Back in August, the California Air Resources Board voted to ban the sales of new internal combustion cars by 2035. As we reported, the impact of this will be huge. Currently about 16 percent of California’s new vehicle sales are emissions-free vehicles. But for the period between now and 2035, CARB is setting goals for phasing out sales of new ICE-powered cars. In 2026, the number of emissions-free vehicle sales are expected to rise to 35 percent. And in 2030, 68 percent of California’s new car sales are expected to be emissions-free. Then, in 2035, the state will make it illegal to sell a new internal combustion-powered passenger vehicle. At first, California was praised as being the first in the world to do this, but that wasn’t correct. Back in 2019, British Columbia passed a law banning the sale of new ICE-powered vehicles in 2040. And is widely reported, Europe voted before California to ban the sales of new ICE vehicles in 2035. Here in the United States, many states already had laws on their books that merely targeted the phasing out the sales of new ICE vehicles. California went all of the way to make it a law. Since a number of states follow California’s lead on vehicle emissions regulations, there have been announcements of plans to enact similar new ICE sales bans as California. Washington state announced plans to follow California’s lead. Virginia and Massachusetts went even further by passing trigger laws in the past. Virginia and Massachusetts passed laws that would ban the sale of new ICE-powered vehicles in 2035. However, their laws were dependent on California signing its own law, first. This means that at the moment, there are at least three states with laws on their books to ban the sales of new ICE-powered cars and more pledging to follow suit. I should also note that there is a movement in Virginia right now to repeal that trigger law, so it’s possible that its law (or any other state’s law) may not be around in 2035. This comes on the heels of California beginning to phase out the small off-road engines like the ones used in lawnmowers by 2024 and generators like the ones used in RVs by 2028. And now, CARB wants to go even further. Currently, California’s new ICE sales ban only impacts vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating of no more than 8,500 pounds. That means that new heavier-duty vehicles can still be sold in ICE form in 2035. However, CARB plans to enact legislation that would cover medium and heavy duty vehicles, too, including semi trucks sold in the state. CARB’s reasoning is this, from page 7 of the proposal: The regulator’s plans to do it are laid out in a 296-page document. There’s a lot to go through, so I’ll highlight the most important bits. The proposal starts off by targeting state and local government fleets. Vehicle additions to fleets outside of designated low-population counties would be expected to be 50 percent emissions-free by 2024, and 100 percent by 2027. And ICE vehicles in those fleets will be expected to be retired after their minimum useful life. Drayage trucks, the Class 7 and Class 8 trucks that operate at intermodal seaports and railyards, would be required to be electric by 2035. But until then, existing ICE drayage trucks would be allowed to operate for a minimum period, defined as the later of these two scenarios:
Thirteen (13) years from the MY that the engine and emissions control systems are first certified by CARB or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA); or When the vehicle reaches 800,000 vehicle miles traveled (VMT) or 18 years from the MY that the engine and emissions control systems are first certified by CARB or the U.S. EPA, whichever is earlier.
And beginning in 2024, all new drayage trucks added to the CARB Online System will have to be electric. CARB’s idea is that these scenarios will slowly phase out ICE drayage trucks until 2035, when all would be required to be electric.
And here’s the one that I think will be the biggest. According to the proposal, sales of all new medium duty and heavy duty vehicles (gross vehicle weight rating of over 8,500 pounds) will have to be electric by 2040. That includes semi trucks, but excludes emergency vehicles.
CARB expects that all of these measures would reduce “cardiopulmonary mortality, hospitalizations for cardiovascular and respiratory illness, and ER visits for asthma.”
As for charging all of these electric vehicles, the regulator has thoughts on that, too. For operations where trucks return to a depot at the end of the day, CARB expects those vehicles to be charged off-shift. Ideas like this are already in place for schools utilizing electric buses and other EV fleet operators.
For trucks traveling long distances? CARB is expecting that charging infrastructure will be up to par. At first, the state says that electric trucks will have to feed from up to 350 kW public chargers, and take up to three hours to charge. However, the state is expecting that in the future, an “extreme high-powered charging system” will be in place to allow long haul truckers to charge up at truck stops and rest areas. This proposed charging system would provide 3.75 MW of power to charge a truck in under an hour.
