California is expected to vote on Thursday to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
"The climate crisis is solvable if we focus on the big, bold steps necessary to stem the tide of carbon pollution," Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
The landmark move toward electric vehicles would be phased in over several years, with a target of 35 percent of new vehicles that don't emit fossil fuels being set for 2026, a target of 51 percent for 2028, 68 percent for 2030, and finally a target of 100 percent for 2035.
The California Air Resource Board will vote to implement the measure on Thursday, with board member Daniel Sperling telling CNN that he is "99.9 percent" confident that it will pass. "This is monumental," Sperling added. "This is the most important thing that CARB has done in the last 30 years. It's important not just for California, but it's important for the country and the world."
https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/California-Is-Banning-the-Sale-of-Gas-Cars-17395622.php
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kreuzfeld on Thursday August 25 2022, @09:46PM (13 children)
But it's still vaguely reassuring to see some state doing something, at any rate.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday August 25 2022, @10:03PM (5 children)
I've yet to be convinced that Electric vehicles are definitively better for the environment than Gas powered vehicles. Perhaps, if they were powered by "clean energy" and battery technology wasn't a dumpster fire. Hydrogen fuel cells seemed like a much better and cleaner alternative to either approach. Unfortunately, Hydrogen is more of a pipe dream than anything at this point.
For electric vehicle to really take off, batteries need to be more standardized and more easily recycled. In the event that we create giant landfills of used lithium batteries, were' not necessarily doing the environment any favors. Still, with consolidation of pollution and areas that are polluted via electricity generation. We could do things that could better handle the pollution. Whereas with gas powered vehicles, the polluting elements are so wide spread. Any solution that could reduce the pollution has a major cost hurdle that would be shoulder be every single user.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hopdevil on Thursday August 25 2022, @10:47PM (2 children)
The issue isn't so much the car sales as ensuring the infrastructure is in place to support them.. the grid, especially at the local distribution level was never designed to support everyone coming home (at the same time) in the evening and sucking down a crazy amount of electricity to charge batteries. Renewables don't typically work like this. If everyone has an electric, load needs to be distributed evenly during the off-peak hours or else you end up needing to fire up your coal plants to deal with the extra demand.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Friday August 26 2022, @03:20PM (1 child)
Why are you assuming that every person coming home will be charging their car with a totally flat battery?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sfm on Friday August 26 2022, @04:02PM
"Why are you assuming that every person coming home will be charging their
car with a totally flat battery?"
If your EV battery is down below 75% (or so) it will still start charging at a high
current level. This is happening at the end of the work day, which is traditionally
when electricity demand increases. Even if your EV has finished by 10pm, it has
already contributed to the problem.
Eventually we will likely settle on a scheme that distributes charging (randomly??)
throughout the night. More of a band-aid than a solution, but could work until
power infrastructure can be improved.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by bussdriver on Friday August 26 2022, @12:24AM
A skeptic about EVs with a bible quote in his sig?
Aside from that, parent's whole post is ignorant. Must need the chicken and the egg spontaneously snap into existence as an act of god; probably believes that happened too. Maybe we need preachers to tell the sheep we need to go to EVs ASAP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2022, @10:30AM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday August 25 2022, @11:26PM (6 children)
If only to thoroughly kill the idea that doing something is better than doing nothing.
I find it interesting how two questions aren't being answered here: 1) Does the evidence of near future harm for global warming support this level of radical restructuring of society? and 2) Does the radical restructuring of society move us in a positive direction? My take is that California is well on its way to becoming an also-ran state. Getting rid of functional cars will be a considerable move along that path. Further, it'll make a lot of people poor both in and outside the state. That'll increase the long term fertility of those affected which I think will be more important in the long run than some modest emissions.
My bet is that it'll be a lot like Germany's Energiewende policy which actually increased the greenhouses gases emissions of Germany while making its electricity supply more vulnerable and unreliable, or US corn ethanol subsidies that ended up just being hand-outs to corn agri-biz.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Friday August 26 2022, @08:55AM (5 children)
To answer question 1: YES. Have you been living under a fucking rock? Are you really that stupid???????
