“Instability” is not a good word here alone- solar is not damaging the grid. Replace it with “demand instability”. This causes issues with PGE, etc trying to meet their planned demands.
You’ve alluded to it already, but the “duck curve” is one of the problems from PV over-generation.
It’s not the maximum instantaneous power that’s the issue (California already frequently has times when 100%+ of its power comes from renewables), it’s the sudden shift (at nightfall) where all the solar goes off at once. In the past it would’ve been slower ramp-ups and downs, but with solar in particular, the huge ramp-up at dawn and huge ramp-down at dusk makes it quite hard for the grid to deal with.
Even a stable overproduction is itself difficult; excess power past what California can use has to be either sold to another state (sometimes at negative profit, i.e., California sometimes has to pay someone else to take the power), turned off at the source, or shunted to storage or waste heat somehow, and at megawatt scale that’s not a trivial thing.
Yes, storage can help that situation, and so can smart devices and vehicle-to-grid charging… but all of those face significant barriers of adoption. Storage requires expensive battery or large empty areas for water batteries or engineering for dangerous flywheels, etc. There’s like that fringe anti-radio-wave anti-smart-meter movement, people who don’t want to risk losing EV range due to factors out of their control, people who don’t want the government telling them when they can run their laundry machine, people who don’t like it when they have to delay their thermostat by a few hours and live two degrees out of their comfort zone, etc.
There’s a lot of EV and grid problems that are relatively trivial in the engineering sense, but that are much more difficult in the real-world, messy human sense.
Nissan has absolutely been in financial trouble for several years.
They’ve been losing money in the U.S., and in late 2024, company executives told Financial Times that the company had “12 to 14 months to survive.”
A planned merger with Honda, announced at the end of '24, was scrapped by Nissan a few months later, as Nissan management had wanted their company to be an equal partner with Honda, rather than becoming a subsidiary.
Thank you. I didn’t realize it was THAT bad.
And apparently their most recent loss ($4 billion USD) was twice as bad as what analysts had feared: Struggling Nissan forecasts $4.2 billion full-year net loss - The Japan Times
Yeesh 
I hope they don’t disappear altogether… the Leaf was one of the last affordable-ish EVs.
Solar is affecting the grid, though: It’s not just demand instability, but also generation instability, and specifically the difficulty in syncing them up when too much of their difference comes from home solar in particular.
With industrial grid-scale solar sites, at least they can directly control it (by turning off some arrays, for example). That sort of bi-directional demand-generation control is rarer in home solar, and many homeowners don’t WANT the grid to be able to control their generation.
It’s not only a matter of pricing (like paying homeowners less during times of overproduction), but the actual electrical connections either have to be disconnected during excess production or else “moved” somewhere. That’s not easy.
Some homeowners who can afford batteries at home can take advantage of that situation by storing that excess production in their own batteries and then selling it back to the grid later in the night. But at a utility scale, having to manage that over millions of households is not an easy thing.
That is a different situation from both fossil fuel plants and other renewables (like wind and hydro) which generally happen at utility-controlled commercial-scale sites. Managing a few big plants is a lot easier than managing millions of tiny ones, which is why home solar is especially hard to deal with.
California, as one of the pioneers in home solar, got too much of a good thing way, way, WAY too quickly. Households adopted solar faster than the grid or the regulators could keep up with. The incentives were all misaligned… the climate goals, individual solar vendors, households, utilities, policy planners… all wanted different things, at different timescales, and the state ended up with nonstop compromises and infighting and band-aid fixes.
I don’t think it will be allowed to die.
Governments all over the rest of the world are mandating it. However important you may or not agree about climate change. Trump won’t be around forever….?
They then adjusted to a new forecast and seem to be turning around.
Nissan now expects an operating loss of 60 billion yen ($390 million) for the year to the end of March, compared with its previous forecast for a 275 billion yen shortfall.
The 26 Leaf is getting great reviews. Despite our specific vehicle being a lemon. 
True, but some like Canada have canceled that mandate, instead tougher emissions standards.
As for the EU-
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-12-16/eu-backtracks-on-electric-vehicles
Under the new proposal, the European Commission will lower the requirements that would have halted sales of new gasoline and diesel-fueled cars starting in 2035, instead allowing a number of plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles with fuel-powered range extenders, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
But yeah, under a sane president, EVs will be pushed harder, with more rebates, etc, and perhaps allowing only the sale of new Hybrids or EVs by some future date.
Do you have a 2026 Leaf? Or an earlier one?
same reason metric hasn’t taken over. The U.S. consumers don’t demand it, and our governmental system doesn’t mandate it.
As anathema as it might seem thats the way we collectively want it. While many dopers here lament the lagging of EV’s many prefer to drive IC or hybrids.
I have a hybrid and an IC pickup. I’m not ready for an EV because I go places that prevent me from easily picking up a bucket of high energy electrons to get me back to civilization. I see upthread the argument that most of us drive only 40miles a day. That is irrelevant to me. Yes, I mostly drive less then 40 miles away, but about 5-10 times a year, I’m driving 600 miles in one day, and getting out 50 miles from anywhere. I’m not inclined to get a separate EV for my daily driver; when my current IC does both local and long distance driving jobs.
