I hope somebody in charge will have the wisdom to delay this if it turns into the absolute nightmare that it sounds like. "Embracing a vision" that is not connected to physical and economic reality is California's specialty.

I've started investigating an electric vehicle. I was blown away by the demo yesterday. However, I was reminded this morning by a friend about lack of infrastructure for 'filling' stations, and how long an EV takes to recharge.

I drive up to SF a couple of days a week (not convenient by Caltrain - would still need Uber rides in SF.)

Stuart Soffer, whatever preferences you have will be irrelevant in 2035, as the great state of California has decreed that all must conform to the whims of the Air Resources Board, regardless of expense or any practical concerns.

This reminds me of the boondoggle High-Speed Rail, and is just one more reason for hardworking middle-class people to flee the state, lots of good-paying jobs in Texas and Florida.

p.s. there won't be the grid or the charging stations to support this,

The difference is while a bad decision to fund high-speed rail at least we voted on it,

This boondoggle was done by Bureaucratic Fiat.

bureaucratic:
Bureaucratic means involving complicated rules and procedures which can cause long delays. adj usu ADJ n
Diplomats believe that bureaucratic delays are inevitable..., The department has become a bureaucratic nightmare.

Westbrook:

people may have voted for HSR but they were told a pack of lies to get them to.

Two power outages in two days in Portola Valley. California's grid is in no state to handle the additional load this action will put upon it.

Roughly 2M new cars are sold in Ca. every year,

The CAISO announced today that because of what would normally be called a typically mild "heat wave" "fairly common in the State", This weekend they will be issuing "Emergency Notifications" to reduce energy use.

On Aug. 14th, Two weeks ago, the CAISO announced a Stage 2 Emergency Alert. Again a mild heat wave.

They are shutting down the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant in 2026,

That's without having to power millions of new EV Cars.


Is this starting to sink in?

According to a story in Newsweek today,

Californians may need to take measures to conserve energy, including by avoiding charging electric vehicles, to prevent strain to the state's power grid over the Labor Day weekend, officials said

The top conservation actions are to set thermostats to 78 degrees or higher to reduce air conditioner use, avoid using large appliances and charging electric vehicles, and turn off unnecessary lights, it said.

When there are millions of new EV's do you really think there will be enough power to charge them?

"When there are millions of new EV's do you really think there will be enough power to charge them?"

Not a chance. Especially when the virtue signalers force everyone into all electric everything. No gas used for anything, everything powered by electricity. More demand on a grid barely able to handle the load that it is trying to carry now, and in some cases, it can't even do that. And where will all this additional power come from? Not hydro, with global warming you can pretty much forget that due to drought. Solar? Nope, not after PG&E and their lapdog the CPUC get done making private solar unaffordable. Wind? No, can't build enough windmills. Nuclear? It could, but the virtue signalers in addition to wanting to make everything electric, don't want a nuclear plants built. So what's that leave? Natural gas. But, that produces CO2 and that's bad.

So, does anyone see where this goes and that these virtue signalers have no idea how to actually make it possible for everything to be electric AND not produce CO2? They just want to "save the world" at everyone else expense with no idea how to actually make it happen beyond "doing something", anything as long as it makes them feel better.

To understand the requirement/boondoggle that is only new EV's in Ca. as of 2035. One need only review the history of HSR. Passed in 2008', took till 2013' to award contracts, to 2015 to start construction, to now 14 years later and not even being close to laying a single mile of track between Merced and Bakersfield? With completion originally scheduled to be 2023. And they want the whole state to be carbon neutral by 2045 after shutting down the last Nuclear plant.

And you can't charge your car for 5 days due to lack of power generation.

I'm not the brightest guy around but with a little common sense and all this information being readily available, It's not hard to figure out.

Westbrook:

most of it is easy to figure out. Politicians are getting paid to make these decisions. In the case of HSR, the labor unions and large contractors that specialize in large, heavy construction gave lots of money to politicians to be sure this project didn't get killed. Because it's a public works project it is built primarily by union labor. And there are few contractors with the size and experience to take on projects of this size. A project like this means billions of dollars to them. A few hundred million is nothing to politicians to get what they want.

As long as it's business as usual the same thing will happen when the infrastructure is needed for thousands of new charging stations to supply the millions of new EV's.

what I'm always curious about is does the average person not understand this or do they choose to look away and just hope?

I mean it's really not complicated.

This is clearly a means of controlling the population as well. The government can shut off the grid at any time -- leaving you unable to charge your vehicle and leave wherever you are. This is very scary.

Yesterday, 9/2/2022, PGE turned off the power in our immediate neighborhood for 12 Hours while they replaced a power pole to raise the height. Power was restored after 10PM. It was really dark outside and inside.


