CAN IT GET THERE?

CALIFORNIA IS COMMITTING TO GREEN AUTOMOBILES, BANNING THE SALE OF NEW GASOLINE-POWERED VEHICLES BY 2035

In the fall, Gov. Gavin Newsom made headlines by announcing California will prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. How will the state get there and, more to the point, can it get there? Officials at the California Air Resources Board — the agency tasked with making Newsom’s goal a regulatory reality — say the target will be achieved within the allotted 15 years. Some auto analysts and dealers have questions, though.

“California does lead the way in EVS (electric vehicles), so it’s not inconceivable,” said Ivan Drury, who studies trends in the automotive industry as a senior manager for Edmunds. “We’re just not there yet. Maybe by 2035, things will be different.”

But Steven Cliff, deputy executive director at the Air Resources Board, known as CARB for short, has no doubts.

“In terms of feasibility, absolutely,” Cliff said. “The technology exists today. There’s something on the order of more than 40 models of zero-emission passenger cars — and now, trucks — that are available either for sale or pre-order and in the next five years, that numreduce

ber will double.”

Newsom’s order calls on CARB to develop regulations so that within 15 years, 100 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in California emit zero carbon emissions. That does not mean the state is going to ban existing gasoline-powered cars or eliminate sales of vehicles with internal combustion engines on the used car market.

“No one’s taking away those cars,” Cliff said. “No one’s trying to go into your garage and get rid of your car and say you can’t register it. This is really about progressively increasing sales to the point where all new vehicles would be zero-emission” by 2035.

As of early November, there were 763,816 plug-ins on California roads. (By the end of 2019, there were just over 26 million automobiles registered in California, according to the DMV.)

According to CARB, the transportation sector accounts for more than half of California’s carbon pollution, 80 percent of smog-forming pollution and 95 percent of toxic diesel emissions.

When announcing the mandate, Newsom said it aims to greenhouse gas emissions by more than 35 percent and result in an 80 percent improvement statewide in oxides of nitrogen emissions.

“Moving toward zero emissions is necessary for the longterm survival of humans as a species,” Cliff said. “And we know that moving there can really be a no-regrets policy for consumers.”

CARB is taking the lead on turning the executive order into a formal regulation but other state agencies are involved, such as the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission.

Getting enough charging stations

Drury’s biggest concern centers on the chicken-andthe-egg problem long associated with zero-emission vehicles: Building sufficient numbers of charging stations.

Many car buyers are reluctant to buy an EV because there aren’t enough charging stations and they fear getting stranded. But there aren’t enough stations because electric vehicles still make up a relatively small percentage of cars on the road.

“The biggest problem is that the infrastructure is not there to support every single new vehicle,” Drury said. “Think about people in apartment buildings or a condo. How are you suddenly going to prop up hundreds of charging stations, and where is this energy going to come from?”

The California Energy Commission has been focused on boosting the construction of

charging stations. Through FY 2020-2021, the commission has allocated $300 million for passenger vehicles and light trucks infrastructure.

When former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 announced a target of 5 million zero-emission vehicles on state roads by 2030, he also called for 250,000 charging stations by that time frame. Not counting chargers in private homes, as of Nov. 3, there were 67,343 charging stations in California — about 27 percent of the way there.

Through the Public Utilities Commission, investorowned utilities such as San Diego Gas & Electric have also spent ratepayer dollars to build charging stations in their respective service territories.

SDG&E’S Power Your Drive program has installed about 3,000 charging stations in 250 apartments, condominium complexes and workplaces and is looking to add 2,000 more if it gets approval from the commission.

Cliff acknowledges the challenge.

“Those are things we really need to solve, especially in communities that really don’t have the infrastructure because they’ve been disadvantaged,” he said.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles also count toward the governor’s “no gasoline vehicles” mandate and spending is being directed toward building hydrogen fueling stations as well.

There are currently fewer than 9,000 hydrogen fuel cell cars in the state that rely on 45 publicly funded and seven publicly funded hydrogen fueling stations. Sixteen more stations using public money are under construction.

The energy commission last week announced an expansive plan to spend $115 million to construct 111 more by 2027, which would put the state within striking range of its goal to have 200 hydrogen fueling stations up and running by 2025.

Taken together, the efforts will accelerate the transition needed to meet the 2035 mandate, CARB officials said.

“I think just having that focus on where we’re going really puts the private capital market, as well as public policy decision-makers, on notice that this is what needs to happen,” Cliff said.

A plug-in future?

Automakers are ramping up production of zeroemission vehicles, or ZEVS.

Nearly 100 pure electric models are scheduled to roll out by the end of 2024, with an increasing number of SUVS and pickups accompanying production of plugin hybrids.

