AMAC Exclusive – By Shane Harris
On Thursday, California regulators voted to require that all new passenger cars and trucks sold in the state run on electricity or hydrogen after 2035, the latest move by state officials to “phase out” the use of all gas and diesel-powered vehicles. In addition to posing a severe challenge for California’s already strained power grid, the decision threatens to send the state’s economy tumbling – likely taking the rest of the country with it.
The new rule, which was released by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) two years after Governor Gavin Newsom first directed the Board to consider such a policy, was hailed as a major victory for environmental activists, even as economists and engineers expressed major reservations. According to the policy, 35% of new passenger vehicles sold by 2026 must produce “zero emissions,” a requirement that climbs to 68% by 2030. By 2035, one-fifth of new car sales in the state can be plug-in hybrids (electric vehicles that switch over to a gas-powered engine for longer distances), but the rest must be powered solely by electricity or hydrogen.
Though California leads the country in number of registered EVs by far – more than 550,000 – that figure still pales in comparison to the more than 30 million total registered vehicles in the state. In the first three months of this year, just 16% of new cars sold in California were electric, a percentage that would have to more than double in just four years in order to be in compliance with the plan.
Conservatives and auto industry leaders have been quick to point out, however, that EVs are hardly the “environmentally friendly,” “zero emission” solution that California Democrats – and the rest of the liberal establishment – have billed them as. Though the vehicles themselves produce zero emissions, they still must be charged using electricity from power generating stations. Even in California, 65% of that electricity is produced using nonrenewable sources. More electric cars means more burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at those power plants. Additionally, EV batteries, which last about 15 years, mostly end up in landfills, where they release dangerous toxins into the environment (and that’s not even to mention the serious environmental and human rights concerns associated with lithium and cobalt mining for EV battery manufacturing).
There are also major doubts about whether or not California’s energy grid will even be able to handle the increase in demand brought on by such a large increase in the number of EVs on the road in such a short time. According to one analysis from the University of Texas, if every vehicle in California were to go electric, the state would need to produce 47% more electricity than it does today. That’s likely unwelcome news for Californians who are already facing rolling blackouts thanks to the state’s overreliance on renewable energy.
Banning gas cars in California is also likely to have ripple effects throughout the rest of the U.S. economy. A number of other Democrat-led states like New York and Oregon have, for instance, indicated that they will follow California’s lead, leaving automakers in a difficult position. Even Virginia has passed legislation that forces it to adhere to California regulations. California alone represents a full 10% of the overall U.S. car market, meaning that its laws can – and have – shaped the direction of the market for the entire country. The problems that this decision poses for California are thus likely to be exported to other states, whether they agree with the policy or not.
With fewer gas cars on the road, many gas stations will likely go out of business, making it more difficult for those with gas cars to get around. In addition to posing a severe burden on people in rural parts of the state, this will also discourage tourism from other states, an industry that contributes more than $100 billion annually to California’s economy.
At the same time as this policy is going into effect on passenger vehicles, a series of perhaps even more devastating laws and regulations are also set to take effect to “phase out” medium- and heavy-duty gas- and diesel-powered trucks. On January 1, 2023, some 76,000 trucks with engines built before 2010 will no longer be allowed to operate under a different set of CARB regulations. By 2040, all new medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold in the state must also be fully electric – posing an enormous cost for transportation companies, which will no doubt be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
The new truck regulations are particularly bad news for California’s vital agricultural sector. California is far and away the country’s most productive agricultural state, accounting for more than 13% of U.S. agricultural production value – some $25 billion annually. The state leads the nation in the production of 77 different crops and livestock, and accounts for more than 99% of U.S. production of 14 specialty crops such as almonds, olives, and raisins.
All of these products have to be transported to the rest of the country. According to USDA data, 95% of the time that means a diesel-powered semi-truck. Even if farms and ranches can afford expensive new electric trucks, and even if California installs thousands of new electric vehicle charging stations specifically for electric trucks, it is powerless to force other states to do so, meaning that produce might have to be shipped via electric truck in California and switched to diesel-powered trucks for the rest of the journey – increasing costs and slowing down shipments. The result is that the nearly one million Californians who work in the agricultural sector are likely to have their lives and livelihoods upended, while the rest of the country can expect to pay significantly more for produce.
Notably, these new rules must all be approved by the Biden administration under the provisions of the 1970 Clean Air Act. While officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are expected to do so without delay, they may want to reconsider, lest they risk throttling the country further toward economic ruin.
Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @Shane_Harris_
Such legislation here in Minnesota would kill people in droves. Imagine having your EV’s battery go dead in the middle of a blizzard! We get winter storms here with wind chills down to minus 45 below and 50 mph winds blowing snow so thickly that you can’t see past the end of your car hood. We are taught from an early age that if you’re stranded in a blizzard, you do not leave your car because if you get disoriented and lost in the whiteout trying to walk somewhere, you’re dead. With a gas vehicle, you can idle the engine for a few minutes every hour in order to run the car heater and keep yourself from freezing to death. So, what would we have with EVs? Thousands of vehicles stranded on I-35 near the Iowa border with corpses in them?? Lord God of heaven and earth, cause the voters to rise up and evict these self-absorbed loonies who couldn’t care less about practical truths!
God is still in control! Leftist won’t be in control for long. Just make sure you vote so that together we can make a difference that really matters. Let California die all by itself if they don’t get in-line with truth. The leftist won’t be in power one way or another after mid terms or there will be far worse consequences to pay than energy. Just remember that God is still in control. He will never forsake us.
The arrogance that mankind is going to “save the world!” “While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” GOD’S promise to Noah in Gen. 8:22.
Gavin Newsom is mandating this for 2035 and on the other side of his mouth he is requesting that we cut down on electricity use and don’t charge your cars to avoid power outages. What an idiot. And he wants to be president????????? What a joke!!!!!!!!!!!
Liberals seem to engage mouth while small brain is asleep.The remedy,think,think,think about what your actions will do to people and their livelihood,not your privileged life.
If this is the direction where heading to its GAME OVER
These people are brain dead. It really does not matter if we shut down all of our economy, shut down all of America’s farms and kill all the farmers livestock off, and ban all gasoline powered cars.
The only thing that will accomplish is that we will all starve to death and have no jobs or income.
Bidum spends Billions or Trillions of U.S. dollars on Climate Accord, meanwhile China and India the biggest polluters and the rest of the world have always contributed just a tiny amount of their GDP.
China has 1,000 coal fired electric generating plants in operation, is building 43 new plants and has 240 more planned or in construction, plus 18 new blast furnaces. Meanwhile India has 281 coal fired electric generating plants in operation, 23 in construction and 23 more in pre construction phase. And that’s just China and India. Does anyone really think destroying America’s economy, starving and or freezing us to death will make even a ripple in climate change of the Earth? You’re having a bad dream if you do!
America’s air quality has already improved by 52%, how much has China and others improved their air quality? Zero, zip. It only gets worse so we should not subsidize them.
Meanwhile as Obuma, Bidum and other top 1% Americans try to panic American’s, they aren’t worried about rising sea levels, they just keep building their multi million dollar homes on the oceanfront.
Just shut up and do as we say, not as we do! Vote them out while your still able to.
Governor Inslee of Washington stated yesterday that he will push for state of Washington to pass the same thing as California. And these Green Deal advocates do not have a plan on how this can be done in such a tight timeline.
Cut off coal and gas to California. Let them see what is going to happen. Keep their stupidity in California
This so called INFLATION REDUCTION ACT is nothing more than the springboard for the leftist socialist liberals and environmental climate change scammers to enact the GREEN NEW DEAL! It’s not an economically sound solution and will immediately bankrupt our country and destroy capitalism in its tracks!!! That is what this is all about, it will collapse everything and then the elitist can employ the totalitarian and totally totalitarian dictatorship that they are painting all conservatives with. Our illegitimate president is treasonous to we the people and we all fully understand how compromised he and his dirty family are.
Why are Americans, blessed with choice at the ballot box, electing fools to office? A child can look at the numbers above and understand this plan cannot work!
I am glad they are the ones experimenting with this. They can show the rest of the country how it just does not work. They should have made the designation as “non-polluting” rather than “zero emmissions”. They did not because there is no such thing as non-polluting or having no impact on the environment. I cannot wait! But by the time this all happens. I will not care any more. I will be either gone or near my end, I hope.
The silliness continues with nary a thought of the unintended consequences and the big picture.
If California slid off into the Pacifjc our country would actually be better off.
There are no highway trucks run by electricity that can replace the powerful, efficient diesel vehicles-they would look like diesel electric locomotives to achieve those horsepowers and torque. This is an incredible pipe dream in combination with Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day. The State of California belongs to the Greek Land of the Lotus Eaters.
Wake Up America. The agenda IS DE POPULATION & DE GROWTH..period!!!They will force those that are not wealthy to NOT DRIVE and take mass transit OR walk! The National median annual wage in 2021 was $45,760.00 !!
The cost of an EV along with insurance and upkeep is UNAFFORDABLE…PERIOD!!
