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Transportation United States

California Makes Zero-emission Autonomous Vehicles Mandatory by 2030 (engadget.com) 138

Starting in 2030, California will require all light-duty autonomous vehicles that operate in the state to emit zero emissions. From a report: Signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday, SB 500 represents the latest effort by the state to limit the sale of new internal combustion vehicles with an eye towards reducing greenhouse emissions. In 2020, Newsom signed an executive order that effectively banned the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035. That same year, the state's Air Resources Board mandated that all new trucks sold in California emit zero emissions by 2045. "We're grateful for California's leadership in ensuring this will be the industry standard," said Prashanthi Raman, head of global government affairs at Cruise, in a statement to Engadget. "The AV industry is primed to lead the way in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in cities, and it's why we've operated an all-electric, zero-emissions fleet from the start." Cruise backed SB 500 through its involvement with the Emission Zero Coalition, a group that also includes autonomous delivery startup Nuro.
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California Makes Zero-emission Autonomous Vehicles Mandatory by 2030

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  • AV Industry (Score:2, Funny)

    by what2123 ( 1116571 )
    Is the Audio Video Industry really a major contributor to pollution and greenhouse gas? You'd think they would be a green-er industry already but perhaps I was assuming too much. Good for Mr. Raman on taking initiative in his industry though.
    • The AV club has a lot of political clout!

    • by LKM ( 227954 )
      Heating is the biggest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, but it's not like people aren't also making changes there by getting rid of coal plants, and focusing on renewables.

      Globally, transportation is in fourth place after agriculture and industrial emissions (although in California in particular, I wouldn't be surprised if transportation was in first or second place). So getting rid of emissions from transportation is still important. It's not like we can just do one thing to solve this pro
    • AV in this context means "Autonomous Vehicle," i.e. self-driving cars. They aren't talking about the Audio Video industry at all.
      • by tgeek ( 941867 ) on Friday September 24, 2021 @01:24PM (#61829025)
        Are you sure it's not the Adult Video industry? All those FakeTaxi videos properly generate an awful lot of greenhouse gases (and probably many other kinds of gases we'd prefer not to discuss) during their production.
  • There aren't any truly autonomous vehicles in operation though.

    Will we see them by 2030?

    • Yeah, so now we're regulating things before they even exist I guess...
      • by suss ( 158993 )

        And the electricity network will magically adapt to the heavier load, ofcourse. Or California turns into a version of Mad Max...

        • I suspect this will motivate more homeowners to install solar panels

          • by suss ( 158993 )

            In the future dystopia, things run on pig shit.

          • I suspect this will motivate more homeowners to install solar panels

            There's already government mandates and subsidies driving plenty of people in California to install solar panels. The problem is that the mandates and subsidies do not cover any storage. Homeowners with solar panels on their roof found out that if there is an outage at the utility that they lose power, the solar panels cannot supply power to the home independent from the grid. Because there is a shortage of storage California utilities are constantly trying to manage the power flow in and out of the stat

            • >>This seems to be a common theme with Democrats, they create a problem, demand money to fix it, then when that doesn't work then they just demand more money to do more of the wrong thing. Democrats don't want hydro and nuclear power because that would solve the problem. Instead they want to spend money on making the problem worse, and that means more solar power, more windmills, higher energy costs, higher taxes, and more subsidies.

              amazing number of strawmen you apply there

              I suspect that you would re

            • citation: https://www.realclearenergy.or... [realclearenergy.org]

              • It appears you didn't read the entire article that was linked at the end of the page you linked to. The Democrat party has no intention to actually see any new nuclear power plants built. All they will do, at best, is keep kicking the can down the road by allowing existing nuclear power plants to remain operating.

                Anyone serious about lowering CO2 emissions, and lowering energy costs, will support building new nuclear power plants in large numbers. There are very few Democrats that are serious about both.

        • by LKM ( 227954 )
          Typically, infrastructure is built when it is needed. I don't think we can expect today's grid to already be built for the consumption we expect in 2030. Unlike reverting climate change, building out the grid is one of the most easily solvable problems.
        • That is the most hilarious thing I've envisioned this morning. A bunch of surfer dudes and latte sippers waging war over the last few Starbucks wifi outlets.
        • Citation definitely needed.

          Because that sounds like uneducated, trolly horseshit.

    • I interviewed a lot of drunks who claim honestly that they don't know how they managed to get to their destination. I can only conclude autonomous driving was involved.

      • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        I interviewed a lot of drunks who claim honestly that they don't know how they managed to get to their destination. I can only conclude autonomous driving was involved.

