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California approves $768M for electric vehicles

286 points by prostoalex 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
melling 8y ago
Don’t we still need a standard supercharging plug for electric vehicles?
- xsmasher 8y ago
  > 230 direct-current fast-charging stations, which can add 50 to 70 miles of range to a car’s battery in 20 minutes Not quite a supercharger, but not too shabby. Faster than my Level 2 home charger.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    We have an L3 DC-Fast charger at my work - I take my 110mi range Ford Focus EV from 10% to 95% in 30m. From near-zero I can get enough to drive home (40mi) in 20m.
- Maybestring 8y ago
  With $210 million for medium and heavy-duty vehicle chargers, whatever they choose may become the de-facto standard.
- r00fus 8y ago
  Tesla does it's own thing, everyone else is pretty much consolidated on CCS (with ChaDeMo thrown in there as an alternative port). Most fast charging stations have both major standards, and Tesla owners (like Mac owners) gotta dongle.
Brakenshire 8y ago
> The programs unanimously approved Thursday by the California Public Utilities Commission focus on creating the infrastructure to support charging stations particularly for electric trucks and buses, in contrast to previous expenditures, which have focused more on cars. Interesting that they're focusing on these high-utilization vehicles, you'd have thought that a percentage of bus transport and a percentage of freight or delivery transport would already fit the right profile for electric vehicles. For instance UPS or DHL must have some routes which have a lot of deliveries in a small area, in the centre of towns or cities, which are stop start for deliveries and for traffic. Using electric vehicles under those circumstances seems like an open goal.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
  They do. But why would they pay for charging stations when they can get the tax payer to cover it for them and keep all the profits to themselves?
  - Brakenshire 8y ago
    I was looking recently at a report about the costs of running electric buses, and it seems to be on the edge of profitable at the moment, which is why private investment isn't piling in. It does seem like the right place to make a public investment, though, that will be one of the first areas where electric vehicles will be the hard-nosed cheapest option. Especially given the money will presumably go in part to public institutions like schools, which can potentially reduce bills, certainly in the long-run.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      Even if the buses are not strictly profitable, buses are usually diesel powered and probably contribute quite a bit to smog-forming emissions. So electric buses have the benefit of removing (or relocating) those emissions, which is a public benefit.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - BRAlNlAC 8y ago
        why is relocating smog and all of the industrial waste associated with the production of a new bus and bus batteries a "public benefit"? Diesel engines last a long time, as do bus bodies, I don't have first hand experience managing a fleet but I'd be very interested to know how the pollution stacks up--is generating, transmitting, distributing, and storing the power, with all the losses incurred, along side making the batteries, which I assume wouldn't last that long in a fleet vehicle, really that much better than just burning diesel? I need to see a spreadsheet or something.
barnesto 8y ago
we have an overabundance of "green" energy here in California, yet energy prices are through the roof, we are looking at potential, rolling blackouts this summer, and we have to sell excess power to other states each month. why? well none of that green energy is connected to the public grid. with the wealth of energy, consumer prices should be zero. only that's not the goal of energy companies as they're all profit driven companies. meanwhile the CPUC is a corrupt as they come and haven't done anything to lighten the consumer's burden. that Clean PowerSF program? not voluntary in the sense you can opt out of it. you can choose how much more money you will be charged each month with that money going to produce clean energy. see the problem? they want us to pay for energy we can't even use and are hiding behind this clean energy program. as usual the consumer is getting hosed.
- webkike 8y ago
  can you provide a citation on the potential rolling blackouts this summer?
  - Edrexlerr 8y ago
    https://www.google.com/amp/amp.dailycaller.com/2018/05/31/california-texas-heat-waves-blackouts/ https://www.google.com/amp/amp.dailycaller.com/2018/05/31/ca... (When did users on this forum get so lazy they can't do a google search?)
    - mdorazio 8y ago
      When did users on this forum get so lazy they can't provide a citation when making potentially bogus claims? The burden of proof should always be on the person making a claim, not the person reading it.
      - ams6110 8y ago
        Rolling blackouts in the summer in California have been in the news perennially.
en4bz 8y ago
