I was born and raised in California, lived there until 1980, then when I was 24 moved to Washington State.
My grandparents lived in Santa Monica, CA, which is close to Beverly Hills. My family would visit them on a regular basis. I can remember sitting at a stop light and not being able to see the next light that was only 1 block away. The air pollution was terrible.
I grew up in the Bay Area, in Cupertino, and in the summer it was so unusual to to be able to see the foothills that people would remark about being able to see the hills when they were visible.
Then CA started demanding that cars pollute less. American car makers were so resistant to the new pollution reducing laws that the cars they made to comply were only made for California. And the methods they used were half-assed. The Japanese car makers didn't go this route. Their methods to reduce emissions were not as nearly complex and didn't have the same negative effect on gas mileage.
All kinds of folks moaned and groaned about the new laws but after the air got clean nobody complained. Eventually the car makers wised up and stopped making cars just for California. If left up to private industry the changes would have taken at least a decade longer.
The same kind of thing happened with the gas mileage laws passed in CA. Same moaning and complaining. Now we have cars that get much better gas mileage all over the nation.
California's new law about banning small engines has such a large loophole it almost looks like it is simply ssymbolic It is of course not, but implementation will not occur for many years. What I think it will do is give extra impetus to existing companies and entrepreneurs to develop electric motors and batteries that will be the equivalent in weight, power, and "refueling" to what we are using today.
A good example of improvements in electronics and energy deliverability comes from computers.
In every computer that plugs into the wall is a power supply called an "Inverter". What an inverter does, basically, is convert DC electricity into AC electricity. AC voltages can be transformed from one voltage by using a transformer, DC cannot be changed this way. The AC frequency from the wall, the mains, is 60 hertz in North America. Transformer size is partly based on the frequency of the electricity going through it, the higher the frequency, the smaller the transformer. So the computer that is plugged into the wall uses a power supply that turns low frequency AC first into DC. Then the DC is turned into high frequency AC. This high AC voltage AC is then transformed into low voltage AC using tiny transformers, then turned into the DC that your computer runs on. The tiny transformers use much less copper so the power supply is lighter and cheaper to build. Another advantage is that the inverter is more efficient so it costs less to run and doesn't need the same cooling that older technology power supplies would need.
I know, this is getting long, but here's the point. Inverters are complex and it took a long time for the technology to mature. But now there are inverter power supplies everywhere. The best generators on the market today are the inverter ones, they have the best voltage and frequency control, the engine RPM affecting neither. Every electric car, battery operated tools. Plasma cutters, welders, etc. My old transformer type Miller welder has a 300 amp output and it weighs about 600 pounds. My new Lincoln 200 amp welder weighs about 60 pounds. And does way more. Because of the inverter power supply inside. My 300 amp Miller wire feed welder only weighs about 200 pounds, and that weight includes the wire feed motor and associated mechanisms.
Another technology developed for computers and improved upon by companies and entrepreneurs is the DC brushless motor. Though these motors and the drive electronics existed before hard and floppy drives in computers they really started to be radically improved upon once they started to become so ubiquitous since the drives were in every computer. Now these brushless motors and drives are in every drone. All sorts of power tools use them. All sorts of modern CNC machine tools use them. They are used in some electric cars. I have a tool that has a 2 horsepower brushless DC motor in it that measures only 3 1/4 inches long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter. 2 horsepower! These motors are used not just because they are so efficient and so powerful for their size. They are also very controllable. Not just the RPM, but also the rotation direction and they can be stopped where ever you want rotation wise. It is easy to have the motor shaft spin so many times, exactly, and then stop. And stop at the exact amount of rotation you want, so the shaft can be positioned rotation wise where ever desired. This can also be accomplished with other motors but with modern brushless DC motors and their drives it is much easier and cheaper. And this exact positioning is used in all sorts of stuff.
I know, this post got really long. My whole point though is I see all sorts of people having knee jerk reactions and not taking the time to really think about stuff. It looks to me like this law is really designed to give some folks a push to design better products. And a ready made market to sell them in.
Eric