Consider the telephone poles. This is technology that goes back to the late 1800's -early 1900's for Telegraph, and then for telephone and power.

The City of Palo Alto owns their utilities. See, "Web Link

"Origins
It was the forward thinking of two Stanford University professors, Charles "Daddy" Marx and Charles Benjamin Wing, who were largely responsible for the emergence of the municipally owned utility service in Palo Alto. Marx and Wing argued that the City could provide utility service at rates significantly below those charged by private companies. One of the founding principles of those early pioneers was that the utilities must show a financial return to the community. This has continued to be a priority. In the most recent fiscal year, the electric and gas utilities provided millions in financial support to community services such as libraries, parks, police and fire protection. These contributions to the community do not occur in areas served by private power companies. This makes Palo Alto a unique place to live and work."


"Palo Alto is the only city in California that owns and operates a full suite of municipal utility services, including electric, fiber optics, natural gas, water and wastewater. We have been providing quality services to the citizens and businesses of Palo Alto since 1896."

Palo Alto has eliminated overhead wires, and underground the services.

You might want to research a new CPUC tax on rooftop solar on your own home. $300-$600 a year may not sound like a lot but as we all know when the door opens for a new method of collecting tax it never closes and keeps expanding.
The CPUC is also recommending reducing the amount of money you receive by selling back your solar power to Utility co.s. Will fewer people install solar?
First, they tell you not to charge over a 5-day period, Now new taxes. My guess is Brownouts and Blackouts to follow.

Why is lithium extraction bad for the environment? Any type of resource extraction is harmful to the planet. This is because removing these raw materials can result in soil degradation, water shortages, biodiversity loss, damage to ecosystem functions and an increase in global warming.

The production of lithium through evaporation ponds uses a lot of water - around 21 million litres per day. That's a lot of water, The largest deposit of lithium in the US is in Northern Nevada. Where will that water come from?
It's easy to pat yourself on the back and say "Wow we are reducing greenhouse gases but at what cost? Lithium, Cobalt, aluminum, etc. all have to be mined.
Suggest you research the horrible effects on the environment to mine these minerals. Mostly from Countries being exploited by big corporations. What is the mining environmental impact?
The repercussions of mining can touch almost every aspect of life." Waste generated from mining cobalt and other metals can pollute water, air and soil, leading to decreased crop yields, contaminated food and water, and respiratory and reproductive health issues.
Is this an out of sight out of mind situation?
Do your research.

"Is this an out of sight out of mind situation?"

Yes. The people "saving the world" don't think about any inconvenient things like the big picture.

In response to the article and some of the comments:

1: While I support the overall goal (lower emissions in the long-run) I don't support the approach (mandating the end of internal combustion engines). This could be accomplished simply by gradually requiring higher and higher MPG on ICE vehicles and letting market forces do the rest.

2: That said, the 'lack of EV charging stations' argument depends more on someone's housing status than infrastructure. If you have access to an electric outlet near your vehicle, a BEV can work for you. Every mainstream manufacture of a BEV has batteries that can go at-or-well-over 200 miles. The bulk of driving for most people is well under that on a per-day basis.

Currently, a BEV can be problematic for people who *routinely* drive either out-of-state or to Southern California. And it would likely be a non-starter for anyone living in an apartment complex that had no access to an electrical plug or charging station, which I agree is likely a lot of apartment/housing complexes.

Living in Menlo Park and routinely driving to/from SF is easily achievable in a BEV.

3: The 'BEV vehicles pollute, too' argument has been studied to death, and the results are clear:

a: at the completion of manufacturing, a BEV has polluted more than an ICE vehicle.
b: at the end-of-life for a passenger vehicle (on average, 12.2 years), a BEV has polluted far LESS than its ICE equivalent. Anyone that argues a BEV pollutes as much (or more) than an ICE vehicle simply doesn't know what they're talking about or is deliberately cherrypicking.
c: that said, it can take anywhere from simply 3-ish years to 8+ years to overcome the polution from manufacturing a BEV, depending on the energy source used for recharging.

Followup thought:

Personally, once I was educated on the matter, the arguments against BEV are pretty weak except for 3 circumstances:

1: your housing situation does not allow you to charge your BEV at night.

2: you really do routinely drive further than the max capacity of your BEV between home...or work...recharge. (this is a relatively small group of people).

3: you really need a very reliable vehicle. Because BEV technology is still relatively new, they...on average...do not score as well in reliability rankings compared to their ICE equivalents. If that is very important to you, you really can only consider ICE vehicles from Lexus, Toyota and Mazda (and Porsche, if you can afford the maintenance costs).