A quick search reveals that ~35-50% of California's electricity comes from Natural Gas. Basically EVs in California are methane powered ICEs by proxy. I find it quite annoying that government keep subsidizing EVs when the infrastructure to make them actually environmentally friendly is not in place. The only place owning an EV is actually environmentally friendly in North America is Quebec since 95% is generated by Hydro.
- dangrossman 8y ago
  California also now requires solar panels on new homes. The electric generation mix will only get cleaner over time. A car purchased today will likely still be on the road until 2029; what percentage of its power will be from gas versus renewables in 2029? I think you need to think a bit more long-term.
  - ptrklly 8y ago
    We don’t even need to think long term—EVs (even charged with fossil power) are already cleaner than gas cars in most cases: https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-numbers-are-in-and-evs-are-cleaner-than-ever https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-numbers-are-in-an... And—to your point—they get cleaner every year.
    - BRAlNlAC 8y ago
      I like the union of concerned scientists, but the study that they cite on this is hot garbage, and they should be ashamed. https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life-cycle-ev-emissions https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life... a few quotes from the pdf "For this analysis we expected the midsize and full-size BEV to need only one lithium-ion battery pack over its lifetime." of 179,000 miles "Excluded from the life cycle assessments are the global warming emissions from building the infrastructure (such as factories and industrial equipment) required to do all of the processing and assembling, and the emissions from transportation of raw materials for manufacturing." "we had limited data on the actual composition of the vehicle models" "Comparing our results with other battery literature(. . .), the emissions (kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of battery weight) depend on the battery chemistry. These estimates are on the lower end of the spectrum for battery-production global warming emissions because they derive from process-level analyses. The alternative approach—top-down methods, which refer to how the battery production energy is assessed— results in higher estimates because the scope of the assessment is large" and especially relevant to your point and the article you linked, which reads, "the extra emissions from making an 80-mile range EV (compared to a similar gasoline car) are about 15% higher" from quoted report "for this study we assumed a lifetime of 179,000 miles, both for gasoline and long-range battery-electric vehicles, based on the National Household Travel Survey (FHWA 2009) data for the first 15 years of a vehicle’s lifetime. However, we posited an exception for the 84-mile-range BEV and comparable gasoline car—that total mileage would be 135,000—75 percent of the mileage of the 265-mile-range BEV. This difference is due to “range limitations” of a car with a more modest-sized battery: its driver would likely be unwilling to drive long distances very often, given the frequent need for stopping to “fill up” " And then there is the whole mystery meat of the supply chain that produce all of the components, which don't seemed to be very shrewdly represented if at all. There is a lot more CO2 produced than just extraction>refinement. I'm really not confident in scientists ability to gauge the resource consumption of industry.
newnewpdro 8y ago
Neat Now who do I have to nag to get laws passed compelling landlords to install charging infrastructure for tenants? This is my main barrier to replacing my antique with an EV; most of the rentals I'm likely to occupy will not have access to charging.
- BMFX 8y ago
  My building just approved 10 (because that's all they can handle powerwise). Those 10 were on a first come first serve, for those willing to pay the $10,000 install fee.
- pkaye 8y ago
  How many charging stations would you expect? One for each parking spot?
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    We need something along these lines if we're being realistic about all the privately owned vehicles becoming electric. It's a major investment in infrastructure, this is the reality of EVs. I don't know how street parking gets handled at all, it almost requires wireless charging through the asphalt activated by simply parking over it. edit: At least until car batteries can be recharged as quickly as a gas tank is filled, then this is largely a non-issue. We're not there yet are we?
- dangrossman 8y ago
  California AB 2565, "Rental property: electric vehicle charging stations", passed in 2014, requires landlords approve all written requests from tenants to install EV charging stations (at the tenant's expense, with some reasonable caveats).
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    That's a step in the right direction, but at the tenants expense? CA should give the rental property owners an economic incentive to preemptively install the infrastructure. It's a very real barrier to adoption when you can't assume your next apartment will be able to charge your car immediately upon move-in.
ghouse 8y ago
