The numbers don’t pencil out for the future where just 25% of cars in California would be electric.
On September 23, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that will ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars in the Golden State by 2035. Ignoring the hard lessons of this past summer, when California’s solar- and wind-reliant electric grid underwent rolling blackouts, Newsom now adds a huge new burden to the grid in the form electric vehicle charging. If California officials follow through and enforce Newsom’s order, the result will be a green new car version of a train wreck.
Let’s run some numbers. According to Statista, there are more than 15 million vehicles registered in California. Per the U.S. Department of Energy, there are only 256,000 electric vehicles registered in the state—just 1.7 percent of all vehicles.
Using the Tesla Model3 mid-range model as a baseline for an electric car, you’ll need to use about 62 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of power to charge a standard range Model 3 battery to full capacity. It will take about eight hours to fully charge it at home using the standard Tesla NEMA 14-50 charger.
Now, let’s assume that by 2040, five years after the mandate takes effect, also assuming no major increase in the number of total vehicles, California manages to increase the number of electric vehicles to 25 percent of the total vehicles in the state. If each vehicle needs an average of 62 kilowatt-hours for a full charge, then the total charging power required daily would be 3,750,000 x 62 KWh, which equals 232,500,000 KWh, or 232.5 gigawatt-hours (GWh) daily.
Utility-scale California solar electric generation according to the energy.ca.gov puts utility-scale solar generation at about 30,000 GWh per year currently. Divide that by 365 days and we get 80 GWh/day, predicted to double, to 160 GWh /day. Even if we add homeowner rooftop solar, about half the utility-scale, at 40 GWh/day we come up to 200 GW/h per day, still 32 GWh short of the charging demand for a 25% electric car fleet in California. Even if rooftop solar doubles by 2040, we are at break-even, with 240GWh of production during the day.
Bottom-line, under the most optimistic best-case scenario, where solar operates at 100% of rated capacity (it seldom does), it would take every single bit of the 2040 utility-scale solar and rooftop capacity just to charge the cars during the day. That leaves nothing left for air conditioning, appliances, lighting, etc. It would all go to charging the cars, and that’s during the day when solar production peaks.
But there’s a much bigger problem. Even a grade-schooler can figure out that solar energy doesn’t work at night, when most electric vehicles will be charging at homes. So, where does Newsom think all this extra electric power is going to come from?
The wind? Wind power lags even further behind solar power. According to energy.gov, as of 2019, California had installed just 5.9 gigawatts of wind power generating capacity. This is because you need large amounts of land for wind farms, and not every place is suitable for high-return wind power.
In 2040, to keep the lights on with 25 percent of all vehicles in California being electric, while maintaining the state mandate requiring all the state’s electricity to come from carbon-free resources by 2045, California would have to blanket the entire state with solar and wind farms. It’s an impossible scenario. And the problem of intermittent power and rolling blackouts would become much worse.
And it isn’t just me saying this. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agrees. In a letter sent by EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to Gavin Newsom on September 28, Wheeler wrote:
“[It] begs the question of how you expect to run an electric car fleet that will come with significant increases in electricity demand, when you can’t even keep the lights on today.
“The truth is that if the state were driving 100 percent electric vehicles today, the state would be dealing with even worse power shortages than the ones that have already caused a series of otherwise preventable environmental and public health consequences.”
California’s green new car wreck looms large on the horizon. Worse, can you imagine electric car owners’ nightmares when California power companies shut off the power for safety reasons during fire season? Try evacuating in your electric car when it has a dead battery.
Gavin Newsom’s “no more gasoline cars sold by 2035” edict isn’t practical, sustainable, or sensible. But isn’t that what we’ve come to expect with any and all of these Green New Deal-lite schemes?
I acknowledge the help of Willis Eschenbach in checking the numbers for this article.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. He is also an owner of an electric vehicle in California.
