[HN Gopher] California to Require All New Vehicles Be Zero-Emiss...
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California to Require All New Vehicles Be Zero-Emission by 2035
Author : pseudolus
Score : 230 points
Date : 2020-09-23 19:05 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| ryandrake wrote:
| Seems like this opens up a long-term opportunity for someone to
| build some car dealerships on the CA/NV and CA/OR borders, since
| it doesn't outlaw bringing existing cars into the state.
| hbcondo714 wrote:
| Original source and announcement from CA governor discussed here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24571019
| _greim_ wrote:
| An analogy I keep coming back to is a kid putting his hand in a
| stream to divert the flow, then being surprised when the water
| continues doing the same thing but in a more complicated way, due
| to the topography of the landscape.
| frank2 wrote:
| California's governor improves his image by signing an executive
| order he will not have to follow through on because he will be
| retired or in national office by the time 2035 rolls around and
| which future California governments cannot be held to.
| dfsegoat wrote:
| 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.
| birken wrote:
| They'll probably make electric versions of those vehicles? Is
| there any reason those types of vehicles must be gas powered?
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| sulam wrote:
| 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.
| ISL wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| >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.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > >electric vehicles have far fewer moving parts than IC
| vehicles
|
| > Not true.
|
| What? It is absolutely true.
|
| Yeah, you still have suspension, steering, and brakes.
|
| But the transmission is a single reduction gear. No clutch
| or torque converter. No shifting mechanism. No planetary
| gears, dog tooth gears, synchronizers, etc. Just a single
| pair of gears that are constantly meshed.
|
| And no engine means no pistons, crank shafts, valves,
| camshafts, timing belts, fuel pumps, oil/fuel filters, etc.
| And that doesn't even begin talking about ICEs with forced
| induction.
|
| The suggestion that EVs _don 't_ have fewer parts is
| insane. You've replaced a complicated transmission system
| to a single reduction gear. An entire engine and all of its
| complexities replaced with a far simpler electric motor.
|
| > I have a cordless chainsaw and weed whip. Both would be
| better with an IC engine.
|
| In a small application like that, yeah you might want ICE
| because a chainsaw requires a lot of power which would mean
| a heavy battery.
|
| For a weed whacker, I use a Ryobi which gets the job done
| because I have a small yard. It's pretty light, but I
| imagine it wouldn't be enough for anybody with a large
| perimeter. It's good enough for most houses though.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| _There's a detailed explanation of the differences between
| an electric motor and an internal-combustion engine (ICE).
| The latter is far more complicated - it requires a
| crankshaft with counterweights to translate the linear
| motion of the pistons into rotational motion, a flywheel to
| smooth power output, a DC motor for starting, an alternator
| to charge the battery, a cooling system, and a host of
| other gadgets that an electric motor doesn't need. An
| induction motor, which produces direct rotational motion
| and uniform power output, is much smaller and lighter.
| Tesla's induction motor puts out 270 kW of power and weighs
| 31.8 kg, whereas an ICE that produces 140 kW of power is
| going to weigh around 180 kg._ [1]
|
| _Teslas use electric motors that have two moving parts,
| and single-speed "transmissions" that have no gears. The
| company says its drivetrain has about 17 moving parts
| compared with about 200 in a conventional internal
| combustion drivetrain._ [2]
|
| Far fewer moving parts, and a transmission with no moving
| parts.
|
| Electric cars are so efficient that they are actually bad
| for the economy - by some estimates it may cut the number
| of jobs in auto manufacturing by 50%. [2] Who knows how
| many jobs will be lost with the reduction in fossil fuels
| and the disappearance of gas stations, fuel deliveries,
| fewer mechanics... Electric motors also last for decades
| with negligible degradation compared to ICEs. The advances
| in battery technology will make older EVs that much more
| valuable, since their range will increase over time with
| battery upgrades that will probably be cheaper than buying
| a similarly sized IC engine.
|
| [1] https://evannex.com/blogs/news/how-does-an-electric-
| car-work
|
| [2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-things-that-make-
| the-te...
|
| [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/electric-
| vehicles-pos...
| ohazi wrote:
| 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.
| jefurii wrote:
| 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.
| phobosanomaly wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Amarok
| rsync wrote:
| "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).
|
| Remember - you can _never have too much truck_.
| phobosanomaly wrote:
| Yeah, the trend towards larger and larger pickups is
| unfortunate.
|
| A small, light truck is a really useful vehicle, and the
| U.S. truck market is due for some new vehicles in that
| class.
|
| A lot of the older used Tacomas have headed south of the
| border where they're used quite a bit, so that market is
| drying up.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| 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]
|
| [1] https://ranger.polaris.com/en-us/ranger-ev/
| adolph wrote:
| More accurate title would be "CA Gov Issues Order for Goal for
| Zero-Emission Vehicles by 2035"
|
| Text of order: https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/09/9.23.20-EO...
| ravenstine wrote:
| 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).
| centimeter wrote:
| Why would anyone trust a state to make grid management
| decisions when they can't even reliably provide power to their
| citizens?
| jonas21 wrote:
| California has a target of 100% carbon-free energy by 2045.
|
| 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.
| Svip wrote:
| Does that include imported energy?
| jonas21 wrote:
| Yes. [1]
|
| [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.
| xhtml...
| StillBored wrote:
| 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.
| tonfa wrote:
| Good thing the last generation of nuclear plants is only
| ten years behind schedule (was supposed to be done in 5
| years, now estimate is 15) and 5x over budget
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Pla
| n...
| jimmaswell wrote:
| All nuclear problems tend to be political, not practical.
| Makes sense when every other energy source is afraid of
| losing to what would be the sole power source (besides
| some scattered wind farms, dams, and solar panels where
| practical) if properly done.
| Tade0 wrote:
| _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?
| babesh wrote:
| 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.
|
| EDIT: That one is being decommissioned
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?msa=0&mid=1t0te1lvPsMd0.
| ..
| babesh wrote:
| Actually, the only one that is still running is Diablo
| Canyon.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant
| barnesto wrote:
| 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.
| notJim wrote:
| 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.
| imglorp wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/10/electric-car-myth-buste...
| phkahler wrote:
| >> 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.
| Guvante wrote:
| > 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.
| zizee wrote:
| > 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.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| 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.
| boringg wrote:
| 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.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > 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.
| sxates wrote:
| 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.
| barnesto wrote:
| Funny hitch - they don't require batteries. When the grid
| goes down you're left without power because your solar
| system isn't storing locally. Of course, you can add your
| own battery array, but many people didn't/haven't and have
| suffered through these blackouts like everyone else
| connected to the grid.
| moftz wrote:
| With the use of efficient lighting, running the AC or
| electric heat is probably the biggest energy usage for a
| house. Having solar panels supplying power during the day
| can help reduce the load on the grid from everyone
| running their AC. It's more of a benefit to the grid and
| everyone else to have panels without a battery than it is
| to your own energy needs.
| DuskStar wrote:
| > If you have even a small solar install--which makes tons of
| sense in California--the load on the grid is near zero.
|
| Will most people be plugging in their cars during the day,
| though? Or will they be charging at night, at home?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I haven't looked into stats, but I wouldn't be surprised if
| most people in California aren't able to charge at home. It
| would be neat to see incentives for adding charging
| infrastructure to apartment and other dense living
| situations
| p1mrx wrote:
| Home charging is the most convenient form of charging,
| and should be encouraged, but people tend to be home when
| it's dark and (excluding the pandemic) away when it's
| sunny, so this doesn't align well with solar generation.
| deadbunny wrote:
| While I know "Zero Emissions" doesn't mean EV but
| assuming most people end up with one and chargers are
| ubiquitous (and free) you could use the EVs as grid
| storage.
|
| There are plenty of people who live in apartments where
| plugging into the grid at work makes a lot of sense.
| moftz wrote:
| The panels can help reduce total grid usage during the
| day to help supply power to businesses where people are
| during the day. A home AC shouldn't be running much
| during the day if no one is home so that helps with
| reducing the load. Once it gets dark, the load shifts
| back to homes where people are charging their cars and
| running the AC more heavily. I imagine the heaviest load
| times would be in the evening when solar panels aren't
| providing much power, the AC is starting to run to cool
| the house down, and people are starting to plug in their
| cars. Large power storage systems should be in place to
| help smooth out these increases in demand.
| p1mrx wrote:
| > 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.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| It's a fair point, but since cars charge during off-peak
| hours and during the night when AC shouldn't be needed,
| which should mitigate the issue.
|
| There will definitely need to be more power generated to
| support EVs if we're going to eliminate fossil fuel
| burning.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| 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.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| I don't want to talk about what my electric bill was like
| when I lived in California, and the number of 100+ degree
| days has gotten worse since we moved out.
| runako wrote:
| > $3-4,000 worth of solar panels
|
| Is this a useful metric in California? In the states where
| I have lived, the total installed system cost has always
| been the driver, and the panels typically are only one
| component of many there.