I drive a EV with a range > 200 miles. Utility-customer funded chargers strike me as a solution tomorrow for a problem of yesterday -- limited EV range.
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  Are they public chargers? Or at they at school bus depots, and so on?
  - saas_co_de 8y ago
    "The utility will also spend $236.3 million on infrastructure and rebates to support electric trucks, buses and other medium or heavy-duty vehicles. Southern California Edison will spend up to $342.6 million on similar efforts." So, mostly corporate welfare. "place an emphasis on installing charging stations in disadvantaged communities or in facilities — such as ports — that tend to be located near low-income neighborhoods." But they are going to dispense the corporate welfare in the general vicinity of poor people, so the poor people can get some vicarious enjoyment out of watching people who are already rich eat a free lunch.
- xyhopguy 8y ago
  Maybe ten years ago I watched Bob Kennedy Jr or 3 or something talk about having battery swap stations instead of charging stations. Seemed interesting but I don't know much about batteries!
  - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
    The problem with that is uneven wear. Unless the battery isn't owned by you, it won't work as well.
    - Gibbon1 8y ago
      For trucks one could easily see trucking companies just leasing batteries from Truck Stops. Where the truck driver stops, picks up a fully charged battery and then drops it off at another truck stop 300 miles later. Rinse lather repeat all the way from New Jersey to Utah. Compressed gas cylinders sort of work this way. When you 'refill' a cylinder you just swap the empty one for a full one. You can even swap different sizes as needed. Which might also be useful for trucks.
cahomeown456 8y ago
This is a mitigation required because of the terrible housing situation in California. If normal people could afford to buy a home, they could install chargers themselves and this massive public construction effort would be unnecessary.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  California is a large state, the problems you're referring to are pretty local to relatively few specific city centers. I think it's at least a little disingenuous to claim the "terrible housing situation" is state-wide, it isn't.
- briandear 8y ago
  The problem is there aren’t enough homes. Price is a reflection of that. Santa Clara County has about a 10 day inventory last time I checked.
st26 8y ago
Apparently in a break from the usual, they've at least determined where they will get new revenue to pay for this.
ironjunkie 8y ago
Taking a step back from the fact that this is "Green energy", and all the usual virtue signaling associated with it nowadays. From a pure economic point of view, this is literally tax-money that will help the top 10% buy EVs more easily (because the other 90% cannot afford anything else than traditional vehicles). It is literally subsidizing a lifestyle on Tax Money. If this made sense economically, people would buy EVs without the need for state and federal subsidies.
- gregable 8y ago
  Read the article. This isn't going towards buying EVs, it's going towards installing a public network of charging stations. Wealthy or not, you won't buy an EV if you can't charge it. It also explicitly places an emphasis on placing stations in disadvantaged communities, and focuses on heavy duty vehicles including buses. This is not primarily putting in Tesla charging stations.
  - ironjunkie 8y ago
    I read the article, thanks. How is this any different? Does the government subsidize the installation of Gas station at every corner on tax-money? The point I'm making is that I would like to see EVs succeeding without the need for the governement to step in. With the governement stepping in, they are essentially giving free money to people that don't need it in the first place.
  - en4bz 8y ago
    Nope. That's 137M going directly to home owners. > San Diego Gas & Electric Co. will provide rebates for as many as 60,000 customers to install home charging stations and offer installation services, for a total of $136.9 million.
- llukas 8y ago
  If all externalities of traditional vehicles would be captured in their price you'd be right.
  - 8y ago
killjoywashere 8y ago
There are 11,502,870 in California. That's $67 per household. That's a night out for the wife and I. I guess it depends on how many chargers we get for this price. I suspect they will be clustered around political hotspots and I'm out in the 'burbs, so I'll never see one unless I drive into the city. Man, I'm shocked by how ambivalent I am to this. There must be some political backstory I'm missing. Somebody's nephew 7 years ago started working on something, that guy has since moved out of state, and it's surely tied up with his tax attorney representing someone involved in a secondary suit related to Vinod Khosla's gate across the path to Martin's Beach.
- rconti 8y ago
  The 'burbs are pretty much the reason charging infrastructure has to exist, isn't it? It's not like you're living on a farm.
- drb91 8y ago
  Out in the 'burbs people have their own garage where they can install a charger--problem solved. Meanwhile, an electric car is still laughably impractical for anyone living in an apartment.
