Electric vehicle mandate in California

mich800 wrote:

colliehauler wrote:
California has a mandate for electric vehicles in the future. Just read with the extreme heat PG&E will have rolling blackouts because of power shortage. Noticed this in previous years as well.

Do you think requiring electric vehicles is putting the cart before the horse in not having a updated power grid to handle the increased demand of charging electric vehicles?

I think mandating any type of technology is dangerous. It stifles development of competing and perhaps better technologies. Requiring a maximum emission output is one thing. Stating how you "must" get there seems illogical.

This was a little different situation, but an example of how a "blind squirrel can find a nut". Several years ago the Port of Seattle (operators of SeaTac Airport) mandated that taxi operators servicing the airport start switching their fleet to hybrid vehicles to reduce emissions. Up until then nearly all of the taxi operators used worn out police cars as taxis because they could buy them for practically nothing. Well, after switching to the Prius, the taxi operators discovered that they were saving about $500 a month per taxi, since the old junk Crown Vics used four times as much gas and constantly needed repairs. Today you can't throw a rock without hitting a Prius taxi. Thanks to that overreaching government mandate, the cab operators are now making more money. This was definitely the exception and not the rule, but I thought it an interesting example.