That’s exactly what they are looking to do. Send this country into economic ruin has been their most worked on intention since Covid. It was the beginning
Build the wall…and make it include California!
this is why Californian is widely ridiculed in the rest of the country . this is insane pie in the sky kind of crap . what happens if you live in the central valley hard enough to find gas stations let alone superchargers . and i for one will not buy an electric vehicle until when and if they will standardixe the plugs you need to plug in to the chargers and your vehicle
“Governor Nuisance providing cover for aunt Nancy’s evil clown show” there fixed it for ya!
I am not able to afford an electric vehicle. Tesla Model 3 cost is over $50,000. Replacement of the batteries for this car is around $25,000. This is the only electric car I would consider since it has at least a 230 mile range. The green savings from electric cars is not that great when compared to an internal combustion powered car. The disposal of all the batteries will be costly. Toyota has the right idea in the Prius with an internal combustion engine in series with an electric motor and batteries. Replacement of batteries is about $2,000 on the Prius. California does not have the capacity to generate the electric power needed for all these electric cars. Our politicians are dooming the United States by having our current economy transition to the third world economy.
Don’t we have anybody that will stand up to these satanic idiots, Ill pay towards having these morons eliminated
Snipers is what we need, several of them.
He couldn’t wait to proclaim Washington will follow California into the EV disaster.
Unintended consequences? Not really. Many (if not most) of the negative consequences associated with this unconscionable mandate are already known or readily determinable. This whole effort by Governor Gruesome and his Libtard establishment here in the Peoples Republic of ☭alifornia is intentional and purely ideologically driven, without any concern whatsoever for the extensive negative consequences it will have on all California citizens, and indirectly on all Americans – it’s simply a predictable train wreck just waiting to happen!
Governor Gruesome is just another pea in the pod with the likes of President Bidense and the Libtard Retards in Congress. Like Bidense, Gruesome is a Charter Member of the “180º Club” (i.e., whatever position he espouses or embraces, the exact opposite is usually true or an eminently more optimal, reasonable, efficacious and productive solution). Unfortunately, the Libtard inmates here in ☭alifornia are truly running the asylum – but into the ground, much like the Demsheviks in Washington are doing to the rest of our country!
For the first time in history, instead of the Auto Manufacturing Companies engineers, scientists, economists etc. politicians are dictating what powers our cars and how it will be used by consumers, And as most people realize, the current group of Bidums politicians don’t have the intellect to tie their own shoelaces. What could possibly go wrong?
Bidum shut down our petroleum industry because of? Then he begged the Saudis for more oil. The only difference being that all the oil from Saudi Arabia has to be shipped via ocean going tankers, creating more emissions, the chance of oil spills, and American oil workers were unemployed. But he doesn’t care!
EV batteries consist mainly of Lithium and China has the worlds largest deposits of Lithium. They mine it, using fossil fuel and then the Lithium is refined, using more fossil fuel. So major amounts of fossil fuel are used in mining, refining and manufacturing the batteries and also the vehicles themselves. So they’re not at all Zero emission to begin with.
EV batteries are not recyclable, so when they wear out or die many of the EVs are parked in huge fields. They don’t know what to do with them but In the end they will likely go into a land fill.
If you choose to replace the battery it will cost 40% to 50% of the original vehicle cost
EV cars cost 50% to 100% more than ICE (gas) powered cars and can only go 200 to 300 miles before needing to recharge the battery, which will take from 30 minutes for partial to 8 hours for a full charge, so you will not take vacation trips with an EV.
When you are charging an EV, that electricity is being generated with fossil fuel, 65% of which uses coal. So overall there is little to no reduction of CO2, but the good news! all vegetation needs CO2 anyway. So what is Bidum and AOC’s issue? The leftists want to destroy America!
It only takes about 5 minutes to fill the tank in your gas powered car, so trips are unlimited!
EVs tend to catch fire and burn down the house or building where they’re being recharged.
An EV fire is very toxic and very difficult to extinguish. You may have seen pictures of an EV after it burned up.
America does not have anywhere near the generating capacity needed for the massive number of EV’s that the Bidum idiots are trying to force on us!
And wind turbines and solar panels are another joke that will never begin to replace fossil fueled power generation, let alone the additional power required just for millions of EVs.
And if you had sufficient power, America does not have the grid capacity to transport that additional power over the long distances required. Many states have been having problems with their grid for years and yet have not upgraded them. That is just one of the reasons California has so many wild fires every year.
My bottom line: you couldn’t give me an EV for free!
Once again, “useful idiots”!!!
All this so billionaires who are invested in all things electrical power(because they cannt outright buy oil companies and make their money there).
Only “useful idiots” buy in to the “global warming/climate change” HOAX). Back in the 70s, when I was in high school the alarmists were all clamoring about global cooling and the coming ice age. WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT YOU F—KING IDIOTS!!!!!!!!!
every single Californian needs to be taxed an extra $50,000 a year for their continuous destruction of the economy and supply chain.
