It was a little difficult to find the exact truck I wanted because of what I wanted powering it. There is a Rivian dealership pretty close to where I live, which is a very good-looking electric truck built out of Detroit, and I see lots of them out on the road. If I hadn’t done the cost-benefit analysis of gas versus electric, I might have been tempted. But the simple fact is I’d have to drive 50,000 miles a year or better to offset the $70,000 dollar cost, even with California’s gasoline price being ridiculously high. It just doesn’t make economic sense to buy one, and no Joe Biden tax credit incentive is going to change that equation.

The decision about what I wanted became cemented the day California announced they were banning the sale of new cars with gas-powered engines beginning in 2035. The ramp-up begins in 2026 with a mandate that 10% of all new vehicles sold in the state be electric. Not sure how they’re going to implement that if the market demand isn’t at 10%. Perhaps dealerships will hold the coveted gas-powered cars hostage until they sell enough EV’s in the same way that you have to eat your spinach before you can have dessert.

Ford is beginning to deemphasize their powerful Coyote V8 motors in the trucks, pushing instead either the electric Lightning or the turbocharged V6. Thanks, but no. I’m all done with bureaucrats telling me what I can and can’t buy. I got a 2018 model with only 27,000 miles on it, and it has the V8 engine. I will most likely keep that until my kids and grandkids take the keys away from me and tell me, “It’s time, Gramps.”

The absurdity of California’s new mandate is that they are demanding this change without doing one thing to increase supply in California’s power grid. As of January 2022, there are over 36 million cars and trucks registered in the Golden State. How many are electric, you ask? Around 600,000, or 1.7%.
Southern California had just had its first true heat wave of the year, with temperatures reaching triple digits. While I was on air doing the Aftershow last week, ironically doing a bit on Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm praising California as the model for the nation both in their use of electricity and their proposed banning of gasoline engines, the obligatory flex alert was sent to my iPhone, warning me if I didn’t shut down everything I could, power would go out. Needless to say, I used that alert in the bit I was doing and paid it no further attention. 25 minutes later, walking out to my truck, the outside air temperature was 87 degrees. 87. In September. And yet somehow, we don’t have the power available on the grid to sustain the protection of air conditioning against this current hellscape we are enduring.

Government bureaucrats can try to curb demand in peak hours all they like, but that doesn’t address the problem. The power grid here has remained relatively unchanged for decades. The population and technology, by contrast, has grown exponentially. Have there been any new nuclear power plants approved to build? Hydro? LNG? Nope. Not here. We’re stuck with what we have, with power companies mooching off residential solar panels retrofitted to older houses that are buckling the walls due to their weight.

In the used car market, there’s already beginning to be a run on low-mile 8-cyllinder vehicles, and beginning in 2032, I suspect, barring a change in which party runs Sacramento, there will be a run on all new gas-powered cars like it was a renewed gold rush. After 2035, new cars will only be brought in from certain other states, and the used car market here will explode. It’s just an economic reality that will follow bad policy. So while all of you are reading this and snickering, thinking that this is what I get for still living in such a goofball state, here’s why this matters to you.

If you happen to live in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Washington, Oregon, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, Virginia, or New Mexico, even though there has been no similar legislation passed in your state to ban certain car engines, you are bound by California’s edict because your state ceded its authority to regulate its own rules and bound itself to California’s standards. That’s just about 88 million people outside of California that may use the Golden State as the butt of all their jokes, but their state legislatures have made them subservient to the craziness emanating from this state.

In total, 127.5 million people in this country, including Californians, are under this new rule. Virginia’s terrific new governor, Glenn Youngkin, found out his predecessor, Ralph Northam, signed off on this before leaving office, and Youngkin is working right now with his state legislature to extricate the Commonwealth from this transportation suicide pact. He’s incredulous it was ever adopted in the first place. The damage, however, may have been done.

Since car buying policy is being set for almost 40% of the country’s population not on market forces but green ideological agendas, Ford, GM and Chrysler can’t help but take notice and change production lines in order to continue to have what will be legally sellable products. It’s not an optimal position for a manufacturer to be in – having to produce cars government dictates, not ones necessarily that the buying public want. Even with a surge in EV purchases due to the gas price surge this year, EV’s still only account for 0.6% of all car registrations in the United States. California by itself is where almost 40% of all EV’s are sold or registered in the country. No other state is close. Purely anecdotally, I just returned from Wichita, Kansas and spend a lot of time driving around. My wife and I noticed almost immediately that there were no EV’s on the road. And when I say no EV’s, I mean we didn’t see one for the three days we were there. They’re ubiquitous where I live in Orange County.

For all that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm sing the praise of electric vehicles, they’re simply nowhere near as efficient as gasoline when you compare the potential energy compared to the weight of the energy source. As my buddy, former Congressman John Campbell often tells me, there’s nothing that can produce more energy for its size and weight than a gallon of gas.

Batteries are heavier, full of toxic metals as components, and that added weight to the car wears out tires and brake pads a lot faster, creating a lot more hazardous waste and brake dust that eventually washes off into rivers, reservoirs, oceans. The weight of the car is a lot harder on roads, causing more potholes that need oil-based asphalt to fill. And that’s not to mention the cars only last for 7 years or so before you have to replace the batteries, which will set you back $20,000-25,000 on average. And don’t get me started on what we’re going to do with all these spent batteries if the entire country’s driving fleet makes the transition to electric.

What remains to be seen is if more and more people will do what I’ve done, which is get a head start on the coming new Carmageddon by buying something with a bigger engine than they might otherwise have considered as a protest statement. I’m very happy driving the truck I want, not what federal and state ecozealots think I should have.

In the meantime, mock us in California as you wish, but don’t be fooled. Leaving the Golden State for saner political pastures doesn’t necessarily make problems go away. Thanks to like-minded legislators all over the country, the craziness out here on the left coast can and will impact you before you know it.