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday August 26 2022, @09:49AM (4 children)
Then you should be able to provide a serious argument for that, right? Not a "living under a rock" argument that could be made to any post ever made on this site.
You might not get this, but I've heard a lot of these arguments before. I agree that there's global warming, mostly caused by humanity. But I also am aware that humanity does a lot of good stuff with those greenhouse gases emissions, including some stuff - like making all of humanity a lot closer to developed world status with its inherent negative population growth and concern for the environment that's hugely needed for any sort of progress on future climate change mitigation.
The California argument here is two-fold, that the weak evidence for possible future harm from global warming is important enough to do something and cargo cult economics - if we force everyone to buy electric cars, it'll magically happen: there will be economies of scale and no unintended consequences or other negative repercussions ever. My take on that is that we already have several examples of that defective, top-down, whistling-past-the-graveyard in action and it can indeed cause a lot of trouble - including in some cases worse outcomes than doing nothing.
Finally, here's my challenge to anyone who wants answer "YES" to my first question:
For example, recently someone in my last journal threw a link up [soylentnews.org] that claimed that we had some existing unprecedented extreme weather events due to climate change. I noted a failure of 5) not showing what is claimed and at least one 2) excessive dependence on modeling (probably all three, because how else do you show that allegedly unprecedented extreme weather is dependent on climate change?). The AC in question then just accused me of being lazy (3) appeal to scientific ignorance) rather than prove their argument for them (Sure, I'm lazy there, but why can't I be as lazy as they are?).
It shouldn't be pulling-teeth hard to make coherent arguments for these positions that don't suck.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Friday August 26 2022, @09:57AM (1 child)
No, the answer should have been clear for a long time now.
You are acting like a flat-earther with your demands for arguments. At some point the demand is just to stupid.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 26 2022, @10:04AM
I actually bested [soylentnews.org] a flat Earther via providing said argument. You need to up your game.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by vux984 on Friday August 26 2022, @05:18PM (1 child)
Eh...
"signs of confirmation bias" -- so basically if you think they find what they were looking for you get to ignore it?
"excessive modelling" -- so basically, no spherical chickens! They have to predict the future without creating a climate model to do it for them? It would be interesting to see them measure the future of the only planet we have access to. They also have to do measure deep into the past using measurements when modern measurements only go back a few decades. This is quite a challenge.
"appeals to scientific consensus" -- so basically they have to do everything from first principles themselves, and/or everything they cite all has to be up to your other standards, or its just built on a foundation of sand and it all falls apart.
So I need to find a credible paper involving scientists who want to prove global warming is harmless, but find out it isn't, and who only cite other work that does the same. To acheive this, we'd need a large team, unlimited funding from a non-partisan wealthy benefactor whose motiviations you trust. Also a time machine.
No wonder you haven't been presented an argument that met your standards. :)
"It shouldn't be pulling-teeth hard to make coherent arguments for these positions that don't suck."
I'm being a facetious of course, but...
Climate science is fundamentally a science about a massive chaotic system on a single planet, with various factors that affect it operating on human to geological time scales. We have no practical ability to control it, and no practical ability to setup smaller controlled experiments. We can't even look at other climates to make comparisons. Our ability to make measurements of past states is severely constricted, even measuring the current state is quite limited.
It's fair to point out the limitations of the scientific method when applied to this situation, but in all seriousness, you don't want "coherent". You seem to want "unassaillable", and you get to set the standard, so it'll just be as high as you need it to be to win. Hurrah for you. You always win.
The arguments for the likely harmful outcomes due to climate change are coherent. They might be totally wrong, and they're definitely not 100% right, and they certainly aren't going to be up to the predictive standard we see in other fields. That doesn't make them useless, and doesn't mean we shouldn't act on them, just because they aren't unassailable.
It's possible the outcome will be worse than doing nothing, and sometimes that will be the case. That doesn't make the argument for "doing nothing" superior though.