|
| $3-$4k sounds reasonable until you realize that you need to
| spend $25k on top of that to be able to use your $4k of
| panels.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| I'm certainly not an expert on this, but wouldn't one need
| to consider the _peak_ power draw rather than _average_
| power draw?
|
| I'm reminded of various articles about toilet flushing
| during breaks in sports broadcasts, e.g. [0]
|
| [0] http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/90_million_people_flu
| sh_to...
| mumblerino wrote:
| 15 years away.
|
| Surely you could require _new_ vehicles to be zero-emission
| sooner than that?
| ravenstine wrote:
| Let me introduce you to some nice folks known as the automobile
| lobby...
| jefurii wrote:
| They're here already, commenting all over this page.
| acchow wrote:
| The largest automobile manufacturer in California produces
| exclusively zero emissions vehicles.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Millions of curbs and apartment lots don't have electrical
| outlets, much less metered 50 kW supplies that would enable the
| public to move past hybrids.
| bluGill wrote:
| That can change quick. When landlords start losing renters
| (or have to reduce rent to get them) they will react. The
| longer wait doesn't do anything to help - most landlords
| won't spend money on outlets until there is demand.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| By then fast charging will be a thing.
|
| (But I suspect charging your car at a public fast charger
| will cost more than charging at home.)
|
| FWIW: I believe fast chargers at grocery stores and similar
| destinations will be the tipping point for electric cars for
| renters. It's easier to just charge your car while you buy
| groceries than to make another stop at a gas station.
|
| Related: Yesterday Tesla announced that their new tabless
| battery will support even faster charging speeds. Not sure if
| it will be able to go to a full charge in 2-3 minutes; but to
| be honest: Every EV I've owned has been able to finish "fast
| charging" by the time I'm done pooping in a public restroom.
| Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote:
| There's like a 2% chance that ICE sales will be more than a
| single-digit percent of the market by 2035.
|
| Yawn
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.
| mrfusion wrote:
| How can this be done by executive order? It really seems like the
| kind of thing you'd want your legislature involved in.
| mlindner wrote:
| 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.
| claydavisss wrote:
| Right. Without the legitimacy of legislative backing, there is
| no roadblock to a future Governor undoing this using the same
| Executive powers.
| sollewitt wrote:
| 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.
| andyjih_ wrote:
| We need bold moves to address our climate crisis. No policy will
| be perfect though.
| peapicker wrote:
| In general, it seems like a good idea, but I worry...
|
| Because PG&E is such an aging, unreliable electricity network I
| seriously worry about what this will mean for how people expect
| to reliably charge those cars in northern CA during the summers
| of rolling blackouts etc without huge amounts of infrastructure
| rebuild.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Everyone installs battery walls and solar panels. People will
| do this to avoid the blackouts anyway.
| legitster wrote:
| 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.
| theptip wrote:
| 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.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| 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.
| azinman2 wrote:
| How do you price extinction?
|
| https://twitter.com/benioff/status/558192472292360192?lang=e...
| legitster wrote:
| 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.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Nuclear and solar and wind power plants come to mind.
| Cogeneration at power plants. Reducing the amount of cattle
| we consume/meat tax. Carbon tax.
| mlindner wrote:
| 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.
| bsder wrote:
| > 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.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 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.
| notJim wrote:
| 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.
| centimeter wrote:
| > the government should make funds available
|
| The government subsidizing this wouldn't change the fact
| that it doesn't make economic sense.
|
| > This is why I like the "carbon dividend" approach some
| have proposed.
|
| Using carbon taxes to fund welfare doesn't actually offset
| the negative externalities of carbon, so you haven't fixed
| anything.
| legitster wrote:
| > 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."
| jacb wrote:
| > 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.
| panopticon wrote:
| This only bans the sale of new ICE vehicles. Presumably,
| lower income households will continue to drive their ICE
| cars after this ban, and then move into an EV sometime down
| the road once the post-2035 used car market has enough EVs
| at the right price.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| In some ways it's worse. Even if all major car
| manufacturers offer EVs by 2035, how many used $2000 EV
| Civics will be on the market by then? I am all for going
| all in on EV but let's not pretend like it's a simple
| matter of pressing your thumb on the neck of the
| manufacturers to suddenly fix the problem. How many places
| in the US are specifically built to be human sized and not
| car sized? NYC? Maybe a few other very specific larger
| cities? So if you don't want the CA economy to tank
| overnight in 2035 (who is going to show up to work if they
| can't drive their cars?), you will need to also subsidize
| car prices because even ICE based vehicles are increasing
| in price way faster than inflation while wages are
| stagnant.
| jayd16 wrote:
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You know, with a few speakers, we can give you that vroom-
| vroom, even on an electric car...
| ape4 wrote:
| diesel-powered cars seems like an obvious loophole. Edit: I see
| it says "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" So its
| phasing out non-zero-emission cars/trucks.
| ISL wrote:
| Diesel engines produce plenty of emissions.
| blondie9x wrote:
| Fighting climate change takes courage and passion. Efforts such
| as these are the only way to win this battle. We need to further
| these efforts globally.
| throway1gjj wrote:
| Takes a lot of courage to destroy other people's industries
| pengaru wrote:
| I'm waiting for California to start taxing the hell out of ICE-
| powered vehicles to discourage their purchase on the used market,
| or just hike gas prices so high it's an enthusiasts-only
| tolerated kind of thing.
|
| You can buy a rust-free used V8 SUV for like 2-3k in CA, and
| it'll be on the road for another decade if maintained.
| analognoise wrote:
| This only hurts poor people.
| jayd16 wrote:
| It does but its not the only thing it does.
| tyoma wrote:
| Doing this via executive order is going to prompt backlash in the
| form of a ballot initiative gutting emissions regulation in the
| state.
| war1025 wrote:
| Would be interesting to see California continue over-playing
| their hand and eventually swing back to being a Red state.
|
| California seems to have the curse of having enough going for
| it climate / business-wise that an incompetent and over-
| controlling government is tolerated by the population.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| They keep getting re-elected so they must be doing something
| right. Maybe the policies aren't as unpopular as you think?
| rattray wrote:
| Maybe the political system is broken enough that people who
| are doing things mostly wrong still get re-elected. (Not
| specific to California)
| freeone3000 wrote:
| California state assembly districts are geographically-
| contiguous, large, evenly populous, and generated by
| computer program vetted by both parties. If there's a
| failing, it doesn't happen in how representatives are
| chosen.
| rattray wrote:
| I actually didn't know that - very cool!
|
| There's definitely a lot more to a political process than
| district sizing, though. For example:
|
| - open primaries
|
| - approval/score/ranked choice voting
|
| - banning political ads
|
| - ending two-party system (some of the above would help)
|
| - effective voter education (the state pamphlet is a
| start...)
|
| I know many of these sound pie-in-the-sky, but it's hard
| to imagine truly responsive government (ie; higher
| quality government than consumer services) without all or
| most of them.
| mbgerring wrote:
| I can't reply to the below comment, but it's worth
| pointing out that we also have an open primary system in
| California, where all the candidates of every political
| party are on the primary ballot and the top two vote
| getters advance to a runoff in the general election.
| Also, several of our cities do have ranked choice voting,
| including in the Bay Area. California's government is the
| result of effective democracy reform.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Yeah, California should totally do what's working so well for
| Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, etc. Bastions of freedom and
| enterprise am I right?
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| Well it definitely isn't working here, why do I need to
| worry about my power being shut off in 110 degree heat with
| a 1 year old in the house?
| nxc18 wrote:
| I think the bigger risk is that California fails to fix the
| most pressing issues (mainly housing). Lots of people are
| leaving the state and lots of people can't afford to live
| where they work, which causes all sorts of problems, like
| forcing people to drive long distances and pushing people to
| build in fire zones.
|
| In the context of the issues facing people, climate
| regulations just aren't top of mind, excepting the tea party
| folks.
|
| I fully support the governor in general, but this feels like
| a band-aid on poor fundamentals. In the case of housing, the
| state is incompetent and _under_ controlling. I also tend to
| think the state is _under_ controlling when it is hard to
| breathe because the air is dirty, something that's happened
| to me regularly since I've moved here.
| mlindner wrote:
| The housing problem is because of _over_ control. Anyone
| with a hint of economics teaching could tell you that.
| There are very strict zoning laws everywhere in the bay
| area that prevent the building of massive apartment
| complexes and restricts everything to 3-4 stories at best.
| This causes massive housing undersupply causing the prices
| to rocket upwards. San Francisco is especially bad with
| their government's constant effort to pour amber over all
| of their "historical" districts full of decrepit falling
| apart housing that need to be bulldozed and have sky
| scrapers installed in their place.
