2035 California PHEV Mandate challenges

[Max Rockatansky]

Seems the Congressional Review Act is being used to possibly block the 2035 PHEV mandate.  This next goes before the Senate.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/house-votes-block-california-banning-153626939.html

Similarly Congress went after EPA Waivers aimed at the trucking industry yesterday:

https://www.overdriveonline.com/equipment/article/15744533/congress-moves-closer-to-revoking-carb-emissions-waivers

Assuming the Senate agrees (and the President) I'm not fully clear on what potential legal hurdles there might be but I can't imagine this won't go unchallenged and in Federal Courts.   I know there is a lot of interest in the outcome in the road community given the rules CARB sets often have ramifications for other states that follow California Emissions standards.

[jeffandnicole]

The 2035 mandates countrywide are probably pie-in-the-sky mandates anyway that would have been delayed regardless of who the Prez is.  If not now, then in the future.

The Trucking mandates are different though, and they probably will be successfully challanged.

[elsmere241]

Delaware's governor wants to pull the plug on its mandate.

http://whyy.org/articles/delaware-electric-vehicle-mandate-meyer/

[Max Rockatansky]

The 2035 mandates countrywide are probably pie-in-the-sky mandates anyway that would have been delayed regardless of who the Prez is.  If not now, then in the future.

I'll be interested to see if the Congressional Review Act is the mechanism which can really be used to toss/delay prior EPA waiver approvals (a lot of opinion out there suggests it can't).  The Republicans control the Senate so I don't really expect there to be much objection there.

[Scott5114]

The Senate parliamentarian (who is a non-partisan official who more or less acts like a referee) has stated that she doesn't believe Congress has the power to override the state mandate. While whichever committee it's referred to could theoretically place the bill on the schedule anyway, there are only so many hours in the day and so the parliamentarian's opinion could discourage them from spending time on it.

If it does end up passing, it is likely it will end up in court. It is hard to see a judge accepting an argument that a state is not free to enact stricter regulations than the federal government regarding what is available for sale in that state. (Regulation of interstate commerce being the domain of the federal government does not mean that a state has to accept any product from out of state as being legal in that state—just off the top of my head Virginia bans radar detectors, and nobody has ever said that is interfering with interstate commerce, because that's stupid.)

[Max Rockatansky]

On a related note last November Governor Newsom declined (via veto) to enact stricter safety standards for cars in California.  In the statement he released it said something about he believed safety standards were the domain of Federal regulators.  I fully suspect what he said to come back up if the CARB EPA waiver issue ends up in court. 

https://apnews.com/article/california-speed-alert-cars-bill-veto-588605f3980c952c894756da6579bf3d

[The Ghostbuster]

I think banning gas cars for all-electric cars is a stupid idea. Electric cars are too expensive, and the refueling process takes far too long for it to be practical (as well as inadequate for emergencies). I would be okay if all cars of the future were hybrids, but until you can recharge an electric car's batteries as fast as filling up a gas car's empty gas tank with gasoline, electric cars will not become the norm.

[Max Rockatansky]

I think banning gas cars for all-electric cars is a stupid idea. Electric cars are too expensive, and the refueling process takes far too long for it to be practical (as well as inadequate for emergencies). I would be okay if all cars of the future were hybrids, but until you can recharge an electric car's batteries as fast as filling up a gas car's empty gas tank with gasoline, electric cars will not become the norm.

This isn't a true full on EV Mandate in California for 2035.  If I recall correctly something like 35% of the passenger sales mix was assigned to Plug-In Hybrid vehicles (hence PHEV).  CARB was criticized locally by California environmental groups for not upping their standards on what a Zero Emissions Vehicle was as part of the 2035 mandate.

Worth noting, registration of conventional new ICE cars in California come 2035 wasn't banned either.  In theory one could purchase out of state and bring it back to California to register.  I want to say Washington was the only State that did put an end date on new ICE car registrations.

[jeffandnicole]

I think banning gas cars for all-electric cars is a stupid idea. Electric cars are too expensive...

You haven't been new car shopping lately, have you?

...and the refueling process takes far too long for it to be practical (as well as inadequate for emergencies). I would be okay if all cars of the future were hybrids, but until you can recharge an electric car's batteries as fast as filling up a gas car's empty gas tank with gasoline, electric cars will not become the norm.

Today, yes.  But technologies improve over time.  Compare charging times from 10 years ago to now.  It's about half the time.  In another 10 years, figure at least twice as fast as now.

EVs also have the advantage of being charged at home and at work, and those people are saving more time to charge their car compared to someone who needs to stop and pump gas.  Some businesses also offer charging stations while you shop.  There are some apartment & condo complexes that offer EV charging, and there's even stations for those that need to parallel park on streets.

