California strikes deal with engine makers on zero-emissions trucking by 2036 | Hacker News Reader

California strikes deal with engine makers on zero-emissions trucking by 2036

sacbee.com

31 pointsgeox37 comments

The actual details seem fine?

To me it looks like "diesel trucks are still legal to sell for (7?) years", plus _relaxed_ emissions standards compared to the state's previous requirements, in exchange for a promise to deliver electric trucks at some point in the future.

Tesla has delivered a few EV trucks to PepsiCo in (iirc) Sacramento but had to build out a few special megawatt chargers for them. Plus I imagine the electric truck R&D investment itself has cooled off so it'll be good to push public expectations out a few years; for example (self-driving truck startup) Embark Trucks is going back private (acquihire?).

I think EV cars are the future. I own an EV. But California needs to be doing some _extremely_ major investments in their electricity infrastructure if they want any of these EV goals to be even remotely possible. It's currently in the bottom half of of grid reliability in the country, and massive numbers of electric cars won't make that better without big investments in infrastructure. Right now they seem to be wanting to mandate EVs without doing the work to make that possible.

Unfortunately California does not currently know how to invest in its grid without raising rates. This is essentially inevitable, as the private utilities are allowed to capture profit in direct proportion to their costs — the more they spend, the more profit they take home.

In an ordinary market, when a buyer shows up and wants to buy a lot of product (say 1GW of power for EV charging), sellers would compete to provide it. In a publicly operated scenario, a public utility would attempt to provide the power at zero profit. In CA, neither of these happens in general.

(There are some actual public electric utilities around. Their customers are lucky. If you live in Santa Clara, you pay reasonable rates.)

It's funny how the wholesale electric cost is really no different than the rest of the nation (2-4c / kwh) but silicon valley power sells it to you for a small markup while PG&E has inflated it 10-20x

EVs are better than ICE cars, but they're still a bandaid. Low occupancy vehicles aren't sustainable, and that doesn't change with a minor increase in efficiency and decarbonization.

They still take up too much space, both on the road and when parked.

They are still a menace to public health, especially anyone not in a car. Hell, they're a menace to people in shops and sitting in their living rooms.

They are still noisy (in fact, artificially so.)

They don't address transportation inequality; in fact, spending on things like public chargers are just further subsidization while cities boo-hoo about how there's no money to build a cycletrack or put down some paint.

Reading the article, this seems like a massive concession to the truck manufacturers with no real upside for CARB?

>As part of the agreement, the companies promised to uphold their commitment to 100% clean truck sales by 2036, even if the state’s plan faces legal challenges in court.

Is that even remotely binding?

This is not CARB’s first rodeo so I’d be surprised if they weren’t figuring this out in the agreement. I’m not familiar with this agreement but I’d speculate something like: It sounds like the manufacturers are getting things they want too, which means that if they want to keep those concessions in place, they have to honor their side of the agreement, independent of whether a court says CARB could force a specific piece of their regulations. (I suppose if a court said CARB couldn’t enforce any regulation then the agreement would be moot, but if they leave anything intact then the manufacturers would presumably be best served by keeping up the deal.)

CARB’s history and track record working through bending the arc of the industry for this type of thing is pretty good, even without Mary Nichols at the helm.

(Another thing worth noting here is most car manufacturers have had a large preference towards consistency and stability in their regulatory agreements, so they often would prefer to sit down and plan a timeline for transitions that doesn’t keep changing around on them and their peers.)

OTOH, CARB is responsible for this disaster:

https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/portable-fuel-conta...

And for the utterly ineffectual regulation of restaurant emissions. (Which, I think, are the dominant source of PM2.5 in a lot of places that get a lot of foot traffic in California.)

It looks like purely bad news to me. WTF is a "clean truck"?

A truck that doesn't emit noxious gas during ordinary use, I suppose.

Lower NOx, lower emissions, less gas/diesel usage.

https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/fact-sheets/advanced-clean-...

> Why do we need zero-emission technology in the transportation sector?

