The Great EV Debacle

Glenn Youngkin, the Governor of Virginia, discovered this week that his state’s 2021 law regarding auto emissions standards were directly tied to the laws (and whims) of the California Air Resources Board. The same board which a couple weeks ago approved a plan to ban all sales of gas powered cars by 2035, a mere thirteen years away.

The Virginia law slipped quietly by the voters and the Mr. Infanticide Himself; Governor Ralph Northam, seems to want to have wanted it that way. First time I’ve heard of it and I pay fairly close attention to what’s going on in Virginia as we will be moving there in the next year or so.

A few days later, California asked that people not charge their EV’s from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. as it’s warm outside and the electrical grid can’t handle all that air conditioning pull as well as filling up a regular vehicle with electricity. Brown outs and Black outs were feared.

Having grown up and lived in California, I am fairly well certain good ol’ PGE (Pacific Gas and Electric) is not up to the job of having the entire state running on electric. PGE has trouble keeping up with just houses and buildings. And their continuing reluctance to invest in upgrading the grid has resulted in massive wild fires not to mention frying people’s appliances by “browning out.”

Another evidence that California is nowhere ready to eliminate fossil fuel vehicles or oil refineries, is that the infamous Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant had been scheduled to go “off-line” and that decision was reversed. Even though Diablo Canyon only produces 8.5% of California’s power, lawmakers conceded that de-commissioning it would strain the grid, something California cannot afford. Think about how thin that margin is, just 8.5%. California essentially said “if we lose 8.5% of electrical production, we’re screwed.”

But hey! In thirteen years you won’t be able to touch a fuel guzzling gas car in California so you better hope PGE gets their act together just in the nick of time. Even though PGE still hasn’t fixed its problems from over a quarter century (or more) ago. I am sure someone in California will figure out some way to sprinkle a bunch of fairy dust on that situation and the Golden State will continue to be oh so Golden.

And in thirteen years there will be plenty of used after-market electric vehicles so that the middle and lower classes will be able to afford to buy one, even if they can’t afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars to replace the batteries (which they can’t). The good news is there’ll be a whole lot of lawn sculptures strewn around the yards of San Mateo, hopefully up on blocks.

Even good old Elon Musk, the daddy of EV’s allowed this week that it will be decades before the country is truly ready for the wide spread population to go-green or achieve meaningful carbon emission. That said, the possibility is during those decades we will understand that raping the planet of its rare earth minerals and strip mining and throwing worn out giant lithium batteries into landfills prove to be more polluting and more damaging to the environment than good old carbon emissions.

And maybe during those decades science will actually return to being science. Not just hysterical political posturing.