Guest Post by Eric Peters
It’s ironic that the state which birthed and came to define the car culture – cruising on Friday nights, the Beach Boys, Ronnie and the Daytonas – has become the state most hostile toward them.
No more little GTOs really looking fine or little Deuce coupes. Hell, no more Hyundais . . . unless they’re battery powered.
Under the terms of a fatwa crafted by Phil Ting – a member of the California General Assembly from San Francisco – the only new vehicles which will be legal for use on California roads beginning in 2040 will be “clean” vehicles.
“Clean” defined in interestingly incoherent – and arbitrary – terms.
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Ting isn’t talking about the actually dirty byproducts of internal combustion – almost all of which have been sequestered and never leaves the tailpipe. That’s been true for decades. He is talking about carbon dioxide, which has become the commie-under-the-bed of our era.
C02 is a gas (and an inert gas) but hardly dirty. It doesn’t foul the air; it doesn’t make it harder to breath. It is a naturally occurring component of the atmosphere – and if it is “dirty” then so are oxygen and nitrogen. 
But C02 is the one impossible to sequester byproduct of internal combustion – which gives it value as the unanswerable trump card of those who need a pretext for banning the cars which they loathe.
This includes electric cars.
One wonders whether Ting groks this – or is just another useful idiot.
EVs do not emit C02, of course.
But the utility plants which produce the electricity which makes them go certainly do. Unless powered by nukes (can’t have that) or unicorn farts or Zero Point energy out of the vacuum – neither of which are online yet or foreseeably.
So if the object of the exercise is to cork up sources of C02, won’t those dirty coal and oil-fired utility plants have to be corked, too? And if they are corked, where will millions of “clean” electric cars obtain the electricity they need to make them go?
Ting does not say. Maybe because he has not thought.
He does say:
“Until you set a deadline, nothing gets done . . . it’s responsible for us to set a deadline 23 years in advance.”
Responsible?
Assuming you buy into the shibboleths, particularly the one about carbon dioxide being “dirty” and the alleged – and allegedly catastrophic – effects on the planet resulting from fractional increases in atmospheric concentrations of C02.
Leave that aside for a moment.
2040 is much closer than it sounds because the car companies – like the Titanic – cannot turn on a dime. It takes years to design a new car and get it ready for the marketplace. And the parameters for new designs are based – these days – at least as much on regulatory fatwas as on market trends.
For instance:
The marketplace hasn’t induced the car companies to “silent recall” most of their six cylinder (and larger) engines – you may have noticed this trend – and replace them with very small fours, very heavily boosted by turbochargers, to recover the power lost by the physical downsizing of the engines.
Nor has the marketplace demanded direct injected engines that turn themselves off automatically every time the car rolls to a stop. Or automatic transmissions with nine and ten speeds that provide no benefit to the vehicle owner but plenty of liability – in the form of weird operating characteristics (all that up and down shifting) and premature economic obsolescence when they fail and the cost to replace them is disproportionate relative to the worth of the car.
Nor easily-damaged and expensive-to-fix aluminum bodies.
Et cetera – and more to come.
These things have been put into production solely in anticipation of the 54.5 MPG fuel economy fatwa that is scheduled to go into effect beginning with the 2025 models.
If California – the largest single market for cars in the United States – passes a law forbidding the sale of cars powered by internal combustion beginning in 2040, the entire industry will have to make plans on that basis as well.
And that will mean the abandonment of the internal combustion engine long before the actual ban goes into effect. No point investing in new engine (or transmission) technologies – which take years to develop, test and make ready for production – when you know ahead of time that all your efforts will simply be thrown away, including the millions (if not billions) spent on R&D, tooling and so on.
If the California General Assembly actually passes this bill and it is signed into law by Governor Moonbat – who has already expressed enthusiasm – it will mean that the current crop of new cars will be the last generation of new cars.
Of IC-powered new cars, at any rate.