        It's called Braille Driving: head in the general direction of your destination, and if you bump into something, then turn away from it. I see lots of odd scrapes on the side of walls; suggesting BD is rampant.

        Back to the topic, if the technology is not made safe by the deadline, mass bleep could happen. If they pre-map key roads, then the aut

        • The deadline does not say that autonomous driving must be done, only that autonomous vehicles must not use gasoline or diesel. So if they don't make the deadline, then no autonomous driving. Not the end of the world, and will giver gig uber drivers more opportunity to ferry around people too lazy to walk two blocks to the store.

    • California has autonomous vehicles operating. They are truly autonomous, but they are geo-bounded to a very small area.

    • I think they are intentionally getting ahead of autonomous vehicle development. They are saying, "don't bother developing them as gas-burners because you won't be able to sell them here." It's easier this way than after the horse has left the barn.

      I am increasingly surprised at colleges, fairgrounds, etc. to see how many of those golf-cart type vehicles are still gasoline.

    • No, we won't.
      They'll never get it over the finish line (to 100% I mean) because none of the so-called, inappropriately-named 'AI' junk they use has any capacity whatsoever to reason, a quality which humans have innately and naturally and that most all people take for granted. We don't even understand how 'reasoning' or 'cognition' works, so we can't write software that does that. 'Deep learning algorithms', 'machine learning', and 'neural nets' are single-digit percentages of what a human brain is capable
  • CA politians (Score:2, Interesting)

    "California Makes Zero-emission Autonomous Vehicles Mandatory by 2030 " ha haha lol 9 years tick tick tick
    • To be fair, California pollution emissions requirements have FORCED compliance from US automakers when nothing else seemed to motivate them

      Let's just admit that regulated capitalism is what works best for everybody and move forward, I suspect these requirements will be met regardless of the complaints that are issued from most automakers

      If only we could get some love from the Dems to Tesla, instead of union mandated chest thumping, since they have also proven to be a huge motivator for the rest of the auto

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

      Zero-emissions in autonomous vehicles. At first it read like they were requiring vehicles to be autonomous... I don't think this part is a big deal, almost all the passenger vehicles right now in contention for being fully autonomous are either all electric or hybrid. What's tinier in the story but bigger overall is that 2035 is the date for removing all gasoline and diesel powered vehicles for sale (yes, you can still drive your old car after that date). For trucks, the date will be 2045.

      It is a bit am

      • Overnight charging in a garage is only feasible if you have a garage

        No, overnight charging is only feasible if you have a plug. You can have a plug without a garage.

        The cost of adding plugs to the parking spaces at an apartment complex or condo isn't all that much, so it's going to be an easy differentiator to add as demand increases.

        For on-street parking, someone's going to make a fortune with something resembling a parking meter with a plug on it. Again, not a huge cost to install and laws like this ensure there will be some demand.

        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          The cost of adding plugs to the parking spaces at an apartment complex or condo

          You have to have a parking space at an apartment or condo to have a plug. Seattle (for one) is pushing for zero parking residential construction. The on-street parking is slowly turning into a war zone. Move a lawn chair reserving someone's 'reserved' space and risk getting shot.

          • Well, the comedian said he solved his parking problem in San Francisco. He bought a parked car. I had a friend who would once or twice a month have to call towing to get a car removed from her driveway in SF.

            Right now, down in San Jose, we have a parking problem in our condo complex. Basically people use their garages for storage, then use their one and only parking space for their car, then put a second car on the street. My own parking space has been used by a neighbor for years now, because I don't r

      • Don't worry, the bus and tram suck in Europe too. Public transport is great if it takes you from where you are to where you need to be, but as soon as you have to change lines just once, the car starts to win out. Except perhaps on subway systems where changing lines is convenient and the trains run frequently, i.e. you don't have to worry overly much about catching the connection or planning your trip ahead of time. Even in our densely populated country with rather good public transport, 80-90% of peopl
        • I dunno, I got along well in Helsinki, even if I had to transfer a few times. Also, in the city it's just as easy to walk, it's not spread out. For instance, when I got off the train about a kilometer from work, there were probably 40-50 people going to exactly the same place. In America, you'd probably have 5 people taking mass transit and the rest driving. Yes, even more people drove themselves of course, but the mass transit was a viable option and it was well used and the train, trolley, and busses h

      • Weird, since a Tesla can charge in 30 minutes - you must be watch something else.
        • These aren't the rapid chargers, and not designed for Teslas either (the Tesla users use an adapter). So the charge rate is a lot less than Tesla can handle. There are primary Tesla chargers elsewhere on the lot but further away. My car with a 30 mile range takes about 2 and a half hours for a charge; granted it has half the current capacity of some other cars. So a half hour for 200-300 mile range would not be on those chargers for sure, it would have to be a Tesla specific charger or one of their supe

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      That's assuming that autonomous vehicles will even be possible by then; if not, then the law will have no effect, and human-piloted gasoline and diesel vehicles will remain legal for another five years.