|
| If you add rent control to try to lower the prices all you
| will cause is a massive increase in the price of any non-
| rentcontrolled housing (such as houses). If you think 1.5M
| dollar houses is expensive, wait till you see 3-4M houses.
| nxc18 wrote:
| You've written as if you disagree with me, but I don't
| think you do.
|
| It is very important when discussing political issues to
| make a distinction between state and local control over
| issues. I live in a community that is desperately
| fighting any attempt to build more, denser housing. They
| are working hard to find loopholes around state
| initiatives to build more housing.
|
| This is a case where the state should be more
| controlling, specifically by preventing cities from
| interfering with the creation of housing. Cities should
| not be allowed to pour amber over historical districts.
| tstrimple wrote:
| If you tell people that housing is an investment and
| treat it like an investment, people resisting changes
| which would hurt their investment is entirely
| predictable. You can't complain about NIMBYism when the
| system is explicitly designed to promote it. The system
| is the problem.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| As long as the 3-4 story limit exists, then rent controls
| are the wrong answer. If you want rent controls, then
| developers need to be able to produce more housing.
|
| In other words, if rent controls mean a landlord can only
| profit $X per unit, then if they want to be able to
| produce $X*100 in profit, then they need to be able to
| produce 100 units.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Well between a huge exodus of people leaving for other
| states[1], a 11% unemployment rate[2], non-stop
| protests/riots over the summer, there won't be much of
| California left. I moved out of San Jose/south bay area as I
| couldn't deal with trash overflowing into the freeways from
| thousands of homeless encampments[3], illegal fireworks every
| night for 2-3 months straight[4](sending my dog into extreme
| panic), packages being stolen off of our doorstep, public
| schools that were outright terrible all while every 3bdrm+
| house is almost $1.5M or more. Forgot to mention the
| wildfires making the areas air toxic[5] and PG&E turning off
| power due to the wind[6]. I stayed in state however and will
| not be voting for any CA incumbents for obvious reasons.
|
| [1] - https://www.theadvocates.org/2020/01/california-
| witnessed-a-...
|
| [2] - https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
|
| [3] - https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/09/14/san-jose-
| unveils-new-...
|
| [4] - https://sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-illegal-
| fireworks-comp...
|
| [5] - https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-
| wildfires/article/A-m...
|
| [6] - https://www.actionnewsnow.com/content/news/Rolling-
| blackouts...
| lklcxkkdk wrote:
| Why not require that all vehicles can fly? It feels like they
| missed a huge opportunity here.
| jamespullar wrote:
| I don't trust licensed drivers on the ground as is.
| eezurr wrote:
| Directing the population from one form of consumption to another
| huh? A real drastic measure would be to ban all non-service
| related advertising and social media. People are driven to
| consume by the infinite comparisons available all around them.
| The only people immune to this are those who practice asceticism.
|
| Another drastic measure would be to ban citizen ownership of
| cars. Local, regional, and national transportation services could
| fill in the gaps. When I was in Brazil, you could pay 2 Reals($)
| to hop in a van that ran on a circuit like a bus, but cheaper.
| People will fill the gaps if there's money in it for them.
|
| Another drastic measure would be to move all the money being
| dumped into self driving cars and electric cars to public
| transportation infrastructure/services.
|
| Another drastic measure would be to heavily tax processed food,
| so less energy is consumed to feed us. (And it will make people
| healthier, which will save a lot of energy in health care.).
|
| Another drastic measure would be to ban imports on most goods and
| force them to be produced locally. Now that we're forced to piss
| in our own pool, that will really motivate clean manufacturing.
| And we'll spend less energy getting the goods to the consumers.
|
| But no, the American way of solving problems involves adding more
| to the equation, not taking away.
|
| This is partly satire, maybe 30% serious.
| helaoban wrote:
| Lol no, how about: 'Newsom pats himself on the back with an
| executive order'.
| o_p wrote:
| Could you use ICE cars by buying gas backed by carbon credits
| with this law?
| CameronNemo wrote:
| What about trucks that transport goods across the state,
| including Amazon, UPS, and USPS trucks as well as traditional
| cargo trucks? Are those still going to be diesel powered and
| leaving a significant amount of brake dust in their wake?
|
| What about the ships that burn the dirtiest fuel imaginable right
| up until they near California ports? Are they still going to be
| greeted with open arms?
|
| What about all of the methane leaks from natural gas operations
| in the state? Will those actors face consequences?
|
| What about the oil drilling that happens all along California's
| coast? Will they still be able to extract fossil fuels without
| paying royalties to the state?
|
| Passenger vehicles are such a small portion of CO2 emissions, and
| implementing these restrictions pisses off a lot of people who do
| not want to change. High hanging fruit that is barely ripe.
| jefurii wrote:
| The announcement says heavy duty vehicles must be zero-emission
| by 2045.
|
| Saying there's lots of other work to do is not a good rationale
| for not doing this.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Can't companies just purchase and register a heavy duty truck
| in Nevada but operate it in California?
| athms wrote:
| If the vehicle is garaged or primarily used in California,
| it must be registered here. The state already has a problem
| with people keeping their vehicles registered in other
| states when they move here. For interstate trucking,
| companies will probably register in Nevada or Arizona, but
| intrastate transport companies are going to face large
| fines if caught.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > cars shouldn't make wildfires worse
|
| Additional strain on the electrical grid could do so (else more
| rolling blackouts)
|
| >The Governor invested in forest health and fuel reduction
|
| Missing text "Your money" The Governor invested
| YOUR MONEY in forest health and fuel reduction
|
| > The executive order will not prevent Californians from owning
| gasoline-powered cars or selling them on the used car market.
|
| Ok, so a dealership can still bring cars in from AZ, OR, NV etc?
| devmunchies wrote:
| > CA is phasing out the internal combustion engine.
|
| What about motorcycles and trains? Is this just cars?
|
| My motorcycle already gets like 80mpg.
| vogre wrote:
| Is there already a way to recycle batteries efficiently? Without
| one this bill would lead to millions of cars with unrecyclable
| toxic batteries.
| philipkglass wrote:
| "North America's first lithium-ion battery recycling hub is
| coming to New York"
|
| _Li-Cycle, a Canadian battery recycling firm has chosen the
| location for its first commercial lithium-ion battery recycling
| Hub: Eastman Business Park in Rochester, New York._
|
| _Construction of the $175 million Hub facility is set to begin
| in 2021 and the facility is planned to be fully operational in
| 2022._
|
| https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/09/21/north-americas-first-...
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Yesterday Tesla described their battery recycling plan in quite
| a bit of detail.
|
| Short answer: Tesla 100% recycles their batteries and will be
| able to 100% recycle them indefinitely.
| echelon wrote:
| Has the problem of having to recharge rapidly been solved?
|
| What if I need to drive somewhere in a hurry but my car isn't
| charged?
|
| What if there's a power outage or I forget to plug in my car
| overnight?
|
| I'm not saying these are blockers, but they're not convenient.
| jefurii wrote:
| Do you remember to put gas in your internal combustion car
| today? It will become something you just remember to do.
| Companies will start offering drive-out quick-charge services,
| and it'd probably be an option from AAA.
| mlindner wrote:
| Plugging your car in overnight is a matter of course. You drive
| home and plug it in every day. It becomes muscle memory like
| anything else you do in life. You can rarely forget of course,
| but it's not like it's inconvenient. And for daily driving you
| can actually do many days of daily driving already without
| charging on standard electric vehicles today already, that'll
| have improved in 15 years as well.
|
| In Tesla's new announcement the other day one of the other
| things they mentioned is like a 10x increase in battery charge
| times with the new cell design which will be ready in 3 years
| or so. So give it time.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Do you mean a 10x increase in battery charge rate?
| ffggvv wrote:
| yeah unfortunately i can't afford an electric vehicle until i
| can afford a house w/ a garage which seems like a prereq to
| charging it.
| HaloZero wrote:
| Or you gotta convince your apartment complex to install
| them.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Easier said than done (I'm not familiar with the
| specifics, but my understanding is that many buildings
| with the cladding that led to Grenfell burning down
| remain unfixed)
| jcranmer wrote:
| And if you don't have a garage?
| redisman wrote:
| Replace parking meters with pay-to-use chargers I guess. If
| you're randomly street parking it'll be pretty difficult
| until they're ubiquitous.
| zzapplezz wrote:
| > What if there's a power outage or I forget to plug in my car
| overnight?
|
| Is making a trip to a gas station just to fill your car up a
| good use of time? Or is it better to accept responsibility and
| make sure you've plugged it in at home? Have you ever forgotten
| to fill up your gas tank and been stuck on the road? C'mon.
| echelon wrote:
| > Have you ever forgotten to fill up your gas tank and been
| stuck on the road? C'mon.
|
| Very nearly, yes. I imagine this hits home for folks with
| ADHD.
| justsomedood wrote:
| This is a big thing. Not just because I can and would forget to
| plug in at home, but a very large amount of people just aren't
| going to be able to charge at home. If you find out you need to
| take a longer trip than you had planned for quickly it would be
| hard to sit for an hour while the vehicle "quick" charges
| Someone1234 wrote:
| 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).
| jliptzin wrote:
| Did you see what Tesla announced at their battery conference
| yesterday?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| No. Did they announce a cost reduction in their vehicles?
