Please do the math?

Please think it through?

I'll try to create a very simple hypothetical case to illustrate the problem and how to think about it:

Assume the average vehicle is driven 50 miles per day.

This includes commercial vehicles, long and mid haul semi trucks, work trucks, delivery vehicles, etc. In other words, the average daily per person numbers do not apply here (that would be around 25 to 45 miles per day, depending on location). I feel an average of 50 miles per day, regardless of vehicle class, is a reasonable number to use as a thinking tool to try to get a ROM (Rough Order of Magnitude) of the problem. The models I developed years ago were far more accurate than this, however, that kind of detail in a simulation is hard to convey in a post like this.

Assume, then, this to represent an average for all 30 million vehicles in CA.

The question:

How much POWER would this require?

Let's assume we use a Level 2 charger that would replenish 60 miles in an hour at 7 kW. Again, we are super-simplifying things here. For example, a semi truck or delivery van will be far less efficient and require charging at a much higher power level and longer charge duration. I am just trying to simplify this for the purpose of illustrating the problem.

Assuming 30 million vehicles charged simultaneously, this means we would need 210,000,000 kW

Let's have them charge with a uniform distribution across 24 hours. That means we need 8,750,000 kW

That's 8.75 GW.

A typical nuclear power plant produces 1 GW. In other words, in this evenly distributed scenario we would need the output of 9 nuclear power plants for 24 hours to charge all vehicles in CA.

We need 9 NEW nuclear power plants in CA. I would round that to ten.

This is power over and above current generation and transport capabilities.

How long does it take to build just one nuclear power plant? Well, certainly longer than a high speed train. I think the range is between 25 years and impossible.

How about 10 of them? Never. Unless we stop talking about EV fantasy and start discussing reality. And that is: If we want EV's to take over we need to get serious about being able to massively expand power generation and delivery and we need to do that immediately.

No, it cannot happen by 2030. That's preposterous.

And, no, solar isn't going to do it. That's wishful thinking. A solar installation that can match a 1 GW nuclear power plant and deliver 1 GW 24/7 has to be built with a peak capacity of at least 10 GW. This is massive and more than most people can imagine in terms of land use, materials, batteries, etc.

And, BTW, the above super-simplified hypothetical isn't even close to just how bad things will be in reality. For example, if you assume that, say, 25% of vehicles will need fast or high power charging, the power demand will skyrocket. Remember that I said the problem is power, not energy. Power is what you need when you have to charge a bunch of cars simultaneously. That's because you have to do it given the time constraints of the task. You don't have 48 hours to charge a semi truck that just completed a thousand mile journey. At best your might have eight hours. And that requires power. A typical truck stop might have fifty to one hundred long-haul trucks in need of charging. What they demand is power in order to deliver the requisite energy in a given amount of time. The other thing it does not take into account is concentration. A city like Los Angeles will require a staggering amount of additional electricity to deal with EV's and it will have massive peaks that will dictate the size and shape of the required feeds.

Again, we can go head-in-the-sand or understand we have a very serious that requires at least a doubling of our power generation and distribution capacity. If we don't wake up to that right away it will be an absolute mess.

I could get into your comment about delaying charge and staggering. I have including that sort of thing in my models. It does not change peak power demand. Here's the simplest explanation: Imagine you slow charge 30 million cars for 12 hours and stagger 1/12th of them every hour as you proposed. Well, 12 hours into this charge methodology you have 30 million cars charging simultaneously. And, because cars are used every day, you pretty much end-up with 30 million cars charging 24/7. I am over-simplifying. The point is that the stagger idea seems to be an intuitive solutions (I thought so before I modeled it), yet it does not eliminate the fact that you have to deliver so many kWh (now talking energy) to so many cars within a narrow window of time. In real use very few will adopt EV's if they have to spend 24 hours charging.