  - worldsayshi 8y ago
    Some apartment blocks have parking spaces with charger stations. I don't see why that couldn't become more commonplace?
    - drb91 8y ago
      It totally can and should! However, I’m looking at electric cars right now and I can’t justify them because of how much it would restrict my apartment searching.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        Housing complexes with more than a few units are required to allow the install of an EV charger (At least in California and Illinois).
rconti 8y ago
One takeaway I saw from another article was that of the ~31M cars on the road in CA, 390,000 of them are EVs (slightly higher number than the one cited in this article). Either way, I'm fairly impressed that 1% of all cars in CA are already electric.
- syncsynchalt 8y ago
  Once you work out what the EVs look like (it's more than just Leafs and Teslas), you see them everywhere. 1% becomes more believable with each new model that you find out about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_production_plug-in_electric_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_production_plug... take a look, you wouldn't give some of these a second glance. You have to look at the badging in a lot of cases.
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    The link includes many plug-in hybrids where charging wouldn't be an efficient use of time. If you're on a road trip in a Chrysler Pacifica (33mi electric range), would you bother to charge it at your destination?
Camillo 8y ago
So the money comes from utility customers? That seems amazingly fiscally regressive, especially for California. At least early on, the main beneficiaries of this will be affluent people. That is hard to avoid when you're trying to incentivize a new technology (early adopters usually tend to be wealthier, for obvious reasons), but at least they could have funded this from general state revenue. But instead they seem to want to get the money from utility customers. That seems like one of the most regressive forms of "taxation" imaginable... pretty much everyone uses electricity, and while bigger households use more, the multiplier will certainly be much smaller than the one for income. Then there are industrial and commercial customers, for sure, but it seems equally misguided to specifically increase the burden on productive activity (rather than, say, on investment income, whose taxation would contribute to the general revenue).
- pyoung 8y ago
  Most CA utilities have low income programs[1]. On top of that, most rate plans are 'progressive' in that they charge more the more you use[2]. [1]https://www.pge.com/care https://www.pge.com/care [2] https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/tiered-base-plan/tiered-base-plan.page https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...
- en4bz 8y ago
  This is a continuation of policies that only benefit homeowners to the detriment of everyone else. Homeowners in California have a stranglehold on all levels of government. This money could have funded public transport which would have had a similar outcome and benefited more low and middle income people.
IronWolve 8y ago
I just wish they would have a standard for charging, they got multiple versions for levels 1,2,3 and Asian, American and Tesla. We finally force mobile phone manufacturers to use USB standard, and now cars are all over the place. Crazy to have Tesla only charging spots.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  > We finally force mobile phone manufacturers to use USB standard, You can thank the European Commission for that one.
- illumin8 8y ago
  Pretty much every EV uses the same port for level 1 and 2. Tesla has a DC fast charging port that comes with an adapter to fit the standard level 1 and 2. I don't see the problem. I own both a BMW i3 and a Tesla Model 3, and I can charge both with any public Chargepoint charger. The BMW i3 even supports level 3 DC fast charging just like the Tesla, although I don't believe Tesla will let you use their Supercharger network for a non-Tesla vehicle.
Animats 8y ago
Did they get rid of the hydrogen station scheme, or is that still in the bill?
- ghouse 8y ago
  This didn't come from the legislature. Approved by the CPUC yesterday morning. No H2 as part of this. You can watch it here: http://www.adminmonitor.com/ca/cpuc/voting_meeting/201805312/ http://www.adminmonitor.com/ca/cpuc/voting_meeting/201805312...
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mortdeus 8y ago
They have $768M and this is the best they can come up with when it comes to improving the state? Fuck, use that money and build the hyperloop like you should have, so we can race the slow as fuck bullet train the state decided to agree to spend billions on; only to find out that they received an overly optimistic bid.
aphextron 8y ago
Count me as someone excited for this. I was literally just sitting in line at a charger at Whole Foods yesterday thinking about how silly it is to have public transportation infrastructure reliant on corporate subsidies. We need massive public spending on EV infrastructure for it to be at a point where regular people will switch over.