I didn't address the specific argument about whether california mandating electric cars by 2030 is necessarily the right "doing something". That's a whole other question.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 27 2022, @12:51AM
Extreme weather is a classic example - cherrypick extreme weather that furthers the climate change narrative and ignore non-climate factors. For example, insurance payouts from flooding are up and it is concluded that climate change is responsible even though there's an obvious non-climate change factor - the US, subsidizing flood insurance. Or blaming the recent Syrian drought (and subsequent civil war) on climate change even through the more obvious explanation is extreme misuse of water (such as draining the water table and growing cotton in a desert).
Another example was the recent discovery that climate change makes you fat. I noted [soylentnews.org] at the time, that studies within the past eight years had found four different ways climate change makes you fat, but zero ways it makes you thin.
Indeed. But it's no different than any other field of science. We don't accept gravity, evolution, or a round Earth on the basis of model gazing, but instead via overwhelming physical evidence. Seems reasonable to me to hold climatogy to the same standards as the rest of science, right?
That would be a good start! A classic example of fabrication of scientific consensus (and confirmation bias, a two-fer) is papers that allege [soylentnews.org] to find massive consensus on climate change from studying research papers.
Evolution has similar trouble and we figured it out. Also, I notice the usual sudden acknowledgment of the uncertainty of climatology that wasn't present earlier. False certainty is a huge problem in this field.
Then where's the evidence for the arguments? Coherent isn't just spinning a story that others can read. It also is about organizing support for those arguments.
A typical failing in this area is ignoring low lying fruit like putting out coal bed fires (there's no interests protecting some random coal fire in the middle of nowhere). There's all these massive restructuring of society - ban ICE cars, ban nuclear power, massively incentivize the use of corn-based ethanol which uses more oil to create than it displaces that show profound disinterest in actually solving global warming or our other problems.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Thursday August 25 2022, @10:43PM (10 children)
If battery tech was cheap enough, and worked, then the market wouldn't need this regulation.
Most people I know could care less what they drive, as long as it gets them there. With most of the people I know wanting to drive to some far off place 30 miles from the closest power line, 4-8 hours away, every weekend, I'm not sure this tech cuts it. Didn't California even sue PG&E (the power company) into oblivion?
And of course that pesky problem of electricity being made by coal and natural gas.
I appreciate the thought, but I won't be surprised when half the people in California have Nevada plates come 2036.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 26 2022, @01:47AM (2 children)
Wow, where I live, most people care far too much about the appearance of their cars. I wish they'd stop being such idiots about it. But no, some one buys a new Mercedes, and someone else has to one up them, and buy, I dunno, a Porche or a Lexus SUV.
Do you appreciate how much low hanging fruit the automotive industry has left unpicked? One of the biggest is aerodynamics. Whenever I read an article that takes a respectful or boasting tone about a car having a cd of 0.24, I cringe. It's so easy to get below 0.2! The winner of the X-prize for a 100 mpg car has a cd of 0.16. Another person modified the aerodynamics of a Honda Civic that already has what's thought to be excellent fuel economy ratings somewhere in the 50 mpg area, and nearly doubled its fuel economy! And what does the fool public say about these vehicles? "Ugly!" What makes me want to scream with frustration is that they cling to bad aero even on cars such as Nissan Leafs that really, really need every known enhancement, to increase that range that everyone acknowledges is far too low. Yet even with that need, they won't do it.
Maybe California is being too ambitious. It's certain that the automotive industry and the public have been way too conservative, and need a hard kick in their complacency. Tesla has been delivering a little bit of a kicking. We need more.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2022, @03:30AM (1 child)
> One of the biggest is aerodynamics.
Personally, I agree with you completely. I'd be very happy to drive a car with low air drag. Nearly 40 years ago I started building streamlined bicycles, "human powered vehicles", and many of the home made streamliners had drag coefficients in the range of Cd = 0.1, including a couple of mine.
A visionary friend who built a small car with equally slippery shape (he wind tunnel tested a 20% model at Cd = 0.10) would often quote Felice Bianchi Anderloni of Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera: "Il peso è il nemico, la resistenza dell'aria è l'ostacolo."
