Category Archives: Vehicles

Insight, Opinion, Vehicles

Electrify California

Last week, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed a plan that requires all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the state to be electric vehicles or plug-in electric hybrids by 2035.

Five days later, California is telling people not to charge their electric vehicles due to a heat wave that is hitting the state over the next several days.

I’m left scratching my head wondering what in the world is going on. California cannot even get their power grid under control, and yet they want to ban all new sales of gas-powered cars and light trucks within the state in the next thirteen years. This seems like a huge stretch. Possible? Anything is possible. Likely? I highly doubt it.

California averages around 2 million new car sales a year according to the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA). In 2017 and 2018, California sold over 2 million new cars. With Covid hitting, California new car sales dropped slightly by 2020 down to 1.6 million, however went up to 1.8 million in 2021. According to the CNCDA, California is expected to either exceed 2 million new car sales by the end of 2022 or come extremely close to that mark. According to Wikipedia, as of December 2021, cumulative plug-in car registrations in the state since 2010 totaled 1.072 million units. So, while California sells an average of 2 million new cars per year, it’s taken them 11 years to sell just 1 million electric cars, some of which are undoubtedly hybrids.

California sells more EV’s than any other state in the union. According to Inside EV’s, plug-in vehicle registrations in 2021 increased by about 79% year-over-year to 237,618, which is 12.8% of the total market. There’s no doubt that Californians are adapting to electric vehicles. The issue here is that CARB’s plan to make all new car and light truck sales fully electric by 2035 puts sales of EV’s into overdrive at a rate that I’m not so sure their grid can keep up. The sales of EV’s going into 2035 is going to come in phases.

35% percent of new cars and light trucks sold in the state must be zero-emission, plug-in hybrid or hydrogen-powered vehicles by the year 2026. The sales of these vehicles will increase to 68% by the year 2030 and will end up at 100% by the year 2035. To put that into perspective, if California stays at selling 2 million cars per year through 2035, that means by 2026 they must be selling 700,000 EV’s or hybrids per year, 1.36 million by 2030, and a full 2 million by 2035. In order to be able to do this, California is going to have to go through a huge overhaul in their electrical infrastructure. Not only that, but a ton of electrical stations are going to have to be put all over the state to accommodate for those who travel.

According to The Sacramento Bee, there’s plenty of concern from experts concerning such a fast transition into a full EV market within the next decade. Among them: that electric cars will be too expensive, charging stations won’t be plentiful, and an all-electric fleet will put additional pressure on the state’s fragile power grid. According to the article, the Western States Petroleum Association said, “electrification of the transportation sector will increase demand by around 300,000 gigawatt-hours statewide,” which would amount to doubling electricity demands.

However, officials from the California Energy Commission are pushing back against this idea saying that, charging electric vehicles will “add only a small amount of demand onto the grid” and they believe that electricity demand is forecasted to make up less than 3% of energy use during peak hours in 2030. I just find that simply ironic since they are telling people right now to not charge their electric vehicles because of demands, but here in 8 years everything is going to be fine and will make up only about 3% of the total energy use. Can California revamp their electrical infrastructure that fast? The demand is only going to increase year after year as more people buy EV’s. At some point, every household in California will have at least 1 EV. Some may have 2. Some people with kids may have more. Millions upon millions of EV’s charging at the same time has got to put a strain on the electrical grid. You can say goodbye to your electrical discount that most providers give during overnight hours when demand is low.

Another major issue if America’s power grid itself. New technology has increased the need for electricity over the past couple decades including cell phones, tablets, tech watches, and much more. According to an article by The Wall Street Journal titled “America’s Power Grid Is Increasingly Unreliable”, the U.S. electrical system is becoming less dependable, not more. According to the article, the pace of change, hastened by market forces and long-term efforts to reduce carbon emissions, has raised concerns that power plants will retire more quickly than they can be replaced, creating new strain on the grid at a time when other factors are converging to weaken it. Also, according to the article, large, sustained outages have occurred with increasing frequency in the U.S. over the past two decades. In 2000, there were fewer than two dozen major disruptions, the data shows. In 2020, the number surpassed 180. To be fair, the article does say that aging power lines and climate change, if you believe in that, are factors to the increased outages. However, it does say that going green is also a cause.

California is just one of many states that are committed to going fully electric over the next decade or so. The demand to change at such a rapid pace will undoubtedly have its challenges. California already has enough problems trying to keep the lights on during major heat waves and other situations of electrical high demand. To execute a major overhaul of the California’s entire electrical infrastructure within the next 13 years to support the millions upon millions of EV’s coming into the market is going to be extremely tough. Extremely is an understatement. Can they do it? It’s possible, but it doesn’t seem probable.

California should have started increasing their grid long ago before demanding that its citizens convert to fully EV’s over the next decade. Instead, they took the backwards route and are demanding that its citizens convert to EV’s before even having an infrastructure to support them. California only has about 3.5 years to make a significant change before tons of new EV’s come pouring into the market when the 35% mark of all new car sales must be EV’s becomes a reality. My guess is that by 2035, with all the demands that California is making, EV’s in the state will explode to 10+ million. That’s a huge increase from the 1 million they have now. California has their work cut out for them. I wish them the best of luck, but I won’t be surprised if this is one of the worst failures in modern American history.