286 points by prostoalex 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

melling 8y ago

Don’t we still need a standard supercharging plug for electric vehicles?

xsmasher 8y ago
> 230 direct-current fast-charging stations, which can add 50 to 70 miles of range to a car’s battery in 20 minutes Not quite a supercharger, but not too shabby. Faster than my Level 2 home charger.
- r00fus 8y ago
  We have an L3 DC-Fast charger at my work - I take my 110mi range Ford Focus EV from 10% to 95% in 30m. From near-zero I can get enough to drive home (40mi) in 20m.
Maybestring 8y ago
With $210 million for medium and heavy-duty vehicle chargers, whatever they choose may become the de-facto standard.
r00fus 8y ago
Tesla does it's own thing, everyone else is pretty much consolidated on CCS (with ChaDeMo thrown in there as an alternative port). Most fast charging stations have both major standards, and Tesla owners (like Mac owners) gotta dongle.

Brakenshire 8y ago

> The programs unanimously approved Thursday by the California Public Utilities Commission focus on creating the infrastructure to support charging stations particularly for electric trucks and buses, in contrast to previous expenditures, which have focused more on cars. Interesting that they're focusing on these high-utilization vehicles, you'd have thought that a percentage of bus transport and a percentage of freight or delivery transport would already fit the right profile for electric vehicles. For instance UPS or DHL must have some routes which have a lot of deliveries in a small area, in the centre of towns or cities, which are stop start for deliveries and for traffic. Using electric vehicles under those circumstances seems like an open goal.

onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
They do. But why would they pay for charging stations when they can get the tax payer to cover it for them and keep all the profits to themselves?
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  I was looking recently at a report about the costs of running electric buses, and it seems to be on the edge of profitable at the moment, which is why private investment isn't piling in. It does seem like the right place to make a public investment, though, that will be one of the first areas where electric vehicles will be the hard-nosed cheapest option. Especially given the money will presumably go in part to public institutions like schools, which can potentially reduce bills, certainly in the long-run.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Even if the buses are not strictly profitable, buses are usually diesel powered and probably contribute quite a bit to smog-forming emissions. So electric buses have the benefit of removing (or relocating) those emissions, which is a public benefit.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - BRAlNlAC 8y ago
      why is relocating smog and all of the industrial waste associated with the production of a new bus and bus batteries a "public benefit"? Diesel engines last a long time, as do bus bodies, I don't have first hand experience managing a fleet but I'd be very interested to know how the pollution stacks up--is generating, transmitting, distributing, and storing the power, with all the losses incurred, along side making the batteries, which I assume wouldn't last that long in a fleet vehicle, really that much better than just burning diesel? I need to see a spreadsheet or something.

barnesto 8y ago

we have an overabundance of "green" energy here in California, yet energy prices are through the roof, we are looking at potential, rolling blackouts this summer, and we have to sell excess power to other states each month. why? well none of that green energy is connected to the public grid. with the wealth of energy, consumer prices should be zero. only that's not the goal of energy companies as they're all profit driven companies. meanwhile the CPUC is a corrupt as they come and haven't done anything to lighten the consumer's burden. that Clean PowerSF program? not voluntary in the sense you can opt out of it. you can choose how much more money you will be charged each month with that money going to produce clean energy. see the problem? they want us to pay for energy we can't even use and are hiding behind this clean energy program. as usual the consumer is getting hosed.

webkike 8y ago
can you provide a citation on the potential rolling blackouts this summer?
- Edrexlerr 8y ago
  https://www.google.com/amp/amp.dailycaller.com/2018/05/31/california-texas-heat-waves-blackouts/ https://www.google.com/amp/amp.dailycaller.com/2018/05/31/ca... (When did users on this forum get so lazy they can't do a google search?)
  - mdorazio 8y ago
    When did users on this forum get so lazy they can't provide a citation when making potentially bogus claims? The burden of proof should always be on the person making a claim, not the person reading it.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      Rolling blackouts in the summer in California have been in the news perennially.