DeepL translates to, "Weight is the enemy, air resistance is the obstacle."
However, the car companies sell cars in volume and the jury is definitely out when it comes to this. Perhaps the first attempt to market streamlining (in USA) was the Chrysler Airflow...and it was not a sales success. The original Ford Taurus was sold as aerodynamic, but according to the big chart here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient [wikipedia.org] the Cd for two different generations was .3 and .32
Meanwhile the boxy-looking Nissan Leaf is .29, the result I believe of considerable detail work in a wind tunnel to get it that good.
The rest of that wiki page is kind of hokey, imo, but the big chart is nice.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 26 2022, @09:48PM
A time tested method of extending range is to simply drive slower. It works better than it ought, because pretty much every car ever sold has such terrible aerodynamics. What many Leaf owners have noticed is that just the difference between traveling at 40 mph vs 30 mph has an outsized effect on range. Like, a bit more than 20% more range at the slower speed.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Reziac on Friday August 26 2022, @02:11AM (6 children)
California figures they can take electricity from the surrounding states, which being just deplorable dirt people, deserve to freeze in the dark so Californians can drive their EVs.
Sarcasm? Not exactly. California already imports around a third of its electricity from other states. Going 100% EV would require about 5x the existing available power (per the last figures I recall).
And, you are right. Truly successful ideas and tech need not be mandated; people flock to it in droves.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Touché) by weirsbaski on Friday August 26 2022, @08:14PM (5 children)
And about two-thirds of California's gasoline is refined from out-of-state crude oil. So if the electricity is a problem, this is twice the problem, right?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday August 26 2022, @09:04PM (4 children)
And California shouldn't need to import much of anything, but it's nimby'd itself into dependency on other states.
So yeah, it's a broader problem than just power for EVs.
Here's an idea: if they mandate EVs-only, they should have to entirely supply their own electricity to handle charging 'em. Because their folly should not be everyone else's problem.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday August 27 2022, @05:53PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 27 2022, @07:03PM (2 children)
There is that, but the day is coming when we Deplorable Dirt People will need our own resources, and then what will California do??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday August 27 2022, @10:44PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 27 2022, @10:53PM
Yep, I think that's a likely scenario. Of course there's no reason both can't happen simultaneously.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by darkfeline on Friday August 26 2022, @12:47AM (21 children)
What do you expect to happen when this passes?
Black market for ICE vehicles? Import loophole?
What happens to people who can't afford Teslas and/or don't have access to chargers?
I can't wait to see how this turns out if it passes. I'll need to pre-stock the popcorn just in case.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by helel on Friday August 26 2022, @01:09AM (16 children)
I expect the same thing to happen that happened when they mandated emission standards. That is to say nobody in California will be able to purchase a car at all and the whole state will go back to horse and buggy. Orrrrrrr the government mandate will force manufacturers to invest in newer tech, forcing the economy of scale that doesn't exist for a small number of specialty Teslas, thus making electric cars cheeper for everyone both in and out of California.
One of those two.
(Score: 2, Troll) by khallow on Friday August 26 2022, @02:26AM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by helel on Friday August 26 2022, @02:36AM (4 children)
You want to put money to that bet?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 26 2022, @04:22AM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday August 26 2022, @09:14PM (2 children)
Actually, that no longer works, and hasn't in at least 30 years.
Used to be tons of Texas plates in CA, because Texas registration was $10/year, while California's was in the mid-3-figures or even higher (plus if you drive a pickup, you additionally pay commercial ie. 18 wheeler weight charges**, even if it's a mini truck). Now you don't see any Texas plates. Why? They cracked down on out of state registration. Just having a TX plate was grounds for being stopped. Texas plate + CA address = big fine. "Oh, I just moved here" -- nope, 30 days and then a late fine for not getting new plates, plus they can easily check your prior DMV and other records.