GM announced it’s spending $20 billion to deliver 20 new EVS by 2023 and Swedish carmaker Volvo has pledged that by 2025 half of its sales will come from electric cars, with the rest hybrids.

A change in the White House also figures to boost sales.

With Joe Biden replacing Donald Trump, it’s expected the Environmental Protection Agency will once again grant the Golden State a waiver to the Clean Air Act, allowing the state to set vehicle emissions standards that are tougher than federal rules.

Since the Golden State represents such a large market, automakers in the past have built their fleets to conform to California’s standards.

On the campaign trail, Biden said he would work to broaden the federal electriccar tax credit of up to $7,500 for the purchase of EVS and plug-in hybrids and called for building 500,000 charging stations across the country.

To enact Newsom’s 2035 mandate, CARB officials have begun developing the next phase of regulations with workshops to get input from various stakeholders.

Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association, said his group has “a whole lot of questions” surrounding how the mandate will be implemented, as well as a host of topics such as charging infrastructure, grid reliability and whether sufficient customers actually want to buy ZEVS.

“We’re open-minded about having a dialogue about how we get there but we need to be realistic,” Maas said, adding that the Legislature should be intimately involved in “what arguably is the most important transportation policy decision of our lifetime.”

The transition also brings up issues about equity.

While California policymakers have put income caps on the rebates residents receive from buying a ZEV to help make sure the money is not going disproportionately to the wealthy, a recent analysis by the San Francisco Chronicle showed just 28 percent of rebate recipients between 2017 and 2019 had household incomes below $100,000 a year.

And instituting a no-gasoline-vehicle mandate also brings up questions about whether the state’s rebate program should continue post-2035, since every new car and truck purchased in California by then will have to be a ZEV.

There are also questions about cost. A review conducted by the Union-tribune in early 2019 showed state agencies had committed $2.46 billion in public funds — some of it already spent and the rest planned over a number of years — on various programs promoting zero- or low-emission vehicles.

When looking at overall new vehicle sales in the state, the number of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids has slowly increased — making up about 8 percent of total market share in the third quarter of this year.

“We’ve got 92 percent to go in 15 years,” Maas said. “That’s a long way to go. How are we going to get there is the question we want to address, not whether we should get there. That’s up to policymakers to decide.”

CARB exec Cliff said there’s a good chance benchmarks will be instituted in the years leading up to the 2035 end-date to help track the state’s progress in terms of ZEV sales.

“That’s similar to how we’ve done regulatory efforts in the past,” he said.

Cliff said he expects a final regulation — which will have the force of law — will be on the books by the end of 2022.

What ifs

Once the regulation is finalized, what would prevent California residents in 2035 from going to neighboring states, buying gas-powered cars there and driving them back to California?

Cliff admits, “That’s something that we’ll have to keep an eye on,” but said it would not be as easy as one may think.

First, any car or truck bought in from another state must be certified as a California-compliant vehicle. If it is not certified for California, it must have at least 7,500 miles on it and will be registered as a used vehicle.

In addition, the person buying any vehicle — new or used — can only register it in a state where he or she has an address.

“You have to register it where you live,” Cliff said.

On the other hand, theoretically, that would not prevent California customers in 2035 who really want a gaspowered car from going to a neighboring state, buying a gently used car with 7,501 miles on the odometer, driving it home and getting it legally registered in California.

CARB officials, however, said rules could very well change in the next 15 years and the vehicles would still be subject to a smog check.

Another scenario, as Maas of the car dealers association pointed out, would be the 2035 ban would just lead to more people hanging onto the gas-powered cars they already own.

“You can’t make consumers buy zero-emission vehicles and if consumers aren’t comfortable with the fact that (ZEVS) meet their needs, they’re not going to do it, whether it’s a mandate or a goal or any other policy,” Maas said. “So we want to work with policymakers to figure out how to address these issues.”

ZEVS have a higher sticker price than comparable gasoline-powered models, although supporters of electric vehicles say the costs narrow once state and federal discounts are accounted for, as well as savings on maintenance and fueling costs.

Cliff said the costs to produce ZEVS will also come down as more come off the assembly lines, leading to greater numbers of car buyers gravitating to cleaner cars and pickup trucks. He expressed confidence the 2035 mandate will work.

“Today, it sounds radical to say, ‘Oh my gosh, 100 percent zero emissions by 2035,’” Cliff said. “But in fact, even if you buy a (ZEV) today, those vehicles are already an economic benefit to consumers ... Even if you pay a little bit more for the vehicle today, over its lifetime you’re saving several thousand dollars on your energy costs. So going forward, this isn’t something that consumers are going to see as a burden.”

While most of the attention in Newsom’s executive order centered on passenger vehicles, the directive also called for CARB to develop regulations mandating all operations of mediumand heavy-duty vehicles — big rigs and the like — shall be emissions-free by 2045.

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