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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

It makes some sense. The electric grid will not be able to support everyone going electric for many decades until the wires are upgraded, so there will need to be a good stopgap so the state can reach its emission goals. Hydrogen is one of those stopgaps.

My friend just bought a fuel cell car. Between the tax incentives, tax rebates, dealer incentives, and $15,000 fuel card, the car is almost free.

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> It makes some sense. The electric grid will not be able to support everyone going electric, so there will need to be a good stopgap. Hydrogen is one of those stopgaps.

This is simply not true. The DOE produced a report several years ago demonstrating that 70% of light vehicles could be electrified immediately and existing electrical generation capacity would be sufficient. As that scenario is impossible, the growth of EVs in lockstep with the rapid uptake in renewables (and natural gas/batteries to a lesser degree) ensures that there will be no generation shortfall. A more recent citation is provided below.

https://www.virta.global/blog/myth-buster-electric-vehicles-...

Going to renewables doesn't change the fact that the physical wires running across the state cannot move enough electricity fast enough to meet everyone's charging needs. It will take decades to upgrade all the wires in the state.

Generation isn't the problem it's moving it from where it's generated to where it is needed.

Even without renewables, there is enough generation and transmission capacity today. Cars charge at homes (overnight), offices (during the day), and other locations where they can dwell for hours at a time.

These circuits are the same size as a large heat pump or induction stove, and vehicle charging can be orchestrated in the same way Nest thermostats are used to shed HVAC loads in order to sidestep infrastructure constraints (“DER” or distributed energy resources).

Just last year the grid operator asked people to charge before 5pm because there wasn't enough capacity at night to charge. Also, the state grid operator has said that we can't support electrification of all vehicles today:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-01/california...

Or have we have enough capacity installed to step-down voltages between transport and charging. The whole grid infra is lot more complex than just some wires.

"Wires" is shorthand for all the stuff in between. :)

It's not free, it was just paid for by other people. If it has to be nearly free for someone to take it, not sure that really supports these being commercially viable.

EVs have been getting at different times up-to and beyond 10k in incentives paid for by others, which also points to not-yet being viable. Between renewables being chosen over nuclear and the onslaught of EVs, we're gonna need a couple orders of magnitude more battery capacity in the coming years. Maybe subsidies for alternative forms of energy storage a smart hedge.

The number one selling EV make (in the US) sells every car they can build (hundreds of thousands) with no incentives.

Incentives as in tax incentives, subsidies, rebates and credits, not manufacturer incentives. On Tesla's own website they still factor "incentives" into the price for states that still offer them. At some points in time , incentives were so wild, you could lease a Chevy Volt for $100/mo with nothing down, a Fiat 500e for about $90.

I never said it was commercially viable. All I said was that it makes sense for California to subsidize the technology to reach the state's emission goals until the electrical grid can be upgraded to support electrification of all vehicles.

> The electric grid will not be able to support everyone going electric, so there will need to be a good stopgap

More accurately, we in California decided that "flex alerts", planned blackouts, and closing plants are the right approaches to our energy infrastructure.

I agree that our grid wouldn't support everyone having electric cars, but why do I get the feeling that it could and should?

this is partial information.. the internals for the electrical grid were so solid, for so long.. then came the crack in the dam -- de-regulation.. while Happy Episcopalians in San Francisco planned their PC Green Energy sourcing, aggressive Texans built ENRON. Once there is so much money on the table, every day, the crack in the dam is hard to patch. Today there are now many fingers in the pie, and terrible incentives all the way down.

I have heard wise-guy finance say with a knowing look, that the "electrical infrastructure will be redesigned, and redesigned again." I believe them because, there is money to be made at each step. Repair of the forests and streams are the poverty work, not new electrical grid configurations, in California.

It is not the right time to throw the solid parts of the grid under the bus, and downplay the functional parts of the past, while pining for the workable future. A plea here (including present writer) to investigate and use fact-based analysis.

> "We in California"

I'm on Silicon Valley Power. None of those issues apply. PG&E needs more than a slap in the wrist.

It's not generation that's the problem, it's the wires that move the electricity from generation to where it's needed. It will take decades to upgrade all the wires to support electrification of all light vehicles.

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