8 states are planning to BAN the sale of gas-powered cars entirely - after Biden unveiled ambitious plans to phase them out by 2032

[SimplyMe]

Fair point. "A lack of thorough planning to prevent power grid outages" is the main concern. There are local outages caused by peak usages and weather, and then there are cascading outages, which are often complex in nature and caused by peak usages and a number of factors, the "perfect storm" scenarios. The United States currently has such problems and EVs will further strain the system.

Except EVs don't have to. I recall in California last summer, when they had record high temperatures, they asked EV owners not to plug in during peak hours. Again, one of the advantages of EVs, when people are charging at home, is they can literally charge overnight when demand for electricity is lowest.

No one knows where the charging station concentrations will be at this time. It is likely the colder areas will be hit the hardest, more electricity will be needed, they put out estimated miles for a vehicle on a full charge, that can go up dramatically when all of the accessories such as heat are on.

Yes, all cars are less efficient in the cold. However, it isn't enough to cause huge drains on the power grid -- and again, EVs can be charged during non-peak hours.

If it gets cold enough cars don't start, you quickly run down the battery trying and it has to be recharged.

I don't even understand this, what cars? If cars don't start, it is due to the 12V battery being dead (and cold weather often causes a weak 12V battery to fail). If a car doesn't start and drains all the power from the 12V battery, that is an ICE vehicle that is having the issue. And recharging a 12V does not use a lot of power.

When an EV "starts," roughly all that is happening is that the car's computers are booted and the traction battery is connected to the powertrain -- it requires very little power that all comes from the 12V battery. An EV doesn't need the "cold cranking amps" that ICE cars require, so the battery can turn the gasoline engine to start it.

Where you have densely populated cities, such as Chicago, the electrical demand for a small area might go up dramatically.

Again, why, beyond the normal demand that goes up during extreme cold weather?

Now, I'm sure you're going to claim that what happened in Chicago during their extreme cold last winter would be terrible for the grid if there were more EVs. The answer is, no, not particularly. Under normal circumstances, extreme cold weather should not be causing a lot of extra use at public charging stations. On top of that, if what happened in Chicago happened again, it would use a lot less power. The two issues that occurred were 1) several charging stations were not properly "winterized" and failed -- meaning they were using basically no power. Next, some drivers (my understanding is ride share drivers) let their batteries get too low, to the point that their batteries would not pre-condition (warm themselves to proper charging temperature) on the way to the chargers. Essentially, the cars got almost no power out of the station for the first hour or two, meaning power draw was extremely low. What should have been maybe a half hour charging session might go for two and a half hours, but not really use anymore power than if it was able to charge in 30 minutes. And, of course, the people who had to wait for these people with cold batteries to charge ended up having their own batteries cool down during the wait, meaning they ended up taking hours, as well.

It is worth noting that Canada and Norway, where these extreme temperatures are occur more frequently do not have these issues -- this was something unique to Chicago, where the EV infrastructure was not properly set up for Chicago's weather.

I don't have confidence that Joe, or even Kamala, have properly evaluated power grid outages that will be cause by the greater number of EVs mandated. Our infrastructure, power grids, bridges, etc. are often ignored by politicians, and a lot people, until there is a disaster. Trump has said he won't mandate numbers, that people will be free to choose EVs or gas powered vehicles. If he is elected that would prevent a sudden strain of the power grid.

I don't have confidence in any President to properly evaluate power grid outages -- that isn't their job. Again, it is the power utilities, the "experts" that we (and even politicians) rely on to make those determinations, particularly since each has to be made for the "local" area. An evaluation for Chicago isn't going to be applicable to Atlanta or Houston, despite all of them being large cities.

Having said that, as has been mentioned, Pres. Biden did add funding to modernize and improve our power grid in the Infrastructure bill, with some funds specifically to improve the grid to prepare it for EVs. As for Pres. Trump, that was one of his major campaign promises he broke -- he didn't get it done his first two years when he had Republicans to pass it in Congress. The next two years he kept finding excuses to not negotiate with Democrats to make it happen; talks would be scheduled and Congresspeople would show up at the White House, Trump would come in, and typically quickly find an excuse to end the talks.