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I think they threw out a guesstimate being able to sell a
| low end model for around $25k three years from now.
| QuixoticQuibit wrote:
| Musk said the same thing years ago. He's a chronic liar
| and/or an over-promising, under-delivering salesman.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Would appear the people working for him have a history of
| delivering though.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Really? The model 3 is an excellent vehicle that everyone
| dismissed and said would never come to fruition
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Elon Musk said they expect to "halve" the costs of
| batteries. This is due to a new battery design,
| manufacturing changes, vertical integration.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/22/21450916/tesla-battery-
| pa...
| sagarm wrote:
| Elon Musk has a reputation for overselling and
| underdelivering, so there doesn't mean much.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| One decade ago, he said Tesla would be delivering 500,000
| EV in 2020. This looks more and more probable as we get
| closer to EOY.
|
| That's the most important criteria to evaluate the
| success of Tesla (in addition to profitability). I'd say
| he's been the most reliable executive in the industry. No
| wonder why he's the CEO in auto with the longest tenure.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You have to compare TCO. According to https://ev.pge.com/vehicl
| es/Tesla_Model_3_Standard_Range_Plu..., a model 3 is $1700
| cheaper than a Toyota Camry Hybrid over 5 years.
| asdfadsfgfdda wrote:
| 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.
| llukas wrote:
| You can put solar panels on most of the roofs.
| zbrozek wrote:
| PG&E and the CPUC need significant attention to come to
| serve the people. CA pays some of the highest rates in the
| nation but gets some of the shoddiest infrastructure in
| return. Check out slide 28 in [1] and read the entirety of
| [0].
|
| [0] https://www.buttecounty.net/Portals/30/CFReport/PGE-
| THE-CAMP...
|
| [1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUCWebsite/Conte
| nt/Ne...
| [deleted]
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That $27K is saying that you can buy it for $37K and sell
| it for $10K 5 years later. That's super conservative, you
| should be able to get at least 40%.
|
| You can click on the "include vehicle resale" box to remove
| the resale factor.
| shaftway wrote:
| > 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".
|
| https://www.edmunds.com/industry/press/new-vehicle-prices-cl...
| [deleted]
| mbgerring wrote:
| 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.
| mhh__ wrote:
| 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.)
| mxschumacher wrote:
| I'll eat my hat if there is a national ban on SUVs and
| pickups in the US in the next few years. Instead, I expect
| their market share to increase
| Nbox9 wrote:
| Not only do I think a national ban on SUVs and pickups will
| be politically impossible in the next 10 years, I think
| it's a terrible idea. If you think it's likely to happen
| you should spend more time out of whatever urban core you
| live in.
|
| If you have a family of more than 4 an SUV is both
| practical and economical. The whole family can go places
| together, with enough cargo space for a beach weekend or a
| costco run.
|
| If you ban pickup trucks you'll essentially ban private
| boat ownership. You'll also upset the many people that use
| their truck for both personal and business common for
| construction/agri/landscaping.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > 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.
| acchow wrote:
| Tesla announced yesterday they intend to have a $25k electric
| vehicle in 3 years.
| qppo wrote:
| Sounds like we'll have a $30k car in 6 years
| gnicholas wrote:
| 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.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| 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).
| kenhwang wrote:
| Considering the average transaction price of a new car is
| $39k now, $35k is right in line with what the market can
| bear.
| gnicholas wrote:
| They're reportedly targeting $35k minus the tax credit.
| Don't have the link but I read this in a publication this
| AM.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Multiple publications are describing it as $40K base:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/23/21444141/volkswagen-
| vw-id...
|
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a34114103/2021-vw-
| id4-reve...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/volkswagens-new-
| id-4-el...
| gnicholas wrote:
| Found it:
|
| > _Volkswagen also says it will offer a $35,000 version
| of the ID.4 when production moves to Tennessee._
|
| from https://www.jdpower.com/cars/new-car-
| previews/2021-volkswage...
|
| Also reported at
| https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/2021-volkswagen-
| id4-previ...
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Electric cars are all well and good, but even if everyone drives
| them, they still consume far more energy than public transport.
| qppo wrote:
| You could argue it's a good thing they're more expensive while
| the alternatives are phased out, more people would need to use
| public transit or live within walking distance of places they
| use cars to reach today.
| cultus wrote:
| This is a good point and does not get that much attention.
| Electric cars are still large machines with a large
| environmental input. It is more environmentally friendly to
| just build out transit and encourage density. The vast majority
| of people would not need personal cars were they to live in a
| walkable area with good transit. Not only that, road building
| and maintenance is a far greater money sink than transit.
| People are just used to it and don't think about it.
|
| There will always be a need for some people to have personal
| cars. There's no silver bullet to climate change, and moving to
| electric is a good thing. However, we realistically need to
| reduce total consumption (in terms of environmental resource
| input) massively. Making it easier for people to live without
| cars is relatively low-hanging fruit, and increases quality of
| life, to boot.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Why is California (and perhaps the political left in general)
| obsessed with _banning_ or _requiring_ things? Bit by bit the
| choice individuals could make privately or locally is being taken
| away from them. In a very real way, freedom is being replaced
| with decision-making by the state at broader and broader levels
| of jurisdiction. This is not a good way to manage society.
|
| If the value in adopting electric vehicles is there, let people
| recognize that value on their own and decide on their own to
| adopt it. Alter incentive structures in minor ways but don't
| override an open-ended libertarian choice architecture with top-
| down authoritarian decision-making. More about this in a book
| called Nudge, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_%28book%29
| rsynnott wrote:
| In 1952, due to a combination of weird weather and coal
| emissions, a smog in London lasting four days killed at least
| 4,000 people over its duration and possibly as many as 12,000
| people over the next few months.
|
| This lead to the phasing out of domestic coal in cities,
| regulation on power plant flue gas, and so forth, over the
| following decade. People, and the energy industry, kicked and
| screamed, but the government (at the time controlled by noted
| lefties the Conservative party) did it anyway. There were two
| more incidents in 1957 and 1962 killing 750-1000 people each,
| but that was about the end of it.
|
| Maybe in a parallel universe the libertarian government of the
| UK did nothing, and people reduced their emissions on the same
| timeline anyway. But I think it's somewhat more likely that in
| that parallel universe people are still dying horribly in their
| thousands every time the dangerous weather conditions (cold, no
| wind) repeat. People are notoriously bad at externalities.
| PHGamer wrote:
| its not the governments job to deal with this. europe made the
| same bullshit law. if electric can beat gas at the same price
| point people will naturally pick that. especially if elon is
| correct about his telsa stuff. if you could spend 25k and get a
| model 3 that did almost 400 miles and RWD i think it would kill a
| lot of car models.
| staplor wrote:
| It is the governments job to deal with this. Polluting the
| atmosphere may be cheaper for an individual consumer, but is a
| negative externality for everyone else on earth.
|
| If the government didn't involve itself in any green energy,
| Tesla would not be profitable.[1]
|
| [1] https://realmoney.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/tesla-s-
| mai...
| golemiprague wrote:
| In Europe the situation is even more complicated because many
| people don't have houses and garages like in the US so you need
| also to build infrastructure for charging overnight in the
| street. In Norway they seemed to deal with this issue but how
| is it going to work in places like London or Paris I am not
| sure
| josho wrote:
| The free market solves for things that we price. It often fails
| when externalities are not accounted for.
|
| Ironically free market advocates often are against pricing in
| externalities through things like a carbon tax. If we priced
| carbon appropriately decades ago then the market would look
| drastically different today and this new zero-emissions
| requirement wouldn't be needed.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > its not the governments job to deal with this.
|
| Right... Unless you have something like an aggressive carbon
| tax (at the consumer level), why would the free market work?
| Climate Change is clearly a tragedy of the commons
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)
|
| The technology is clearly possible, but getting past a local
| equilibrium requires some energy.
| option wrote:
| It would be great to make sure: (1) our grid is safe and ready
| for that and (2) we don't buy dirty electricity (like we do now
| more and more buy buying from Utah) and instead use renewables +
| nuclear mix
| throway1gjj wrote:
| California, legislates its way to homelessness then blames the
| lack of government
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Not only will this not make a dent in the broader climate
| problem, this is a direct tax on the poor and forced transfer of
| money to green business like Musk's. I wonder if California is
| trying to convince Musk to keep Tesla in town.
|
| In any event, California also already cannot keep up with its
| electricity demands. Onboarding more renewables with batteries is
| not the solution, especially as California's car market will
| drastically increase demand for battery production.
