Do Californians Deserve What They Get from Their Leaders

 Mike McDaniel has a post today entitled California: electric vehicles are on fire! that discusses the impracticality of EVs when one most needs a vehicle.

Gavin Newsom, possibly the soon-to-be recalled Governor of California, banned internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in California by 20235, ostensibly to reduce pollution. That pipe dream went up in smoke with the wildfires that are still consuming much of the LA area. Whatever pollution reduction that lunatic law might have achieved was lost with Newsom’s equally deranged refusal to do anything to prevent wildfires, including ensuring enough water to fight them.

Something no one has mentioned yet is that the Los Angeles fires have put far more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere than decades of supposed savings by using EVs. Once one factors in disasters like wildfires and volcanos one realizes that man's tiny addition to the greenhouse gases is insignificant. Moreover, if man disappeared from the face of the earth, it would make no difference to the earth's climate, and it is the height of hubris to believe otherwise.

McDaniel points out a number of problems with EVs that make them impractical for the average American. They are expensive to purchase and expensive to repair. Their tires wear out quickly because of the extra weight of the vehicles. Replacing the batteries is also expensive, effectively rendering a vehicle which needs a replacement battery a total loss. Because our electrical grid is already marginal at best, when you most need to charge an EV, you won't be able to do so. And then there are the fires. We have long known that lithium batteries are prone to fire, but the size of vehicle batteries make for spectacular fires.

Even better, EV batteries tend to burst into flame because they contain substances that must be kept separate. Pinholes cause instant flames and even explosions. Once ignited, they produce their own oxygen to fuel the flames, are prone to reignite and all firefighters can do is pour thousands of gallons of water on them to keep the flames from spreading elsewhere as unquenchable flames melt the vehicles into the pavement.

McDaniel points out that if all, or even if most of the cars in Los Angeles were EVs, when the fires broke out, that it would have made the disaster even worse. The power companies would shut down the power at a time when people needed to flee the fires quickly. How many people might have been caught in the conflagration and died? McDaniel asks an important question:

A pertinent question is will the wildfires provoke the spread of sanity among Californians who keep voting worse and worse D/S/C politicians into office? If they keep EV mandates, the answer to that question is obvious.