By Ronald Stein
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Irvine, California
With half of the EV’s in the entire country being located in California, the recent 2021 California study may be a downer for the EV excitement as it shows that EV’s are driven half as much as internal combustion engine vehicles. The study illustrates that EV’s are generally second vehicles and not the primary workhorse vehicle for those few elites that can afford them.
To date, zero and low emission vehicles are generally from the hybrid and electric car owners which are a scholarly bunch; over 70 percent of EV owners have a four-year college or post-graduate degree. This likely explains why the average household income of EV purchasers is upwards of $200,000.
If you are not in that higher educated echelon and the high-income range of society, and a homeowner or resident of a NEW apartment that has charging access there may not be an appetite for an EV. EV’s have yet to attain the status of being the family’s primary vehicle workhorse with their limited usage.
Another challenge for the EV growth is the EV charging dependence on intermittent electricity from wind and solar. Adding EV charging loads onto the grid that is becoming more unstable is like putting salt in the wound. Power outages are now commonplace in California and Texas with more to follow throughout the nation as we adjust to a life dependent upon the time of day and the weather.
The highly educated, and well compensated EV owners that take advantage of State and Federal subsidies are sparingly using their “green” vehicles. With them setting the pace, how will the middle-income and those on fixed incomes be able to buy into the EV evolution?
The California EV market is looking for the less fortunate to belly up and join the EV train. That may prove to be a financial challenge with 45 percent of the California population – that’s a whopping 18 of the 40 million residents of the state – being Hispanic and African American – having average incomes of less than half of present EV owners. Additionally, California has the highest homeless population which is the fifth largest percentage of homeless (behind D.C., New York, and Hawaii, and Oregon), and has the second highest poverty rate.
The unintended consequences Governor Newsom’s recent Executive order to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 may be an incentive for those least likely being able to afford a new car, or a second car, to continuously re-register their existing internal combustion vehicles.
Governor Newsom may have forgotten that whatever type of vehicles uses the roads, there are huge funding requirements for both California’s transportation infrastructure, and for the numerous environmental compliance programs that have come from the gas pumps. The state and federal subsidies help lower the price of EV’s, but EV owners do not pay any gas taxes for California’s almost 400,000 miles of roadways that are heavily dependent on road taxes from fuels that contribute more than $7 billion annually, the same tax base that will be diminishing in the decades ahead.
EV buyers hope to save from the cost of fuels as the all-in posted price of fuel at the pump includes non-transparent costs added to the actual fuel costs, such as: federal tax, excise tax, state tax, local sales tax, cap and trade program compliance costs, low-carbon fuel standard program compliance costs, and renewable fuels standard program compliance costs.
California’s Newsom may also have forgotten that his own Democrats overwhelmingly defeated Senator John Moorlach’s sponsored SB 1074 in 2018 “Disclosure of government-imposed costs” at the pump. The Supermajority Democrats in the legislature remain content with non-transparency of the numerous costs that are “dumped” onto the posted price of fuel, as they are content with keeping the public blissfully ignorant of the many taxes and regulatory costs that drive up prices, to the point that Californians continue to pay almost $1.00 more per gallon of fuel than the rest of the country. An Exxon gas station recently expressed their “transparency opinion” at the pump.
EV buyers beware that the “tax equalizer”, the “VMT” is coming. The Vehicle Mileage Tax (VMT) that has been discussed for years sounds like a logical idea – requiring the users of the highways to pay the fees to maintain those highways. The VMT tax will be needed to replace the $7 billion annually from fuel sales that will be diminishing in the decades ahead.
The challenge for a VMT will be how to implement that great idea which may require annual odometer readings! Lookout for Governor Newsom’s next Executive Order for a VMT requiring annual odometer readings so that each person pays their fair share to maintain the roads they are using to replace the diminishing fuel taxes!
In the United States there were17 million vehicles of all types sold in 2019. EV sales were a dismal 2 percent of the total, i.e., about 350 thousand. California new car sales were more than 10 percent of the nation as California vehicle sales have exceeded 2 million for three straight years.