Now, I must mention that just like with the new ICE car sales ban, used medium and heavy duty trucks will be allowed to be sold and driven in the state. But if you’ll be shopping for a new semi in California in 2040, the state expects you to encounter nothing but electric trucks. As of now, this is just a proposal. However, the state has signaled that it’s ready to make most vehicles driving around the state powered by electricity.
Does any of that mean that this electric car business will work out? Nope. But it might. As always, we’ll see.
If you’re getting the same results as everybody else at a much higher cost, it’s time to start questioning.
I also have a bridge that I’d like to sell. Interested?
Unless there is some crazy technological break thru, electric cars do not scale up to big trucks hauling seriously heavy loads.
Also where is California going to find all this extra electricity??? Build a few more natural gas power plants would be my guess Or some new nuclear plants but that will never happen because nuclear is a political pariah
the state is expecting …”
The whole thing is running on hopes and dreams.
We DO need to do it this fast, in fact, we needed to do it MUCH faster. We’ve known about the impending catastrophe for decades, and sat on our asses because billions of dollars in oil profits were at stake.
If other countries are failing to do their part, such as China adding coal plants, then the absolute WORST thing we could do would be to move slowly. That just creates all the more urgency for America to lead. Remember when American used to lead?
Also, long haul freight, why not just coordinate charge time rate with the amount of downtime mandatory for drivers? No need for 1.21 Gigawatt chargers with humongous supporting coolers and charging cables if you’re already stopped for 8hrs…
Huh, that 385 miles needed does “only” mean about 6000lbs of batteries though. That’s not drastically more than the existing motor, transmission, and fuel.
The issues they’re attempting to address with these blanket rules are incredibly complex and involve huge innovations in many areas (range, battery materials, the grid, etc.). To pretend that you can “ban” your way into solutions for all these is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst
I suspect that most of them have ties to the oil industry in some way.
News flash: California is not the center of the universe, and doesn’t get to tell the rest of the country what to do. I’m generally a progressive, and I fucking despised Cheetolini with a passion, but the one thing he did that I actually agreed with was telling CARB to blow it out their ass for forcing their emissions standards down the entire country’s throat.
If they really wanted to do something useful and meaningful, they’d force the cargo ship industry to go all electric, since, as has been pointed out that cargo ships are actually responsible for the majority of significant emissions, but they don’t want to piss off the longshoremen’s unions and industry that is centered around cheap shit from China flowing into the CA ports. As usual, the private citizens shoulder the burden instead of the corporations. Typical.
That said, I still cuss whenever I deal with the vapor-recovery system. Guess I’m saying is not starkly black or white
Well you just need to buy a Tesla… then you won’t have to worry about vapor-recovery systems anymore!
Not possible. A battery using current tech capable of storing the energy needed would be heavy enough to sink the ship. Hydrogen may not work either as it’s poor energy density by volume would require far more fuel storage space, cutting deep into cargo space. NG might have a shot but of course the real answer is nuclear.
“ecades of racist and classist practices, including red-lining and siting decisions, have concentrated heavy-duty vehicle and freight activities in these communities, with concomitant disproportionate pollution burdens. For instance, communities in and around ports move much of the nation’s freight, and so experience pollution on a national scale in their neighborhoods. CARB has legal and moral obligations to lessen these burdens.”
Still, is it fair to say that, as much as it’s out of CARB’s domain, California (like just about any reasonably wealthy, liberal area – I say this as a Torontonian) has a ton of problems with NIMBYism? Better to keep the segregated people segregated and breathing marginally cleaner air than let them live in more desirable areas?
I think a lot of the points you bring up will be more of an issue for owner-operators. If I had to guess, this measure is probably going to get amended to give owner-operators a break and focus on the big trucking fleets.
Fleets (especially LTL, “less than truckload”) are better sorted to move to electric anyways, for the same reason that some Autopians give for a possible hydrogen trucking fleet: route planning and designated hubs for refueling/maintenance. In fact (and I never thought I’d be saying this) but this might be the one use case where hydrogen has an edge, simply because of the shorter refueling times. Fleet operators have the luxury of swapping drivers AND more centralized maintenance operations, meaning they can maximize the amount of time their trucks are on the road, which is essential if you’re running LTL.
(Plus, a PHEV/EREV setup like a Volt strikes me as a good idea for addressing the very real pollution issues CARB brings up, being able to switch to 50-60 miles of electric operation within the city.)
The big trucking companies, the Swifts and the JB Hunts, will just buy and register their trucks in other states.