|
| There are so many layers to why this is stupid.
|
| - Battery production is already a highly polluting operation. The
| mining needed to put the batteries together is not going to get
| easier or cleaner as the demand for batteries is artificially
| exponentially increased via California mandate.
|
| - How are you going to produce enough power for all these
| electric cars? Solar and wind aren't going to cut it, and they
| need to be supported by large battery or backup generation
| infrastructure. The batteries won't be available in large enough
| capacity. The backup generation is - wait for it - powered by
| gas, and less efficient for transportation than directly burning
| gas in the car's engine.
|
| - I'm predicting many individuals purchase gas generators as
| backups for their home, given how inconsistent power availability
| will be in California.
|
| - All these inconveniences will be absorbed by wealthy folks,
| like many of the commenters here, who pat themselves on the back
| for their virtuous actions. All the while callously creating ever
| greater burdens on the lower and middle class.
| tonyhb wrote:
| > this is a direct tax on the poor and forced transfer of money
| to green business like Musk's
|
| Poor people aren't buying new cars. They're buying 10 year old
| cars that can still run on gas, be hybrids, or be electric. The
| same situation as now.
|
| > - Battery production is already a highly polluting operation.
|
| So is gas, "both ways". EG: exploration, drilling, refining,
| shipment, and actually burning it. Not to mention spills. This
| is a straw man.
|
| > - I'm predicting many individuals buy gas generators as
| backups for their home, given how inconsistent power
| availability will be in California.
|
| This is a PG&E problem.
|
| Don't hate progress, dude. New cars must not pollute in 15
| years time. You could raise a kid to have a better
| understanding of the environment than a lot of people in that
| same time. This is a _long time_.
| mhh__ wrote:
| [Citation/s needed], especially considering that this is in 15
| years time. 15 years ago _An inconvenient truth_ hadn 't even
| come out yet.
| downandout wrote:
| This was an executive order, not a law that was passed. Given
| that multiple new governors will likely have taken office in
| California between now and 2035, and any one of them can rescind
| or modify this based on the then-state of the electric car market
| and the economy, it doesn't really mean anything.
|
| If the electric car market is mature enough by 2035 for this to
| not cause major economic issues for car dealers and others
| throughout the state, then it will stand. But if that's the case,
| the majority of car sales will be electric with or without this
| order. If that's not the case, it will be quietly rescinded or
| modified by the then-governor. So this order, effectively, is
| just political posturing and changes nothing that won't naturally
| happen (or not happen) anyway.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| A bit stronger: Does the governor have the _authority_ to do
| this by executive order? Or is he just shooting his mouth off?
| jefurii wrote:
| The FUD and what-about-ism is pretty thick on this page.
| peferron wrote:
| Yeah, it's such a depressing read.
| mbgerring wrote:
| Who's working on expanding electric vehicle infrastructure in
| rural California? This will become increasingly important late
| next year when electric trucks begin hitting the market.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Someone watched battery day ...
| Bhilai wrote:
| Please educate me, isn't climate change a lost cause now? We know
| its inevitable and despite wide awareness, no one basically does
| anything. Individual action is not going help and US government
| does not even believe that any such thing is happening and has
| relaxed EPA regulations on polluters and such, so is CA
| restricting sale of fossil fuel vehicles going to matter in the
| long run?
| loeg wrote:
| > Please educate me, isn't climate change a lost cause now? We
| know its inevitable and despite wide awareness, no one
| basically does anything.
|
| Er, no. It is inevitable, but the degree of change absolutely
| continues to matter.
|
| > US government does not even believe that any such thing is
| happening and has relaxed EPA regulations on polluters and
| such, so is CA restricting sale of fossil fuel vehicles going
| to matter in the long run?
|
| Here's the context you might be missing: CA is a huge
| automobile market, and has historically set a number of
| requirements that automakers eventually incorporate into all
| cars sold into the US market. It's cheaper to build one SKU
| than two, as long as the CA SKU is only mildly more expensive
| than the non-CA would be.
|
| Additionally, auto manufacturers will have similar requirements
| for the EU market on a similar timeline.
| bsurmanski wrote:
| Everyone is hesitant to make change because "it's going to
| cause too much economic impact". If someone demonstrates that
| it's possible to change without screwing over their economy,
| it's likely other states and countries will follow.
|
| Just because the USA has federal administration that doesn't
| want to act on climate change right now doesn't mean that it
| won't get a greener administration in the future.
|
| As for being a lost cause, isn't it preferable to minimize the
| effect, at least? would you rather the sea levels go up by 2.0
| meters or 1.5 meters?
| tayo42 wrote:
| Our leaders need to be ballsy enough to make unpopular
| decisions to solve climate change. In the short term, things
| will be harder, more expensive, jobs will be lost. That's
| because the externalities of life have been free for our
| society. We need to be brought into a green world kicking and
| screaming.
| acchow wrote:
| Turns out change can create new jobs.
| yongjik wrote:
| The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to
| stop digging. So, while this isn't anywhere near sufficient,
| this is a step in the right direction.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > US government does not even believe that any such thing is
| happening and has relaxed EPA regulations on polluters and
| such, so is CA restricting sale of fossil fuel vehicles going
| to matter in the long run?
|
| Operative word being 'the long run'. The current US government
| may be replaced within the next few months with one that might
| be expected to take a more normal view on the problem, so what
| it's doing now is arguably fairly irrelevant, when you're
| talking about 2035.
|
| Many European countries have recently made similar moves, with
| the EU as a whole and China making noises about something
| similar (though probably on a longer timescale; 2040 or later).
| So this isn't just a weird California thing.
| mlindner wrote:
| This is interesting timing. I wonder if this is because Tesla's
| battery day was yesterday and also the Volkswagen ID4 was
| announced today?
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| Assuming that future governors, legislature, and voters agree
| with Newsom.
| francisofascii wrote:
| The % of American's who want action on climate change seems to
| be going in an upward direction. So it is not a terrible
| assumption. Not to mention we already have zero emission
| vehicles. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-
| thirds-of...
| millstone wrote:
| > He said 34 electric vehicle companies, including Tesla Inc.
| already operate in California, which accounts for about half of
| the nation's EV market.
|
| "California accounts for half the US EV market" is quite
| striking.
|
| What are the 34 companies? Is this counting non-vehicle companies
| like ChargePoint, tiny startups, existing automakers with EV
| offerings?
|
| It's striking how many more EV options are available in Europe.
| Here in CA, we mainly get electric SUVs. I hope this announcement
| expands the market.
| username90 wrote:
| Did people vote for this? Doesn't look like he campaigned with
| this in mind, is it really democratic to just randomly put
| together things like this?
|
| https://www.politifact.com/california/promises/newsom-meter/
| jefurii wrote:
| Given that addressing climate change is increasingly popular
| with the electorate he's not out of step.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| Since when were politicians not allowed to do things they
| didn't explicitly campaign for?
|
| California is on fire, seems only reasonable to react to that
| as Governor.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Voter polling on the importance of climate change may have
| shifted recently.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| It's bizarre to me that we would consider legislating this before
| considering compulsory vegetarianism.
| bootlooped wrote:
| 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.
| robomartin wrote:
| > 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.
| mhh__ wrote:
| This move is big, but not as radical as some imply. 15 years is
| a fairly long time - Al Gore had not yet released An
| Inconvenient Truth 15 years ago.
| username90 wrote:
| Why do it randomly in the middle of a term instead of campaign
| based of this so we can properly debate and discuss the
| details?
| gpm wrote:
| 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).
| username90 wrote:
| You are probably right, I don't see any movement in car
| stocks at all. Seems like nobody thinks this matters.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Over the last few years, a number of mostly European
| countries have passed regulations to ban new
| petrol/diesel cars by 2030-2040, with some cities to ban
| then as early as 2025. So from the industry's point of
| view, this is more of the same, and not unexpected. It
| would arguably be weird if the markets moved much; this
| sort of thing should be priced in.
| username90 wrote:
| > Over the last few years, a number of mostly European
| countries have passed regulations to ban new
| petrol/diesel cars by 2030-2040
|
| They haven't, EU countries cannot do that since it is
| against EU law. Instead there have been several proposals
| for phasing out fossil fuel cars that are still
| discussed, but nothing is decided. That is how politics
| and regulations are usually done.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Because we don't live in a direct democracy?
| username90 wrote:
| Hiding your true intentions and then showing your 15 year
| plan after you get elected is not in the spirit of
| representative democracies. Here in Sweden we discuss these
| things before elections and in general have more climate
| measures than California, so I don't see why a politician
| would need to be this heavy handed.
| natch wrote:
| > I don't see why...
|
| The mistake here is assuming that just because _you_
| don't see a reason, that must mean there is no reason.
|
| Maybe you should visit California next time we are in
| peak firestorm mode and then you might see.
