California Considers Banning Internal Combustion Engines To Meet Emissions Goals (sacbee.com)

New submitter Rick Schumann writes about California considering a ban on internal combustion engines: The ban on internal-combustion engine automobiles would be at least 10 years away, and it's unclear at this early stage if it would ban only sales and use of new cars, or ban existing cars as well. There's also no mention of two (or three) wheeled vehicles at this stage. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is nevertheless considering this seriously, in order to meet its ambitious emissions reduction goals. According to state data, tailpipes generate more than one-third of all greenhouse gases, and so far only a small fraction of California's motorists drive electric vehicles. The announcement was made in an interview with Bloomberg news. "I've gotten messages from the governor asking, 'Why haven't we done something already?' The governor has certainly indicated an interest in why China can do this and not California," Mary Nichols, the chairwoman of the CARB, told Bloomberg.

Comments

Re:Because

[flatt]

>why China can do this and not California

Because they're a dictatorship who can proclaim broad life-changing decrees and their citizens have no way to vote them out.

China or California?

Re:How this will realistically go

[Solandri]

I expect that small and mid-sized sedans would be all-electric first.

The problem is these are not the vehicles producing the emissions. The whole thing stems from MPG being the inverse of fuel consumption. People see the big MPG number from a fuel-efficient vehicle and think they're making a big difference in fuel consumption. It's actually the opposite - the bigger the MPG of a vehicle, the smaller the impact it has on overall consumption and emissions. Switching from a 25 MPG sedan to a 50 MPG Prius results in less fuel savings (and thus less emissions reduction) than someone switching from a 15 MPG full-size SUV to a 25 MPG large sedan. Yes, that 10 MPG improvement results in more fuel savings and more emissions reduction than the Prius' 25 MPG improvement.

15 MPG = 6.67 gallons to drive 100 miles
25 MPG = 4 gallons to drive 100 miles, a 2.67 gallon improvement
50 MPG = 2 gallons to drive 100 miles, only a 2 gallon improvement

Because MPG is the inverse of fuel consumption, it's 1/MPG which is the important value. And the bigger MPG values mean less incremental fuel savings. The rest of the world uses liters per 100 km to avoid this problem. For some reason it's backwards in the U.S., and marketing has abused it to make people feel good about buying a Prius when it's about the smallest difference you can make in terms of driving.

You know how environmentalists scoffed at hybrid SUVs? That was actually the best place to put a hybrid engine. The 6 MPG improvement the Highlander Hybrid gets from 22 to 28 MPG results in a fuel savings of nearly 1 gallon per 100 miles. That's about the same savings as switching from a 33 MPG econobox to a 50 MPG Prius. If you can improve a tractor trailer's 6 MPG to just 6,4 MPG, that also saves about the same amount of fuel per mile. It's the big vehicles which consume a lot of fuel whose efficiency you want to improve first in order to produce the biggest reduction in fuel consumption and emissions. The Priuses, econoboxes, and small sedans are roundoff error.

Give Musk credit. He actually understands this, which is why his next project is an electric tractor trailer.

I read the article before I submitted it..

[Rick Schumann]

To summarize a few points:
* This is just CARB 'talking' about this. It's not legislation, no one has introduced a bill. It's really just a 'what if' they're discussing.
* I hardly think they'd suddenly ban all IC engine vehicles. That would be a disaster, so don't even think about it.
* Furthermore it'd likely be a gradual shift away from IC engines to electric.
* Furthermore, I don't think things like motorcycles would be included in the ban, nor fleets of trucks, emergency vehicles, etc.
* Furthermore, I don't think it'd include existing vehicles, just new vehicles. Otherwise it would be an impossible financial burden on everyone. * Again: It's just above the level of coffee-table conversation the CARB is having about this. It would be at least TEN YEARS before they'd do anything.
* Furthermore, it'd likely have to be legislation. We all know how long that'd take, right?

Basically: No need to get all flustered about it -- YET. But it was worthy of being posted, so you all know what's going on. Also, not like you didn't all think something like this would come up eventually, anyway, we've been slowly moving towards this for a while now.