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New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act has a target of a 40% reduction of GHG emissions by 2030 for all sectors including transportation. New York has about 11 million vehicles registered so to get a 40% reduction about 5 million will have to be zero emitting by 2030. As of August 2, 2020 there are 53,859 zero-emitting vehicles. I will see California’s looming car wreck and raise you a New York inevitable catastrophic car wreck
Won’t be a problem. By 2035, the middle-class in California that does most of the driving will be gone; either moved away for a better standard of living and jobs elsewhere, or simply absorbed into the lower class that will be packed in cities and won’t need a car anyway.
The man is stupid, his staff must be stupid too. A limit of one gas powered car per household and as many electrics as you want is a little more reasonable, but not a state-wide mandate, leave it up to local government. That along with nuclear power for the grid just might make a decent world to live in. But that isn’t what left-wing liberal Democrats want.
I understand it will only ban sales of ICE vehicles in CA. Bye bye auto industry with associated sales tax and show rooms and support personnel and hello to windfall in Nevada, Arizona, and Oregon auto industry. This alone will stop the edict.
Uh, that’s the governor of CA? He looks like a clueless adult-kid that lives in mommy’s basement.
There is another alternative which is ammonia fuel. If you like your internal combustion engine car, you can keep your internal combustion engine car.
Saudi Arabia has just shipped a bunch of blue ammonia to Japan for use in power generators. It’s called blue because, although it is made with fossil fuels, the carbon is sequestered so there are no CO2 emissions. link
The reason some people like ammonia is that it means they don’t have to change things. In this case, Saudi Arabia can continue to pump oil and still claim to be climate friendly. The shipping industry likes ammonia because it burns in their giant diesel engines. ie. They won’t have to make ruinous modifications to their ships or their business models.
Ammonia lets people go along the way they were going and only actually switch to away from fossil fuels if and when they are forced to do so.
Work on about 16Kwhrs plug to wheel average per 100 kms (60miles) per car and in Oz the average annual kms travelled is 15000kms so maybe 10000 miles for the US? Then with the number of cars you’ll get an idea of the firm power required.
You don’t have solar at night and getting rid of fossil fuels means no off peak at night like coal. So that kills the benefits of overnight home charging so you’d have to have charging at work or commuter carparking to use the midday solar duck curve with super chargers. Copper miners start digging now.
Besides savvy homeowners would quickly learn to use their solar for electric hot water and aircon as the most economic form of storage with uniformly priced power-
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/divert-solar-air-conditioning/
Fantasy and we need any increase in lithium production for doomster medication-
https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/lithium
Gavin Newsom should at least modify this less than thought out proposal to ban all ICE vehicles by 2035, to a Plug In Hybrid (PHEV) version of the EO, that allows for a very efficient use of a smaller ICE engine to assist in charging and traction to the wheels, but still get the benefit of having available the advantages of pure EV power for a majority of trips. I would never ever buy a pure EV unless it was a golf cart, so having this transition to PHEV for 20-30 years would resolve all of these problems with everything including cold weather issues. The PHEV will still be majority run in EV mode with batteries for a shorter 40-50 miles range but have the capability of a full ICE and unlimited range. A pure EV is a disaster waiting to happen on a society scale, when push comes to shove and there is an emergency and the power is out for any reason. Or everyone is on the road at once…think of any evacuation for a forest fire, or hurricane and everyone stuck at once. Complete disaster waiting to happen.
The Toyota RAV4 Prime with 302 HP combined powertrain that is almost as fast as a Ferrari 0-60 MPH is looking like a real winner from a PHEV perspective. Has the full advantages and best of both worlds. Put a 15 Amp (1800 watt) household inverter on the battery for a back up electricity supply for off grid, or when the ice storm/hurricane arrives and you can stay at home with a priority load controller for the furnace fan, fridge/freezer and TV/Internet working, and people will be beating a path to buy these. I have a downpayment on one, but they are so in demand, most people can’t buy one and there is now a two year waiting list. China withheld a lot of rare earth elements to Japan in their trade conflict the last few years, so has curtailed their production of EV’s somewhat for now.
