California just announced the end of gas-powered vehicles in its state and Minnesotans should be concerned.
New regulations recently announced by California Air Resources Board (CARB) will require that 35% of new passenger vehicles sold in the Golden State must be zero emissions by 2026, a number that ramps up to and 100% of new vehicles by 2035. This has implications for Minnesota because in 2019 Gov. Tim Walz instructed the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to unilaterally adopt California’s current and future standards for low and zero emission vehicles. In wake of this stunning announcement by CARB, the MPCA has reaffirmed their belief that they have the authority to adopt all the rules set by CARB “as is,” including the ban. That is a lot of power for an unelected agency.
Minnesota has always been on the forefront when it comes to clean energy and protecting our beautiful natural resources and I believe we all want to live in a world with less pollutants and greenhouse gases. But a complete ban on gas vehicles, at an arbitrary date, putting only electric vehicles on dealer lots in the hopes that people buy them is like putting more broccoli in front of a toddler in hopes that he will eat it. Just because it is there, doesn’t mean that the demand is there.
I imagine that there are several reasons why Minnesotans don’t think an electric vehicle is for them. It might be someone like my sister, who has eight children and can’t quite get everyone into a Prius for church on Sunday mornings. Maybe it is someone who has valid concerns about the diminished driving range their electric vehicles would likely experience during the cold Minnesota winter. Perhaps it is someone who lives in rural Minnesota, where there is no battery charging infrastructure to support these vehicles.
Farmers have also expressed concerns on what these new rules mean from an equipment standpoint, given the fact that these same CARB mandates will also require that all commercial trucks and vans be zero emission starting in 2045. There are also concerned that this will have long-term negative implications for the biofuels industry, which contributes $2 billion annually to Minnesota’s economy and farmers.
Despite growing momentum toward cleaner cars, less than 1% of vehicles on the nation’s roads are electric. Minnesota dealers currently sell about 2,000 electric vehicles each year. I am a firm believer in the market and believe that we will get to a point where it might make sense to have only electric vehicles on lots, but government won’t decide that – consumers will. The fact remains though, that until certain technological innovations come forward, electric vehicles will still not be an option for many consumers. We should step back and fully evaluate our goals and how we should achieve them.
The good news is that the market is shifting on its own, negating the need for such mandates, as several automobile manufacturers are on their own investing heavily in electrification. There is still much work to be done to lengthen driving ranges, speed up battery charges, and invest in charging infrastructure but progress is being made on these fronts every day.
[image_caption]Amy Koch[/image_caption]
To state the obvious, Minnesota is not California and this heavy-handed approach by individual states will not have the impact that we hope it will have. Let’s not go down the one technology-fits-all path. It stifles innovation and doesn’t have the effect on greenhouse gas and pollution that is intended. California bureaucrats should not be setting pollution standards in Minnesota, and consumers should be left with a fuel choice for their vehicles.
Amy Koch is a former state senator and Senate majority leader. Koch served on the Senate Transportation and Senate Energy Committees during her tenure in the Senate and, following her time in office, as chair of the Minnesota Conservative Energy Forum.
Wow, from Senate Majority Leader to pathetic partisan screeds on topics of interest to about 5% of the readership on a regional blog. No one but bizarre anti-climate change activists care about gas vehicles going away, most of us hope it can happen even faster than planned. No one is forcing you to stop driving your coal roller, hell, if it makes those folks more poor as gas and diesel get more expensive, all the better. The rest of us will just keep moving on, watching backward conservatives get further and further behind us in the rearview.
It’s so telling that the very best argument Koch can devise against electric vehicles is that we’d have to upgrade the grid.
And the idea that there isn’t demand for these cars is simply laughable. You can’t find one on a lot because they’re all waitlisted! There’s an abundance of demand.
Seems Amy Koch hasn’t gained any integrity since her resignation.
And what is it you are proposing? Do nothing, just spark fear into the hearts of the voters? You know you should stop using cell phones as well, that is battery powered/rechargeable, and stop using those battery powered/rechargeable computers, tools, lawn mowers, trimmers, drills, saws, sanders etc. etc. etc. as well. Electrical vehicles are just an application of the same battery powered technology, but apparently real scary to some people.
Mandates and bans. This is the primary reason why I stopped voting democrat. Let the market decide.
And which market is that?
No the main reason you stopped voting Democratic (yeah right…) is that we won’t validate you for being anti-social, and no matter how much you try, just won’t hate the same people you do.
