California makes zero-emission autonomous vehicles mandatory by 2030 | Hacker News Reader

California makes zero-emission autonomous vehicles mandatory by 2030

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44 pointsturtlegrids58 comments

Here is a different question I am curious about.

How do we manage the constantly growing number of laws that have to be passed to manage a state and all the issues that come up?

At some point, you might think that there needs to be a simpler set of higher level principles, but not quite so general as the constitution, to manage what must be tens of thousands of laws. i.e. to say that if the laws follow this set of principles, then their interpretation is clear.

Because as far as I know, our courts are being swamped with cases and under water, every law that's passed opens up a new area of challenge for lawyers to learn/assist/profit from, depending on your perspective, and for people to have to keep track of or somehow find out about.

Is it just a fact of modern life that the more new things we encounter as a society, the more laws we need?

Does anyone else perceive that the growing body of law will at some point become a problem?

From what I understand, this is a USA problem. European legal system isn't based on case law and there is a lot more of the jugde interpreting the loosely defined laws and the constitution. There is also this "law practice" or how would you call it which is when a similar thing has been decided in the same manner you can expect yours to be too but it is not guaranteed and these "trends" regarding the same thing can change from time to time

It's called precedent and is also prevalent in the US Justice system

It's not only the US with this "every court ruling becomes quasi-law" approach. (I have a hard time not to call it madness to be honest). It's inherited form the Anglo-Saxon law tradition so this system can be found across the whole British commonwealth as well.

Most EU countries on the other hands side come from a law tradition inherited form the Roman Empire. The Romans didn't had case law but a very structured and principled law system. (It likely wouldn't had worked otherwise for them given all the different traditions in the provinces; you wouldn't have gotten any comparable court rulings in different parts of the empire without a strict systematic and strong governing principles).

But EU law as a whole (compared to the law in the countries) isn't that "pure" as the Brits brought of course their views to the table and some more case-law like parts sneaked into EU law by now. Just look at who the European Court of Justice works for example.

I think the answer here is to improve the legal system, not limit the number of laws. IMHO it's inevitable that as society progresses it will have more and more things to take care of / regulate due to the evolving needs and general progress. Regulation of autonomous vehicles or e-scooters was a non-issue 10-15 years ago, but now it needs to be done. The same way that regulating ISPs or social media wasn't a thing that was needed 40 years ago.

Torts?

If Jesus reappeared he would probally be in jail in a few day.

fishing in the creek without a license

fishing in a protected creek

Loitering

Could not account for the 3 gold coins found on him. (Cops confiscated, and charges pending.)

Jaywalking (In CA they are getting rid of this one. Cops were using it to harass. I believe it's near Neusome's desk.)

Drinking wine in public.

Suspected drunk in public charge.

Federal, state, an local, charges related to the fermentation, and manufacture of wine. He didn't get the right permits, or follow federal regulations.

Supplying alcohol to a minor. (A 20 year old was drinking from his chalice.)

Giving a sermon. (Didn't get/pay for a event permit from the town.)

Bathing in a protected stream.

Exposing himself to a minor. (Air dried because he didn't have a towel, and Cartman saw his thingy.)

And finally, caught urinating in public. (all the wine?)

Well, he was sentenced to die even when he lived so...

California is not like other states in this regard.

First is its size. California's population and GDP are more comparable to a country than most US states. "If California were a sovereign nation (2020), it would rank as the world's fifth largest economy, ahead of India and behind Germany" [1]. California also has a larger population than Canada [2, 3]. As a result, California has a long history of making its own rules and getting compliance.

Second is that these types of California laws tend to affect more than just California. Several other US states and even some Canadian provenances have banded together with California and enforce California's regulations in their jurisdictions as well. ~15 US states and the Canadian province of Quebec enforce CARB standards [4]. Further, the national Government of Canada is cooperating with California on greenhouse gas emissions mitigation [4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California

[2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/CA

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Air_Resources_Board...

> Does anyone else perceive that the growing body of law will at some point become a problem?

Tacitus perceived it already 2000 years ago. I've basically got his take on this and, yup, I perceive it's a very serious problem. Here's what he had to say about it:

"The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state.".

Well if some guy said it, I'm persuaded!

But it's not just some guy. It's not like a post on Shitter, you know?

It's a guy people still talking about what he said 2000 years later! That makes a little difference…

It basically a given that there have been changes of significance to society, technology, or the global environment in the last few thousand years, too. Humanity’s ability to handle complexity is just a universal constant.