en4bz 8y ago

A quick search reveals that ~35-50% of California's electricity comes from Natural Gas. Basically EVs in California are methane powered ICEs by proxy. I find it quite annoying that government keep subsidizing EVs when the infrastructure to make them actually environmentally friendly is not in place. The only place owning an EV is actually environmentally friendly in North America is Quebec since 95% is generated by Hydro.

dangrossman 8y ago
California also now requires solar panels on new homes. The electric generation mix will only get cleaner over time. A car purchased today will likely still be on the road until 2029; what percentage of its power will be from gas versus renewables in 2029? I think you need to think a bit more long-term.
- ptrklly 8y ago
  We don’t even need to think long term—EVs (even charged with fossil power) are already cleaner than gas cars in most cases: https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-numbers-are-in-and-evs-are-cleaner-than-ever https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-numbers-are-in-an... And—to your point—they get cleaner every year.
  - BRAlNlAC 8y ago
    I like the union of concerned scientists, but the study that they cite on this is hot garbage, and they should be ashamed. https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life-cycle-ev-emissions https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life... a few quotes from the pdf "For this analysis we expected the midsize and full-size BEV to need only one lithium-ion battery pack over its lifetime." of 179,000 miles "Excluded from the life cycle assessments are the global warming emissions from building the infrastructure (such as factories and industrial equipment) required to do all of the processing and assembling, and the emissions from transportation of raw materials for manufacturing." "we had limited data on the actual composition of the vehicle models" "Comparing our results with other battery literature(. . .), the emissions (kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of battery weight) depend on the battery chemistry. These estimates are on the lower end of the spectrum for battery-production global warming emissions because they derive from process-level analyses. The alternative approach—top-down methods, which refer to how the battery production energy is assessed— results in higher estimates because the scope of the assessment is large" and especially relevant to your point and the article you linked, which reads, "the extra emissions from making an 80-mile range EV (compared to a similar gasoline car) are about 15% higher" from quoted report "for this study we assumed a lifetime of 179,000 miles, both for gasoline and long-range battery-electric vehicles, based on the National Household Travel Survey (FHWA 2009) data for the first 15 years of a vehicle’s lifetime. However, we posited an exception for the 84-mile-range BEV and comparable gasoline car—that total mileage would be 135,000—75 percent of the mileage of the 265-mile-range BEV. This difference is due to “range limitations” of a car with a more modest-sized battery: its driver would likely be unwilling to drive long distances very often, given the frequent need for stopping to “fill up” " And then there is the whole mystery meat of the supply chain that produce all of the components, which don't seemed to be very shrewdly represented if at all. There is a lot more CO2 produced than just extraction>refinement. I'm really not confident in scientists ability to gauge the resource consumption of industry.

newnewpdro 8y ago

Neat Now who do I have to nag to get laws passed compelling landlords to install charging infrastructure for tenants? This is my main barrier to replacing my antique with an EV; most of the rentals I'm likely to occupy will not have access to charging.

BMFX 8y ago
My building just approved 10 (because that's all they can handle powerwise). Those 10 were on a first come first serve, for those willing to pay the $10,000 install fee.
pkaye 8y ago
How many charging stations would you expect? One for each parking spot?
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  We need something along these lines if we're being realistic about all the privately owned vehicles becoming electric. It's a major investment in infrastructure, this is the reality of EVs. I don't know how street parking gets handled at all, it almost requires wireless charging through the asphalt activated by simply parking over it. edit: At least until car batteries can be recharged as quickly as a gas tank is filled, then this is largely a non-issue. We're not there yet are we?
dangrossman 8y ago
California AB 2565, "Rental property: electric vehicle charging stations", passed in 2014, requires landlords approve all written requests from tenants to install EV charging stations (at the tenant's expense, with some reasonable caveats).
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  That's a step in the right direction, but at the tenants expense? CA should give the rental property owners an economic incentive to preemptively install the infrastructure. It's a very real barrier to adoption when you can't assume your next apartment will be able to charge your car immediately upon move-in.

ghouse 8y ago

I drive a EV with a range > 200 miles. Utility-customer funded chargers strike me as a solution tomorrow for a problem of yesterday -- limited EV range.