“A pure EV is a disaster waiting to happen on a society scale, when push comes to shove and there is an emergency and the power is out for any reason. Or everyone is on the road at once…think of any evacuation for a forest fire, or hurricane and everyone stuck at once. Complete disaster waiting to happen.”
At least with a stalled ICE vehicle you can haul gas to it in order to get it out of the way? How do you haul electricity to a dead EV?
I agree a PHEV is a partial answer but what do you do when you want to pull your 24foot trailer to the lake 100 miles away? I wouldn’t plan on using a RAV4! If you have to have a second vehicle even the PHEV looks a whole lot less attractive.
I still say Newsome and the Dems are going to get shot down on this one. Vehicles are an interstate commodity just like wheat. And no state can ban interstate commerce, that is solely the purview of the federal government. The first time an auto dealer imports a new out-of-state Ford 250 pickup into CA in order to sell it and CA tries to interfere the new conservative Supreme Court is going to slap them down.
Assuming the Democrats are still in in control of California by 2035, they will raise the carbon/fuel taxes on fossil fuels to artificially make the cost so expensive that people won’t be able to afford to have an ICE vehicle on the road in Kali. While interstate commerce is protected under the constitution, they can implement other ignorant measures to throw roadblocks in the way of federal regulations. And tie things up in court indefinitely. Or just make the vehicle inspection process so erroneous that you can’t pass for a clean air policy defect on an older ICE vehicle. If they are determined to commit collective suicide, not much anyone can do.
The only option is to vote these shiesters out of office but that won’t likely happen either, with the demographics also shifting, especially in California. Probably a lot of middle class will just up and leave the Golden state and Californize the rest of the Union. I think we might be witnessing the demise of America as we once knew it, which is the stated agenda of a lot of anarchist groups like BLM and Antifa forces which the Democrats openly support. The Russians and Chicoms must be rubbing their hands in glee as they watch the West implode with socialistic/marxist philosophy behind it all. As Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev declared when he said in 1960 at the UN, that they would bury us without firing a shot.
I am truly hoping we won’t see any Caiforiazation here. Unless they like country music and their vision of entertainment is attending something like the Country Stampede, the local county fair, or the state there isn’t much here to attract them. It’s pretty much the same from TX north to the Canadian border.
Part of the problem with America today is too many people who consider themselves “elites” living in the lap of luxury and not having any idea how that luxury comes about. Even the poor have cell phones, air conditioning, and heat in the winter and no idea how any of it works! Meat comes from the grocery store and not from someone standing knee deep in cow guts. But OMG we got to have our free stuff! And the politicians are happy to promise the free stuff because most of them don’t know how anything works either or where it comes from either!
Here in the UK our crackpot politicians are going one better and banning the sale of petrol or diesel cars by 2030. They’ve no idea where ‘the electric’ will come from (does it grow on trees?) or those nasty chemicals required to manufacture batteries (probably grow on trees as well?). You have to pinch yourself sometimes to prove this isn’t some sort of bad dream. Has someone perfected the ultimate ‘stupid virus’ and infected politicians round the world?
Never fear, Goldberg Engineering has been awarded the contract from the state and will design an elaborate system of batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and long term contracts with out of state fossil power plants to ensure the Big Green Machine rolls forward…
Is Rube running that company?
Cal’s Democrats are all Rubes.
My fleet of used Toyotas just got more valuable. Right Scotty?
I predict an electric car and a big used SUV in every Hollywood driveway. This will replace the Prius and the big SUV today. Of course the plane at the airport is exempt along with the yacht at the marina and the part interest in a limo business.
California car mechanics rejoice … Used car salesmen are not far behind …
I would expect runs on electricity to occur ahead of every forecasted heatwave, storm or cold snap. Just like the run on toilet paper with C-19, people will want to hoard power to ensure their EVs are fully charged at all times, particularly if they feel threatened. The grid demand will be extremely peaky.