I also feel it is a problem, but perhaps for different reasons. As an illustration, my first thought regarding this particular CA law is that some people will prefer gas vehicles and that is okay by me. Freedom matters - it isn’t just an empty slogan but something that really changes people’s perception of their life, their role as an actor with control, and their ability to undertake the activities they seek without fear of an intangible authority. To me, approaches that favor local choice are better - like pricing in the externalities (for both gas and electric vehicles) and letting people buy what they want. But as we create a larger and larger body of laws that move control into higher and higher levels of government, that sense of freedom gets eroded. It starts to feel like too many facets of our lives are subject to the whims of the government, which is to say, other people. It starts to force everyone to invest heavily in battling politically rather than saving that time for living their lives, because if they don’t, they will be subject to that loss of freedom based on the whims of those who are overly politically involved. A sufficiently complex legal system, like in west coast states, is also difficult to interpret and difficult to enforce fairly. You end up with the potential for abuse in the form of regulatory capture or selective enforcement or whatever else. The original vision for American government was a limited body that protected a small set of higher level principles (as you said), with everything else left to lower levels of government. There’s a lot of wisdom in that and I feel there’s a way to retain something closer to that instead of where we are today.

The less specific the law, the more the courts must define the details. The details don't magically disappear just because the legislature doesn't define them. If what you're saying really generated fewer cases, we wouldn't be fighting over what the constitution says 250 years later.

If it helps you, think of the principle as a "clean environment" and each law as a detail to carry it out.

I think it’s somewhat like spaghetti code. At some point it will all need to be refactored.

I think the title is misleading. The way I understand the article is that in 2030 if your vehicle is autonomous then it has to be 0 emission but I don't think it implies that all vehicles must be autonomous.

"California requires autonomous vehicles to be zero-emission by 2030" seems more accurate".

"California requires autonomous vehicles that meet SAE's level 3 definition or higher to be zero-emission by 2030" seems more accurate".

And sensible too. The general public has a different idea of what autonomous means. Level 5 autonomous vehicles are not even guaranteed to appear as early as 2030.

The article is confusing. Here [1] is the actual bill and it makes more sense.

[1] - https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

Lots of us would like to see more ambitious targets across the whole fleet, but I can understand targeting autonomous vehicles in particular because a) they're new anyway, and b) there's a somewhat legit fear of people doing ridiculous stuff like having their vehicle just circle the block all day rather than find itself a parking space.

Obviously, a behaviour like that would have a lot more negative externalities than just the emissions side of it, but at least this way you ensure that if millions of autonomous vehicles are tooling around empty, they're at least not polluting while doing so.

I have read somewhere that about 50% of a vehicle emissions are from the tires and the breaks, so we're still far from 0 emissions even with an EV.

In your scenario the idiot that let his vehicle circle the block all day would still have to pay for breaks, tires and electricity. And judging by the inflation trajectory since last year, I'm not sure many of us will be able to afford this kind of waste in 2030.

But I don't think we will get level 5 autonomy by 2030 anyway (if ever).

A stat like that would be referring to particulate emissions, not CO2 emissions

I wasn't referring to CO2: breaks and tires emit particulates due to wear.

Right, but the article is about greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 and equiv), so I was offering clarity. Particulate emissions don't have global warming potential aren't terribly relevant in the context.

EVs have a fraction of the brake dust due to regenerative braking. Tyres clearly need work though.

As far as I understand it ~50% of emissions occur during manufacture. Unfortunately this won't be solved by EV

Addressing climate change is a wide problem, every branch needs to be addressed:

- switching to EV will eliminate tailpipe emissions (up to 50% per your number, grid dependent)

- greening the grid will reduce more (reduce per-km emissions, as well as reduce manufacturing emissions)

- Hydrogen reduced steel will reduce remaining manufacturing emissions

All of these combined have to happen to get to zero, not just one or the other.

I think, Tesla claims that the brakes will last lifetime for the vehicle, as the regenerative braking is very aggressive and regular brakes should not be used that much.

With the complete lack of competent and high quality public transportation options in California, I'm not sure "targeting the fleet" would be where I spend most of my effort.

Any vehicle that is tooling around empty is polluting. You've just moved the pollution from the vehicle to whatever source is powering the grid. Even if it was fully renewable that still would not a good excuse to entirely ignore efficiency in these "full vehicle for a single rider" transportation options.

How many "autonomous vehicles" will there be by 2030?

DARPA Grand Challenge was won by Stanford in 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

Google started self-driving in 2009.

Maybe we should make this an easier problem to solve?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot

This law is only making the requirement for self driving cars to be electric by 2030, not that there must be self driving cars.

I wish dang or someone could fix the headline as this thread is already descending into flamebait because of the misleading title.

Saw 2 of them in San Francisco last night, and I was up there outside of business hours.

I think this is one of those cases where "the future is here, but it's unevenly distributed". If you live in Phoenix, San Francisco, or the South Bay, self-driving cars are already here; if you're in Mountain View they've been here since 2012. If you're in the rest of the country, they're science fiction.

Waymo at least is being super-careful about rolling out, as they should, but that doesn't mean the tech doesn't work.

How can they predict the future so far in advanced? I don't mean what process they took, I mean it's a decade away, and I don't care who you are, you cannot predict the future. We could have some catastrophe, or major event of some kind, not to mention the required technologies never reaching maturity, and this will be a useless waste of time.