| blackflame7000 wrote:
| So this will stop the fires then? Better than say
| mandating forest management?
| tstrimple wrote:
| Stop fires? No. In the long term it's meant to address
| the conditions to lead to the size and severity of fires
| we're seeing today.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46183690
|
| > In terms of loss of life and damage to property, the
| data shows the worst fires have all been in the past 10
| years or so - except for one fire in 1991 in Alameda
| County.
|
| > And this year, there have also been unusually strong
| winds combined with periods of drought across parts of
| the western US. Six of the largest fires recorded in
| California have all happened this year.
|
| > Prof Doerr says a combination of drier, hotter and
| windy conditions is the key factor in these recent fires.
|
| > He adds that even in areas where there have been
| attempts to reduce flammable material in forests, it's
| not clear how much difference this would have made.
|
| > "The bottom line remains that the extreme
| meteorological conditions are the main drivers for these
| extreme fires."
| throwawaysea wrote:
| But climate change is not the main driver of recent
| wildfires, and it at most one contributing factor among
| many. If old growth trees remained, if forests were
| cleared of dead trees, if stands were thinned, if logging
| companies were allowed to harvest in a timely/economical
| fashion, or if controlled burns were used with the
| frequency they used to be, most of these fires would not
| happen. If there are fewer fires, the smaller number of
| bad fires that do still happen are much easier to put out
| quickly, because we would not have to spread fire
| fighting resources too thinly.
|
| Here's a survey of articles covering the West coast fires
| (CA, OR, WA) that make this clear:
|
| - https://www.npr.org/2020/08/24/899422710/to-manage-
| wildfire-... mentions that before 1800, several million
| acres were burned every year through indigenous burning
| and also lightning-caused fires. In 2019, California
| committed to burning just half a million acres a year,
| but is far from reaching even that modest goal.
|
| - https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/911592361/are-recent-
| wildfire... mentions that California needs to address 20M
| acres every year (through thinning or burning). In 2019,
| $160M was spent putting out wildfires in CA, but the
| economic damage was $80B - and yet preventative measures
| are not being taken.
|
| - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/us/california-
| today-100-m... notes that California's focus on fire
| suppression has led to mass quantities of dead trees
| resulting from a lack of smaller fires and increased
| infestation (due to increased forest density enabling
| transmission of pests/disease)
|
| - https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/09/did-global-
| warming-pl... mentions that the wind patterns that caused
| recent wildfires in Oregon is unlikely to have been
| caused by climate change
|
| - https://katu.com/news/on-your-side/lack-of-forest-
| management... notes that in Oregon, a lack of forest
| management has led to a buildup of dense fuels
|
| -
| https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/to-
| stop... notes various policy failures that have caused
| Washington forests to grow out of control, unharvested,
| and with high density.
|
| - Both the WA state Department of Natural Resources
| (https://www.dnr.wa.gov/StrategicFireProtection) and WA
| timber industry (http://www.wfpa.org/sustainable-
| forestry/reduce-wildfire-ris...) have been increased
| investment/assistance/regulatory support in thinning
| forests and conducting prescribed burns. Despite these
| calls being made for over a decade, despite ever
| increasing state budgets, and despite a consistent
| single-party rule, the governor and legislature have done
| little to respond to those calls for help.
|
| The reality is that all three West Coast governors -
| Newsom (CA), Brown (OR), and Inslee (WA) - are operating
| in states that have left-leaning legislatures,
| judiciaries, and executive leadership. The failure to
| prevent wildfires or manage them effectively is entirely
| their fault. It's much more convenient however, to blame
| an externality like climate change, than to be honest
| about their own failures. And at the same time, the
| political theater of blaming wildfires on climate change
| allows them to forward their political/ideological
| agendas through far-reaching proposals like Green New
| Deal, which are much broader than just environmental
| issues.
| naiveprogrammer wrote:
| Excellent post, thank you.
|
| It does seem to me that blaming the whole situation on
| climate change is an exaggeration. However, it is a
| politically savvy move from Newsom et al. as west coast
| states are solid blue. They are pandering to their
| audience. It also happens on the right with different
| issues.
| gnicholas wrote:
| CA regularly amends its constitution via voter initiatives,
| so I'd say we (Californians) actually do live in a fairly
| direct democracy.
|
| Also, I'm not sure anyone has ever characterized
| representative democracy as: politicians campaign on
| certain issues, and then after getting elected -- and with
| no material intervening factors -- they enact sweeping
| regulations that they never even hinted at during their
| campaign (or decades-long prior political life).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we (Californians) actually do live in a fairly direct
| democracy_
|
| California has direct democratic elements. It is not a
| direct democracy.
|
| There is a lot of writing and research on why direct
| democracies are probably not a good idea for all
| questions, from antiquity to the modern era. One field
| that dies with proximity to democracy is law, _e.g._ the
| ancient Athenian system of trial by popular assembly.
| Another is the management of commons, _e.g._ fisheries,
| forestry and, I would argue, our atmosphere.
|
| Note that such delegation doesn't mean usurpation. It
| just means the elected leaders negatively consent to, and
| constrain, rule making. This is the basis of the agency-
| driven civil service model, which first-to my knowledge-
| flourished in China before making it West by way of the
| Middle East.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Why do you believe management of the commons would fail
| under direct democracies? That seems like an arbitrary
| claim but maybe I don't understand the reasoning. I feel
| like any flaw that is claimed about direct democracy can
| be claimed about high-turnout representative democracy as
| well (and therefore broadly about democracy in general).
| After all, we elect representatives effectively on
| popularity contexts, echo chambers squeezing out marginal
| leads, and poor/manipulable information flows.
|
| A related question: wouldn't a representative democracy
| always perform more poorly than a (benevolent)
| technocracy?
| s17n wrote:
| Pretty sure the original concept of representative
| democracy didn't involve campaigning on issues at all, it
| was more like "the people decide who they want to
| represent them by picking the wisest and most honorable
| citizens, and then the representatives decide what to do
| about the issues."
| mehrdadn wrote:
| 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.
| username90 wrote:
| Problem is that without debates this is likely to just get
| reverted and make people lose even more trust in their
| politicians.
| sjy wrote:
| In Australia, the debate was so popular that it continued
| after a carbon tax was successfully implemented, which
| resulted in the tax being repealed in 2014 and not much
| action on climate change since then. Maybe "debate" is
| not the right word for what happened, but engaging the
| public on climate policy seems to have had perverse
| effects in Australia.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia
| username90 wrote:
| Sounds like you would get better results if you created a
| policy people are happy with instead of just doing
| something that will get reversed and create more future
| opposition against green solutions.
| natch wrote:
| 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.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _It's a good time right now because the fires in
| California have put a spotlight on environmental issues._
|
| Some people are blaming the wildfires on global warming,
| but many (on the left and the right) are saying forest
| maintenance has been the primary cause. [1]
|
| Also, the recent rolling blackouts have shown the risk of
| relying too much on solar and wind power. I'm not sure that
| the specific timing makes too much sense, unless the goal
| is to have this largely overshadowed by the presidential
| election and recent passing of Justice Ginsburg.
|
| 1: https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-
| prevent-...
| headmelted wrote:
| I'm a bit saddened people didn't react more positively to
| the Tesla battery day event.
|
| I'm not talking about stock speculators (gamblers gonna
| gamble, whatever) but just generally I thought it was
| very encouraging that Tesla's main goal right now is to
| dramatically drive down the cost of energy storage while
| driving up the density and production capacity.
|
| Is it enough? Not on their own, but if others can adopt
| their methods to produce more batteries then it's
| effectively printing money for those companies for the
| next thirty years (as even the laggards are forced to
| move to zero emissions across their grids).
|
| It would be nice if this creates the kind of fierce
| competition E.M. set out to do with Tesla originally. We
| need more energy storage than we have now by several
| orders of magnitude.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| what makes you think the blackouts have to do with the
| power generation type? my understanding was that the
| blackouts have to do with danger to/from power
| distribution infrastructure
| gnicholas wrote:
| The cause that was announced was that there was not
| enough power available. These weren't PSPS (public safety
| power shutoffs), which are driven by fire-related
| concerns around infrastructure.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| 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.
| username90 wrote:
| A 15 year plan isn't urgent and requires very strong
| support in order to survive when the next leader gets
| elected. Doing this without a public discussion doesn't
| make sense in any way.
|
| Also we have known about climate change for decades, there
| has been no huge revelations about it the past year, there
| was no reason this couldn't have been a part of his
| campaign.
| mrfusion wrote:
| At least the plants are happy. Co2 is food for them.
| breakyerself wrote:
| The damage from changes to local climate are likely to
| outweigh that benefit for many species of plant.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Yes, and warmth is good for them.