In a recent Los Angeles Times article, citing Edmunds data, The number of battery-electric models available more than doubled from 2018 to 2019, but EV sales budged in the wrong direction. In response to the major efforts by manufacturers, the horrific EV sales data shows that only 325,000 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles were sold in the U.S. in 2019, down from 349,000 in 2018. As mentioned previously, half of all EV’s in America are in one state – California. The rest of the country seems to be less enthralled with EV’s. Are EV carmakers driving off a cliff?”
If the California trend of EV’s being low mileage driven second vehicles, and not being the family workhorse vehicles for the higher income owners, when and how will the lower income earners join the EV excitement?
Ronald Stein, P.E. Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure
http://www.energyliteracy.net/
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I look forward to the day when we are fossil fuel free and people are forced to drive on Belgian Block and Wood Corduroy roads. Can’t have cement or asphalt after all. Asphalt comes from oil and you need coal to make cement.
“…how will the lower income earners join the EV excitement?”
They won’t. That’s a feature and not a bug for the Progressive elite who have tired of the riff-raff clogging up the highways and overrunning their favorite destinations. They’ll raise taxes for more mass transit for those people.
If you want to buy a brick, then buy an EV which has zero resale value when the battery dies.
“EV’s not family workhorses, but short range second cars”
Tell me about it! My son bought a Tesla and has asked my wife for one of our gasoline powered vehicles whenever he drives out of town. His wife finally bought a practical gas powered Audi SUV for their primary vehicle.
The only way to make an electric vehicle practical would be to add generators that charge partitioned batteries while the wheels are in motion.
Normally I would say go for it and leave me out of it, but in this case we as taxpayers are paying for tax credits for EVs and more credits for overpriced rooftop solar installations using Chinese panels made with parts from forced labor camps. So we can’t be conscientious objectors to the Climate Wars.
Sort of of topic but at least car related. I called the driveway coating company who owes me a response to schedule my driveway coating job, and you know what he said? “We won’t start to start scheduling until May so I will circle back at that time.” I blew up, “Circle back”?! That’s what Biden’s press secretary says and it means you won’t ever get an answer, so why don’t you use another figure of speech that won’t piss your customers off.”
Here is an interesting tidbit “In addition to giving a 50 percent battery life increase, Tesla also announced that it will be bundled with solar products from now on.
“Starting next week, Tesla Solar Panels & Solar Roof will only be sold as an integrated product with Tesla Powerwall battery,” Musk tweeted. “Solar power will feed exclusively to Powerwall. Powerwall will interface only between utility meter & house main breaker panel, enabling super simple install & seamless whole house backup during utility dropouts,” another tweet read.” … https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/energy/549838-elon-musk-is-increasing-teslas-powerwall-power
If an EV was a good idea I would own one. Comparing one bad choice to another does not make it a good choice.
“still city air is crappy”
So where do you live China?
‘Good Air Quality’ has a rigorous air definition. US cities have been there for 20 years long before the current EV fad. airnow.gov
I am old enough to remember bad air quality. So some idiot coroner ruled that a 93 old woman was killed by pollution based on junk science. She died of old age fool. If air pollution was going to kill her she would not have made past 2.
SPR is a methodology for effects of air pollution. What is the source of pollution and the pathway to the receptor.
I have seen some really bad air quality the last few years. Smoke from wildfires cut visibility to less than a quarter mile where I was in Washington State.
If you want to claim EV solve pollution, first state what the level of pollution is. Then state what the source is. Then show how an EV will fix that.
EV = EEV (elsewhere emission vehicle)
About 40% of EVs are hybrid gas/electric. Everyone I know who has one just outs gas in it….they don’t plug-in.
To date, I have seen only 2 Teslas, ever, on the road.
…puts gas….
I see Teslas regularly on I 15 between Utah and Las Vegas, at least one almost every trip, I don’t travel at the same time every trip so I would think different cars.
