From the New York Times:
E.P.A. Lays Out Rules to Turbocharge Sales of Electric Cars and Trucks
The Biden administration is proposing rules to ensure that two-thirds of new cars and a quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the United States by 2032 are all-electric.
The new rules would require nothing short of a revolution in the U.S. auto industry.
By Coral Davenport
April 12, 2023…The proposed tailpipe pollution limits for cars, first reported by The New York Times on Saturday, are designed to ensure that 67 percent of sales of new light-duty passenger vehicles, from sedans to pickup trucks, will be all-electric by 2032.
Additionally, 46 percent of sales of new medium-duty trucks, such as delivery vans, will be all-electric or use some other form of zero-emissions technology by the same year, according to the plan.
The E.P.A. also proposed a companion rule governing heavy-duty vehicles, designed so that half of new buses and a quarter of new heavy trucks sold, including eighteen-wheeler big rigs, would be all-electric by 2032. …
Sounds like more car crashes on the highways as you get stuck behind an electric 18 wheeler that suddenly drops from 65 mph to 20 mph on an upslope.
But at least one American citizen will benefit:
At least one American automaker, Tesla, is poised to emerge as a singular winner under the new rules because it produces only electric cars.
As a Southern Californian, there seems like plenty of otherwise useless desert (Southern California has unattractive desert compared to Arizona or Utah) between Los Angeles and Las Vegas to fill up with solar panels as they come down in price. In rainier, higher latitude parts of the country, well, I dunno where they are going to get the electricity.
Of course, California is full of environmental regulations, so Biden’s environmental regulation will soon run into roadblocks, much like the L.A. to S.F. high speed rail that idiot voters approved 15 years ago.
Another problem is that solar power is generated most around noon standard time, but most people expect to charge their car in their driveway overnight. The easiest way to store solar-generated electricity is to pump water uphill in the late morning and let it run downhill in the late afternoon and at night to generate hydroelectric power, but Southern California already does that with the aqueduct and it’s not clear where it would get the extra water to do much more of that.
There are plans dreams hopes of a new, much faster charging battery technology that would let you recharge around noon instead of overnight. Toyota and Ford have invested heavily in it. It would be really nice if it works.
In my neighborhood, I see a fair number of electric sedans in driveways. I don’t see too many families that have committed to two electric cars. It looks like typically Dad commutes 15 or 20 miles each way and then recharges the Tesla or BMW in the driveway overnight while mom drives a V-6 or V-8 SUV. Maybe they take the electric sedan to dinner on Ventura Blvd., but when they the kids to Mammoth for skiing, they take the gas-powered behemoth.
Having two electric cars would still work okay if you have a wide driveway and can install two chargers.
But what if you have a one-car driveway? What do you do if you don’t have a driveway?
From the Boston Globe:
It took 2½ years, 37 letters of support, an architect, and four city councilor endorsements.
By Mike Damiano, The Boston Globe
March 29, 2023
All Matt Malloy wanted was a place to charge his car. How hard could it be?
His first thought was to run an extension cable from his house in Dorchester and charge his car on the street. But the city nixed that idea, threatening to fine him.
It turns out that “you can’t drape a 50-amp line across the sidewalk and expect there to be no issues,” Malloy said.
So he pivoted to the idea of building a driveway. “For someone who has a driveway it’s relatively easy” to own an electric car, he said. “You buy a Level 2 charging station and you pay an electrician to come out and install it.”
Malloy, chief executive of Dorchester Brewing Co. and a former Zipcar executive, just had to persuade the city to let him cut the curb in front of his house and pave a small portion of his yard.
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| Dorchester Brewing Co. |
In other words, this guy is at about the 97th percentile at Getting Things Done. He knows all the politically correct buzzphrases. He’s got two huge BLM posters hanging on his multi-million dollar facility and a gay rainbow (but not trans) flag hanging out front. And the political process still was a nightmare for him.
In the end, it took 2½ years, 37 letters of support, the services of an architect, and the endorsement of four city councilors. Then, finally, on March 14, the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals authorized him to place 200 square feet of brick pavers in his front yard.
Malloy’s long campaign for a miniature driveway illustrates how the practical challenges of electric car ownership bump up against the state’s and the city’s ambitions to help residents trade in gas-powered cars for EVs.
“For city dwellers, the number one concern is, ‘Where am I going to charge?’ ” said Kyle Murray, the Massachusetts program director for the clean energy advocacy group Acadia Center.
The problem, Malloy said, is that there are few charging stations in his neighborhood and only one within a 3-mile radius that is a high-speed Level 3 charger. That lone high-speed station, he said, often has a long line, which makes relying on it impractical.
The vast majority of Boston’s chargers—most of them in parking garages—are slower Level 2 chargers that can take up to 10 hours to deliver a full charge. For Malloy, that would mean parking his car in a faraway garage to charge overnight—not a realistic option, he said. …
Oliver Sellers-Garcia, Boston’s first Green New Deal director, said the Wu administration wants to put an EV charging station within a 10-minute walk of every home by 2030.
Swell. One charging station within a 10 minute walk. And what happens when you drive up and somebody else has already taken it for the night?
Saying the quiet part out loud:
(Sellers-Garcia noted that the administration’s real transportation goal is to coax more residents to ditch cars entirely for public transit, walking, and cycling.)
In Cambridge, another persistent man—former city councilor Craig Kelley—is trying to change zoning rules so that homeowners can rent out the chargers they’ve installed in their garages or driveways to the public through an app. His petition has already failed twice—in 2018 and last year—but he said he believes he has mustered enough support for it to pass this year.
Daily life is going to get much more complicated.
Perhaps the most innovative effort was a pilot program run by Melrose and National Grid. In 2021, the electric utility company mounted 15 EV chargers on existing telephone poles—a lower-cost and less-intrusive way to install new stations.
Fifteen!
The program was such a success that National Grid petitioned the state Department of Public Utilities to roll out the program in 10 more towns. The department rejected the proposal, arguing that the widespread installation of pole-mounted chargers could discourage private companies from building their own charging infrastructure.
In December, the department approved a $400 million plan that will allow utilities to place a surcharge on electric bills to fund the installation of tens of thousands of EV chargers. The plan will take at least four years.
In the meantime, Malloy is taking matters into his own hands. He will soon break ground on his driveway, where he plans to park—and charge—a Ford Mach-E he plans to buy soon. Then he hopes to install solar panels to power the charger.
But there’s a hitch. His Victorian home has an unusual roof line with no large, flat surfaces. There are also regulatory hurdles related to the visibility of solar panels from the street. “Every solar company I’ve gone to so far has rejected my project. I’m going to have to bootstrap it again,” he said.
“So fingers crossed on that project.”
And then he’s going to realize Dorchester is in Boston and there’s practically no sun from November through February.
What it sounds like is that America in 2060 will look like Havana today, with a whole bunch of ancient gasoline powered cars being babied along by brilliant auto mechanics.
I saw the best minds of my generation channeled by Biden, honored, prosperous, thriving, fixing ancient cars in underground garages, eluding the EPA.
April is my first of three fundraisers per year. I’m a full-time professional writer, which is what lets me do what I do. But what I do doesn’t pay that well. For example, in June I’m doing my first paid speech in a decade. Leftist violence and cancellations by hotels afraid of leftist violence has kept me from public speaking. So, I rely on the generosity of my readers to let me keep going rather than getting a real job.
I really like getting money, so thanks in advance.
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