California Mulls Combustion-Engine Car Ban: "You Could Stop All Sales By 2030"

California, the state which single-handedly turned Elon Musk into the billionaire that he is today by forcing taxpayers to subsidize his unprofitable electric vehicle scam via "Zero Emission Vehicle" credits, is now considering a full ban of combustion-engine cars by as early as 2030. The potential ban was discussed by Mary Nichols of the California Air Resources Board, the same folks who decided to regulate cow farts last year, who told Bloomberg that Governor Jerry Brown has expressed interest in a ban.

Governor Jerry Brown has expressed an interest in barring the sale of vehicles powered by internal-combustion engines, Mary Nichols, chairman of the California Air Resources Board, said in an interview Friday at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. Brown, one of the most outspoken elected official in the U.S. about the need for policies to combat climate change, would be replicating similar moves by China, France and the U.K.

“I’ve gotten messages from the governor asking, ‘Why haven’t we done something already?’” Nichols said, referring to China’s planned phase-out of fossil-fuel vehicle sales. “The governor has certainly indicated an interest in why China can do this and not California.”

California has set a goal to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. Rising emissions from on-road transportation has undercut the state’s efforts to reduce pollution, a San Francisco-based non-profit said last month.

“To reach the ambitious levels of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, we have to pretty much replace all combustion with some form of renewable energy by 2040 or 2050," Nichols said. “We’re looking at that as a method of moving this discussion forward.”

"There are people who believe, including who work for me, that you could stop all sales of new internal-combustion cars by 2030. Some people say 2035, some people say 2040,” she said. “It’s awfully hard to predict any of that with precision, but it doesn’t appear to be out of the question.”

Of course, the irony that seems to be lost on Jerry Brown and Mary Nichols is that, according to Morgan Stanley, electric cars generate more CO2 than they save.  As a stark reminder to our left-leaning political elites who created these companies with massive taxpayer funded subsidies in the United States, Morgan Stanley pointed out that while electric cars don"t burn gasoline they do have to be charged using electricity generated by coal and other fossil fuels.

This is where Tesla, along with China’s Guoxuan High-Tech fall short.

“Whilst the electric vehicles and lithium batteries manufactured by these two companies do indeed help to reduce direct CO2 emissions from vehicles, electricity is needed to power them,” Morgan Stanley wrote. “And with their primary markets still largely weighted towards fossil-fuel power (72% in the U.S. and 75% in China) the CO2 emissions from this electricity generation are still material.”

In other words, “the carbon emissions generated by the electricity required for electric vehicles are greater than those saved by cutting out direct vehicle emissions.”

Morgan Stanley calculated that an investment of $1 million in Canadian Solar results in nearly 15,300 metric tons of carbon dioxide being saved every year. For Tesla, such an investment adds nearly one-third of a metric ton of CO2.

Meanwhile, despite Brown"s desire for "Hope & Change," even the U.S. Energy Information Administration says that "renewables" will represent less than 20% of electricity generation in the U.S. by 2040.

Of course, the problem is that a California ban on combustion engine cars would effectively be the same as a full U.S. ban given the size of the California market. 

Embracing such a policy would send shockwaves through the global car industry due to the heft of California’s auto market. More than 2 million new passenger vehicles were registered in the state last year, topping France, Italy or Spain. If a ban were implemented, automakers from General Motors Co. to Toyota Motor Corp. would be under new pressure to make electric vehicles the standard for personal transportation in the most populous U.S. state, casting fresh doubts on the future of gasoline- and diesel-powered autos elsewhere.

The end result of this effort to "save the environment" will be more expensive vehicles, landfills full of lithium-ion batteries and more coal-fired generation plants...but, somehow we suspect those "inconvenient facts" are lost on our politicians and enviros who seem determined to subsidize Elon"s trip to Mars.

China's Electric (A.K.A. Coal-Fueled) Car Companies Soar On Promise Of Petrol Vehicle Ban

A few weeks ago we highlighted an "inconvenient fact" for the publicly traded electric car manufacturers and the environmentally-conscious Left, namely that, according to Morgan Stanley, electric cars generate more CO2 than they save.  As a stark reminder to our left-leaning political elites who created these companies with massive taxpayer funded subsidies in the United States, Morgan Stanley pointed out that while electric cars don"t burn gasoline they do have to be charged using electricity generated by coal and other fossil fuels.

This is where Tesla, along with China’s Guoxuan High-Tech fall short.

“Whilst the electric vehicles and lithium batteries manufactured by these two companies do indeed help to reduce direct CO2 emissions from vehicles, electricity is needed to power them,” Morgan Stanley wrote. “And with their primary markets still largely weighted towards fossil-fuel power (72% in the U.S. and 75% in China) the CO2 emissions from this electricity generation are still material.”

In other words, “the carbon emissions generated by the electricity required for electric vehicles are greater than those saved by cutting out direct vehicle emissions.”

Morgan Stanley calculated that an investment of $1 million in Canadian Solar results in nearly 15,300 metric tons of carbon dioxide being saved every year. For Tesla, such an investment adds nearly one-third of a metric ton of CO2.

Which seems like the perfect backdrop to report on the recent comments of Xin Guobin, vice-minister of industry and information technology, who told a forum in the northern city of Tianjin over the weekend that his ministry had started “relevant research” for establishing a timeline to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles in the Chinese market.  According to The Guardian, Xin said the policy would be implemented "in the near future."

“These measures will promote profound changes in the environment and give momentum to China’s auto industry development,” he said in remarks broadcast by CCTV state television.

“Enterprises should strive to improve the level of energy saving for traditional cars, and vigorously develop new energy vehicles according to assessment requirements,” he said.