Of course it is a heavily traveled road.
Drake ==> Well, Teslas certainly haven’t had the rapid uptake that the Minis did . . .
One of the more recent reasons for buying an EV is that they will save you money in the long run. This was based on driving 15k miles a year and the difference in the price of gas and electricity.
According to the study, EV are being used 5k miles a year.
Got to love the justifications men give their wives for buying a status symbol.
Nobody really wants an EV. The batteries burn in a crash, the range is limited, fueling stations are limited and take forever, batteries need to be replaced eventually and nobody but the dealer knows how to work on them.
The subject of EVs always seems to generate a lot of heated comments on both sides. Leaving aside for the moment all the issues around subsidies and mandates, let’s take a sober view of the practical utility of EVs for owners:
Benefits:
Drawbacks:
None of this will dissuade people who believe in EVs, and this is to be expected. Carmakers have always advertised cars using emotional appeal, and a large part of the public responds to it even as they know the appeal is false:
Pretending you are only using “green” electrons to charge your EV is delusion; it only means you are forcing your neighbors to use proportionally more “dirty” electrons to do their laundry. The total electric demand will be filled from the total available generation mix regardless of accounting sleight-of-hand. If you didn’t buy an EV, your neighbors would all be proportionally “greener”. How can you feel virtuous when your choice has forced your neighbors into greater sin?
But if you want to buy an EV for whatever reason, go right ahead; I won’t mock you. Just don’t claim that EVs fill the same spectrum of needs currently supplied by ICVs, or that they will make any detectable difference in global CO2 emissions.
Coming back to the issue of subsidies; with EVs like everything else they distort the market and skew decision-making. The society as a whole spends a given amount annually in exchange for a certain value in personal transportation. To the extent subsidies cause people to spend more total dollars (their own plus the subsidy) to get the same or lesser transportation value, we have as a society become poorer by the difference.
Tesla batteries are so good tesla won’t share the info on failures, fires etc <sarc>
Tesla does not share info on other things about the cars with independent certified mechanics unlike any other brand and industry standard
Several thoughts here:
1) You are exactly right about the second car as EV in urban areas for the wealthy (and where the main voter target base is)
2) As in the current marketplace, low income buyers are going to get shafted with lower quality models and lower reliability which in this case is going to mean battery fires like Chevy Bolt.
3) Any major pull back by the buying public once EVs ramp up is going to send GM back to bankruptcy and bailout. It’s possible we could see another major round of U.S. capacity contraction while Biden is touting battery jobs etc. at other locations.
4) The insurance market is here to serve you with overcharges for lower mile usage EVs.
Alan Watt:
Nice post.
Here is a 2019 MIT review of EV [Tesla] vs ICE [Toyota Camry] that looks at the costs of the full life-cycle of the vehicles: from mining the materials, maintenance, to recycling the car at end-of-life. It did not include EV purchase subsides or battery replacement.
https://energy.mit.edu/insightsintofuturemobility
Bottom line: they thoiught it would be ~10 years or so before a EV would be cost effective to a comparatively equiped ICE. Mainly due to the cost of the battery.
I just printed and taped to my kitchen fridge the LLNL Energy Flow Chart for 2020…anybody talking about “net zero carbon” (?) without a moonshot-level expansion of nuclear doesn’t have the best interests of Americans, or humanity, at heart.
The main impact of EVs is going to be in the luxury car market where the only domestic U.S. exposure is Cadillac. GM has already deflected the news of a significant number of Cadillac dealers dropping their commitment to continue into the EV plan. Those dealers who press on will regret that decision. The non-luxury market will have large numbers of lower quality models with higher defect rates and battery fires. Get ready for more car fire stories on the list of unintended consequences.
Get ready for the flood of compact EVs imported from China by GM for the low end of the market while VW ramps up the volume of EV VW Rabbit equivalents. I guess we will count union dock workers as new jobs by Biden Harris.