** That happened because there was a ballot initiative to "make truckers pay their fair share" while neglecting to notice that ALL trucks of ANY size are "commercial" in CA. Many a twit who voted to screw over truckers was astonished when their next renewal was several times larger than before. (Mine went from $34 to $138 for a middle-aged light pickup; this was back in the 1980s.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 27 2022, @12:57AM (1 child)
Someone has to enforce it first. What's California's record [policygenius.com] on uninsured drivers again? 16.6% of California drivers are uninsured. Hmmm.
When it boils down to maintaining the ability to drive rather than just saving a relatively small fee, they'll find a way. Maybe you're right, maybe it won't be via out of state registration, but I believe something will happen.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 27 2022, @01:35AM
Uninsured drivers don't drive around with a sign on the outside of their vehicle announcing that they're probably in violation of the law, as a TX plate effectively does.
When they started enforcing in-state registrations, TX plates went from perhaps 10% to zilch within a year.
Anyway, yeah, whatever they do, people will look for ways around it, and some will succeed. At least for a while.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Funny) by deimtee on Friday August 26 2022, @05:49AM
Nah, you just put a 20KW diesel generator on a trailer and tow it around behind you.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by darkfeline on Friday August 26 2022, @03:50AM (8 children)
Interesting thing about the tech for the emission standards. It turns out catalytic converters are just a small thing. They don't add too much cost or affect car design too much. But they are valuable enough to be worth stealing, and that fact has been increasingly noticed in recent years. People have thus been increasingly driving around without them after such theft. It's not legal, but what are you going to do? It also turns out that getting replacements has grown increasingly difficult in recent years. People can't afford them. Odd coincidence, that.
For better or worse, replacing the entire drive system for a vehicle is not a sensible comparison. Well, the last thing Tesla owners need is people cutting out the batteries in 30 seconds to sell off.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by helel on Friday August 26 2022, @04:03AM (7 children)
If you've got the talent to pull EV batteries in 30 seconds you'll make a heck of a lot more money in an auto shop than you ever could flipping old batteries for scrap.
(Score: 2) by Username on Friday August 26 2022, @07:54AM (1 child)
So a guy that's good at pulling out peoples organs in 30 seconds should be a doctor? I wouldn't go to that doctor. That logic doesn't make sense.
Nobody is scrapping battery cells. They sell them as is. Crack heads don't steal phones to sell them as scrap plastic, nor would I want them to repair my electronics.
It looks like you've never been poor or associated with poor people. Just because something isn't brand new doesn't make it scrap or unusable.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday August 26 2022, @09:28PM
There exists a demo vid of a car being stripped on the street, with just the tools one can conveniently carry. It was amazing how much of the car disappeared in two minutes flat.
Methinks in some areas this will devolve to modern-day Lincoln Park Pirates.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday August 26 2022, @09:22PM (4 children)
Some social worker figured out that one of her 'homeless' clients made over $100k per year via theft (and used all of it to support his drug habit). Now, one could argue that such 'talent' should be redirected, but fact is thieves are thieves and would rather not do real work, even if it's 1) less actual work, and 2) pays better. (And 3, most of 'em can't stay reliable long enough at a stretch to keep a job.)
And there are chop shops all over California, and recycle yards that may require your ID for oft-stolen metals (notably copper) but have absolutely no way to know that you're not recycling batteries from a shop, and certainly prefer plausible deniability and a steady income stream to being strict about sources. So long as there's no serial number on it, they'll take it.
So methinks the only reason EV-battery theft hasn't become a Thing, is because EVs are still mostly the province of gated communities. But once they're in front of everyone's house, the "recycling" possibilities expand apace.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by speederaser on Saturday August 27 2022, @05:41PM (3 children)
As someone who owns a Tesla, battery theft is the last thing I'm worried about. I've been all over that car and the battery is basically built into the car. It forms part of the structure. It would take a heroic effort to remove it, much more difficult than, say, swapping an engine in an ICE car.