There will be minor updates of the cars currently in production, to keep them as fresh as feasible – but it would be economic suicide for a car company to make any major investment in a technology that will no longer be legal to sell in the biggest market in the country just a few product cycles down the road from now. Particularly if other states follow California’s example, which several probably will.
So the car industry will transition to “clean” electrics – which aren’t.
Meanwhile, C02 will continue to be emitted – just not at the tailpipe. Unless Ting, et al also go after the smokestacks, which they no doubt will. Which – absent the unicorn farts or Zero Point energy pulled out of the vacuum – will mean the end of the EVs, too.
You are maybe beginning to see the picture.
Sum Ting Wong with Mista Ting.
Sum Ting Wong with Govna Moonbat, too, but that would take an entire article to describe.
That freaky bow tie reminds me Big Lie, The Not-Science Scammer Guy, who also regularly has hissy fits over CO2. Wonder if they share bow ties, in addition to wacko ideas?
I wonder if any of these wackos realize that CO2 is essential for plant growth? We eat plants, and also eat the flesh of critters which live off eating plants.
The only guy with a bow tie who warrants the slightest respect is Colonel Sanders. Bernie Sanders could have wrapped up the Democrat nomination in the South if he’d changed his first name to “Colonel”.
I am looking forward to a time when I don’t hear my neighbors cars from 2 blocks away. Or the fucking motorcycles that can be heard from 6 blocks away. Assholes!
My neighbors cars are silent. What manner of shithole area do you live where cars dont have mufflers?
A few people who are to poor or lazy to fix their cars.
Some gearheads who think loud is cool.
A bunch of big pickups-old or diesel.
60 by 130 lots– of houses that sell for $65k–mostly white-5 blocks off of 4 streets that are 4 lane –single family urban. Lowes-menards-home depot-and 7 grocery stores within 5 miles. A place where you can ride a bicycle for days without starting a car. $20 a month for sewer and water.
Trouble in Paradise, Karl?
Robert (QSLV)
Gotta support the Tesla plant.
Screw Cali and “fouled up” a$$holes. Even the illegals are starting to leave…..
The Army stationed me twice in southern California in 87 – 88 and again in 91 -92. Two of the best one year stints that I had in my career and it is gone forever.
Talk about full retard – Ting has effectively outlawed horses!
Does this crazy ban only apply to cars? Or bigrigs too?
IMO, this is another reason we should all get fully behind the Cali Secession movement. If it were me running a car company, I would focus on expanding my overseas market over the next few years, and let my competitors deal with Cali. Close up shop in Cali and make up the loss elsewhere with improved ICE performance and narrowed product focus. Just say bye-bye until Guv Moonbat and the Lobotomy Bunch retire or die off, then look at it down the road.
Seems like the only winning move is not to play, at least if you want to make profits enough to go forward. I’m waiting to see how the EV bunch really fares outside of tightly controlled urban areas. And bigrigs? I guess you could run tandem trailers – one for batteries and the other for cargo. But man, wait until they hit that long ramp up the continental divide! The charging stations on either side will need their own 1000,000 volt high tension substations!!
It will be interesting in another decade or so when oil has climbed and remained at high price, and lithium is past peak production…
CO2 is plant food!
These eco-warriors don’t take into account the vast amounts of filth-spewage from importing “clean” vehicles. http://www.enfos.com/blog/2015/06/23/behemoths-of-emission-how-a-container-ship-can-out-pollute-50-million-cars/
Ting’s a plant abuser – anti green! He can’t not know that when plants are deprived of CO2 they turn brown and die. The world’s plants are starving because of his ilk.
Not to worry, America’s Military Industrial Complex has a plan to put all these issues to rest.
I think the auto industry ought to grow a pair and tell California to fuck off. Let the serfs in California know that there will be no more autos delivered until their stupid rules are rescinded. Let’s see how long it takes the citizens to pay a visit to Sacramento with the tar and feathers.
Clean air is nice but be realistic.