As for emergencies...take a look at Florida when people evacuated due to this year's hurricanes.  Many cars ran out of gas on the street because gas stations kept running out of gas.  If these people prepared properly, they would've gotten gas at the first notice of a possible storm.  EV owners also have to plan ahead and charge their cars nightly. I never understand this "emergencies" argument as for 100 years, people ran out of gas, yet the moment EVs arrived, suddenly people against EVs act as if running out of gas has never happened.

[Max Rockatansky]

Speaking of new car sales, man am I glad that bought something last year.  There is a lot of competition out there to buy new cars before this quarter ends due to "other recent events" driving buying decisions.  I tried to steer my wife towards buying a Hybrid RAV4 at the beginning of the year but it didn't work out.

To that end I ended selling my old Impreza my wife's niece.  It was probably the right thing to do given she wasn't going to be able to afford anything else used.  All the same I think now would be as good as time as any to hold onto an extra paid for vehicle.

[pderocco]

I think banning gas cars for all-electric cars is a stupid idea. Electric cars are too expensive...

You haven't been new car shopping lately, have you?

Their cost is intrinsically higher because of the cost of the batteries, which isn't likely to drop very much in the forseeable future. But their price is artificially low because of the subsidies and mandates that lead manufacturers to discount them. Meanwhile supply and demand is slowly pushing up the price of ICE cars, which is what most people prefer.

...and the refueling process takes far too long for it to be practical (as well as inadequate for emergencies). I would be okay if all cars of the future were hybrids, but until you can recharge an electric car's batteries as fast as filling up a gas car's empty gas tank with gasoline, electric cars will not become the norm.

Today, yes.  But technologies improve over time.  Compare charging times from 10 years ago to now.  It's about half the time.  In another 10 years, figure at least twice as fast as now.

They'll still have an order of magnitude to go. If they get it down to 20 minutes for a full charge, that's still 10x the time to fill a tank, and fast charges waste energy as heat and stress the batteries. You can stand next to your car for 2 minutes, but 20 minutes means you need to get coffee or something. And if it takes as little as 10x as long, the world will need at least 10x as many charging stations as we now have gas pumps.

As for emergencies...take a look at Florida when people evacuated due to this year's hurricanes.  Many cars ran out of gas on the street because gas stations kept running out of gas.  If these people prepared properly, they would've gotten gas at the first notice of a possible storm.  EV owners also have to plan ahead and charge their cars nightly. I never understand this "emergencies" argument as for 100 years, people ran out of gas, yet the moment EVs arrived, suddenly people against EVs act as if running out of gas has never happened.

I interpreted that as a more quotidian kind of emergency, where you suddenly have to go somewhere and your battery is near empty. That happens a lot more often than hurricanes.

We have a few charging stations where I work, and for all I know it works out fine because there are only a few people who want to use them. But if there were more, consider the ridiculous logistics: You get to work, and there is no charger available. So you use a phone app to reserve time. At some point, another driver will get a notice that his battery is charged, but he's in the middle of a meeting, and can't go move his car. Or you're in a meeting, and can't go move your car, meaning you're holding up whoever is next in line after you. You can imagine the same thing at motels: get a notice at 2:30am that you need to move your car.

I'd rather see continued use of ICE cars, with renewable liquid fuels perhaps derived from algae, grown under LED light powered by nukes. Maybe someone will discover a way to use electricity to directly convert carbon from atmospheric CO2, plus hydrogen from water, into liquid fuel, with no intervening photosynthesis.

[vdeane]

You can stand next to your car for 2 minutes, but 20 minutes means you need to get coffee or something. And if it takes as little as 10x as long, the world will need at least 10x as many charging stations as we now have gas pumps.

This is why I'd love to see restaurants/convenience stores that service people on roadtrips to have chargers at every parking space.  That would solve the roadtrip problem.  As for regular commuting and the like, most EV owners charge at home.  It's more convenient and charging slower overnight is better for long-term battery health.

[stevashe]

You can stand next to your car for 2 minutes, but 20 minutes means you need to get coffee or something. And if it takes as little as 10x as long, the world will need at least 10x as many charging stations as we now have gas pumps.

This is why I'd love to see restaurants/convenience stores that service people on roadtrips to have chargers at every parking space.  That would solve the roadtrip problem.  As for regular commuting and the like, most EV owners charge at home.  It's more convenient and charging slower overnight is better for long-term battery health.

Exactly. There's no need to replace gas pump capacity 1:1 since anyone who charges their EV at home should only ever use a public EV charger when on a road trip.