Mobile sources and the fossil fuels that power them are the largest contributors to the formation of ozone, greenhouse gas emissions, fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and toxic diesel particulate matter. In California, they are responsible for approximately 80% of smog-forming nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. They also represent about 50% of greenhouse gas emissions when including emissions from fuel production, and more than 95% of toxic diesel particulate matter emissions. Zero-emission vehicles have no tailpipe emissions. When compared to diesel vehicles, they are two to five times more energy efficient, reduce dependence on petroleum, and reduce GHG emissions substantially.

>What is the Advanced Clean Truck Regulation?

The Advanced Clean Truck Regulation is part of a holistic approach to accelerate a large-scale transition of zero-emission medium-and heavy-duty vehicles from Class 2b to Class 8. The regulation has two components including a manufacturer sales requirement, and a reporting requirement:

> Zero-emission truck sales: Manufacturers who certify Class 2b-8 chassis or complete vehicles with combustion engines would be required to sell zero-emission trucks as an increasing percentage of their annual California sales from 2024 to 2035. By 2035, zero-emission truck/chassis sales would need to be 55% of Class 2b – 3 truck sales, 75% of Class 4 – 8 straight truck sales, and 40% of truck tractor sales.

> Company and fleet reporting: Large employers including retailers, manufacturers, brokers and others are required to report information about shipments and shuttle services. Fleet owners, with 50 or more trucks, are required to report about their existing fleet operations. This information will help identify future strategies to ensure that fleets purchase available zero-emission trucks and place them in service where suitable to meet their needs.

I appreciate clean emissions, but I’m skeptical this will happen in 13 years time. Are there similarly ambitious programs that have worked in CA’s past?

The reason nationwide emissions are as good as they are is because CARB is massively influential. Famously from a few years ago, Trump tried to make it illegal for states to set their own emissions standards because CARB's goals were much more aggressive than the auto manufacturers and other lobbyists preferred.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/18/20872304/trump-california...

They also were the first governing body to investigate VW's diesel 'defeat device';

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/business/volkswagen...

My thinking is companies and people will take the path of least resistance. In this case it is sticking to gas powered engines. Maybe we need states to start implementing these laws to force companies to start investing more in R&D in order for this to happen quicker? Maybe moving from horses to vehicles was such a huge improvement that people were willing to do it. Moving from a gas powered vehicle to electric or any other zero emission system might not be seen as a big improvement and therefore the willingness is much less.

For sure companies and people will take the path of least resistance; companies will always prioritize the bottom-line. It seems most consumers are tipped toward EVs because of the incentives and things like carpool lane waivers.

EVs are a tremendous improvement in regards to emissions but in my opinion a step backwards in terms of functionality (hear me out on this one!). ICE are one of the greatest inventions of our species and the energy density of liquid fuels is so much greater than in a battery - with this comes field portability and long-term usage of trucks/heavy-equipment etc. Certainly EVs have other advantages such as torque bands, fewer moving parts, etc.

In short I agree with your points

https://archive.ph/obIsb

Insanity. Shouldn’t we first prove that we can actually produce electric shipping trucks?

Why?

It's not like we proved we could put a man on the moon before committing to it.

Although given that almost every train runs on an electric engine (diesel is a liquid battery on diesel train) I have no doubt that we can produce electric shipping trucks. Also, electric shipping trucks already exist [1] but all this is tangential to my point.

[1]: https://www.peterbilt.com/electric-vehicles

Why?

Because shipping trucks deliver food to the grocery stores. Our supply chains would collapse if we suddenly cannot produce trucks.

I believe we’ll figure it out too. But banning the production of critical infrastructure without a working alternative is just plain dumb.

Fortunately for California, there's other states besides California to make up for their dumb decisions. Still sucks though.

I think the Yin and Yang in this case is very much needed. We need states to push forward while others are slower to adopt. This will allow us to test new things while also providing a fallback in case the plan doesn't work.

That's, in principle, the purpose of the progressive/conservative dichotomy, no?

Critical infrastructure isn't banned.

