California small-gas-engine ban

[tek]

California took another step toward its goal of ridding the state of all gas-powered engines thanks to a new bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday.

The new law will ban the sale of all off-road, gas-powered engines, including generators, lawn equipment, pressure washers, chainsaws, weed trimmers, and even golf carts. Under the new law, these machines must be zero-emissions, meaning they will have to be either battery-powered or plug-in, according to the Los Angeles Times.

I'm actually on board with almost all of this; I was thinking about this yesterday while on a bike ride, riding past the dozen or so lawn-mowing crews in the neighborhood. Before we left Massachusetts there were already several local lawn-mowing services that were fully battery powered.

But.

A battery-powered "generator" is not a generator. I know, I have one. It even has a solar panel for charging. It works fine for keeping the network gear up, or keeping the fans running at a car show. But it won't hold up a well pump or a sump pump.

Even a Tesla Powerwall won't hold up all that long (13.5 kWh storage)

Oh wait, I forgot. California never has power outages.

[bill_g]

Is the ban on the sale, or on the use of small gas engines?

[bill_g]

And has anyone cracked the battery disposal problem beyond shipping them to another country?

[tek]

I believe it is 'sale'

And this is America! We NEVER worry about our technological waste!

[neeneko]

Ok, looking at the actual law.. it only applies to the production and sale of new engines, not banning existing ones. It is also much narrower in intent,... I am not clear on what might be swept up in the category, but that actual purpose behind the law is to target lawn maintenance equipment. I gather that the idea was to go after two stroke engines, but looking at what 'small offroad engines' are actually defined as, looks like 4 stroke is included.

The law does include a mention of generators, so it acknowledges that these engines are sometimes used in them, so it states that this class must be looked into. Poking around, there are indeed companies working on brining fuel cell based zero emission generators to market, but the wording of the law makes it sound like generators would be an exception until these new ones are feasible.