Is California being unreasonably optimistic. (Electric Vehicles)

In My Humble Opinion
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California to end sales of gasoline-only cars by 2035

Aug 25, 2022 (Reuters) - California on Thursday moved to require all new vehicles sold in the state by 2035 to be either electric or plug-in electric hybrids, a landmark move that could speed the end of gasoline-powered vehicles.

Are you ready for a blackout? How Californians can keep their lights on

But even in cities, higher temperatures are straining the power grid, raising the specter of brownouts and blackouts if residents don’t manage their electricity use well.

California has seen more outages in the last five years — 99 — caused by “major disturbances and unexpected occurrences” than any other state except Texas

This is the best article I could find that wasn’t over the top political blather and grandstanding.

Race to zero: Can California’s power grid handle a 15-fold increase in electric cars?

State officials claim that the 12.5 million electric vehicles expected on California’s roads in 2035 will not strain the grid. But their confidence that the state can avoid power outages relies on a best-case — some say unrealistic — scenario: massive and rapid construction of offshore wind and solar farms, and drivers charging their cars in off-peak hours.

Personally, believing how broken and corrupt infrastructure construction is, I have serious doubts that this will work out nearly as well as they are trying to make it out to be.

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IMHO it’s a couple of things.

One, it’s sale of NEW vehicles. So existing vehicles, and sold used vehicles will probabably be at a slight premium to the national average for quite a while.

As for CA’s power grid, even with the above caveat, no, they aren’t ready, and are probably overly optimistic especially when taking into account likely further demands on power as temps increase.

What worries me MORE is that even if the grid could handle it (and it could with a major change in power priorities and immediate action to start, which is a good idea if desalination becomes a needed step to deal with the water crisis) is that based on costs of living, it seem unlikely that a lot of CA drivers are going to have a place to plug in their cars. Lots of rentals, which means lots of convincing the property owners to make major infrastructure changes to allow for say, 80% of their renters to charge at the same time.

Yeah, going to be rough.

But, people said the same thing about forcing mileage and emissions standards. And if they hadn’t, industry probably wouldn’t have moved as well and quickly as they should, even if it was grudgingly.

Still, I wouldn’t want to be living in the area during the teething troubles, that’s for sure.

3

Insanely optimistic. Even with the hybrid caveat, I seriously doubt they will be able to get there infrastructure-wise in a little over a decade and really corruption has nothing to do with it. It’s just going to be very, very hard to accomplish.

It’s good to have aspirational goals, I guess. But if that timeline doesn’t end up being amended with an assortment of tacked-on extensions, I’ll be shocked.

ETA: ParallelLines has it on the nose about the problem of renters. That’s going to be a particularly difficult transition.

4

Notwithstanding the macro-infrastructure obstacles, how many neighborhood power grids have the capacity to supply a significant number of homes with enough current to charge everyone’s vehicles without the power lines radiating a lovely shade of red?

Sure, there will be some incremental improvements in both battery and electric motor technology, but barring something in the frictionless bearing/ room temperature superconductor level of advancement, these will be of minuscule benefit to the problem.

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MHO: Not gonna happen.

Electric vehicles have their purposes. General household and family use isn’t one of them, not yet anyway.

6

Missed this in my earlier post, but CA will commit to subsidizing the necessary upgrades and/or strong arming vehicle manufacturers to contribute. But considering their already multi-billion dollar budget deficit, I’d be hesitant to sign any contracts.

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I do not live in California (or America*), but if they take their leads from countries that have successfully made a significant transition, then it is immensely doable. But will they? The technology is available, and quality and reliability is improving and getting cheaper exponentially, so all it needs is funding and action. But that is a big obstacle, for some situations.

*Indeed, Australia is seriously behind in their EV infrastructure implementation goals already

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Its 2035. Or more than a decade. First of all, everyone I know that has either a plug in or electric car has solar. In fact, 80% of the houses in my area have solar.

The rentals are gonna be the issue. But only 16% of Californians live in apartment buildings. So, only half get retrofitted- leaving 8% to not but brand new cars or but a plug in. Not a huge issue.

CA has a huge network of Tesla chargers.

And I know quite a few people with an electric car that are quite happy and they work just fine. Mind you, they come in two versions- either Telsas for cross country or other cars for a modest commute and home charging.

Solar panels on the roofs.

And plug ins are not an issue. If we converted every single car in CA to a plug in, there would be no issue- since they cheerfully run on gas.

The blackouts in CA are not caused by strain to the grid. They are caused by PG&E not getting their ass together and burying power lines. So, high winds cause power lines to go down, causing fires- one of which killed people, etc. This meant PG&E got their asses sued and fined. So now they do a short blackout due to high winds in areas where there are still old not properly maintained power lines, in order to protect themselves from fines and lawsuits.

California's power grid looks good ahead of heat wave | abc10.com.

FOLSOM, Calif. — Energy regulators in California say the grid is stable ahead of this week’s coming heat wave, adding that they anticipate no supply shortfalls.

