Can California save the EV revolution before car makers ruin it?

Electric Hummers are on the horizon.

Electric Hummers are on the horizon.

General Motors

The electric vehicle revolution is here. And it’s looking bigger and dumber than many of us had hoped for. Electric Hummers will soon to be a thing. As will massive electric Ford F-150 pickup trucks. It’s not hard to imagine cheaper electric behemoths will soon follow.

These offerings represent progress of sorts. Gas-powered giants are bad. Battery-powered giants are better. But not all EVs are created equal. And the purpose of vehicle electrification isn’t to give us marginally improved toys to play with; it’s to help prevent catastrophic climate change.

On this front, size matters.

“All BEVs emit zero carbon emissions,” explains Michael McCarthy, vehicle program specialist with the California Air Resources Board, “but zero does not equal zero.”

Just like eating a 500-calorie salad made from veggies you grew in your backyard isn’t the same as a 500-calorie bag of Doritos, there’s a huge difference in impact between an electric Hummer and a tiny Nissan Leaf.

All things considered, bigger and heavier vehicles are less efficient. Meaning to sustainably charge an electric vehicle fleet composed of SUVs and pickup trucks, you need to generate a whole lot more renewable energy than may be humanly possible.

McCarthy says California can green its transportation sector. But the models CARB is using to make that determination assume behavioral changes, in additional to technological ones. There are over 26 million vehicles on the road in California. Transitioning that fleet to EVs will play a role. But more Californians also need to bike, walk and take public transit to meet air-quality and climate goals. And those of us who do use private vehicles can’t all drive giant electrified battering rams.

Hummers and other large EVs aren’t just less efficient than smaller vehicles, their size and bulk present a danger to other road users. Kids, pedestrians and cyclists are all vulnerable to crashes with large vehicles. Cycling and pedestrian deaths have skyrocketed in California and across the nation as SUVs and pickup trucks dominate the auto market like never before.

We need people to bike and walk. But they won’t if they’re terrified of being plowed over.

This begs the question: Why is America’s auto fleet so monstrous? Are we a nation of overcompensators in desperate need of Freudian analysis?


But the government also helped create this ogre.

When the Obama administration made the rules that govern how fuel-efficient our cars have to be, it created a carve-out for SUVs and other “light trucks.” The bigger the car, the more gas you can waste. So automakers have exploited that loophole by making their cars bigger. And dirtier. And more dangerous.

There’s nothing inherent about America’s current preference for big cars. And if we don’t stop this quirk of Obama-era regulation from saturating the EV market, it could ruin our best chance of stopping catastrophic climate change.

Thankfully, California can do something about it.

In 2019, under dubious legal grounds, Trump took away California’s ability to regulate auto emissions. Joe Biden, however, has already suggested he will take the necessary legal steps to restore those powers. According to CARB officials, that could happen as soon as next month.

Let’s use those powers. Government regulation incentivized the spread of SUVs and pickups; government regulation should fix the problem.

It is within CARB’s authority to regulate any element of California’s auto fleet that prevents the state from meeting its climate emission and clean-air goals. McCarthy and other CARB officials I spoke with say they feel confident that both President Biden and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg are aware of the problems with America’s steroidal auto fleet — and will act to remedy the problem.

But if the feds don’t have what it takes to keep the auto industry in check, California should step up and do the dirty work.

Electric Hummers are not progress. They are harbingers of a dumb and self-destructive future.

Kill it before it grows.

Matthew Fleischer is The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial page editor. Email: Twitter: @MatteFleischer