(And on a road trip, I've timed my stops at gas stations and rest areas and they are almost always 15 minutes or longer, so I'd argue that the fastest chargers available now are sufficient. There's still a ways to go until you can road trip without planning your stops though.)

[Scott5114]

They'll still have an order of magnitude to go. If they get it down to 20 minutes for a full charge, that's still 10x the time to fill a tank, and fast charges waste energy as heat and stress the batteries. You can stand next to your car for 2 minutes, but 20 minutes means you need to get coffee or something. And if it takes as little as 10x as long, the world will need at least 10x as many charging stations as we now have gas pumps.

Most EV owners have charge times of 0 minutes—they plug it in and then go inside their house instead of hovering in the garage next to the car watching it charge like a weirdo. The vast majority of trips people take do not exceed the range of the car and therefore charge times just are not relevant to them.

EVs really only don't work for people that don't live somewhere that supports EV charging (e.g. an apartment), or who regularly go on long trips (which is most people on the forum, but not very many off of it). For most people, the tech is there today.

[jeffandnicole]

With road trips...people that have said they haven't had a vacation in years suddenly say they can't take a roadtrip with an EV because of all the stopping and charging.  Other than a vacation or two a year, most people aren't driving more than 100 miles a day, so plenty of time to charge vehicles at home in the evening.

While people may be traveling more, many of those trips are via air. People can still get to the airport and home on a single charge.

I think banning gas cars for all-electric cars is a stupid idea. Electric cars are too expensive...

You haven't been new car shopping lately, have you?

Their cost is intrinsically higher because of the cost of the batteries, which isn't likely to drop very much in the forseeable future.

How much do the batteries cost? 

And I was talking sticker price.  You never actually answered the question - have you been car shopping lately.

...And if it takes as little as 10x as long, the world will need at least 10x as many charging stations as we now have gas pumps.

Except, you ignored my point where charging can take place at home.

We have a few charging stations where I work, and for all I know it works out fine because there are only a few people who want to use them. But if there were more, consider the ridiculous logistics: You get to work, and there is no charger available. So you use a phone app to reserve time. At some point, another driver will get a notice that his battery is charged, but he's in the middle of a meeting, and can't go move his car. Or you're in a meeting, and can't go move your car, meaning you're holding up whoever is next in line after you. You can imagine the same thing at motels: get a notice at 2:30am that you need to move your car.

Except, you ignored my point where charging can take place at home.

There are a lot more EVs on the road now than there were 10 years ago.  Yet, it's rare to see lines and waits at charging stations. Why? Because they keep building more charging stations. In your "ridiculous" logistics example above, you believe everything is fine now, but won't be in the future.  Why wouldn't your company just add charging stations? Isn't that a benefit to current employees and an incentive for future employees?

I know your answer will be "they don't have the money to keep installing charging stations". Well, they have the money for other benefits, don't they?  Companies have daycares and gyms to encourage people to work for those companies. They can spend the money on charging stations as well. 

The EV argument has long centered on "this is what we have now; but we'll go with the theory if people keep buying EVs they won't expand EV charging and we'll all be in a huge line to charge our vehicles".

Those against EVs also think EV people will use up all the electricity.  That argument has been made in the past as well with other technologies. About the only time we see the effects is on very hot days when everyone is running air conditioning.  They blamed the power company in the past for not keeping up. Now they blame EVs...even though most EV owners charge their vehicles in the evening...during non-peak periods.

[Max Rockatansky]

The range and charging of EVs might be coming more into line as tolerable things to live with.  Both have certainly gotten better in the half decade we've on/off discussed this topic.

The thing that I can't get past with full EVs is average price of entry (even with tax credits).  I can't speak for others, but I'm not inclined to purchase a 50k plus daily driver from a volume manufacturer.  I'm even less inclined when those same automakers offer economy or hybrid options a far lower price point.

I've never seen the point of forcing the automotive market to grow towards EVs through regulation.  I see even less of a point when it was already naturally happening before the 2035 PHEV mandate. 

Of course, we haven't touched on the matter of electrical grid expansion the State of California wanted to aid facilitation of the 2035 PHEV mandate.  The State wants to rely fully on renewable sources of power which requires massive infrastructure projects like the Morro Bay Wind Farm.  Said wind farm was/is expected to produce 15GW electricity by 2035 to support the PHEV mandate.  The project really hasn't even gotten started and in all probability isn't coming fully online any time close to 2035.

[pderocco]

I know your answer will be "they don't have the money to keep installing charging stations". Well, they have the money for other benefits, don't they?  Companies have daycares and gyms to encourage people to work for those companies. They can spend the money on charging stations as well. 