| redisman wrote:
| Wrong. Most plants have a small range of extreme (and
| average) temperatures (low and high) they can tolerate.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Wrong. Freezing temperatures are by far the most
| challenging environments for plants to deal with and only
| a limited set of species are well adapted for cold
| climates. Meanwhile warm climates mean year round growing
| seasons and the widest range of species that thrive, this
| is why you can grow almost anything in tropical zones and
| get much more productivity out of that growth.
|
| See: https://www.gilmour.com/planting-zones-hardiness-map
| redisman wrote:
| Hardiness zones are really useful for human cultivated
| plants. Many seeds require a certain amount of time below
| a low temperature to germinate and a hundred other
| variables. You seem to also be assuming many biomes in
| the northern hemisphere turns into a rainforest rather
| than a desert from increasing temperatures.
| breakyerself wrote:
| The best warmth for a given species of plant is usually the
| one its adapted to. At the very least warmer temperatures
| can lead to populations of harmful insects to go out of
| control. Like bark eating beetles
| chrisco255 wrote:
| If that were generally true then tropical zones would be
| overridden with bark eating beetles. Vastly more
| biodiversity occurs in tropical zones than in Arctic and
| Temperate zones.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| So the levels increased from 300 to 400 ppm and in that same
| time frame the quality of life and length of life improved
| dramatically. What catastrophe? You think we can prevent
| periodic droughts from hitting the West Coast even though
| there's fossil evidence of such droughts occurring regularly
| over the past several thousand years? The increase from 300ppm
| to 400ppm saw _marginal_ differences in temperature and
| dramatically improved yields in crop farming. 100 years ago
| millions would still regularly perish from famine. Today that
| 's almost unheard of, even in most developing countries. Your
| idea of a crisis is quite different from that of your ancestors
| from the pre-300ppm days.
| jariel wrote:
| That we have made progress 'over here' doesn't discount the
| risk 'over there'.
|
| Also, the advantages of 'farming tech' may not be of the same
| scale as 'climate change'.
|
| Specifically 'forest fires' are a pop culture issue, we're
| not ever going to be threatened by them.
|
| Regular temperature increases will likely yield 'systematic
| problems' that go far, far beyond 'possibly more fires' but
| the issues is different because of the 'risk profile' and the
| 'existential' nature of climate change. It's not like 'a
| chemical in some food products' we can get rid of. It's an
| issue that affects 'everything' with potential catastrophic
| outcomes at the riskier end of the scale.
|
| All of that said I would much more prefer 'Mr. Face' Governor
| to be investing more heavily in solutions rather than just
| happy legislation.
|
| Newsom+California bureaucracy is an inefficient, bloated
| mess, Cali could save itself 2x more quickly if they did
| their jobs well.
| jeromegv wrote:
| What catastrophe? Did you miss the California fires 2 weeks
| ago? Improvement in farming also clearly came from
| improvement in agriculture, you seem to imply that the rise
| in climate temperature is the only explanation.
|
| And no, there is no evidence that temperature has ever
| increased that fast.
|
| And even if you keep denying the impact of climate change,
| think alone of the change in AIR QUALITY in a place with so
| many cars like Los Angeles. The increase in air quality alone
| in big urban centers is worth it on its own. It's already
| been improved quite a bit in recent years (at least in the
| west) and this can only get better. I live next to a big road
| here in my city and I just can't wait to have less emission
| vehicles on the road.
| headmelted wrote:
| This.
|
| Also, people should buy electric cars. FACT: a bad electric
| car is outright better than almost any ICE car.
|
| Source: I own a Nissan Leaf. And it's no Tesla. Still leaps
| and bounds above any gas car I've ever driven.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| All EVs are good EVs. As long as you're displacing
| combustion, you're doing your part.
| josho wrote:
| > a bad electric car is outright better than almost any
| ICE car.
|
| You are right, and I want to add more perspective that in
| your proposal there are now 2 cars on the road. Your
| electric and your used ICE car. The better situation is
| to drive your ICE car to its end, and only then replace
| it.
|
| Our over consumption is a part of the problem as well.
| tkzed49 wrote:
| This doesn't really make sense... the person who bought
| the used car wasn't just going to not drive if it weren't
| for sale, they'd just buy a different one. Now, there is
| one ICE car and one electric car on the road instead of
| two ICE cars.
|
| If half of the world immediately upgraded to electric
| cars, sure there would be a temporary surplus of
| vehicles, but it would only last until the old ones broke
| down.
| SECProto wrote:
| > If half of the world immediately upgraded to electric
| cars, sure there would be a temporary surplus of
| vehicles, but it would only last until the old ones broke
| down.
|
| Exactly. There'd be a temporary surplus of (newer,
| better-condition) ICE vehicles. And people who are
| otherwise faced with a $1500 bill to repair their old one
| "kinda needs repairs, burns some oil but a quart a week
| isnt too bad", will instead buy a more efficient ICE.
| Most new BEV will get an old shitty ICE off the road.
| headmelted wrote:
| You've missed the point completely, and very little of what
| you've said is relevant to the OPs statement.
|
| Famines didn't suddenly stop because of global warming.
|
| Quality of life and length of life have increased _depending
| on which metrics you use_ , but in any case wealth inequality
| has never been greater, and length of life has increased due
| to medical technology, not increased atmospheric carbon.
|
| What constitutes a " _marginal_ "difference in temperature?
| Keeping the rise below 1.5c is still far too much _and_ too
| much to ask (apparently).
| danepowell wrote:
| > This move feels radical
|
| 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...
| kristopolous wrote:
| 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.
| Brakenshire wrote:
| Yes, it will be interesting whether this includes any
| meaningful action within his term of office. In the EU and
| UK there are requirements for average emissions for each
| manufacturer, which get tougher every year, and already are
| requiring about 5-10% of vehicles to be electric.
| legerdemain wrote:
| Is this policy move California's response to the federal
| government gutting vehicle emission reduction policies just
| this spring?[1]
|
| 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...
| mempko wrote:
| It's also not clear what zero emissions mean. Is the supply
| chain zero emissions?
| bhahn wrote:
| I'm not sure why your comment is getting downvoted. I also
| had the same question.
| dv_dt wrote:
| FWIW, I think no one is proposing to apply a requirement of
| an end item decarbonization to the entire logistics chain
| behind a product. Most proposals want to apply regulation
| to many individual links up and down the chain directly.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I downvoted because it is very clear and if you want other
| people to answer a question you have to put in some work. I
| don't care to see trivial questions so I downvoted and
| banned that guy from my view.
| observr9 wrote:
| I actually thought it was a rhetorical question, with the
| intent of stating that the law still wouldn't save us
| from supply chain emissions.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Thank you for explaining that to me. I think I will
| continue filtering out that person for stating
| banalities.
| pjscott wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/about/glossary
| clairity wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0]: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-
| gas... [1]: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/ghg-inventory-data
| tchaffee wrote:
| At least part of China's emissions is thanks to US consumers.
| Just because we moved the factories there doesn't mean that
| goes away.
| refurb wrote:
| I missed it at first, but this is only _new_ cars. Cars,
| especially in CA, can last for decades.
|
| I would guess CA would still have a very large number of ICE
| vehicles in 2060 with this legislation.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| 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.
| paxys wrote:
| This isn't just optimistic thinking. A lot of the current
| American consumer laws, emissions standards etc. are de
| facto set by California rather than the Federal government.
| dsg42 wrote:
| 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.
| njarboe wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant
| hristov wrote:
| 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.
| Rapzid wrote:
| 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.
| athms wrote:
| 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.
| ebg13 wrote:
| > _Every nuclear power plant in the United States has been
| a money pit_
|
| Let's pretend that this is unequivocally true. Sometimes
| doing things for public health and safety costs money. It
| seems like the main question we should ask is "would
| switching to nuclear significantly save lives and improve
| the environment?". Most research says yes.
|
| See e.g.:
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-
| d...
