Electric Cars, California's Ailing Power Grid, and College Football

While electric cars are still a small fraction of the total number of vehicles on the road, it's a rapidly growing fraction. I rarely ever saw an electric car during my commute a few years ago, now I see them relatively often. There are Teslas, Nissan Leafs, electric BMWs, and Chevy Sparks on the road near my office on a fairly regular basis.

In theory, electric cars could be pretty cheap and reliable. If the industry standardized batteries, electronics and motors, for example, the components for cars could be very affordable and the industry could control the pollution associated with producing them. There are still nagging problems with electric cars and batteries, though that prevent mass adoption. There's a lot of optimism that those problems will be solved, but it's also plausible that some of those nagging problems won't have feasible or economical solutions any time soon.

It's a pretty good question if the overall endeavor of changing the transportation system over from petroleum to the mix of fuels used to produce electricity is any more sustainable than ICE engine powered cars or is really even "green" in aggregate.

Also, the infrastructure upgrade to support mass adoption of electric cars might not be feasible; the ailing power grid in California is an example of why the feasibility of that upgrade is questionable. Something so basic should be a top priority for the state and its people, but for whatever reason it wasn't and isn't. Similarly ailing and failing water systems around the country show how expensive infrastructure build-out and maintenance can be, and also shows people don't give a fuck about those fundamentals.

All that said, it's pretty comical to think about having to prioritize funds, or to think about resource scarcity for the electrical system on a Saturday during the college football season. In just California, how many billions of dollars, millions of gallons of liquid fuels, and kilowatt hours of electricity go into a weekend of college football?