The demand calculations need to also consider the EV trucking fleet and when they will be recharging. EV reefer semis hauling perishables such as produce and frozen mean are going to use a lot of watts. Some portion of these trucks will likely be charging at all hours.
Can you imagine what the power demand will be at the large truck stops where the rigs park overnight? I’ve seen some with over 50 rigs lined up, running their engines all night to keep the refrigeration units going.
If this move by Newsom can be challenged by a proposition, I hope it does and overrides it.
will ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars in the Golden State by 2035
Banning new ice cars is one thing, but there is the second-hand marke to considert. Cars can last quite a long time if they are well maintained.
Perhaps California can buy them all up?
California claims to have met its goal of 33% of power from renewables. They raised the target to 50% and are talking about shooting for 100%.
Now let’s look at reality. I grabbed the numbers from CAISO at 6:00pm last night. I chose 6:00pm because that’s roughly when demand peaks at this time of year.
Around 23.8 GW (56%) from Natural Gas
Around 9.8 GW (23%) from Imports
Around 3.4 GW (8%) from Large Hydro
Around 3.0 GW (7%) from Renewables
Around 2.0 WG (5%) from Nuclear (that would be Diablo Canyon which they’re planning to close)
We typically have around 10 GW of solar in the middle of the day. When that falls off a cliff in the evening, we import 10 GW of power to see is through until the following morning.
Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom and friends are just flat out lying about the viability of wind and solar.
And all this is to control global temperature in 2100? Good luck with that.
And who is going to pay for subsidizing all these EV’s? Add on the extra cost of even buying a subsidized EV and paying the subsidy in your taxes, the high cost of renewable energy, the taxes to subsidize the infrastructure for the renewables, the cost of infrastructure for charging stations (possibly millions of stations), higher taxes to substitute for the loss of road tax revenue on gasoline sales, etc. and you end up with a pretty poor and pissed off electorate.
I foresee a revolution starting in California that will end up consuming the nation.
Boy Newsom is making that speech while standing in front of 4 EVs. I can see thaa one is an Audi, and 2 are Teslas.
The Audi etron EV has for 2021 a base starting price of $67,000.
The model 3 Tesla base price is $35,500 but very few are made at that price. Most start at $45K.
The model S starting base price for the lowest KWh model is $76,000.
Based on the huge number of $15,000 Hyundais and other “value” brand new cars on Cal’s roads today, there’s a real disconnect with economic reality going on there. The Democrats depend on the low wage voter in Cal to keep them in office. Seems to me the lower income, barely middle class voter in Cal voting Democrat are voting against their own self interests.
Joel, I agree with the thrust of your post, but take issue with your statement “The Democrats depend on the low wage voter in Cal to keep them in office.”
That is largely true, but IMHO they depend equally on high wage liberal voters (e.g., entertainment stars and related mucky-mucks, some business men/women dependent on state government largesse and favorable “issue” legislation, advocates for open border immigration, most academicians, etc.) . . . it is these people that willingly cough up the money to support the continuing elections of Democrats.
The high earner white Libs are the ones driving the Tesla Models S, X and Audi e-tron EV’s at $80K – $130K a pop. They never think these climate scam policies will adversely affect them, that is until the lights and A/C on a summer night can’t stay on reliably.
That’s a problem certainly set to get worse in California.
“..Gavin Newsom’s “no more gasoline cars sold by 2035” edict isn’t practical, sustainable, or sensible…”
Insane or nuts are better words for it.
I also doubt that it is legal. We’ll see what happens.
As a retired electricity planning engineer from Australia where these things have actually been thought about:
– Daily peak demand is unlikely to have a major impact on the grid given the time frames involved. EV’s are parked somewhere during the day and will be charged then: probably using wireless charging through resonance circuits.
– Again, given the time frames involved it is highly likely that the charging circuits will have sufficient smarts that they will refuse to charge at times when the Electricity Distribution Companies cannot support the demand. EV’s will simply have a lower priority than other domestic or public circuits. What this will do to public support for EV’s is a question that the polly’s haven’t thought through.
