Posted on 03/11/2024 8:35:41 AM PDT by Red Badger
Powering the nation’s long-haul trucks with electricity would require the same amount of electricity for more than 46 million homes every year.
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In 2022, California adopted regulations that required all new cars, trucks and SUVs sold in the state to be zero emissions by 2035. Immediately, 17 states eyed the electric vehicle mandates and started considering their own. That was on top of the Biden administration’s own tailpipe standards, which many say function as a federal EV mandate.
The vision of a forced electric vehicle transition hasn't quite gone as California and the Biden administration have hoped. But in April 2023, California was still riding high on a wave of EV fever and set its ambitions on electrifying semi truck fleets.
The issues that have reduced consumer interest in EVs are compounded with heavy-duty semi trucks. A recent study by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) finds that if California transitioned to an electrified trucking fleet, it would strain the state’s already stressed grid, take decades to source the minerals needed, and ultimately drive up the costs of goods for all Americans.
Starts in California
California’s 2022 Advanced Clean Fleets Regulation hoped to lay the groundwork for replacing diesel-powered semi trucks with electric ones, starting with drayage freight. Drayage trucks are those hauling goods to and from seaports to railyards. In 2022, there were over 140,000 drayage trucks operating in California, and approximately 33,500 of those trucks serviced the state’s seaports and railyards annually.
The regulation would have required them all to transition to zero-emissions vehicles starting this year, with 100% transitioned by 2035. As with California’s EV mandate, other states are looking at pushing their own electric semi truck regulations. In October, National Grid, which serves much of New York, launched a two-year study into the electrification of commercial fleets.
In October 2023, the California Trucking Association filed a federal lawsuit hoping to block the enforcement of California’s rules, arguing the rules conflict with federal law. California sought a waiver from the EPA, so that it may enforce the state’s own emissions standards. While the EPA mulls over the request, California isn’t enforcing the Advanced Clean Fleets Regulation.
Whether that reprieve results in the end of the electric semi truck mandates depends on what the EPA decides on the waiver, but the ATRI study raises questions about its feasibility.
“It's certainly possible to run these heavy trucks on batteries, but the cost is incredible,” David Blackmon, an energy analyst who publishes “Energy Absurdities” on Substack, told Just The News.
Electricity, minerals and infrastructure
In looking at California’s semi truck transition, ATRI followed methodologies from a 2022 national analysis. The national analysis found that electrifying all vehicles on America’s roads would require 40% of all electricity generation. Some states would need more, including California, which would require 57.2% of its total electricity generation.
Tens of millions of tons of cobalt, graphite, lithium and nickel would also be needed, and that would take as much as 35 years at current global production rates and nearly 65% of global reserves of these minerals.
The analysis noted social impacts of this mining, which includes massive amounts of carbon dioxide that are produced in the energy-intensive mining and processing industries. The countries from where these materials are sourced lack the kind of labor protections of the developed world, meaning the exploitation of labor to mine the materials.
The weights of batteries would also take up a lot of the vehicle’s hauling capacity. Larger batteries would give trucks more range, but would mean a limited ability to carry freight. Ultimately, the analysis concluded, America’s highways would become even more congested since more trucks would be needed to haul the same amount of freight.
The charging infrastructure, as is a problem with passenger cars, would be an even larger challenge for electric semi trucks. Installation at the nation’s truck parking locations, according to ATRI, would be $35 billion. To supply the charging needs at a single rural rest stop would require enough daily electricity to power more than 5,000 U.S. households.
Another analysis by Guidehouse estimated that the electrification of America’s long-haul fleet would require 504 trillion watt hours annually. The average household uses about 899,000 watt hours per month. So, powering the nation’s long-haul trucks would require the same amount of electricity for more than 46 million homes every year.
“This is not something that's affordable or sustainable to scale this up on a society-wide basis, or even a statewide basis within the state of California,” Blackmon said.
