Can Los Angeles Power a Future Full of Electric Cars?

An electric vehicle charging station (Photo – PWP)

In 2022, California approved a plan to phase out the sale of all gas cars and light trucks by 2035. With the 2035 deadline now only a decade away, the feasibility of this plan is a big question.

By Shashank Tongaonkar

Could Los Angeles support a county full of electric cars? Well, maybe. The average electric car takes 0.346 kilowatt-hours of electricity per mile, with newer, more efficient cars taking less, closer to 0.3 kilowatt-hours. The average Californian drives around 12,000 miles a year and, according to the DMV, there are 9,063,443 licensed drivers in Los Angeles and Orange County. If you throw all those numbers into a calculator, you get 32,628,394,800 kWh (kilowatt-hours) or 32.6 TWh (terawatt-hours). According to the Atlas Ev Hub there are around 139,000 electric car registrations in Los Angeles and Orange or about 2.2% of cars are already electric. Factoring that into our estimate brings it down to around 31 TWh. If you replaced every single car in LA and Orange County tomorrow with an electric car, those cars would need somewhere around 31 TWh.

To put into perspective just how much energy this is, LA and Orange County produced 24.9 TWh of energy last year, while total energy usage was 67.3 TWh. To sustain our communities with electric cars, we would need to essentially double the amount of energy we import or produce!

Obviously not every car is going to be replaced with an electric one on January 1, 2035.  How long would it take for electric cars to take over? Every year, between 500,000 and750,000 new cars are bought and registered in Los Angeles and Orange County. There are currently around 10,000,000 registered vehicles in this geographic region. That means it would take 15–20 years for electric cars to make up the majority of cars; therefore, in 25–30 years, Los Angeles has to be sourcing and storing 50% more electricity.

Granted, electric cars are bound to become significantly more efficient and use less electricity per mile, but the ever-growing number of cars, along with a slowly increasing population, means that an enormous amount of electricity willk be needed. To meet the need,  multi-billion-dollar electrical grid upgrades will be required, including energy storage and renewable energy integration, and demolition of soon-to-be useless gas stations and replacement with fresh new car charging stations. The sheer amount of electricity needed would also require the opening of new electrical plants to keep up with demand.

Electricity centralization

Another issue is electricity centralization. Instead of a tiny car engine burning gasoline to power a car,  a world full of electric cars requires a massive industrial turbine in an energy plant. While this is good for the environment as these bigger turbines are undoubtedly more efficient, it pushes the energy release portion of the cycle onto an electrical plant. Instead of putting gas into thousands of cars and letting them do all the burning, one energy plant has to do it all for all of them–centralizing the strain into one point. This is bound to cause an increase in electric costs, while also presenting significant risk in the case the power plant needs to shut down.

The Effect of Supply and demand

The demand for electricity will simply replace the demand for gas, causing the price of electricity to go up. Not only will this make it more expensive to fill up your car, but it will also make it more expensive to turn on your lights, wash your dishes, and turn on your A/C during a sweltering SoCal day. Electric cars are cheaper to operate right now because they are the exception. As soon as electric cars become the new normal, the money consumers save on gas is bound to be spent on electricity.

Electric cars are an essential step toward a greener future, especially in a world grappling with the consequences of climate change. With gas-powered vehicles responsible for over 50% of transportation emissions, transitioning to electric vehicles would significantly reduce our carbon footprint. Achieving this vision requires more than just replacing cars, however, it demands a plan to address the strain on our electrical grid, manage costs, and upgrade our infrastructure.

As Los Angeles prepares for this shift, we must invest in renewable energy, modernize the grid, and ensure that the transition is both environmentally and economically viable. With only a decade left until the 2035 deadline, the time to act is now., Progress must not come at the expense of practicality or accessibility.