– There will need to be significant upgrades in older areas; especially in blocks of units sharing the same LV feeds. In places like Sydney this will become a major issue as non EV owners will be asked to pay for these upgrades by EV owners through body corporate fees.
– EV batteries will be used to support the grid over short term events (minutes to maybe 1 hour) which will reduce the short term unreliability of wind and solar. The technical term is FCAS. This is one of the few real benefits of EV’s.
In my opinion, the real problems with supporting large scale EV rollouts in most markets come from trying to satisfy seasonal power demands as these will be accentuated by the relatively constant nature of vehicle use. In some countries where long term energy storage is plentiful such as Norway and New Zealand through their hydro lakes this wont be much of an issue. However in countries where long term energy storage is relatively rare – such as the US and the U.K. good luck with getting sufficient generating capacity at an economic cost – especially if you are planning on using non dispatchable power such as PV and Wind.
Resonance circuits? Really? Are you a big fan of Tesla’s (the original) broadcast power, too? There’s no gain (pardon the pun) to be had over cabled charging since the transmitter still needs to be in close proximity to the receiver. In the end, it doesn’t matter. You can’t get all the GW-hr you need from the current system.
Elon doesn’t seem to be inclined to allow access to the battery packs-
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/tesla-unveils-new-ev-battery-design-but-musk-downplays-vehicle-to-grid-app/585723/
Hi Anthony,
I take issue with your numbers. Yes, the Tesla takes 62KWH to charge, but that yields perhaps 250 miles.
So, you should divide the charge amount by the amount of days the charge should last to yield the daily charge.
If you agree, I would be interested in the revised findings.
~El
It’s not even clear that Ravin’ Gavin’s executive order would even reduce CO2 emissions very much. If it takes 62 kWh (or 223 MJ) of electricity to recharge for a range of 192 miles (per Mike Smith), that’s about 1.16 MJ per mile.
If the electricity comes from natural gas, the heating value of methane is about 49 MJ/kg. If the overall efficiency of the power plant and transmission lines is about 30%, about 1.16 / 49 / 0.30 = 0.079 kg, or 79 grams of methane would have to be burned per mile, resulting in the emission of 79 / 16 * 44 = 217 g of CO2 per mile driven.
Most ICE cars can get at least 25 miles per gallon of gasoline, which has a density of roughly 2.8 kg/gallon, requiring the burning of 112 g of gasoline per mile driven. Gasoline contains about 85 wt% carbon, and burning 12 g of carbon produces 44 g of CO2, so that an ICE car emits 112 * 0.85 * 44/12 = 349 g CO2 / mile.
Using all-electric cars would reduce the CO2 emissions from driving by about 38%, but it would definitely increase the load on gas-fired power plants, and California already has problems providing enough power for the peak loads on hot summer afternoons (when hydro can’t provide much because the dams are dry).
If Ravin’ Gavin is worried about CO2 emissions, a better solution would be to mandate hybrid cars, which have a small gasoline engine which can charge the battery while braking, and the electric motor can be used alone for low-speed driving (and the gasoline engine turns off while stopped in traffic). I have a 2008 Toyota Prius hybrid which averages about 42 miles per gallon, meaning that its CO2 emissions (compared to a 25 mpg car) would be 349 * 25 / 42 = 208 g CO2 / mile, which is less than the CO2 emissions from the natural gas burned to produce electric power for a Tesla (217 g CO2 / mile).
And Ravin’ Gavin wouldn’t need any more power plants.
Anthony – even as an EV enthusiast, I am quite against government mandating what people can drive.
However I think you give a hostage to fortune when you say “If each vehicle needs an average of 62 kilowatt-hours for a full charge, then the total charging power required daily would be 3,750,000 x 62 KWh, which equals 232,500,000 KWh, or 232.5 gigawatt-hours (GWh) daily.”. 62 kw-hrs is about 250 miles. The average californian driver covers less than 40 miles a day – so we are talking about having to recharge a 62 kw-hr car littke more than once a week