Dem Rep. Sherman: You Still Have 8-Hour Window to Charge EVs — CA Gas Car Ban Means We Can Export Oil ‘if We Produce’ It

On Friday’s broadcast of C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said that electric vehicles in California can still be charged for eight hours a day and argued California’s recent ban on the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 is a boost to national security because “if we produce oil, we’ll be able to export it to countries that would otherwise be dependent upon Russia and Iran.”

Sherman said, “The fact is that electric vehicles’ charge can be 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. That’s not when we’re going to have a blackout. That’s when other demand is down. Electric vehicles can and in the future will, and some do already, put power back into the grid at key times and then use their batteries and pull the power out of the grid at that 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. window. Less than 1% of our electricity currently goes to electric vehicles.”

Sherman then specifically discussed the ban on the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035, saying, “The recent announcement is that after — in roughly a decade, we will not be selling gasoline-powered vehicles. Now, it’ll take a decade or more after that before all the gas-powered vehicles are down to a small percentage of those on the 405 Freeway. But we see prices of electric vehicles coming down. We see the tax credits that Congress just adopted and the president signed. And we’re going to see American energy, produced in America, running our vehicles, and if we produce oil, we’ll be able to export it to countries that would otherwise be dependent upon Russia and Iran. So, this is a huge step forward for our national security.”

He later added that there won’t be a complete ban on fossil fuels.

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett