Dear Board,
While I think the goal of ACC II is worthy, mandating something
like this without making sure that everything needed for it is in
place, or already on the way is folly - and that is what ACC II
currently is folly. To pick a number out of thin air - proabably
based on ramping up to another date picked out of thin air
(governors 2035 zero ICE goal) just doesn't make sense. Where is
the infrastructure to support this? I have had a Chevy Volt, Kia
Niro (plugin hybrid), as well as a Chevy Bolt and from experience
prefer the plugin hybrids because of the difficulty of finding an
affordable place to charge. It's ridiculous currently to find a
charging station (that will connect to the car), and know the price
you'll pay. It's definitely not like going to a gas station where
you see the prices advertised. On many I see no list of costs and
even in their apps you have to search for it. Then on top of that
some places have minimum charges, or additional fees that they tack
on to it. Its ridiculous! Of course most people will charge at home
I agree. Lets talk about that. As recently as the winter of
2020-2021 in my area we had 3 major outages due to risk of fire.
Two of these came without warning. Now while I already had
solar on my house because SDG&E shut down power it didn't do me
any good in running my house or charging my car. No I would have to
shell out a lot of money to have my own battery bank to be able to
sustain my car during this time. The power grid is too dependant on
external power and thus will be at risk to shut down due to weather
events in the foreseeable future. Getting rid of things like San
Onofre had a major cost and we are and will be paying for it for as
long as I can see. In addition the EV market is, and will continue
to be dominated by buyers in the top 20% of incomes in the state. I
don't know anyone in what I would call middle to lower income
buying these vehicles - because even with rebates they can't afford
it! So as far as I'm concerned currently all the EV incentives are
just additional perks for the rich only.
So unless you revamp our power grid (which won't happen in 4
yrs!), you put the infrastructure in to support all these new EVs
(which I'm not seeing any real movement on by the state to this
point), and find a way to make it possible for everyone to buy
EVs - your mandating a certain percentage of EVs will be just
like when I believe you previously mandated a 15% EV rate by 2018,
which of course was a similar pipe dream. I agree EVs are coming -
the problem is setting arbitrary goals that are not supported by
the infrastructure and ability of all to participate in the EV
market.
I am against this arbitrary goal of 35% and think you should get
the infrastructure ready before making such a goal, and provide a
meaningful way for all to participate prior to any future goals
like this
regards
eric shoquilst
|