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California makes zero-emission autonomous vehicles mandatory by 2030
- melling 5y agoHow many "autonomous vehicles" will there be by 2030? DARPA Grand Challenge was won by Stanford in 2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge Google started self-driving in 2009. Maybe we should make this an easier problem to solve? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot
- snovv_crash 5y agoThis law is only making the requirement for self driving cars to be electric by 2030, not that there must be self driving cars.
- rsj_hn 5y agoI wish dang or someone could fix the headline as this thread is already descending into flamebait because of the misleading title.
- nostrademons 5y agoSaw 2 of them in San Francisco last night, and I was up there outside of business hours. I think this is one of those cases where "the future is here, but it's unevenly distributed". If you live in Phoenix, San Francisco, or the South Bay, self-driving cars are already here; if you're in Mountain View they've been here since 2012. If you're in the rest of the country, they're science fiction. Waymo at least is being super-careful about rolling out, as they should, but that doesn't mean the tech doesn't work.
- jmnicolas 5y agoI think the title is misleading. The way I understand the article is that in 2030 if your vehicle is autonomous then it has to be 0 emission but I don't think it implies that all vehicles must be autonomous.
- mikepurvis 5y agoLots of us would like to see more ambitious targets across the whole fleet, but I can understand targeting autonomous vehicles in particular because a) they're new anyway, and b) there's a somewhat legit fear of people doing ridiculous stuff like having their vehicle just circle the block all day rather than find itself a parking space. Obviously, a behaviour like that would have a lot more negative externalities than just the emissions side of it, but at least this way you ensure that if millions of autonomous vehicles are tooling around empty, they're at least not polluting while doing so.
- jmnicolas 5y agoI have read somewhere that about 50% of a vehicle emissions are from the tires and the breaks, so we're still far from 0 emissions even with an EV. In your scenario the idiot that let his vehicle circle the block all day would still have to pay for breaks, tires and electricity. And judging by the inflation trajectory since last year, I'm not sure many of us will be able to afford this kind of waste in 2030. But I don't think we will get level 5 autonomy by 2030 anyway (if ever).
- SECProto 5y agoA stat like that would be referring to particulate emissions, not CO2 emissions
- jmnicolas 5y agoI wasn't referring to CO2: breaks and tires emit particulates due to wear.
- SECProto 5y agoRight, but the article is about greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 and equiv), so I was offering clarity. Particulate emissions don't have global warming potential aren't terribly relevant in the context.
- PenguinCoder 5y agoNever going to happen in that timeframe.
- roflchoppa 5y agoI don’t think Californias power grid is ready to handle the demands for a massive increase in electronic vehicles on the grid. These timelines are great on paper and for getting votes by progressives, but the infra can’t handle it.
- crocodiletears 5y agoDoesn't matter. Part of the solutions we're most likely to adopt for the climate crisis involves putting the majority of the population under some form of energy austerity. One of the pushes in of the green and urbanist movements is the phasing out of personal vehicles in favor of shared and public transportation infrastructure. Achieving this goal necessitates that the use of personal vehicles become uneconomic for the masses. Whether or not new infrastructure is built, or public transport becomes pleasant or viable, this goal is eminently achievable through the use of regulatory targets.
- jdavis703 5y agoI’m not too concerned about transmission. Time of day billing can solve this. What concerns me is power generation. We’re phasing out nuclear power, and replacing it with solar (doesn’t work well during most of the times when grid use is low) and then of course natural gas which is obviously problematic.
- justinzollars 5y agoI'll plug in my TESLA from 12-1, you plug in yours from 1-2, our neighbor can wake up and charge their TESLA from 3-4, and their neighbor from 4am-5am. Its going to be a warm morning, so no TESLA charging after 6am
- justinzollars 5y agoWhy is this fact downvoted? I have friends at PGE and they say exactly this.
- snovv_crash 5y agoCan't PG&E massively ramp up infrastructure investment in anticipation to increased demand? Wouldn't this make them a lot of money?
- jeffbee 5y agoCalifornia loves to pass superficial regulations that won't change anything. Whatever looks good on paper and doesn't actually impact anyone is great for us. Things that could actually reduce GHG emissions like completing the high-speed rail project, taxing fuels, fossil fuel severance taxes, enforceable bus lanes, walkable urban development happen slowly or not at all.
- annexrichmond 5y agoDo you know for a fact that taxing fuels will reduce emissions? Afaict, it’ll just increase the COL even further for those not privileged enough to live close to public transit lines.
- jeffbee 5y agoDemand for motor fuels is elastic: https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2020/0616 https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2020/0616
- gghlp11 5y ago"Autonomous" is really a misnomer for driverless cars, especially when they are electric. They all track your location and a bunch of other things. If electric, you are dependent on a centralized grid operator. It's easy for a totalitarian government to halt all electric cars. Electric vehicles, while nice, are another step towards centralization. Another loss of freedom and real autonomy.
