As climate change has become an increasingly important issue, it is easy to see why Californian politicians are trying to make the change to emission-free vehicles.
California legislators unanimously passed a policy on Aug. 25 that will fully ban the sale of new combustion engine cars by 2035.
However, the policy comes with caveats that may hinder the state and results could be disastrous if not kept in check.
The move was put in place just days before multiple Californian cities had their hottest days on record and electric vehicle (EV) owners were asked via a Flex Alert not to charge their cars during peak energy hours according to a Sept. 2 CBS Los Angeles article.
In major cities across the state, residents narrowly avoided rolling blackouts caused by intense air conditioning uses, according to a Sept. 7 CBS News article
Statewide, California’s power grid struggled to maintain energy levels during peak hours, even with calls from notices calling for its residents to reduce their electricity usages.
The energy usage from EVs is already astronomically high. Combined with steadily increasing demand for air conditioning and the need for more EV charging stations, the Californian power grid will only continue to become further strained, according to a Feb. 4 Los Angeles Times article.
As it stands, the state of our power grid is unacceptable. If the relatively small amount of plug-in vehicles can cause issues, what will it be like when every new car bought needs to be charged as well?
This is combined with the fact that the state currently has around 80 thousand public EV chargers, according to the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development “Plug-in Electric Vehicle Charging Station Readiness” webpage.
In another report by the California Energy Commision, the state requires 1.2 million more electric chargers by 2030, according to their website.
That issue is compounded with current electric cars requiring materials of which the world is quickly losing. The need for Lithium has surged in recent years and demand is outrunning supply. Lithium is an incredibly important resource, which is used in a vast array of electronics such as cellphones and computers.
If the world were to run out, where a sufficient alternative is not found, it could doom a significant amount of technological infrastructure worldwide.
European climate group Transport and Environment, a non-governmental environmental committee, estimates that there is only enough lithium in the world to make 14 million cars, according to a May 3 Reuters article.
Cobalt is another precious metal that is required for the production of EVs. Most of the world’s cobalt comes from mines in the Democratic Republic Congo, which are rife with poor working conditions and child labor, according to a Dec. 18, 2019 CNN article.
Though EVs are cleaner than their gas-guzzling counterparts, the way they are made is less than eco-friendly.
A study from Northwestern University concluded that the exploitation of Cobalt has led to “increases in violence, substance abuse, food and water insecurity, and physical and mental health challenges.”
In our efforts to improve emissions, the cost has become an incredible amount of human suffering, and the disruption of an entire nation’s economy.
Plug-in EVs accounted for only 2% of all car sales in 2021 in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center.
If the electric car industry wants to succeed, it needs to reduce prices significantly and the availability of the cars must extend beyond metropolitan areas and single-family homes.
Meanwhile, if alternatives to combustion engine vehicles don’t become widespread, people in sparsely populated and rural areas would be negatively affected. Not everybody has the money available to invest in their own superchargers and solar panel installations.
And yet it is almost certain that EVs are the future of personal transportation, according to an Oct. 4 2021 Forbes article.
An increasing number of auto manufacturers, including General Motors, Volvo, Volkswagen and Nissan are planning to shift their lineups to all electric models by 2030.
Even those who have the means to buy an electric car may not have a garage or don’t live in a place that has charging stations.
EVs are simply not widely adopted and supported as they need to be. Accessibility needs to improve by a large margin for combustion-powered cars to no longer be the best option for consumers.
Climate change will not slow down or stop on its own. As California continues to get hotter and dryer every year, it is crucial that we move beyond the reliance of fossil fuels.
EVs are a great stepping stone toward ensuring climate change becomes under our control, but without great improvements of EV design and the ways we access electricity, our trajectory toward demise will remain.