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Vehicles

Warrantied Out

If there is one thing that I hate in this, world it’s deceptive practices.  Those where people tell you the truth, but don’t fully explain how something actually works so it becomes deceptive.  One of the biggest today, in my own personal opinion, is that of the manufactures warranty of a new or used vehicle.  Most people don’t understand how a manufactures warranty actually works so let me lay it down for you.

All vehicle manufactures of vehicles offer some type of warranty to their vehicles.  In most cases this is going to be a 3 year/36,000 mile warranty.  Whichever one of those two you hit first is when your vehicles warranty expires.  But is it really?  Yes and no.  Let me explain.

When you buy a new vehicle you get a 3 year/36,000 mile warranty.  The 36,000 miles is a given.  There is nothing that is going to change that unless the manufacture changes that on their own, which they have every right to do, but it’s not likely.  The 3 year part of the warranty is where the confusion comes in.  Most people believe that the 3 year/ 36,000 mile warranty begins the day that they purchase the vehicle, which is supposed to be the case, but may not always be the case.  Like I said, the 36,000 miles on a warranty is a given.  You already have that.  However, you may not have a full 3 years.

A manufacture starts their warranty the month that the vehicle is actually listed as sold by the dealer.  This is where the deception comes into play concerning warranties in some cases.  According to carsguide.com, dealers are prematurely advising manufacturers and importers that cars are sold to pocket sales incentives such as cash and overseas trips. Once the manufacturer is notified a vehicle is “sold”, the warranty starts ticking. However, it could still sit on the dealer’s lot for several months before it is actually sold to a customer who is then shortchanged on their warranty. An industry source predicts that as many as one in five new cars could have reduced warranties.

AMIF senior policy director Colin Duckworth said some car makers deem the warranty period to have started when they are notified of a vehicle’s sale, even though it can be sitting in the dealer’s lot. “This practice has been around for who knows how long,” Mr Duckworth said.

Another deceptive practice among car dealerships and warranties is the selling of a used vehicle.  This is slightly more complex, but still just as deceptive.  

If you’ve been in the market for a used vehicle, one of the biggest advertisements that dealers put on a vehicle is the model year of the vehicle.  Chances are that is you go to a used car dealership, the model year of the vehicle is going to be in big bold print on the front windshield.  It draws attention for people looking for a specific year model on a vehicle.  

So let’s say that you bought a 2014 Ford Mustang in March of 2015.  One year later in March of 2016 your having problems with it.  So you take it into the dealer, and alas, they tell you your vehicle has no warranty at all.  How could this be possible you might ask.  After all, the vehicle is only 2 years old.  Not so fast.  Vehicle manufacturers are allowed to start selling any given model year vehicle in January of the preceding year.  This means Ford could have made your vehicle on January 1st of 2013 and market it as a 2014 model.  So in this scenario, let’s say that Ford manufactures your vehicle in January of 2013, shipped it to the dealer which in turn sold it in February of 2013, starting the warranty clock at that point.  This would mean that your manufactures warranty would expire in February of 2016 meaning you just missed out on your warranty by a month.  Sad but true, and what makes it even worse is that it’s perfectly legal.  In the long run, it helps manufactures not have to pay so much out of pocket costs to fix vehicles.  They essentially pass the buck to unsuspecting customers.

So let me go back to used car dealers for a second.  It’s actually possible to drive off the lot with a vehicle that has no warranty yet your under the impression that it does.  This would go back to the not knowing when the actual manufactures warranty began.  The Used Car Rule, formally known as the Used Motor Vehicle Trade Regulation Rule, has been in effect since 1985. It requires car dealers to display a window sticker, known as a Buyers Guide, on the used cars they offer for sale. The Buyers Guide discloses whether the dealer offers a warranty and, if so, its terms and conditions, including the duration of the coverage, the percentage of total repair costs the dealer will pay, and which vehicle systems the warranty covers.  Some unwitty customers may actually overlook this guide and simply pay attention to the model year of the vehicle instead.  In rare cases, a dealership might not put the Buyers Guide on one of their used vehicles.

Let’s use my example above of buying a 2014 Ford Mustang, but instead of having problems with it in March of 2016, this will be the date that you purchase the vehicle.  Everything else remains the same.  If this were the case, it’s possible to drive off the lot with a used vehicle with no warranty. Even though you think the vehicle still has a year of coverage left, it doesn’t because of when the vehicle was actually made and then sold.

So the moral of this story is when buying a new car, make absolutely sure that the manufactures warranty has not begun until you purchase the vehicle and the vehicle has been marked as sold.  The last thing you want is a brand new vehicle with only a 2.5 year warranty or maybe even something worse.  And when buying a used vehicle, make sure that the warranty has not expired if your looking to still have some sort of coverage on the vehicle.  Carfax.com is an excellent way of getting this information.  It will tell you when the vehicle was actually purchased and when the warranty began.  Most dealerships will offer the carfax to you for free if your on the dealers lot or you can go online and get it through the dealers website.

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