Good news for your sister – GM is working on an EV replacement for their cargo/passenger vans. Manufacturers already sell every EV they make – why do you think that means there’s no demand for them? https://www.autoweek.com/news/a40435740/gm-will-replace-chevrolet-express-gmc-savana-with-evs-2026/
Unilaterally following California on anything is a disaster waiting to happen. The Lefties here in Minnesota love California and with Walz following their lead in electric vehicles, there must be such exciting banter at their cocktail socials… . Regular Minnesotans don’t want electric vehicles getting 50% battery performance in sub zero weather.
You must feel lonely missing out on those “cocktail socials” whilst pounding 1.75’s of Karkov in your basement, all alone.
When the first sentence of the piece is a lie, it’s hard to continue reading, but I did.
The market is deciding, and the decision is EV’s. To say otherwise is merely willful ignorance (which I believe is an aspirational trait for Republicans).
Ms. Kock trots out all the tired and irksome canards, blackouts, range anxiety, slow charging, nobody wants one, although to her credit, when she lambasts California bureaucrats, she didn’t say “liberal, or leftist”, so there’s that.
It would be useful to note that Ms. Koch is employed as a political strategist for a lobbying firm.
Her commentary may be her own and in no way related to her employment, but failure to disclose that information (while including her previous employment) is suspect.
Finally, a realistic demand that Minnesota politicians and regulators realize that Minnesota is not California.
As far as I can see, the very Minnpost article this author links to refutes her description of what the MPCA says it intends to do, while also ignoring that the same article says the CA “ban” is not actually a part of its standards. But the MN GOP has pledged to foment fear and rage over the Clean Cars initiative (and “unelected “bureaucrats!”), especially in rural MN. So they have to stay the course.
Since no one can see CO2, it is a classic case of “pollution of the commons”, and environmental science has long demonstrated that this is exactly where “the market” simply cannot solve the problem, as the pollution of each actor is loaded anonymously onto the whole society. And why in the world do you think auto manufacturers are now changing their production plans, other than because CO2 emissions are (finally!) beginning to be regulated, as in CA?
So bleating about the The Market as the Holy Grail is just more conservative claptrap. There will have to be government regulation and disfavoring of unnecessary CO2 emissions if they are to be reduced adequately to save the only planet on which both Californians and Minnesotans live. Purely voluntary compliance (“the market”) cannot succeed, no matter how many conservatives splice their articles with supposed love and concern for Minnesota’s “beautiful natural resources”. Acting as though “the market” can possibly solve the crisis on its own is just disguised Do-Nothingism and disinformation.
California has banned sale of pure hydrocarbon vehices by 2035. This will allow hybrids, and plug-in hybrids. As such, this represents a slow & soft landing.
Such transitional vehicles will allow up to 100% gasoline and diesel use for the forseeable future, under California rules.
I agree hard deadlines aren’t ideal when making a big change like this.
I also worry about the up to 40% decline in range that comes with cold weather.
There is an answer for this in the near term: hybrids.
There is no longer a trade off when you get a hybrid. Often it is the better model, performance and comfort wise. This is definitely the case with our AWD RAV4 Hybrid. And we got it for less than 30k. The plug in version, the RAV4 Prime is even better and would still be allowed in a California-style mandate.
If you like AWD, there are plenty of other options. There is even an 8 passenger hybrid that offers AWD: the Toyota Sienna. There are also lots of hybrid SUVs in a variety of sizes. And if you really want to get good mileage, roomy sedans like the Honda Accord and Hyundai Sonata.
Hybrids, for a small nominal cost up from an ICE version of a car or truck effectively double your gas mileage. So when gas hits $4/gallon, it is more like $2/gallon for hybrid owners. It sure helped on our summer road trip to Alabama and back. We got 42 mpg.
Hybrid also only require small batteries – stretching the capacity of current battery manufacturing until we get to the point we have enough battery and charging capacity for universal adoption of EVs.
I also think EV makers need to figure out how to get their EVs to retain charge in January in MN. And no, I’m not going to just turn on my seat warmers and shut off my heat to stretch range, I want to be able to have my heat on full blast when it is -20 outside.
Your dubious claim of 40% loss in winter begs this question. When is it cold? Is it 31, just below freezing, or 0, or the mythical -40 that reaches the threshold of cold. Loss occurs, but this is not a fact sprung on unsuspecting EV owners in the middle of winter, they know if going in.
You people act as if every trip out of the garage with an EV is a 400 mile journey fraught with peril. The average trip taken in a car or truck in this country is roughly 20 miles, 20 miles. Even if your personal commute is double that, how does that produce range anxiety in anyone.
From the latest Nature, a scholarly paper on a group of researchers who’ve developed a technology to recharge an EV from flat to 70% in ten minutes. I bet those guys have friends working on reducing the impact of cold and range too. (Full disclosure, I didn’t read the whole paper, waaay to sciency for this liberal arts majors brain)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05281-0