I don’t think Californias power grid is ready to handle the demands for a massive increase in electronic vehicles on the grid. These timelines are great on paper and for getting votes by progressives, but the infra can’t handle it.

I’m not too concerned about transmission. Time of day billing can solve this. What concerns me is power generation. We’re phasing out nuclear power, and replacing it with solar (doesn’t work well during most of the times when grid use is low) and then of course natural gas which is obviously problematic.

I'll plug in my TESLA from 12-1, you plug in yours from 1-2, our neighbor can wake up and charge their TESLA from 3-4, and their neighbor from 4am-5am. Its going to be a warm morning, so no TESLA charging after 6am

Why is this fact downvoted? I have friends at PGE and they say exactly this.

Can't PG&E massively ramp up infrastructure investment in anticipation to increased demand? Wouldn't this make them a lot of money?

Doesn't matter. Part of the solutions we're most likely to adopt for the climate crisis involves putting the majority of the population under some form of energy austerity. One of the pushes in of the green and urbanist movements is the phasing out of personal vehicles in favor of shared and public transportation infrastructure.

Achieving this goal necessitates that the use of personal vehicles become uneconomic for the masses. Whether or not new infrastructure is built, or public transport becomes pleasant or viable, this goal is eminently achievable through the use of regulatory targets.

Private infrastructure is largely picking up the slack. The trend among the demographic that can afford EVs is to get solar and a couple PowerWalls as well, and then the home solar system is sized to charge the EVs as well. Also most businesses have installed EV chargers in their parking lots, so you can charge your car while you're at work, during peak solar hours. (Many also have panels on top of the parking spaces.)

PG&E doesn't like it because private infrastructure is basically a threat to their public utility monopoly. But that's the direction we're headed.

With all due respect this is madness.

If by some hail mary miracle we manage to get Level 5 or even advanced Level 4 that should be the priority for the automotive industry, not electrification.

Government should throw money at the problem, because once you remove car crashes we basically won't die violently anymore...at least in the West.

Call me selfish but I am much more concerned for my safety and the safety of my family members and in general the safety of my contemporaries compared to those who'd inhabit the planet 200 years from now who'd face the effect of Global Warming.

Also as Bill Gates eloquently described in his book "How to avoid a Climate disaster" electric cars , should they come alone are basically the low hanging fruit vanity project.

We need solutions for steel, cement, farming etc.

> that should be the priority for the automotive industry, not electrification

Why on earth would that be? I see electrification as a much more important issue than “self driving” and it’s an actual proven technology. There are no true L4 or L5 implementations without huge asterisks (works geofenced in sunny weather with a human remote driver to bail it out) so it would be insanity to mandate a still mostly fictitious technology

For sure you have somebody in your life who had a car crash?

Maybe somebody who is not with us anymore due to a car crash.

The health problems caused by ICEs are as easy to solve as wearing an N95 mask.

There is no reward in electrification for the people who are alive right now, there maybe is for those who'd be alive 200 years from now if they also come with the hard stuff such as new technologies in farming, electricity generation, cement etc.

Agreed. It’s crazy to selectively disadvantage this sector.

Come up with a plan to phase out ICEs, probably with different timelines for business vs. consumer based on typical depreciation schedules, and apply those restrictions across the board.

This kind of selective enforcement distorts the market, and will only delay the transition to autonomous vehicles.

California desperately needs to reduce the amount of free parking and encourage non-car modes of travel.

Never going to happen in that timeframe.

the fewer autonomous vehicles we have, the easier it gets!

It might work if we remove all non autonomous vehicles and non-vehicles...

Very surprising how many anti-green comments there are here. What do solutions for a cleaner, greener world look like, if not ones that include steps like these?

California loves to pass superficial regulations that won't change anything. Whatever looks good on paper and doesn't actually impact anyone is great for us.

Things that could actually reduce GHG emissions like completing the high-speed rail project, taxing fuels, fossil fuel severance taxes, enforceable bus lanes, walkable urban development happen slowly or not at all.

Do you know for a fact that taxing fuels will reduce emissions?

Afaict, it’ll just increase the COL even further for those not privileged enough to live close to public transit lines.

Demand for motor fuels is elastic: https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2020/0616

"Autonomous" is really a misnomer for driverless cars, especially when they are electric. They all track your location and a bunch of other things.

If electric, you are dependent on a centralized grid operator. It's easy for a totalitarian government to halt all electric cars.

Electric vehicles, while nice, are another step towards centralization. Another loss of freedom and real autonomy.

I’m sorry, but it would be just as easy for a totalitarian government to shut down gas stations. Even still, if you were so worried, you could keep some off grid charging solution around. Can’t stop solar…

How exactly is it easier for a government to shut down your solar panels than to stop you from getting highly refined oil products?

Iff you were right, what would stop you from charging your electric car with a diesel generator?

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