Brakenshire 8y ago
Are they public chargers? Or at they at school bus depots, and so on?
- saas_co_de 8y ago
  "The utility will also spend $236.3 million on infrastructure and rebates to support electric trucks, buses and other medium or heavy-duty vehicles. Southern California Edison will spend up to $342.6 million on similar efforts." So, mostly corporate welfare. "place an emphasis on installing charging stations in disadvantaged communities or in facilities — such as ports — that tend to be located near low-income neighborhoods." But they are going to dispense the corporate welfare in the general vicinity of poor people, so the poor people can get some vicarious enjoyment out of watching people who are already rich eat a free lunch.
xyhopguy 8y ago
Maybe ten years ago I watched Bob Kennedy Jr or 3 or something talk about having battery swap stations instead of charging stations. Seemed interesting but I don't know much about batteries!
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
  The problem with that is uneven wear. Unless the battery isn't owned by you, it won't work as well.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    For trucks one could easily see trucking companies just leasing batteries from Truck Stops. Where the truck driver stops, picks up a fully charged battery and then drops it off at another truck stop 300 miles later. Rinse lather repeat all the way from New Jersey to Utah. Compressed gas cylinders sort of work this way. When you 'refill' a cylinder you just swap the empty one for a full one. You can even swap different sizes as needed. Which might also be useful for trucks.

cahomeown456 8y ago

This is a mitigation required because of the terrible housing situation in California. If normal people could afford to buy a home, they could install chargers themselves and this massive public construction effort would be unnecessary.

newnewpdro 8y ago
California is a large state, the problems you're referring to are pretty local to relatively few specific city centers. I think it's at least a little disingenuous to claim the "terrible housing situation" is state-wide, it isn't.
briandear 8y ago
The problem is there aren’t enough homes. Price is a reflection of that. Santa Clara County has about a 10 day inventory last time I checked.

st26 8y ago

Apparently in a break from the usual, they've at least determined where they will get new revenue to pay for this.

ironjunkie 8y ago

Taking a step back from the fact that this is "Green energy", and all the usual virtue signaling associated with it nowadays. From a pure economic point of view, this is literally tax-money that will help the top 10% buy EVs more easily (because the other 90% cannot afford anything else than traditional vehicles). It is literally subsidizing a lifestyle on Tax Money. If this made sense economically, people would buy EVs without the need for state and federal subsidies.

gregable 8y ago
Read the article. This isn't going towards buying EVs, it's going towards installing a public network of charging stations. Wealthy or not, you won't buy an EV if you can't charge it. It also explicitly places an emphasis on placing stations in disadvantaged communities, and focuses on heavy duty vehicles including buses. This is not primarily putting in Tesla charging stations.
- ironjunkie 8y ago
  I read the article, thanks. How is this any different? Does the government subsidize the installation of Gas station at every corner on tax-money? The point I'm making is that I would like to see EVs succeeding without the need for the governement to step in. With the governement stepping in, they are essentially giving free money to people that don't need it in the first place.
- en4bz 8y ago
  Nope. That's 137M going directly to home owners. > San Diego Gas & Electric Co. will provide rebates for as many as 60,000 customers to install home charging stations and offer installation services, for a total of $136.9 million.
llukas 8y ago
If all externalities of traditional vehicles would be captured in their price you'd be right.
- 8y ago

killjoywashere 8y ago

There are 11,502,870 in California. That's $67 per household. That's a night out for the wife and I. I guess it depends on how many chargers we get for this price. I suspect they will be clustered around political hotspots and I'm out in the 'burbs, so I'll never see one unless I drive into the city. Man, I'm shocked by how ambivalent I am to this. There must be some political backstory I'm missing. Somebody's nephew 7 years ago started working on something, that guy has since moved out of state, and it's surely tied up with his tax attorney representing someone involved in a secondary suit related to Vinod Khosla's gate across the path to Martin's Beach.