China produced and sold more than 28m vehicles last year, according to the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers.

Ironically, China generates 65% of its power, more than double the U.S., from the "dirtiest" fuel available: coal.  So, while the move to electric cars will undoubtedly be praised by blissfully ignorant politicians and environmental lobbyists, the end result will be even higher carbon emissions.

Of course, this is hardly a China-centric development as Bloomberg recently noted that almost 80% of the global auto market is pushing toward a phase-out of petroleum cars in favor of more "environmentally friendly" electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, aggregate global electric vehicle sales are expected to overtake internal combustion engines within about 20 years.

Ironically, the end result of this effort to "save the environment" will be more expensive vehicles, landfills full of lithium-ion batteries and more coal-fired generation plants...but, somehow we suspect those "inconvenient facts" are lost on our politicians and enviros who seem determined to subsidize Elon"s trip to Mars.

Oh well, at least electric car investors in China are having a good day...

China"s new energy car shares surging, after govt official said over the weekend China to make timetable for banning diesel and petrol cars pic.twitter.com/uIeZkilMhZ

— YUAN TALKS (@YuanTalks) September 11, 2017

Electric Car Fever

Authored by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,

Maybe you remember Disco Fever.

Mid-70s, United States. For no apparent reason, suddenly everyone seemed to be singing in a high-pitched falsetto voice and wearing skin-tight lycra with open collared shirts displaying chest hair and gold medallions.

It was fun for awhile but got old fast.

Electric Car Fever is now upon us. Laws are being passed – the Brits being the latest – mandating the production of electric cars by outlawing the production of cars powered by internal combustion.

This will get old fast, too.

King Canute could decree that the tide not come back – and politicians can decree that we’ll all be driving electric cars by “x” year, not too far from now. But wishing – and decreeing – can’t overcome reality. It can just make things really expensive and difficult for us.

One reality almost no one seems willing to talk plainly about is the fact that hundreds of thousands of electric cars queuing up to spend 30-45 minutes each at a recharging port is as ludicrous in concept as waiting that long at McDonald’s to get a burger. Especially when there is a Wendy’s across the street that’ll get a burger in your hands and you back on the road in less than 5 minutes.

Most people will never accept this. Would you accept waiting 30-45 minutes (absolute best-case scenario, if a “fast” charger is available) to put a partial charge back into your EV? Were you aware that at the high-voltage “fast” chargers, due to the nature of the thing (and for the sake of battery life) you cannot put more than 80 percent charge back into the thing?

So, whatever the advertised best-case range of the car is, subtract 20 percent.

That puts even the longest-ranged of them in the same class as the fiercest-guzzling IC-engined SUV. Maybe 200 miles or so. But the fierce-guzzling SUV can be refueled to 100 percent in 5 minutes.

Which would you prefer to take on a road trip? One where there might not be a “fast” charger available when you run out of juice. What then?

Then, you spend overnight wherever you happen to be.

Electric car freaks peddle a Disney-esque fantasy to counter this objection. They envision everyone plugging in at home, overnight – or at work, while they work. The problem with this idea is the ant-like uniformity of use it assumes. Everyone going to work – and back home – at pretty much the same time.

A middling-bright eight-year-old would be raising his hand about now.

American driving patterns are scattershot. People are individuals and have individually variable schedules. They work odd hours. Part-time. They need to go Here – and then There.

On the spur of the moment, not planned in advance.

Have a look outside and see whether you see vacant streets during the hours in between 9 and 5. Then a sudden effusion of cars and people migrating homeward.

How about . . . traffic? It’s quite true that an electric car’s battery isn’t being drained to move the car when it’s not moving, as when it is stuck in traffic. But if you are running the AC (or the heater) and the lights you are drawing volts – and running the battery down. Keep in mind the best-case 30-45 minute wait to “fill ‘er up.”

It’s so laughable it’s painful.

The reality of EV World would be conga queues that would make the gas lines of the early ’70s (the result of oil embargoes, not lack of oil) seem like a minor irritation in comparison.

The Conga Effect would multiply, too – as  (potentially) hundreds of thousands of EVs jockey for a slot at a charging port. Imagine a gas station, right now, with each EV taking a minimum of 30-45 minutes to finish its business.

Certifiable.

Leaving aside the economic absurdity of electric cars – the least expensive of them cost in excess of $30,000 (heavily subsidized, the true cost is much higher) which renders retarded any talk of “saving money” when you could buy a more functionally competent IC-powered car for half that sum – there is one non-negotiable technical/practical hurdle that must be overcome before EVs could conceivably replace IC-powered cars on a mass scale:

They must be able to get back on the road within 5 minutes. Even a 15 minute wait is unacceptable. Five minutes. No more.

Or – as a compensatory fix – an EV must be able to travel at least 600 miles before needing to be recharged.

Absent one or the other, the whole scheme is preposterous. Either that or deliberately calculated to be ruinous.

Which may well be exactly it.

The people pushing electric cars are well aware of the realities discussed above and – their pie-in-the-sky assurances notwithstanding. By pushing cars that don’t work and which they know don’t work, they may be deliberately trying to recreate the world that existed before Henry Ford gave the world the Model T.

Which made cars affordable.

Before the T, cars were expensive extravagances, the toys of the rich.

Sound familiar?

From a certain point of view, affordable mobility is not desirable. That is to say, independent mobility. It is harder to control, encourages random and unpredictable patterns of human activity – the kind of activity loathed by the central planning, nudging technocrats who are (among other things) pushing electric cars.

The question is – will there be any push back?

And will it come in time?