Thank you for your time to consider my comments regarding the
elimination of diesel powered trucks in California with a
switchover to electric powered vehicles. To be blunt, I find the
proposal to be ill conceived, naive and a total disaster in the
making. The proposal lacks common sense and logic while totally
ignoring a simple fact. Nobody is talking about how the batteries
associated with these vehicles are going to be charged. Nobody is
talking about the time required to charge them and the real costs
that would need to be covered. It isn't just the electricity
needed, it is the time involved. Speaking of the electricity, One
of Gavin Newsom's real failures is the condition of the power grid
in California. The CPUC is right there with him as is the CARB. We
are being asked to conserve on hot days due to a lack of power
available to the grid. How much power will be needed to charge a
single truck? How many trucks will need charging daily and how long
will they run before needing to be recharged? How much power does
this all add up to? Where would it come from? How do you deal with
express trucking requirements where two drivers split time to get
something from point a to point b as fast as possible? How many
charging stations will be required to replace gas pumps with a
short turnover time to charge all of the trucks attempting to keep
on trucking? What happens when a snowstorm closes one of the
mountain passes and the truck's batteries are drained?What about
the severely decreased battery life in cold weather? You can't
control trucks in other states so what do you do when one shows up
at the border into the state? Deny them entry? Have them no longer
deliver here?
Until these questions have solid answers any attempt to further
make a mess of the transportation situation in California by
mandating electric trucks and baning diesels needs to be put on
hold and the mandates now suggested to be diesel free by a date
need to be dropped until such time as it is really feasable to meet
those goals. If the Governor wants diesel free electric powered
heavy freight transportation then he needs to get the ball rolling
on solutions to all of the questions I asked above and the carb
needs to stop the insanity of declaring things that will either not
be possible to meet or will casuse great economic damage to both
California and the entire country because they aren't met.
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