All EVs by 2035? Report Shows Roadblocks

January 25, 2021

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by David Ferris (E&E News) This study, an update by the California Energy Commission on the state's EV charging needs, is the first to try to game out the implications of Gov. Gavin Newsom's earthshaking order to ban the sale of internal-combustion engines by 2035.

The short answer: Charging stations will need to propagate like rabbits, and electricity demand will drastically shift.

The Golden State alone will need to have a total of 1.5 million EV chargers by 2030, or three times what Biden promised for the entire nation while on the campaign trail. It is unclear where the money will come from.

Furthermore, a massive 15% surge of electricity demand could arrive at midnight, when people are charging during off-peak hours. That could prompt a wholesale rethinking of how to move electricity around.

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The order unveiled by Newsom (D) in September — as the state choked on smoke from a catastrophic fire season — takes the impact on fueling and the electric grid to a whole new level.

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It is also likely to be of interest to policymakers in Washington, D.C. Last week, a new business council, the Zero Emission Transportation Association, called on the new administration to develop policies that would make it possible for all new cars to be EVs by 2030 (Energywire, Jan. 13). And yesterday, another leading EV advocacy group, Plug In America, said it would push for all new cars to be either pure electric or plug-in hybrids by 2030.

On the campaign trail, Biden promised, along with a raft of plans to electrify transportation, to build 500,000 charging stations by 2030.

If California, with 12% of the U.S. population, needs 1.5 million chargers, is Biden's pledge even close to enough?

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The California Energy Commission report used a modeling tool to answer some difficult-to-answer questions about what the Golden State's fueling network and electric grid would look like if auto showrooms were selling only EVs 15 years from now.

It looked only as far as 2030. To be on track for the 2035 goal of closing the market for gasoline-powered cars, the state would have 8 million EVs on the road by then. Today, the state has about 763,000. That's 45% of all the EVs in America today.

Accompanying those new vehicles will be a pileup of charging stations.

Today, the state has 67,000 chargers available to the public. Under the state's prior executive orders — before Newsom's — that roster was due to rise to 250,000 by 2025 and 968,000 by 2030.

The state is hard-pressed to meet those earlier and more modest goals.

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Meeting the charging needs of trucks is something that fleet managers and utilities are only starting to come to grips with (Energywire, Oct. 16, 2020).

Private industry could step up to fill these yawning gaps in the charging infrastructure. But the CEC pointed out that few have figured out how to make money without government subsidies.

California is home to the most thriving electric vehicle and EV-charging business ecosystem in the country. Yet even with that heft, it hasn't come up with a way to wring profit from delivering electrons to cars.

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"The vast majority" of the charging "will not naturally align with daytime solar generation," the study noted. "Electricity demand from vehicle charging will surge at midnight when off-peak electricity rates take effect, and when carbon-free electricity is not widely available."

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Bidirectional charging — the ability for a car to not just receive power but deliver it — is a potential upside for the grid. This capability is absent from Teslas ....

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The report said that investment by power companies is needed but did not attempt to quantify it. READ MORE

California Energy Commission STAFF REPORT Assembly Bill 2127 Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Assessment Analyzing Charging Needs to Support Zero-Emission Vehicles in 2030 (California Energy Commission)

webinar: California Leadership: 100% Zero-Emissions for New Cars and Trucks by 2035 (Veloz)

Where Exactly Does Joe Biden Plan To Put 550,000 EV Charging Stations? (Jalopnik)

Biden renews call for federal EV fleet. But no order yet (E&E News)

Biden vows to replace U.S. government fleet with electric vehicles (Reuters)

Electric Car Quotas Have a High Cost: California wants to do it, and Biden wants to help—even though it will violate the law and cost us all. (Wall Street Journal)

Opinion: Want greener cars? Focus on fuel efficiency over electric vehicles (Market Watch)

When the Electric Car Is King, Less Energy Is More (Bloomberg)

Self-driving EVs could raise emissions — study (E&E News)

Why driverless cars have an emissions problem (BBC)

California bill would require all self-driving vehicles to be zero emision by 2025 (Tech Crunch)

Excerpt from Jalopnik: To really make a lasting change, however, Biden’s policy should focus on low-income neighborhoods, multi-family housing installations, and parking lots for business and industrial parks. Anywhere that a car is forced to sit for hours at a time anyway is a good place to have charging. Equip street lamps with EV chargers. Equip parking meters with EV chargers.

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Given the opportunity, I’d love to see Biden’s plan continue to expand charging infrastructure into rural communities and smaller state highways.

As it stands, you can get most places with the existing EV infrastructure we have, but if you’re trying to get to your cousin’s place in rural Idaho or North Dakota, you’re going to have a tough time. Hopefully by making electric car chargers as ubiquitous as gas stations, that range anxiety and usability problem will disappear entirely. With more charging stations, we can shrink the so-called electron deserts. READ MORE

Excerpt from Wall Street Journal: Start with federal law. It requires the transportation secretary to set national average fuel-economy performance standards for car makers at the “maximum feasible” level without restricting consumer choice. Instead of mandating a given technology, federal fuel-economy standards allow car makers the freedom to decide how best to improve fuel economy at the lowest cost.

To promote efficiency, federal law broadly forbids state regulations “related to fuel economy standards.” Courts have held that this law forbids electric car quotas and similarly meddlesome command-and-control policies that seek to dictate how car makers should meet federal performance standards. The Golden State argues that a special exception made for California regulations in the Clean Air Act should also be read into the federal fuel-economy law. But that law’s text says no. It forbids fuel-economy regulation by any state—no exceptions.

Next, the policy. Congress pre-empted state laws in 1975 because sprinkling policies like state electric car quotas on top of federal fuel-economy standards makes no sense. An electric car quota in California would force car makers to meet national fuel-economy standards using one of the most expensive fuel-efficiency technologies, undermining consumer choice and increasing costs. One study from 2019 estimates that state electric car quotas will cost an extra $400 for every new car nationwide by 2025.

Those costs won’t be distributed equally. The zero-emission vehicle standard is in effect a hidden regressive tax paid by ordinary car buyers to subsidize luxury cars for the wealthy. It takes $400 from the wallets of low- and moderate-income car buyers and hands it over primarily to six-figure-income electric car buyers, who enjoy many other subsidies, too. READ MORE