Would love to detach California and give it a good push over to China. I know it won’t happen, but I think many people might leave the state the rate they are going!
what other proof does one need that libs live in a fantasy world. But Jacobs going to blow his horn before then, so those left behind can deal with their terminal stupidity.
As California goes so goes the nation. Unless something drastic changes, we’re soon to be living a Venezuelan lifestyle.
these liberal tree huggers are nukinfutz
Note this… 90% of car fires start in the electrical circuits. Gas will takeover but not before the electrical circuits are already well established.
Marxist idiot!
Total ignorance!! Where does electricity come from? Does it grow on trees? NO! It is generated by coal or natural gas, both of which the Marxists criticize or nuclear which they also hate! It will be IMPOSSIBLE to run millions of electric vehicles in 10 years (or more). The parts and composite elements come from Red China! Are they going to HELP us? The parts for wind turbines also come from Red China! If your battery dies on an EV, it costs $6000 or more for a new one! And, again, the parts come from China!
Reconsider? Huh? All this is by design. The demons in these covens have been scheming for fifty years to cripple the country. Theyve had to bide their time till ‘education’ and media brainwashed sufficient numbers of robots. Well, theyve done it. Dem robots will cheer all of this even from the cattle cars taking them to fertilizer factories.
I read an article yesterday about the banking industry push to stop making loans for gas powered vehicles. I subscribe to 2 auto industry publications, in the last 18 months they have virtually stopped testing and reporting on gas powered vehicle. 75% of their articles are about new EVs. They downplay any negative issues associated with EVs. We are being force fed a product that is a disaster waiting to happen. I suspect many politicians are being bribed to push this special interest.
Queer thinking. Their brains are already warped.
Issues:
o state electrical rates
o EV costs
o Black/Brownouts
o Replace battery unit
o Lack EV service techs
o Crowded charging centers
o No Uniform group for EVs like Auto Club for ICE
o Tesla Auto drive wrecks
o No energy for EVs
o CA wont OK nuclear or thorium for energy
o Dated grid
California has no problem killing
America as does the puppet biden. Let California become its own country and the democrats I think will be voted out. F Cally and F dems. I think we have seen Paul Reveres ride again. Too arms, too arms, the commies are coming.
Thank you for reporting on this. I wanted more info from a reliable source, which you are.
I currently live in Southern California in 13 years I will be 87 years old. Now if I still have good health and still driving, then I’ll just have to move to Texas.
Here in southeastern Michigan it’s still the “Motor City” with the auto industry affecting the entire state. The Big 3 (I won’t even try for the others on this) are already laying off. This was the news last week: About 3,000 white-collar workers at Ford Motor Co. will lose their jobs as the company cuts costs to help make the long transition from internal combustion vehicles to those powered by batteries.
Leaders of the Dearborn, Michigan, automaker made the announcement Monday in a companywide email, saying that 2,000 full-time salaried workers would be let go along with another 1,000 contract workers.
So far that doesn’t touch union employees. Ford plans half of its global production to be electric vehicles by 2030. They also say their work force is too large and “The cuts may not be over.”
This attempt to force gas-powered vehicles to follow the horse-&-buggy will touch everybody and this article makes it clear it is proceeding both without guarantees to help the environment nor handle such drastic deadlines.
I am convinced that the Buyden Administration WISHES to destroy American democracy, in order to replace it with a left-wing totalitarian state. This is the true objective of today’s Democrap Party. In furtherance of that objective, destruction of our country’s economy is a very helpful tool, which these unconscionable laws will accelerate. We MUST elect a vast Republican majority in the next two elections. And, to that end, we must ALL get out to vote. Do not trust that the Red Wave is coming — it depends upon voter turnout, and complacency will doom us.
All Electric. Nice. Wont sll enough gas to make it profitable. Soi no ga. . Charge at niten no power, water is to low to generate. Wheres my Cantalope I orded 6 days ago. ??? I had to stop 5 times to recharge. Hay Cal! ! ! . Why dont u slide off into the sea and be done with it.
I live in CA and I WILL NEVER drive an electric vehicle. Too many catch fire while charging….no place to put dead batteries……cost is way out of my $$$ range. Our Governor is a jackass.
Having retired from GM I’d guess that will stop any further MPG improvement development efforts impacting emissions for everyone who can’t buy an EV or can’t charge any they have.
At least 10-20 times a day I hear of some idiocy of California and thank our gracious God that I got out of that state (forever) a little over 20 years ago.
Typical Newsome grandstanding w/o a basis. They’ll lose in court big time.
WHEN WILL THE SAN ANDREAS FAULT SEND california INTO THE OCEAN, TODAY ?
There goes our economy! California people are nuts!