California plans to ban small IC engines by Jan 2024

[Unclepaul]

Their may be many areas where battery powered gardening tools can take over from gassers. Leaf blowers, trimmers, chain saws, circular saws, demo tools, mowers etc. will work well in easy to moderate situations. In heavy commercial or residential, the gas will still be the most powerful.
Many small generators can be easily be replaced by Lithium Iron power packs. Then can easily power most RV usage (except inefficient air conditioning). They significantly reduce the length of time a generator will need to be run. They also can be recharged during the day with Solar.

Doing so will significantly enhance the camping experience. Things will be far quieter and better smelling without all those little gassers chugging away.

As the deadline nears, better electric alternatives will be on the market. The gassers will not be totally eliminated, but the reduced smell and noise will be welcomed by many.

Many chores will still be best served with gas/diesel implements. Imagine it would be prudent for our Govt. to carve out exemptions for those areas.

[followingsea]

Originally Posted by Solo_RV_Guy

for @slow joe and @followingsea:

.... Those little 2 stroke engines are pretty dirty.

.....

As an expert and environmental professional let me characterize my $88 Harbor Freight generator with a 2 stroke engine.

Gets the job done, insignificant environmental impact. End of story.

Oil in water is one of the things I worry about so I read the EPA's annual report on the subject. I was surprised to see that 2 stroke personal watercraft was a major source in the executive summary.

As I suspected when I checked the main body of the report that was not true.

[FrogHollow]

One of the things I miss the most is a sharp memory, so bear with me here as it has been a while since I read up CA. rules regarding older vehicles. As I recall a fleet is defined in CA as three vehicles. Contractors and other small business owners who were mechanically inclined or know someone who was were able to keep their older vehicles going rather than purchase new emissions friendly vehicles. To deal with this CA. now prevents fleets from registering vehicles over a certain age.
Not sure how they would prevent people from keeping old small engine equipment running, but my guess it they are thinking hard about it.

[Bobby F]

I'm told that this applies to chainsaws, which is going to make California's efforts to de-fuel some of the high-risk-for-wildfire areas a bit more challenging.

They'll hand this over to the State Board for the rule-making process, which will decide what "cost effective" means, and this will trigger a pile of lawsuits over the meaning of "technologically feasible." Is it "cost effective" to simply ban small ICE products? Whose cost matters?

So I wouldn't expect to see much impact from this for a decade or so. This is more of a feel-good measure, with an aim of prodding manufacturers to get as close to clean as quickly as possible.

[Marine359]

The ban will make the F150 hybrid with ProPower worth its weight in gold.

[Boogie_]

Originally Posted by SlowJoe

This is an absurd statement!!!


I have a heavily wooded lot with lots of leaves in the fall. I bought the largest echo back-pack style blower the place had. It is an industrial version and maybe there is something on the market larger, but I couldn't find it.



The fuel tank holds about 1/2 gallon of fuel.


If I fire it up and run wide open for 1 hour, it may burn the entire tank but I dont believe so. I really haven't timed it specifically, but it runs a long time on a full tank of fuel.



A 2017 camry gets 33mph on the highway according to Google. Assuming this number is real, then an 1100 mile trip would require 33 gallons of gas.



How are these "experts" trying to represent that my blower can burn 1/2 gallon of fuel in an hour and produce more emissions than a vehicle which will burn 33 gallons on an 1100 mile trip? Where is the study that show this to be true?


What is the problem we are trying to solve here? They really have know way of knowing if there are actually 16.7 million small engines in the state, but even if one accepts that estimate, what is the impact of them? I have a generator, riding lawnmower, weedeater, blower, tiller, wood splitter and 4 chainsaws. They spend the majority of their time producing 0 emissions, because they ARE NOT RUNNING! Most of them get cranked less than 12 times a year. I may run 10 gallons of fuel through the lawnmower and 2 gallons through everything else in a year at the most.



This is a solution to a problem that does not exist.





I actually think this is a good thing. These officials are over playing their hands and people are waking up every time something like this passes.


I hope they keep it up!!!

Spot on.

There is absolutely no need to mandate converting anything, including cars, to battery power.

[MCCOHENS]

Your logic regarding fuel consumption is ignoring how much is coming out the exhaust and how efficient car engines can be. How about some facts:
Emissions
Fuel (evaporative and unburnt) and exhaust emissions consist of hydrocarbons (HC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and fine particulate matter (PM). Emissions from gas powered leaf blowers are substantial. The amount of CO (carbon monoxide) emitted from a typical backpack leaf blower for just 1 hour is equal to CO coming from the tailpipe of a current year automobile operating for over 8 hours. For the other pollutants, the amounts are even greater.

