California: zero emissions cars powered by not zero emissions power plants.

Not sure if everyone saw it but California's Governor announced that in 2035 all new vehicles must be zero emissions.

OK let's review electric cars produce emissions because you need to charge them up and to that you need powerplants and if the majority of your cars are electric your going to need to a lot more powerplants. More powerplants means more construction which in turn means more emissions. 

Additionally, along with folks running there AC all day, the grid will now have bunches of people charging up their cars at night..........recipe for brown outs?

I know it makes a great sound bite but how do people not figure this out............dang non car people.

The emperor has no clothes!!!

Sounds like you've got it all figured out. Please tell us about your experience getting your EE Masters, and then continue opening our eyes.

Sure there are holes in this plan that you could land a jumbo jet in...But of all the arguments against the gas-ban, these are some of the weakest I've seen. For all their faults, EV's still average less than half the well-to-wheels emissions of ICE's. Even at their worst (pure coal) they're better.  And again, for all of its faults, new (much of it 'sustainable') electrical production infrastructure has a considerably lower overall environmental impact than that of fossil fuels as well.

^^^^ This.

The "dirty" power plant thing is mostly a non-issue now. Even with coal generation and more environmentally harmful construction, an EV becomes a net positive from an environmental standpoint relatively fast. The more you clean up the powerplants, the sooner that "break even" point occurs. Switching to natural gas has a big jump vs coal from an emissions standpoint, but it's still a CO2 producing fossil fuel. Switching to nuclear or renewables is 0 carbon so the only thing that has to be offset is the manufacturing of the vehicle.

In places that get most of their electricity from 0 carbon sources, and EV can be 70% cleaner than an ICE

More than 50% of the electricity consumed in CA came from non-emissions power plants in 2018.

15 years from now finding a new ICE vehicle is likely to be the big challenge, not registering it.

If that's legal, it seems like California may be giving its governor a bit too much power. It seems like if a state wants to ban internal combustion engines, shouldn't it need its legislature to pass a law for that?

The real issue here is that CA doesn't have enough power generation to meet load. I suppose an ideal smart grid could have cars charging during the sunny hours and sending power to the grid at night, but that's far, far away.

Yeah I wouldn't be caught dead at an autocross with one of those girlie-man Model 3's. Not to mention silly stuff like db limits. Only thing worse is one of those Japanese imports. Give me good old v8 power body-on-frame.

Bad for the economy. Bad for the working class. Commiefornia trying to keep the welfare states down once again. People leaving in droves for places like Louisiana and Tennessee with good old fashioned values.

Gonna kill the car scene, I'm calling it. I've been around long enough to know.

In reply to MadScientistMatt :

California is very much like a corporation. Governor is a CEO, the legislators are the company minions making what the CEO says  happen, with the citizens being shareholders saying "yay".

This is still pie in the sky thinking by this dufus, but I digress. I don't believe even 20 yrs from now, electric will be feasible. I know a Tesla did drag week and finished, but even if you had charging stations as available as gas stations, it's a large inconvenience to have to wait 30-40 minutes for a "fast charge" to go 150-200 miles.

MadScientistMatt said:

If that's legal, it seems like California may be giving its governor a bit too much power. It seems like if a state wants to ban internal combustion engines, shouldn't it need its legislature to pass a law for that?

I think the right answer is to firm the EO with legislative action, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is what happens. 

There is really no reason that the investment into solar, wind, storage can't be made, as you are firming up future demand scenarios. It takes time to build infrastructure and with the low cost of PV, dropping storage costs, future hydrogen availability for long haul it makes sense in this timeframe. If you want transition in 15 years, you need to signal now to get industry ramped.

From a motorsports perspective, I think if ice goes away for new then all bets are off for "pleasure use" long term. So far that's true for non road going, but I think the low total emissions from a few motorsports uses are not even worth worrying about from a co2/pollution perspective.

So here or off topics thread??

may i be the first to say IBTL?

STM317 said:

More than 50% of the electricity consumed in CA came from non-emissions power plants in 2018.

nuclear is considered non-emission?  that's a serious question, not me being smarmy.  

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

WRT CO2, yes, it is. So there's a ton of work finding safer alternatives than we have. And ones that don't produce nasty waste. 

California can barely keep up with its power needs at it is with its infrastructure, overloading it with EVs will be interesting. I hope part of the plan is to support the infrastructure growth to meet this demand.

In reply to Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) :

Cali has miles of wind turbines out in the desert and I mean miles worth along I8 and I10. Most of them, don't turn, at least in my snapshot of driving through resently.

Ranger50 said:

In reply to Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) :

Cali has miles of wind turbines out in the desert and I mean miles worth along I8 and I10. Most of them, don't turn, at least in my snapshot of driving through resently.

True but nowhere near enough to retire the remaining gas plants. 

Ranger50

is is still pie in the sky thinking by this dufus, but I digress. I don't believe even 20 yrs from now, electric will be feasible. I know a Tesla did drag week and finished, but even if you had charging stations as available as gas stations, it's a large inconvenience to have to wait 30-40 minutes for a "fast charge" to go 150-200 miles.

and again, how many people do that kind of mileage daily? Not very many. While there is a need for on the road charging, even in Cali, the majority of people don't need to go to charging stations every time they need to "fill up". 

Let Cali do what they want, but with PG&E heading towards bankruptcy already, their grid won't be able to handle the added load from this new EO without MASSIVE influxes of cash into their infrastructure as a whole, and I just don't see that as feasible for a variety of floundery reasons.

Whatever happened to "We choose (a goal) not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills"?

I guess that was so sixty years ago, trying is just sooo hard now,  Better to just sit back and let someone else do it.

In reply to tremm :

Flounder much?

Usually in these threads this is where I step in and defend California....

Sorry, can't do it. I'm tired of all the crap. Tired of how San Francisco pays its public employees like  superstars, and is now talking about mandating that they stay home - not because of COVID, but because of global warming. I'm tired of the wildly uneven school quality, the crime rates and the homeless persons, or the $20,000 dollars on average that it takes to evict someone.  I'm tired of the smoke.

How long can they choke the golden goose?

Why are those damn kids on my lawn?

I own no electric vehicles right now but that's really a cost-driven solution.  I'm also so far to the right that on the street I always make three right turns because I never turn left.  All that said, though, isn't an electric motor just better at making rotations?  I mean, yes I would like a very low center of gravity, torque dripping out of my nether-regions, and the ability to use all of that torque in my first RPM!  I'll grant that it doesn't sound the same, and that I'd miss the sweet smell of VP Racing Fuel exhaust, but I was always under the impression that a race was about who was able to get from A to B faster, not who could smell better or sound better doing it.  Yeah, range is a thing, but it's kind of weird how when people start getting some sort of incentive to develop better batteries, all of sudden better batteries start getting developed.  Electric cars probably involve some pollution too, but that's a bit of a what-about-ism debate, isn't it?  I guess I just fail to see why people get so angry about things that make us go faster.

(editing to say that I'm not really for gubbmint dictating what the market should or should not produce, so in that regard, I am against.  But not because there's anything wrong with electric cars.)