Thieves that steal catalytic converters prefer tall vehicles like SUVs and pickups so they don't have to jack them up first. Teslas are so low to the ground they require jacking for anything, and jacking up a Tesla the right way requires the key to set the car in tow/jack mode. The Tesla leveling system is ALWAYS active unless you do this, even when it's "off". The car trying to level itself during a jacking operation could lead to the car falling off the jack. Very dangerous.
Not to mention, the batteries are powerful enough to kill anyone that touches it the wrong way.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 27 2022, @05:58PM (2 children)
Teslas are not the only EVs, and not all have those fancy features.
And if they're that difficult, but sufficiently valuable, you can bet someone will figure it out.
And yeah, these thieves could make a good living putting their talents to better use, but that's not what thieves do.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by speederaser on Sunday August 28 2022, @12:44AM (1 child)
I forgot to mention that the battery weighs ~1200 lbs. and is awkwardly shaped. Thieves have already figured it out - don't bother stealing EV batteries. Stealing the whole car is much easier, though still difficult.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday August 28 2022, @12:48AM
And the chop shops are already used to dealing with whole cars.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2022, @01:14AM (3 children)
Didn't CA enact some other rules on zero/low emission vehicles in the past? I've forgotten details, I think there was also a mandate that every manufacturer had to sell some % of battery electric cars by some date. All those deadlines have past and not become reality. CA and CARB will get some headlines from this latest ruling, but the reality of the market will determine what actually happens in ~13 years.
Somewhere recently I read a story about the reality of living in a bad part of town--basically anything left outdoors that had scrap value was stolen over night and often found at a nearby recycling center. This is what happens in poor neighborhoods. The assumption was that if you recharged your BEV outdoors (no garage), the extension cord would be stolen overnight for the copper content. Not much point in owning an electric car under those conditions, since charging at home is by far the most common approach. As I understand it, public chargers are usually used when away from one's local area, and/or when a fast charge is needed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Spamalope on Friday August 26 2022, @02:00AM
That's assuming you have a house. When you have an apartment without assigned parking and no charging facility what are you supposed to do? Are we still pretending CA didn't have rolling blackouts in the recent past? Speaking of apartment dwellers, used $8k cars needing 20k battery packs is a problem. This destroys the inexpensive used car market. Maybe the politicians can tell those folks to stop being poor.
Meanwhile, the lower middle class neighborhoods near me have 3-5 cars each. (parents + teenagers or young adults who can't afford to move out) What electrical service is needed to fast charge that many? That's not even going to be possible for most places, is it? (I'm assuming that if you've got 100-150 amp service, 300 amp service isn't supported by the utility's lines to your address most likely)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2022, @03:02AM (1 child)
I thought I read that this was banning the sale of 100% ICE cars, so hybrids would still be fine.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday August 26 2022, @04:28AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Vocal Minority on Friday August 26 2022, @05:15AM (2 children)
I really, really don't like this idea that the government should outright ban something in cases where there is a reasonable alternative. I'm sure that there is a level of regulatory burden that would discourage most motorists from buying cars with ICEs but still allow them to be available to a small number of enthusiasts. You Merkins do pay car registration and such like? Just up the fees for running ICEs.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Username on Friday August 26 2022, @08:10AM (1 child)
They're not going to ban them. That's why the ban comes into effect in 2035 and not now when the politician currently holds office. Kicking the can down the road.
They'll never have the infrastructure to charge that many electric cars if everyone switches. That's doubling the electric power usage of every resident in a state that currently has roving brown outs/black outs due to lack of power plants.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2022, @10:08AM
It was codified into law. It can be removed as well.
All it takes is a sufficiently pissed off public.
Politicians will see their political career end of they don't. Not only that, it will likely end the political career of any other politician caught fraternizing with it. Guilty by association.
They tried it before. With Alcohol.
All it did was fund an immense underworld of those skirting the law, as well as foment a disrespect for the law.
If nothing else, "jury nullification".
If you ever find yourself on the jury for a copyright case, keep this in mind. A jury can find a law itself unjust and have the whole thing nullified, so I have been told.
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=jury%20nullification [duckduckgo.com]