The EV argument has long centered on "this is what we have now; but we'll go with the theory if people keep buying EVs they won't expand EV charging and we'll all be in a huge line to charge our vehicles".

That isn't my answer. Of course they'll increase the number of charging stations. But if ICE vehicles went the way of the dodo, we would need a staggering number of charging stations to avoid the musical chairs problem, and a staggering infrastructure to support them, and each charger would only be used for a small fraction of the time. I don't think that's economically feasible. And since you can't store significant amounts of electricity cheaply, whenever someone is charging his car, that electricity will have to be generated somewhere else at that same moment, which in a green world doesn't work when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Not like gasoline sitting in a big underground tank, available whenever it's needed.

The only thing good about EVs is that they "save the planet". The list of downsides is quite long: the fact that trips often have to be planned around the need to spend time recharging, the loss of capacity in the cold, the initial cost of batteries compared to the cost of a gas tank, the fact that batteries eventually need to be replaced, the fact that they're made of toxic materials rather than metal or fiberglass, the fact that the energy has to be distributed by a huge number of new power lines rather than a modest number of tanker trucks on existing roads, etc. The motivated belief that all this and more can all be handled somehow seems of a piece with the motivated belief in the efficacy of windmills and solar panels.

[Scott5114]

I'm going to pretend half the thread doesn't exist because it makes my position look silly.

[stevashe]

I'm not inclined to purchase a 50k plus daily driver from a volume manufacturer. 

Not all electric cars are that expensive. The Hyundai Kona EV starts at $32k (without accounting for any incentives). Granted, the ICE version is still cheaper at $25k, but arguably you could make that cost difference up fairly quickly if electricity is cheap and gas is expensive.

But if ICE vehicles went the way of the dodo, we would need a staggering number of charging stations to avoid the musical chairs problem, and a staggering infrastructure to support them, and each charger would only be used for a small fraction of the time.

You're still completely ignoring the fact that 90+% of charging will be done at home and therefore not require any chargers to be built!

the fact that they're made of toxic materials rather than metal or fiberglass, the fact that the energy has to be distributed by a huge number of new power lines rather than a modest number of tanker trucks on existing roads, etc.

Sure batteries are made of some rather harsh chemicals, but you manufacture the battery ONE TIME and then you can drive with it for 10+ years. You mustn't forget that EVERY TIME you go to fill a car up with gasoline, you need to produce that toxic material. You likely use hundreds of times more material producing gasoline to power an ICE car compared to producing one lithium battery, especially when considering that batteries can be reliably recycled.

[LilianaUwU]

EVs are nowhere near ready to be the only option by 2035.

[Scott5114]

EVs are nowhere near ready to be the only option by 2035.

California banning things is good for my state's economy, so I'm all in favor of it. 

[LilianaUwU]

EVs are nowhere near ready to be the only option by 2035.

California banning things is good for my state's economy, so I'm all in favor of it. 

They're banning cancer so the tobacco industry can thrive in Vegas.

[Max Rockatansky]

Regarding the Kona, the conventional ICE variant doesn't have very good mileage.  The EPA rating I'm looking at is 26-31 MPG.  Yes, the 304 mile claimed range is on the lower end of what I would consider acceptable. 

All the same, I ended up getting a Corolla Hybrid last year for close to the starting price of the base Kona.  The car I got is rated at 47-50 MPG and doesn't have the compromise of having to charge it.  I guess if I really wanted a CUV/EV I probably would have considered the Kona. 

The Kona surprisingly on has 6.7 inches of ground clearance.  I was surprised to see how close it was to my Corolla which has 5.7 inches.  Both vehicles are probably going to be restricted to the same kinds of roads.

[Rothman]

Regarding the Kona, the conventional ICE variant doesn't have very good mileage.  The EPA rating I'm looking at is 26-31 MPG.  Yes, the 304 mile claimed range is on the lower end of what I would consider acceptable. 

All the same, I ended up getting a Corolla Hybrid last year for close to the starting price of the base Kona.  The car I got is rated at 47-50 MPG and doesn't have the compromise of having to charge it.  I guess if I really wanted a CUV/EV I probably would have considered the Kona. 

The Kona surprisingly on has 6.7 inches of ground clearance.  I was surprised to see how close it was to my Corolla which has 5.7 inches.  Both vehicles are probably going to be restricted to the same kinds of roads.

I know I've asked you before, but how would you match type of road (pavement, packed dirt, two-track) to how much ground clearance you need?  I still haven't come across a good definition of "high clearance vehicle."

[hotdogPi]

I still haven't come across a good definition of "high clearance vehicle."

Any vehicle that the dealership is trying to get rid of because it's not the current model year.