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
|
| And since that's the case, then we can ask a new question:
| "Does your 'money pit' statement account for the benefits
| of reduced mortality and greenhouse emissions, or are you
| only thinking about the electric bill?"
| notJim wrote:
| 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.
| vondur wrote:
| I'm not sure about that goal, California currently imports
| around 32% of its power now. That number will likely
| increase if we shut down all of the remaining nuclear.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| California can import clean solar from Arizona and Nevada
| (which have enormous solar potential), as well as hydro
| and wind from the pacific northwest.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| They are expensive and take long to construct because of
| political and environmental requirements on them. This is
| not an inherent property of nuclear, and can be solved with
| a single stroke of the pen. This is not going to happen,
| though, because people tend to think that if something is
| "environmental", then it must be good.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's pretty naive. Companies will always put off big
| capital expenses as long as possible, especially if
| someone else holds the risk.
| dv_dt wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generati
| ng_...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, you have to convince the locals there since you and
| your neighbours aren't willing to have a plant next door.
| adrr wrote:
| 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.
| d33lio wrote:
| Obviously this works when you purchase power from natural gas
| power plants out of state...
| cbayram wrote:
| It'd be great if modern society could make smaller vehicles for
| personal use. Average number of occupants on the road has to
| below 2.0, seems terribly inefficient. The industries and costs
| associated w car ownership would have to adjust too for this too
| happen. Legislation is also necessary to deal with mutually
| destructive nature of not wanting to be on the same roads as
| larger fortified vehicles; i.e. lanes/roads dedicated to smaller
| personal vehicles. Above all, as a society, we have to start
| giving a damn about environmental destruction. Rethink the status
| quo, rethink urban planning, rethink overuse of plastics, rethink
| leaf blowing...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I like the sentiment but...
|
| This is going to be terrible for everyone who doesn't drive new
| cars because you can bet your ass that if they actually hit their
| goal and no new fossil fuel cars are sold in 2035 by 2040 they'll
| have massive "polluter" (or whatever they want to call it)
| surcharges (aka taxes in disguise) on what's already the highest
| registration prices in the nation.
|
| So the people who are driving a 2020 Camry in 2040 are gonna get
| screwed hard.
|
| If they truly believe electric will soon be economically viable
| without government subsidy (as all the headlines proclaim) then
| what's the point of the law?
| titzer wrote:
| > then what's the point of the law?
|
| Ostensibly, to reduce CO2 emissions.
|
| > This is going to be terrible for everyone who doesn't drive
| new cars
|
| Unfortunately, cars have been pumping out negative
| externalities for more than a century. You can't avoid these
| negative externalities forever.
| kumarm wrote:
| Its funny the comment above you says CA Governor signed a law
| that he doesn't have to follow through since he would retire by
| then.
|
| You comment indicate why it discourages people buying non
| electric cars even now.
|
| So it's a good win for Earth?
| kiliantics wrote:
| Too little too late. How can a vehicle be "zero emission" anyway,
| unless the entire production and supply chain is also zero
| emission.
| blank_fan_pill wrote:
| >How can a vehicle be "zero emission" anyway, unless the entire
| production and supply chain is also zero emission.
|
| Yeah, its almost like this is one step in a long, complicated
| process of getting the world off of fossil fuels, or something?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I guess we shouldn't do anything at all, as long as there's a
| pedantic way to dismiss the idea.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Tesla's production is quite clean.
|
| Anyway, an electric car can run off of pretty much any energy
| source. It's much more expensive to make gasoline from sunlight
| or nuclear power than charging a battery.
|
| (And, if you're wondering, yes, making gasoline from sunlight
| (biofuels) is a thing, and no, it isn't practical, and yes,
| people DO try.)
| _greim_ wrote:
| Agreed. We should definitely not try to make progress
| incrementally. It should all happen in one big chunk or not at
| all.
| m0zg wrote:
| That's pretty brilliant thinking on Newsom's part: shut down all
| remaining nuclear and fossil fuel power plants (which has led to
| rolling blackouts already) and require that all cars are
| electric. Bold strategy. Let's see how it plays out.
| biolurker1 wrote:
| Five years later than Amsterdam that is.
| ivankirigin wrote:
| This phases out car sales, not the cars. Lifecycle is 15 years,
| so we're looking at 2050.
|
| For context, EVs are a few percent of sales in California, and
| almost zero for trucks.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| California being California we're likely looking at massive
| "polluter" surcharges on already expensive registration for
| anyone driving an ICE vehicle in 2040 or so.
|
| 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.
| tyingq wrote:
| Sounds like only for "new car" sales also.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Don't trucks generally run on Diesel, so aren't effected by
| this?
|
| Could people start buying more Diesel cars, as well as trucks,
| because of this?
| svachalek wrote:
| The title says gasoline but the body says "zero-emission". I
| suspect the actual legislation is about emissions not type of
| fuel.
| mlindner wrote:
| It says passenger vehicles, so I expect trucks to be included
| but not semi trucks and other cargo vehicles.
| chadash wrote:
| 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.
| notional wrote:
| There is a provision in there for medium and heavy duty
| vehicles to require it 10 yrs later but heavy duty day cab
| trucks meet the same req as cars.
| babesh wrote:
| " 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."
|
| https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/09/23/governor-newsom-
| announces-...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Hmmm I wonder why the title only mentions gasoline then?
| abootstrapper wrote:
| Sure doesn't seem aggressive enough, yet it's the most
| aggressive stance on gas transportation to date, that I'm aware
| of.
| vinni2 wrote:
| https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-
| change/nor...
| natch wrote:
| 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.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| With the right incentives it can go faster.
|
| > 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...
| Svip wrote:
| 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.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| > The study found that 63% of Norwegian households with
| electric cars also have a fossil car or hybrid car, down
| from 70% in 2017. The survey also found that among
| respondents having only one car in the household, one third
| (32.4%) are electric car owners, up from 26.3% in 2017.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-
| in_electric_vehicles_in_N...
| rainyMammoth wrote:
| Norway taxes ICE cars in such a way that they virtually all
| cost MORE than an expensive electrical car.
|
| They are definitely not a good example of a free market
| choosing EVs because they are actually better.
| loeg wrote:
| Norway _heavily_ subsidized new electric vehicle purchases to
| achieve this result.
|
| Coincidentally, the principal for Norway's huge sovereign
| wealth fund comes largely from oil extraction.
| chadash wrote:
| > "so we're looking at 2050"
|
| 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.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| blackflame7000 wrote:
| You still have to figure out how to fill your battery as fast
| as you can fill at tank of gas.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Honestly not as big of a deal as many make it out to be.
| With EVs, the cars can be constantly charging when stopped.
| Even for longer trips, the newer, faster chargers can do
| 180 miles of charge in 15 minutes. This, combined with
| being able to charge virtually any time the car is stopped,
| can make electric cars even more convenient when it comes
| to filling up.
|
| Also, having your car at 100% at the start of any day more
| than makes up for those rare occasions when you're going on
| a 500+ mile road trip.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Doesn't need to be equally fast. If you roadtrip a lot, it
| matters. But if you charge almost exclusively at home, then
| the number of times you have to recharge on a strict
| schedule is quite limited. The time savings from never
| going to the gas station is pretty significant compared
| with taking a half hour to recharge when you're on a long
| trip.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Even if you road trip significantly; Human physiology
| suggests eating, waste disposal, or at least moving
| around (to prevent blood clots) at about half the current
| range of Teslas (3 hrs or 180 miles). And current
| charging technology allows fast charging particularly
| well at these percentages.
|
| Ie, charge for 30 minutes every 3 hours, 1 hour every 6
| hours, and on either the 12 or 15th hour you charge for
| 4+ hours (and sleep)
| Retric wrote:
| EV's could use in road charging to get effectively
| unlimited range on highways. https://www.theguardian.com/en
| vironment/2018/apr/12/worlds-f... But, I think that's
| completely unnecessary. Charging at home actually saves
| time traveling to gas stations more than making up for
| spending an extra 5-10 minutes on the extremely unusual
| 400+ mile road trip.
|
| Remember, we are talking about 50+% of cars being EV that
| means plentiful charging infrastructure.
|
| EV's are already shipping with 400+ mile ranges and 180
| miles of charging in 15 minutes. 2 different 15 minute
| stops for food, bathroom breaks, and just stretching over
| 10 hours means your EV is doing 750~ miles per day, that's
| well past what most people are willing to spend in their
| cars, and it can completely charge overnight.
| colpabar wrote:
| 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.
| pwned1 wrote:
| What percentage of CO2 emissions are from cars?
| philipkglass wrote:
| As of 2017, California had statewide emissions of 424 million
| tons CO2-equivalent [1]. "CO2-equivalent" emissions include the
| global warming effects of CO2 plus methane, nitrous oxide, and
| other gases, normalized to the global warming potential of CO2.
| (For example, emitting a ton of nitrous oxide is roughly equal
| to 298 tons of carbon dioxide on a 100 year time horizon [2].)
|
| Using California's Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventory Query Tool
| [3], I searched for transportation, on road, light duty
| vehicles only, CO2 only.
|
| For 2017, the emissions were 58 million tons from light duty
| trucks and SUVs plus 58.4 million tons from passenger cars.
|
| The total of 116.4 million tons is about 27.5% of all
| California emissions. Since according to [1] the transportation
| sector accounts for 41% of _all_ CA emissions, light duty road
| vehicles account for about 67% of California 's transportation
| emissions.
|
| Heavy duty trucks account for another 32.3 million tons of CO2
| emissions.
|
| [1]
| https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/inventory/pubs/reports/2000_2017/g...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential
|
| [3] https://www.arb.ca.gov/app/ghg/2000_2017/ghg_sector.php
| pwned1 wrote:
| Thank you, that's helpful.
| ummonk wrote:
| Just urban politicians who don't give a damn about rural people.
| vaccinator wrote:
| Zero emission including power generation? Or do they just ignore
| it? that's the main problem with corporations' pollution...
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