- Skunkleton 5y agoI’m sorry, but it would be just as easy for a totalitarian government to shut down gas stations. Even still, if you were so worried, you could keep some off grid charging solution around. Can’t stop solar…
- maxnoe 5y agoHow exactly is it easier for a government to shut down your solar panels than to stop you from getting highly refined oil products? Iff you were right, what would stop you from charging your electric car with a diesel generator?
- chapium 5y agoCalifornia desperately needs to reduce the amount of free parking and encourage non-car modes of travel.
- supernova87a 5y agoHere is a different question I am curious about. How do we manage the constantly growing number of laws that have to be passed to manage a state and all the issues that come up? At some point, you might think that there needs to be a simpler set of higher level principles, but not quite so general as the constitution, to manage what must be tens of thousands of laws. i.e. to say that if the laws follow this set of principles, then their interpretation is clear. Because as far as I know, our courts are being swamped with cases and under water, every law that's passed opens up a new area of challenge for lawyers to learn/assist/profit from, depending on your perspective, and for people to have to keep track of or somehow find out about. Is it just a fact of modern life that the more new things we encounter as a society, the more laws we need? Does anyone else perceive that the growing body of law will at some point become a problem?
- kungito 5y agoFrom what I understand, this is a USA problem. European legal system isn't based on case law and there is a lot more of the jugde interpreting the loosely defined laws and the constitution. There is also this "law practice" or how would you call it which is when a similar thing has been decided in the same manner you can expect yours to be too but it is not guaranteed and these "trends" regarding the same thing can change from time to time
- tw04 5y agoIt's called precedent and is also prevalent in the US Justice system
- still_grokking 5y agoIt's not only the US with this "every court ruling becomes quasi-law" approach. (I have a hard time not to call it madness to be honest). It's inherited form the Anglo-Saxon law tradition so this system can be found across the whole British commonwealth as well. Most EU countries on the other hands side come from a law tradition inherited form the Roman Empire. The Romans didn't had case law but a very structured and principled law system. (It likely wouldn't had worked otherwise for them given all the different traditions in the provinces; you wouldn't have gotten any comparable court rulings in different parts of the empire without a strict systematic and strong governing principles). But EU law as a whole (compared to the law in the countries) isn't that "pure" as the Brits brought of course their views to the table and some more case-law like parts sneaked into EU law by now. Just look at who the European Court of Justice works for example.
- GDC7 5y agoWith all due respect this is madness. If by some hail mary miracle we manage to get Level 5 or even advanced Level 4 that should be the priority for the automotive industry, not electrification. Government should throw money at the problem, because once you remove car crashes we basically won't die violently anymore...at least in the West. Call me selfish but I am much more concerned for my safety and the safety of my family members and in general the safety of my contemporaries compared to those who'd inhabit the planet 200 years from now who'd face the effect of Global Warming. Also as Bill Gates eloquently described in his book "How to avoid a Climate disaster" electric cars , should they come alone are basically the low hanging fruit vanity project. We need solutions for steel, cement, farming etc.
- redisman 5y ago> that should be the priority for the automotive industry, not electrification Why on earth would that be? I see electrification as a much more important issue than “self driving” and it’s an actual proven technology. There are no true L4 or L5 implementations without huge asterisks (works geofenced in sunny weather with a human remote driver to bail it out) so it would be insanity to mandate a still mostly fictitious technology
- GDC7 5y agoFor sure you have somebody in your life who had a car crash? Maybe somebody who is not with us anymore due to a car crash. The health problems caused by ICEs are as easy to solve as wearing an N95 mask. There is no reward in electrification for the people who are alive right now, there maybe is for those who'd be alive 200 years from now if they also come with the hard stuff such as new technologies in farming, electricity generation, cement etc.
- theptip 5y agoAgreed. It’s crazy to selectively disadvantage this sector. Come up with a plan to phase out ICEs, probably with different timelines for business vs. consumer based on typical depreciation schedules, and apply those restrictions across the board. This kind of selective enforcement distorts the market, and will only delay the transition to autonomous vehicles.
- voz_ 5y agoVery surprising how many anti-green comments there are here. What do solutions for a cleaner, greener world look like, if not ones that include steps like these?
- black_13 5y agoFirst who needs autonomous vehicles right now who needs this? Actually who needs cars? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/wheres-my-flying-car/603025/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/wheres-...
- proc0 5y agoHow can they predict the future so far in advanced? I don't mean what process they took, I mean it's a decade away, and I don't care who you are, you cannot predict the future. We could have some catastrophe, or major event of some kind, not to mention the required technologies never reaching maturity, and this will be a useless waste of time.