More information is available in the March 2016 document "Nonroad Spark-Ignition Engines 19 Kilowatts and Below: Exhaust Emission Standards" available through the EPA link in the right hand column.

This is from NY state DOE. But there were many options to select from.

[egwilly]

I'd like to share a couple of my viewpoints as a Calif resident....

1. The fact they say the operation of a gas lawnmower is the same as driving from Los Angeles to Denver. I have my doubts about that statement.

2. There is no way a professional gardening service or golf course grounds team can use electric cutting machines for several properties or acres with today's technology. The technology is not there for long use of these tools.

[bigb56]

Strangely absent from the language in both the proposed law and the news reports are diesel, propane and natural gas powered small engines (although the news report erroneously calls gasoline "gas"). I am wondering if this means diesel and propane powered generators will still be allowed.

[radar]

Originally Posted by egwilly

I'd like to share a couple of my viewpoints as a Calif resident....

1. The fact they say the operation of a gas lawnmower is the same as driving from Los Angeles to Denver. I have my doubts about that statement.

2. There is no way a professional gardening service or golf course grounds team can use electric cutting machines for several properties or acres with today's technology. The technology is not there for long use of these tools.

1. I don’t know. When the two lawnmowers, two whipper snippers followed by the leaf blower come through our resort it stinks for an hour or two after.

2. There are already gardening services successfully converting. I have seen inside one trailer. 4 AGM 31’s connected to a inverter/charger hooked to a bank of 40 volt battery chargers. Rotate the batteries as required. No fuel costs, no tune ups, no stink. Plug the trailer in at night in the shop. They are still using a ride on lawnmower for the big areas but all the push mowers are electric along with blowers and trimmers etc. Scale as required.

[CRV2]

It seems to me that there could be a smarter approach. California is a very large state so they could have chosen to ban ICE sales first in the major population areas and then see how that goes prior to making it a statewide imitative. Just a thought.

[glwinger]

And this coming from a state that has rolling power outages during bad weather conditions. No power to your home for days on end.

How is the archaic power grid going to handle all the extra power needed to charge all this equipment?

No one has mentioned the extra pollution the power companies are going to emit producing all the power needed to charge millions of batteries. Sufficient solar and wind power are a long way off, as is the efficiency of batteries needed to store the energy.
Then we have the pollution caused by the dumping of the decaying batteries that are no longer useful. Leaking lithium batteries produce intense heat as they decay causing even more wildfires.

[Bobby F]

Originally Posted by glwinger

No one has mentioned the extra pollution the power companies are going to emit producing all the power needed to charge millions of batteries.

California currently buys about 30% of its electricity from out of state. If they boost the amount of electricity they require, the additional power will also come from out of state - they have no current plans for expansion of their own - and so the additional pollution will be generated out of state. The rest of the SW USA will be California's China, to which all that nasty production pollution will be outsourced.

[Ldubs]

Originally Posted by SlowJoe

This is an absurd statement!!!


I have a heavily wooded lot with lots of leaves in the fall. I bought the largest echo back-pack style blower the place had. It is an industrial version and maybe there is something on the market larger, but I couldn't find it.



The fuel tank holds about 1/2 gallon of fuel.


If I fire it up and run wide open for 1 hour, it may burn the entire tank but I dont believe so. I really haven't timed it specifically, but it runs a long time on a full tank of fuel.



A 2017 camry gets 33mph on the highway according to Google. Assuming this number is real, then an 1100 mile trip would require 33 gallons of gas.



How are these "experts" trying to represent that my blower can burn 1/2 gallon of fuel in an hour and produce more emissions than a vehicle which will burn 33 gallons on an 1100 mile trip? Where is the study that show this to be true?


What is the problem we are trying to solve here? They really have know way of knowing if there are actually 16.7 million small engines in the state, but even if one accepts that estimate, what is the impact of them? I have a generator, riding lawnmower, weedeater, blower, tiller, wood splitter and 4 chainsaws. They spend the majority of their time producing 0 emissions, because they ARE NOT RUNNING! Most of them get cranked less than 12 times a year. I may run 10 gallons of fuel through the lawnmower and 2 gallons through everything else in a year at the most.

They are looking at how much bad stuff is put out. Not how much fuel is used. Regardless, i also question the comparison. But, if what they say is true, if cars are that clean, then why are they also banning the sale of gaso cars by 2035.