California is banning the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles starting in 2035. This forces automakers to speed up the production of electric cars by 2026.
What could go wrong?
Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, remarked when asked about the strain on the electric grid:
“If we add yesterday’s grid with tomorrow’s cars, it’s not going to work.”
So we just build a better grid. Should we call an electrician to get started on that one?
What about infrastructure? It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to create an infrastructure that could support such an initiative. Who's going to pay for that…oh yeah – we are. Who is going to assist the mom-and-pop gasoline stations?
Let's pretend that car manufacturers, after going through the billions of dollars to retool their plants to switch from electricity to gas production, will not pass those costs onto customers. Come on, the whole thing is a fairy tale – play along. How are people going to afford a new electric car? Then to maintain that car, how many consumers will be able to pay for a replacement battery when the original one fizzles out? Today they are thousands of dollars.
What about waiting for the cars in front of you to take 15 to 20 minutes to charge their cars? This idea will not only take lots of money, it will take extreme patience as well.
Will this be inflationary? The demand for electricity will go through the roof along with the price per kilowatt hour that the demand will create. Could it be that there is not that much cost savings between electricity and gas? Once again, what about "tomorrow's" super grid that has not been created yet?
Finally, when should you hunker down and buy that EV? At some point leading up to the deadline, that pre-owned gas-powered car you are going to trade in or sell will be worth a fraction of what they once were worth.
Well Pete, you might want to get started studying up on how all of that works.
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