      There are reasons to autonomous vehicles earlier than human-piloted ones. If we see autonomous vehicles approved by 2030, it's virtually certain we'll see them used in taxi-like services like rideshare. Such cars will see heavier usage than human-piloted ones and so will contribute more to tailpipe emission

    • by khchung ( 462899 )

      "California Makes Zero-emission Autonomous Vehicles Mandatory by 2030 " ha haha lol 9 years tick tick tick

      That's assuming it would actually happen.

      This isn't the first time CA said it would mandate strict emission standard, and then postponed it under pressure from auto companies, effectively penalising the one company that took it seriously. I bet every auto company remembered what happened last time, and will count on the mandate being postponed for another 5-10 years by 2029.

      Credibility, once lost, is not so easily regained just by pretending nothing happened last time.

  • ban dealer ONLY SERVICE as part of that!

  • Electric Grid? (Score:2, Informative)

    by flink ( 18449 )

    Did the bill include a rider mandating billions in investment in power generation and distribution? Because despite how much I endorse going to electric cars, we can't just flip a switch and go all electric on such a tight time scale without a massive investment in our electric infrastructure (I've seen estimate that it would need to have 3x current capacity to support an all-electric fleet).

    • by taustin ( 171655 )

      Did the bill include a rider mandating billions in investment in power generation and distribution?

      You're an optimist. Trillions is more likely.

      A third of Californians rent, and many of them have no enclosed parking, and many have no off-street parking at all.

      Anybody who believes that landlords are going to shell out thousands of dollars per unit for chargers (assuming there is a place to put it) without raising the rent on people living paycheck to paycheck to begin with (and after the last two years, landlords are either on the edge of bankruptcy - or over it) is hallucinating.

      But this is, apparently,

  • 2035 and 2045? That's too damn slow. Just how much more damage will be done to the environment between now and then. There's already been suggestions that fire season won't be a thing anymore by 2030 because, by then, so much of our forests will have been burned away that no more fires will take. That is not acceptable, and EVs need to be rolled out quicker.

    But Newsom's approach is bass-ackward. It reminds me of San Francisco's screwed up "transit first" policy which, while I wholeheartedly agree with

    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Requiring every gas station in California to install an electric car charging spot is actually a good idea. I don't think that it should necessarily be a supercharger, but it sounds like a great way to expand the charging network.

      Of course, you would allow the gas station owner to get a nice cut of the charging fees to make the effort of installing it worthwhile. Who knows, the gas station owner might find that they're making a profit selling snacks to electric car owners and add more chargers.

  • by smoot123 ( 1027084 ) on Friday September 24, 2021 @02:57PM (#61829421)

    Why connect autonomous and electric vehicles? I can't see the two have anything to do with each other. It's not like AVs emit more or less CO2 compared to human-driven vehicles.

    Maybe robots don't care about how long it takes to recharge.

    • The state transit plan involves a lot of public rail transit for long trips, rather than building more highway lanes, because as it turns out it's a lot cheaper in the long run. But people are going to need to connect to the rail, and one way they will do that is in autonomous app-hailed taxis. These vehicles will make a lot of short, stop-and-go trips through urban areas where automobile emissions are already a concern.

  • So, if I read this correctly, all autonomous vehicles on California roads after 2030 have to be zero emissions? Is pollution from autonomous vehicles a real problem in California? What about non-autonomous vehicles?

  • these are very likely to be taxis and package delivery. Meaning lots of short trips in town, which is the worst for pollution.
  • This title is outright incorrect. Zero emission autonomous vehicles will NOT be mandatory in CA by 2030. That sounds like all vehicles in CA must be zero-emission AV by 2030. That would be impossible in the next 9 years.

    This title should read:
    "By 2030 autonomous vehicles sold in CA must be zero-emission."

    That's entirely manageable by their definition of zero emission and AV.

    • Correcting myself here:

      "By 2030 new autonomous vehicles sold in CA must be zero-emission."

      If it's model year 2031 or later, and an AV, it must be zero emission. You can still sell a used gas-burning AV after 2031.

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