California Dreaming

THE STATE'S PLAN TO PHASE-OUT SALES OF NEW GAS GUZZLERS BY 2035 IN FAVOR OF ELECTRIC CARS IS BOLD, VISIONARY, IMPORTANT AND HIGHLY RISKY 

- DAVID H. FREEDMAN

NO STATE IS MORE CAR-CRAZY THAN California and they've paid a big price for it, not just in $6-per-gallon gas. The heat waves, droughts and calamitous wildfires that have ravaged the state in recent years are by-products of climate change, to which greenhouse-gas emissions from California tailpipes (and elsewhere) have contributed.

To Governor Gavin Newsom and other state political leaders, the fix is clear: Regulate the tailpipe out of existence. In August, in a continuation of its half-century-plus tradition of setting the nation's auto emissions standards, California ruled that by 2035 all new cars and trucks sold in the state must be fossil-fuel-free. Instead, electric vehicles, or EVs, will become the law of the land.

Shifting the world to zero-emissions all-electric vehicles would in theory eliminate about one-fifth of all carbon-dioxide emissions, the chief greenhouse gas behind climate change. But making the transition quickly is a tall order and creates new problems. EVs are currently too expensive for most people. The U.S. electric grid needed to power them all is unreliable and still derives much of its energy from burning fossil fuels. Charging stations are few and far between. Supply-chain and manufacturing issues have led to wait lists. And although EVs are popular in California-they constitute 15 percent of sales versus 3 percent for the U.S.-it's unclear how many more enthusiasts the state has left.

The timetable is ambitious, even for California. It goes well beyond the state's past clean-air efforts in scope and exceeds the Biden administration's goal to increase manufacturing of EVS to 50 percent by 2030. The price tag will be staggering: tens of billions of dollars in state spending on EV subsidies and improvements to the electric grid and EV charging infrastructure will be needed, experts say.