The law doesn't take effect until 2036 so claiming that your grocery store is going to be empty is just fear mongering. It's not like car companies were required to make high efficiency cars (i.e. >40mpg) and didn't and then the requirements were relaxed. Like the law will be changed if it becomes unmeetable.

Production of critical infrastructure WILL BE banned. Just because it’s in the future doesn’t mean it’s not a ban.

I agree they’ll just repeal it if needed. What good does this law do then? So many people are relentlessly working on electric trucks for the financial incentive.

The second order effects are unknown to me. California auto manufacturers are never gonna invest in improving ICE vehicles if they think it’s about to be illegal.

We can see real life effects of policies like this during the recent oil shortage when demand far exceeded domestic refining capacity. Look at what happened to Germany and the EU because of their insane “environmentalist (but no nuclear)” policies.

Legislators suck and should get out of the way of technological progress.

/rant

"should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

Sometimes, you just have to put out a marker for people to strive to achieve. Having an undefined target date leaves a large likelihood that progress will be at a leisurely pace.

Failing the moon landing wouldn’t kill our supply chains. It’s a silly comparison.

How do you think we get all our food and raw materials around? With trucks!

What are we going to do with all of the pre-existing trucks? If the EVs don't work, it's not like we have to reinvent anything. Let's see if we can have some more condescension delivered with those trucks too

That’s true! But by 2036 our trucking needs are probably larger. The older vehicles break down. We wouldn’t be able to fill in the gap without repealing the ban.

and at that time, some amendment or some such will be taken up by the legislature to modify. i'm sure this legislation will have loop holes large enough to drive a truck through (as long as it's electric).

I agree! I mean they’ll have to undo it if comes to that. I just think the financial incentives are already far more motivating. Everyone and their momma is trying to get rich by selling EVs. Legislators don’t really create anything…private industry is what drives us forward (e.g Tesla)

You can’t really expect Sacramento to just go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ if alternatives are not available by the deadline. Lawmaking is a 2-way street with room for amendment along the way.

When you say prove, you mean prove at some kind of price point? Tesla has shipped some semis already.

But also the logic is flawed. No alternative need be proven when something is banned. Things are banned for reasons other than there are easy alternatives.

No not price point. I mean literally produce any meaningful number of fully functional EV shipping trucks.

You should reevaluate your own logic. Banning critical infrastructure without a functioning alternative is observably a bad plan.

Like we did with the Moon landing? Wait, we did it this way

Zero emission is a lie. You are simply shifting the emissions up or down the chain. Batteries are horrible if you look at how they are produced. Wind farms too. Diesel is better than electrical when you look at total cost vs benefits.

There are numerous developments happening all up and down the chain to improve efficiency and reduce emissions. Yes some parts will take longer than others, some will have unintended or ignored secondary negative effects, and some will happen faster and better than expected.

Diesel and ICE in general is not going away over night and there are efficiency developments happening with those technologies as well. It seems foolish to just drop any focus on things like solar, batteries, wind, and EVs because it hasn't yet met some standard of perfection.

Not really.

An example:

The "Sea Change" ferry from the Port of SF.

Over the last decade the port of SF has put in lots of effort to electrify the waterfront. What does that mean? It means that they put in huge electrical infrastructure to deliver huge amounts of electricity to the waterfront and piers along the sf waterfront. Why would you want to do that? Several reasons. One is that cruise ships dock there. Normally when cruise ships are docked they still need to run their engines to power the ships huge energy needs. At the SF cruise terminal they don't - The ship is powered by the dock side infrastructure.

Back to the sea change ferry. It's powered by a zero emissions hydrogen fuel cell. The SF port has devised a brilliant infrastructure to support it where there is a floating fuel dock that is moored at a pier and takes advantage of the aforementioned power infrastructure. The floating fuel dock takes electricity in and disassociate hydrogen from bay water. It then transfers it to the ferry when it needs to be refueled.

I know what you're going to say - but that power is generated by non renewable sources in the first place. It's not, it's all powered by the hydroelectric dam at Hetch Hetchy.

So my friend, we have an example of an end to end zero emissions transportation source about to be realized.

Surely an example for others to follow.

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