We’re pivoting hard towards a nationalist, isolationist stance, cutting ourselves off from Asia and Europe and the developed world. There’s no way Americans would work for Asian wages or fight at scale for European labor and environmental protections.
It looks to me like we’re on our own for the foreseeable future. If we don’t get Chinese imports of finished cars, components, or even raw battery materials, we’re already starting with a huge disadvantage. If companies pull back on R&D we’re at a further disadvantage. Other countries won’t want our cars except maybe as status symbols for the rich. Our cars won’t even be able to pass other countries’ emission standards or pedestrian safety requirements.
No, but the damage caused by not just him but a fully-aligned Supreme Court, gutted federal agencies from the FTC to the EPA, etc. will take decades to recover from, if ever.
The sudden and drastic pullback of federal support, by itself, is already at least a 20-year setback. The automakers can’t afford to play investment ping-pong with their EV and battery factories, swinging back and forth every 4 years.
The pivot to PHEVs and EREVs is a loss-stop measure, a way to salvage at least some of their investment, but it’s still a huge loss for those automakers who took a gamble on EVs.
That’s a bit of a silver lining! Thanks for sharing.
Yes. I think it had in some ways become a ‘knee jerk’ automatic position that you Just Weren’t Allowed to Dispute. Green Must be Good etc.
In fact though if you look at what percentage vehicles contribute to overall CO2 emissions, it’s probably not that significant. (OK, I’m writing off the cuff here. If you want cites I’ll dig them up.)
Of course renewable clean energy is a great idea. But it shouldn’t become a rigid religion.
My wife and I used to live quite remote. We needed tough vehicles to get there. And while there are some tough EV’s we did not have a garage. So running charging lines out to the vehicles would be an issue. And we sometimes got 30 feet of snow a year.
Now, in suburbia, and retied, we have two interconnected 2 car garages. Both wired for 220v. And since we are retired, don’t drive near as much.
We are still gonna need SUV type vehicles because of 2 big dogs, but I’m open to it. Here’s the thing though, I drive and average of ~8 miles a day.
I’m a little bit more open to an EV. Provided we find one that can handle our dog/cargo needs.
I’m having trouble finding an EV that’s not big enough for 2 dogs and luggage! I want a small one.
That’s America for you.
The VW id.4 was high on my list, but they’re coming out with a new version (considered an “electric Tiguan”) and I have a feeling I won’t like it as much.
Chevrolet has some well-regarded mid sized EV/SUVs, but they don’t have CarPlay/Android Auto so that’s a dealbreaker for me. Honda Prologue and the Mustang are on my list and they’re both SUV style.
A ‘26. Was intended as a replacement for her ’19 that was t boned and totaled.
No, but his kids will. He is building a dynasty, like the North Koreans.
There are a few 3-row/7+ seat BEV SUVs, if you want something larger.
If you’re made of money and want something with poor reliability but very high customer satisfaction, the https://rivian.com/r1s is one example. Something more mainstream would be the 2026 Kia EV9: Long-Range, Fast-Charging, Available AWD, 3-Row Electric SUV | MSRP & Features | Kia. Toyota is coming out with the 2027 Highlander | Toyota.com.
In Korea and Europe, Kia has moved to a new unified EV platform, and will be releasing many van-like model in both passenger and cargo configurations: Kia PBV Lineup (but not sure if those will ever make it to the USA; one was recently seen in a stealth test drive in public, so hopefully…)
Volkswagen makes the 2025 VW ID. Buzz: The Electric Bus | Volkswagen, which has a lot of room and is incredibly cute, but is also very expensive for what it is. It hasn’t sold well and is currently on a production pause.
For 8 miles a day, you can also probably just find any bigger, older, used EV and be totally fine… or any PHEV should be able to handle that too, if you prefer.
I worked on the old Leaf at Nissan, it was dependable due to it being an established platform from 2013 with minor changes over the years. The new one is built in the UK for the North American market, they could not produce it here for various reasons. The new one is a pretty good car from what I saw and drove, it’s just having teething issues.
Nissan has a plan for non-EV vehicles, but I cannot comment. Other than to say I believe they will work through their issues.
I retired due to burnout, not part of their restructuring plan which didn’t affect the tech center.
My dad had always said never to buy a new car in its first model year. He was a smart man!
I believe most of these will be fine. We just got a teething issue one. Besides the current inability to charge it, from the get go weird infotainment dysfunctionality. Intermittently being unable to connect to a signal so the voice assist would not work. When it did connect it would, in particular with the Sirius, hear the command, repeat it correctly, but then not execute it. Not connecting phone correctly. Does not play nice with CarPlay. Drives great though! At this point one way or the other my wife wants a different car. Hopefully we get a refund under lemon law but if we take a loss trading it in after a repair, assuming they eventually get that accomplished, so be it. And while at first she was jonesing for a new ‘25 that was basically what she had been driving, now she’s back at the drawing board. She doesn’t like the look of the Countryman and wants something small - at least not much longer than the Leaf. No Tesla. Definitely EV. And only wants to buy new. The Ioniq might be too big for her. But for now in a holding pattern while the claim under lemon law is being processed. (Still no fix for the infotainment dysfunctions other than waiting for a software update that might do it.)
Huh, this summer, when we had heat waves and high AC usage, the news reported that the grid wasn’t as stained as expected, because of all the solar that fed into it.