All electric cars in Washington state

As an electrical engineer I find this “interesting”:

Washington state plans to ban most non-electric vehicles by 2030, according to a newly signed bill by Gov. Jay Inslee.

The bill says that all vehicles of the model year 2030 or later that are sold, purchased, or registered in the state must be electric.

As the next year’s model come out in the fall the target for their mandate will be in a little over seven years. I don’t think the electrical infrastructure can be upgraded to handle the new load in time. This will be especially true if the leftist politicians pushing to remove many of the hydroelectric dams are successful.

It is my belief they hope to bring wind and solar online. But those sources are intermittent. Those cars are going to be lower in the priority que than heating and lighting homes and offices. If you pull into the charging station during peak usage in early January with little wind and almost no solar for a few days you could be told you won’t be able to recharge until the wind blows from the south again so the heating load isn’t so high. Perhaps in a week or two. Or maybe you can find a black market diesel generator if you know who to ask and have the cash to pay for it.

My guess is that one of two things will happen.

  1. The politicians who voted for things like this mandate, the anti-business regulations, the schools teaching math is racist, and the oppressive gun laws will be unable to maintain the required margin of fraud in future elections and the oppressive laws will be repealed.
  2. The productive and freedom loving residents will leave the state and the state will spiral down into an economic abyss resembling downtown Seattle and Detroit. I.e., an Atlas Shrugged like scenario.

I often wonder if the economic destruction authoritarians create is due to obliviousness, maliciousness, or a deliberate gamble that things will somehow recover from their reign of power.

We live in interesting times. Prepare appropriately.

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13 thoughts on “All electric cars in Washington state

  1. The bill doesn’t mandate electric cars by 2030, it mandates creating a commission to come up with a plan for doing so. When they fail to do so because it’s pretty much crack-smoking crazy talk, that will be that.

    Makes for a good headline, but in effect is just more money spent on consultants talking to each other.

    • Yes, I knew that but didn’t clearly express it. I didn’t get into it in detail due to lack of time and dilution of my main point, but they have a “Climate Justice” committee/commission/something-or-another to spend the taxpayer’s money for the next several years. Many millions of dollars will be spent on people who don’t know, and can’t possibly understand, Ohm’s Law let alone calculate the Kilowatt Hour energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline.

  2. I find it interesting that every story on the subject of grid capacity is filled with Pollyanna optimism and statements like “Absolutely the grid can handle it!” when talking about essentially doubling industrial load on the entire US grid while sweeping under the rug that “smart grid” features such as Vehical to Grid and time-of-day pricing are core assumptions in their models. It would be great to stop and charge your car in the middle of a trip only to find that the battery was actually drained “for the common good”.

    We were warned of possible rolling blackouts in our area last.summer (prompting me to buy a generator for our freezers), something I had never imagined happening around all the local hydro and nuclear capacity. I guess they are selling all the power to California.

    • I agree that there are grid issues, but I don’t think “doubling” is accurate. When Sandy Cortez first floated her “green new deal” nightmare, I did a detailed analysis of its key ingredients to find out actual costs etc. One of the topics was electric cars; here’s what I found:
      Switching to electric cars adds about 300 billion kWh energy demand; electric trucks about the same. Together they add about 20 percent to the total power use. But the lithium for all those batteries adds up to 21 times the world-wide production of all lithium mines combined.

  3. As a resident of Texas, having seen our grid come close to total collapse, I think electric vehicles are a bad idea. Like you said, we need to at least double grid capacity before we even think about trying to switch everyone to electric cars. And, since they loathe nuclear power, I don’t see that happening.

  4. And don’t forget, they will target all gas powered machines including off road vehicles, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chain saws, and generators (that will be interesting), I expect these bans will happen long before 2030.

  5. “I don’t think the electrical infrastructure can be upgraded to handle the new load in time.”

    It can’t. There would be major deficits just in generation, and that’s not getting into transmission and distribution.

    I hope (stress on hope) that this is just another excuse for politicians to talk a lot, do nothing, and waste money. Because trying to implement this mandate would be a disaster.

    • A small amendment, if I may…

      The generating capacity absolutely cannot be upgraded / expanded by the needed amount given the present regulatory environment. If the regulatory stance is significantly relaxed, it’s still questionable due to many factors (including attitudes and approaches of the engineering teams who “grew up” under the regulations, and may have trouble adjusting to more permissive environments) but might be possible.

      For transmission … we don’t even build transformers for substations any more. Wait times on new ones started at 6 months, two years ago; I expect it’s a year-plus now. Even getting older ones refurbished – which can be done domestically – can take the better part of a year.

  6. I am thinking that it’s going to be #2. Unfortunately many that will be leaving will bring their stupid inane policies with them and drag down wherever they land. I am beginning to think that like the Swiss, you have to be approved by the locals before you can claim citizenship in your new state.

  7. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Thats f–king hilarious! I think there was a couple of old song lyrics about this.
    To dream, the impossible dream?
    And, bring in the clowns, where are the clowns? (now we know!)
    The more things change, the more they stay the same.
    Let us build a tower, so that we can be closer to god!

  8. The left has never let actual facts or the laws of physics (or biology) interfere with their agenda.

  9. Every state should ammend their constitution to make state offices controlled via an electoral college type system.

    NY and WA are examples of when a state is run by a single urban core and doesn’t represent the state as a whole.

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