The ATRI California analysis points out that a new battery-electric truck cost $425,000, which is double the cost of a comparable diesel truck. At California’s electricity rates, which are nearly double the national average, the cost to power an electric semi truck, including equipment, installation and utility upgrades, could be as high as $1.21 per mile. That’s twice the cost per mile of diesel fuel, according to ATRI.
The Capital Press reports that operating margins for truckload carriers was about 10% of their revenue in 2021. The authors of the ATRI analysis told the Press that the added costs of electrification would erase those margins unless the costs were passed onto consumers.
Outright guess
California hopes that its electric truck mandates will lower particulate and carbon dioxide emissions. In the case of carbon dioxide emissions, it’s far from certain, according to a study by the Manhattan Institute.
Electric vehicles, the study explains, require far more upfront emissions to produce than their conventional counterparts. While the electric vehicles produce no emissions while being driven, the study finds that there are so many variables in the supply chains of producing electric vehicles that claims of emission reductions are based on “a rough estimate or an outright guess based on averages, approximations or aspirations.”
As the demand for minerals rises with demand, reductions, if there are any, will shrink and may even lead to a net increase, according to the study. That’s without considering any emissions from the electricity production to charge the vehicles.
Two researchers explain in the Wall Street Journal that California's efforts to reduce particulate matter with EV mandates are also unlikely to result in reductions and may actually increase their concentrations. Since advancements in gas-powered car technology has greatly reduced particulate matter, the researchers say, very little particulates come from vehicles' tailpipes. Most particulate emissions come from tire wear. Since EVs are heavier, they produce more particulate matter.
Writing in The Telegraph, Blackmon said that the cost of this forced electric vehicle transition has to be considered in the context of a nation that’s $34 trillion in debt.
“How much more of a load will we force our future generations to bear before someone in a position of authority has the good sense to demand an accounting and reconsideration of this headlong rush into a green debtor’s prison?” Blackmon wrote.
California is about to crash and burn with this type of nonsense.
I just skimmed article. I’ve been hearing people are worried about the extra weight of EVs on roads and bridges.
The bigger the battery, the less room for cargo. More trucks will be needed to hauls the excess cargo. More trucks and more trucks. No room on the highway for cars.
This is a good article because FINALLY people are waking up to the overall SYSTEMS problem including global mining of rare earths, the labor to do that (often child labor), the fossil fuels expended in the mines, the point that tailpipe particulate emissions are nil and tire wear particulates will increase a huge amount with heavier vehicles, electricity supply, rebuilding the electricity T&D system, charging times, power requirements for huge recharge stations, and lots more.
The systems analysis should be expanded to factor in the additional costs to the entire supply chain of every product and how that will cause prices of EVERYTHING to soar.
It should also include the huge subsidies paid by FedGov that are bankrupting the nation.
The reported analysis doesn’t even factor in the folly of unreliable, weather-dependent, intermittent electricity supply that would gobble up hundreds of millions of acres of valuable land and permanently despoil the beautiful USA landscape.
And for WHAT, you might ask? If you electrified all transportation globally, you would reduce global CO2 emissions by maybe 5% which would POSSIBLY reduce global temperature by 0.1 degree 100 years from now.
What a disaster.
Yes, EVs of all sorts are way heavier than the ICE vehicles due to battery weight.
They also eat tires and brakes at a much higher rate because of that as well.
So, they increase brake and tire dust, which is more dangerous to peoples’ lungs, at the expense of saying they decrease CO2 which doesn’t harm anybody.
These people are insane...................
For adopting a stupid plan like this one, I think several gov’t. officials need to be taken out & beaten with a large tree branch until senseless or nearly so. This can’t do anything but make more problems than we already have. Look at the trouble they are already having with electric buses. Biden & some others will be out of office by the time this takes effect, but maybe they also will be drastically effected by it. It can absolutely accomplish nothing good. If the object of these rules is what it seems to be..of destroying our nation; then they are certainly working.
Spontaneous EV Combustion
Because so much import/export business goes through CA ports, not to mention all the ag and other products originating in CA but marketed in other states, the Feds need to override CA limits on diesel trucks on grounds of Federal Control of interstate commerce. Lots of lefty junk has been done under that rubric, but this really belongs under it and CA can’t be allowed to interdict the rest of the states with its looney green policies.
They won’t even let their premise be questioned.
They know that they’ll never win a debate so they cancel, dox and prosecute any who dare challenge it.
We’re running out of options.
Isaiah 3:4
“I will make mere youths their officials;
children will rule over them.”
“How much more of a load will we force our future generations to bear..”
Future generations will curse these bastards and shitcan all of their filthy green regulations.
Hey, every time the US Gobblement imposes higher taxes on businesses or pass new regulations that affect their net profits they just pass the cost onto their customers in spite of what Joe Birdbrain claims.
Stunning no one saw this comming
If you’re a truck driver, why would you stay in California when there are many states where you could drive your current trucks?
And after shortages and rising prices. Biden will again broadcast a speech saying “Come on Mannnnn” ….. “Quit ripping us off mannnnn”
“Hauling heavy loads over long distances requires very large batteries that take hours to recharge.”
There are a number of problems with EV trucks.
First of all most of the electric Semi from Freightliner, Volvo, Kenworth and Peterbilt are about $400k-500k.
Secondly, as a consequence of being heavier, electric trucks can’t carry as much freight as diesel trucks. The head of the trade association for California drayage truckers said that companies will need to double the size of their fleets just to haul the same amount of freight they currently do.
In California, the state government and private companies are going to spend gobs of money to buy electric trucks for which there aren’t yet charging stations or electric capacity, so that they can move less freight at higher cost. So, longer charging times less freight moved.
And who does this help? China, Russia, the labor union, amd ther government with taxes. That’s why EV cars are sitting in the show rooms gathering dust. The public has caught on to this one.
As for the electricty in California, as of 2021, 30.1% of electricity was imported (11.7% from Northwest and 18.4% from Southwest) out of which 22.6% was of unspecified origin and 30.9% were renewables. The Northwest category is made up of Alberta, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming. The Southwest category includes Arizona, Baja California, Colorado, Mexico, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.
And according to their site, they generate less than half of the electricity at 47.78%:
This informtion is two years old, but the increase in vehicle needs is going to finish the electricity problems in California. They just won’t have enough, period.
wy69
“Hauling heavy loads over long distances requires very large batteries that take hours to recharge.”
There are a number of problems with EV trucks.
First of all most of the electric Semi from Freightliner, Volvo, Kenworth and Peterbilt are about $400k-500k.
Secondly, as a consequence of being heavier, electric trucks can’t carry as much freight as diesel trucks. The head of the trade association for California drayage truckers said that companies will need to double the size of their fleets just to haul the same amount of freight they currently do.
In California, the state government and private companies are going to spend gobs of money to buy electric trucks for which there aren’t yet charging stations or electric capacity, so that they can move less freight at higher cost. So, longer charging times less freight moved.
And who does this help? China, Russia, the labor union, amd ther government with taxes. That’s why EV cars are sitting in the show rooms gathering dust. The public has caught on to this one.
As for the electricty in California, as of 2021, 30.1% of electricity was imported (11.7% from Northwest and 18.4% from Southwest) out of which 22.6% was of unspecified origin and 30.9% were renewables. The Northwest category is made up of Alberta, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming. The Southwest category includes Arizona, Baja California, Colorado, Mexico, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.
And according to their site, they generate less than half of the electricity at 47.78%:
This informtion is two years old, but the increase in vehicle needs is going to finish the electricity problems in California. They just won’t have enough, period.
wy69
Deliver to the state line, then drop the load.....................
"companies will need to double the size of their fleets just to haul the same amount of freight they currently do"
bttt
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