In other words, no rolling brownouts or blackouts are expected to be necessary. That’s according to a tweet Wednesday afternoon from the California Independent System Operator (Cal ISO), which is the authority that oversees 80% of California’s electricity… The other significant factor is the growth in battery storage capacity: 11-fold from 2020 until now. In 2020, the grid had 500 megawatts of battery storage available. Now – as of July 1 - it has about 5,600 megawatts available. For perspective, Cal ISO says 5,000 Megawatts can power about 3.8 million homes for up to four hours before those solar batteries need to be recharged.

That means during periods of high demand, the grid can pull from batteries instead of relying so much on borrowing from other states, who themselves might be experiencing a heat wave.

More battery storage will be coming online soon. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is now requiring regulated utilities to add storage to their portfolios.

9

I think we’ll have to disagree on this point. Perhaps for regions in CA where costs of living force super long commutes in some areas, but with consistent ranges of over 200 miles for most newer electrics (and assuming even worst case with temp and poor maintenance half that actual) it’s enough for most drivers. Are there some who need more than that? Of course. Are there other massive issues mandating in in CA in this timeframe? Sure. But saying they’re not ready for general household and family use is equally unreasonable.

So they can and have mandated a change. They can and have mandated a fix to one of the issues I mentioned. But it’s easy to demand things, I think we all agree that they aren’t budgeting for those costs - more power generation, more demand, massive infrastructure improvements to CA’s notoriously fragile power grid.

Again, doing it in an effort to push people into future proofing their cars by going BEV/PHEV might be good in theory, but unreasonably optimistic is an utterly fair evaluation of the likely reality.

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I don’t try to predict the future, so I have no idea if this goal can be achieved. However, Tesla is already the best selling car in California.. So whatever changes are necessary are happening now, with or without the government’s help.

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I feel like this is political bargaining.

The governor comes in with a ten year time frame, big players in the industry come in with a thirty year time frame… And then they meet somewhere in the middle.

Whatever it is. I don’t take ten years seriously at all.

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In a lot less than ten year’s time, the manufacture of internal combustion engines will be vastly reduced. These factories need a considerable throughput to keep them profitable and there will be a tipping point before long where the owners decide to cut their losses and either close down or switch to manufacturing another product.

The UK has already committed to the 2035 target, but the EU has stalled because the German government (a three-part coalition) wants to protect the industry. Given that car manufacturing makes up a fifth of the country’s industrial revenues, it is easy to understand why its politicians are to preserve jobs.

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No (at least not economically). But deadlines like this are never tightly adhered to anyway. Every affected industry (batteries, automakers, utilities, property developers) will lobby for a small extension and each of them will get one.

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My suspicion is that, in the usual way of EU politics, there will be a deal. A few billion Euros as a sweetener will persuade the reluctant into the fold.

I am sure that the likes of Ford, GM, BMW etc are well on with planning their exit strategies already. Any delays are likely to be from the other side as discussed above: The problem of charging millions of cars every night (if that’s what is required); manufacturing batteries and electronic components, and the supply of raw materials.

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Huh. That’s exactly what they’re best for. We had one and a hybrid for “times we might need it.” We never had those times and now have two EVs.

As for charging, although you can certainly plug in every night, I have enough range that tend to charge only about twice a week (and could get by with less). So, out of 100 EVs on the block, maybe only 45 or 50 would be charging on any particular night.

16

People who are saying that we need EVs because we’re going to run out of gasoline aren’t taking into consideration where the power needed for the EVs is going to come from. Solar and wind certainly help, but aren’t sufficient, as of now.

And then there’s the issue of the batteries themselves. If I could post a link, I would, but the Dope won’t let me so I won’t, but in Finland, a man chose to have his Tesla blown up in a quarry rather than spend 22,000 Euros to replace the battery. You can see it on the “Beyond The Press” channel; most of it is in English but some is in Finnish with captions. Totally worth the views.

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And will it cost less than € 22,000 to replace the car he blew up?

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He posted a different version, all of it in Finnish with English subtitles, on his own YT channel. He probably made enough money from the monetization to pay for the car. I also suspect that he got permission from his insurance company to do this; I do know that they got all the proper local permits from the quarry and locality beforehand, and the explosives were all sourced legally.

The other channel is called “Pommijatkat” with umlauts over the A’s. Google Translate says that word means “bomb sequels.”

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Who are these people? I haven’t heard that one in a very long time. I have heard we will basically roast our planet from CO2 from burning fossil fuels, and EV’s at least lower that a bit, even when EV’s are being powered by fossil fuels, while also allowing a path forward to reduce fossil fuels. I have also heard that reduction on fossil fuels will reduce oil influence on our politics which sounds great since the price is set internationally, and out of the US’s heands and should not be such a large influence on our politics.

20

I have a friend who got his warranty denied when he blew the engine which also damaged the transmission. After looking at the cost of the repair, he chose to junk the car. He could have chose to blow it up I guess, but he is not into sensationalism.

Now that I think if it, I also have a car that the transmission is going, not worth it to repair, though it is much older and was not worth much, which I could also chose to blow up if I wanted to make a youtube video. It is however sitting in my driveway unregistered, and really waiting for me to donate the local fire department for a training exercise.

I think these types of things fall under the heading of shit happens.