rconti 8y ago
The 'burbs are pretty much the reason charging infrastructure has to exist, isn't it? It's not like you're living on a farm.
drb91 8y ago
Out in the 'burbs people have their own garage where they can install a charger--problem solved. Meanwhile, an electric car is still laughably impractical for anyone living in an apartment.
- worldsayshi 8y ago
  Some apartment blocks have parking spaces with charger stations. I don't see why that couldn't become more commonplace?
  - drb91 8y ago
    It totally can and should! However, I’m looking at electric cars right now and I can’t justify them because of how much it would restrict my apartment searching.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Housing complexes with more than a few units are required to allow the install of an EV charger (At least in California and Illinois).

rconti 8y ago

One takeaway I saw from another article was that of the ~31M cars on the road in CA, 390,000 of them are EVs (slightly higher number than the one cited in this article). Either way, I'm fairly impressed that 1% of all cars in CA are already electric.

syncsynchalt 8y ago
Once you work out what the EVs look like (it's more than just Leafs and Teslas), you see them everywhere. 1% becomes more believable with each new model that you find out about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_production_plug-in_electric_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_production_plug... take a look, you wouldn't give some of these a second glance. You have to look at the badging in a lot of cases.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  The link includes many plug-in hybrids where charging wouldn't be an efficient use of time. If you're on a road trip in a Chrysler Pacifica (33mi electric range), would you bother to charge it at your destination?

Camillo 8y ago

So the money comes from utility customers? That seems amazingly fiscally regressive, especially for California. At least early on, the main beneficiaries of this will be affluent people. That is hard to avoid when you're trying to incentivize a new technology (early adopters usually tend to be wealthier, for obvious reasons), but at least they could have funded this from general state revenue. But instead they seem to want to get the money from utility customers. That seems like one of the most regressive forms of "taxation" imaginable... pretty much everyone uses electricity, and while bigger households use more, the multiplier will certainly be much smaller than the one for income. Then there are industrial and commercial customers, for sure, but it seems equally misguided to specifically increase the burden on productive activity (rather than, say, on investment income, whose taxation would contribute to the general revenue).

pyoung 8y ago
Most CA utilities have low income programs[1]. On top of that, most rate plans are 'progressive' in that they charge more the more you use[2]. [1]https://www.pge.com/care https://www.pge.com/care [2] https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/tiered-base-plan/tiered-base-plan.page https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...
en4bz 8y ago
This is a continuation of policies that only benefit homeowners to the detriment of everyone else. Homeowners in California have a stranglehold on all levels of government. This money could have funded public transport which would have had a similar outcome and benefited more low and middle income people.

IronWolve 8y ago

I just wish they would have a standard for charging, they got multiple versions for levels 1,2,3 and Asian, American and Tesla. We finally force mobile phone manufacturers to use USB standard, and now cars are all over the place. Crazy to have Tesla only charging spots.

jacobolus 8y ago
> We finally force mobile phone manufacturers to use USB standard, You can thank the European Commission for that one.
illumin8 8y ago
Pretty much every EV uses the same port for level 1 and 2. Tesla has a DC fast charging port that comes with an adapter to fit the standard level 1 and 2. I don't see the problem. I own both a BMW i3 and a Tesla Model 3, and I can charge both with any public Chargepoint charger. The BMW i3 even supports level 3 DC fast charging just like the Tesla, although I don't believe Tesla will let you use their Supercharger network for a non-Tesla vehicle.

Animats 8y ago

Did they get rid of the hydrogen station scheme, or is that still in the bill?

ghouse 8y ago
This didn't come from the legislature. Approved by the CPUC yesterday morning. No H2 as part of this. You can watch it here: http://www.adminmonitor.com/ca/cpuc/voting_meeting/201805312/ http://www.adminmonitor.com/ca/cpuc/voting_meeting/201805312...

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mortdeus 8y ago

They have $768M and this is the best they can come up with when it comes to improving the state? Fuck, use that money and build the hyperloop like you should have, so we can race the slow as fuck bullet train the state decided to agree to spend billions on; only to find out that they received an overly optimistic bid.

aphextron 8y ago

Count me as someone excited for this. I was literally just sitting in line at a charger at Whole Foods yesterday thinking about how silly it is to have public transportation infrastructure reliant on corporate subsidies. We need massive public spending on EV infrastructure for it to be at a point where regular people will switch over.