars by 2035 will lead to a sudden flurry of new EV development _that wouldn't have happened if they had just precommitted to adding large carbon taxes by 2035.
Just because we don't have the charging stations today doesn't mean we'll never have them.
The order seems vague enough that zero-emissions could possibly include net-zero emissions but I'm not sure we know all the details yet.
You can claim this is radical, but I suspect the auto manufacturers won't be building ICE cars by 2035 anyway.
EV cars are simply WAY cheaper to build than ICE cars. For example, GM quit manufacturing the Volt because the Bolt is stupidly cheaper to manufacture.
Given the current trends with people not buying cars anyway, this is effectively inevitable.
Use the right tool for the job. In this case, a free market solution (i.e. carbon tax) would drive carbon offset prices down, optimizing the solution without centralized control. What if moving fully to electric vehicles is only the 10th most cost-effective way of reversing climate change? With laws like this one, we're committing to a potentially sub-optimal solution, which means we have to find more dollars than we otherwise would need to solve the problem.
Note that the carbon tax (which I assume would include offsetting programs as the sources of carbon credits or the sink for tax dollars) does have some significant regulatory requirements and challenges; if you sell me an offset, how do I actually know that those 10 tons of CO2 were actually captured from the atmosphere? I think you'd need pretty strong regulation for there to be a workable international market in carbon tax credits, for example.
A carbon tax is only effective if everyone pays. Nevada doesn't care if California pays for carbon. However, if CA incentivizes electric vehicle production, multinational car companies can sell the same cars elsewhere.
https://twitter.com/benioff/status/558192472292360192?lang=e...
Granted this is a very bad experiment to run, and we should not do this, but it's not an existential crisis.
Study after study proves that people respond to price incentives. If you set a price for carbon (even less than the cost to sequester it from the atmosphere), people will reduce their output.
And there is a lot of low hanging fruit we could start with before we start ripping cars from people.
For context, EVs are a few percent of sales in California, and almost zero for trucks.
> Clean transport transition leader Norway hit a huge 70.2% plugin passenger vehicle market share in August, up from 49% a year ago. Pure battery electrics alone took 53% of the market.
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/02/norway-in-august-over-7...
Coincidentally, the principal for Norway's huge sovereign wealth fund comes largely from oil extraction.
They are definitely not a good example of a free market choosing EVs because they are actually better.
We already went though something similar with catalytic converter requirements. Some people are going to drive 40+ year old cars, but they quickly become irrelevant.
Probably sooner. In 2034, a year before this takes place, gasoline car sales will probably be small to negligible. In 2045, it'll be a hassle to own a gasoline car when most of the gas stations are closed.
Could people start buying more Diesel cars, as well as trucks, because of this?
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/09/23/governor-newsom-announces-...
Gotta kick 'em when they're down. /s
On the flip side, it will be a great time to own a "buy here pay here" lot.
It frustrates me that people take umbrage at being charged money for using energy and polluting the environment.
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The board that regulates emissions in California is basically run by the executive, with legislative oversight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Air_Resources_Board
You need reliable 4x4 vehicles to access and work in the remote areas where many grapes are grown up here now.
The bigger issue is probably range, for users that need to work in truly remote areas. But big trucks can carry a lot of batteries, too. I think the number of operators that genuinely need more than ~500 miles or so of range is probably pretty low.
I can't recall a time that I've used a cordless drill and thought to myself, "man, this thing would be so much better if it were powered by a two-stroke motor".
This advantage is especially clear in the case of a 4x4: one need not include viscous couplings and fancy differentials.
Not true. You still have the suspention system which has a lot of moving parts. there are also the moving parts of the brakes. Then the steering system. In theory you don't need a transmission, but in practice you do.
There are a few less moving parts, but not substantially less. The moving parts you lose are mostly in a controlled environment with plenty of lubrication and no dirt (though there are other acid combustion byproducts).
> I can't recall a time that I've used a cordless drill and thought to myself, "man, this thing would be so much better if it were powered by a two-stroke motor".
I have a cordless chainsaw and weed whip. Both would be better with an IC engine. Batteries are much heavier than gas, and this is really noticeable when using them for a while. These are new Dewalt 60 volt systems, not some old technology. Of course there are advantages to battery - I won't got back to gas, like I would have 20 years ago when I first used a battery weed whip. I like the low noise and there is plenty of power. However the gas engine would be lighter.
I've also seen gas powered drills and I'm sure that the same applies, batteries are good, but the extra weight to get the same power is a factor. Most drills are used indoors of course so gas was never a real option and that is why battery drills become popular as soon as they worked at all.
[1] https://ranger.polaris.com/en-us/ranger-ev/
I would love to have a diesel-powered 4x4 light pickup with a 5-speed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Amarok
I am sure there will, indeed, be special carve-outs and I am sure the auto manufacturers will find a way to exploit those carve-outs such that every dude in the state can continue to pretend they're a rancher (as they drive their quad cab 1.5ton to and from their apartment building every day).
Remember - you can never have too much truck.