The National Transportation Safety Board recently released the final report on the July 22, 2022, crash near the Reid-Hillview Airport. The 42-year-old pilot was the plane’s only occupant and survived the crash near the intersection of Ocala Avenue and Karl Street, albeit with significant injuries.

The Piper had 15 gallons of fuel available in one of two tanks, but the pilot used a tank that became depleted while the aircraft underwent its annual inspection at the airport. According to the NTSB, those errors by the pilot “resulted in fuel starvation, a total loss of engine power and an impact with the terrain.”

The NTSB said Reid-Hillview Airport did not sell the 100LL leaded aviation fuel that the Piper needed but that the lack of fuel at the airport did not likely influence the pilot’s decision “as he believed he had sufficient fuel to complete the flight.” It is one of only two airports in the country which sell only 94-octane unleaded avgas.

The pilot had intended to fly about 5 miles to Norman Mineta San Jose International Airport, the NTSB said.

Santa Clara County officials made the decision to sell only unleaded avgas at county airports starting in January 2022 after a county-commissioned study released in August 2021 found higher levels of lead in thousands of children living in the area around Reid-Hillview Airport.

A study released in June 2022 found that soil samples taken at the airport did not contain lead levels that exceeded local, state or federal levels. A federal study by the Environmental Protection Agency, released in 2023, found that leaded aviation fuel emissions were a public health hazard.

“The final accident report confirms what we believed to be true at the time of the incident — that the decision to go lead-free at county airports did not cause the crash,” County Executive James R. Williams said in a statement released by the county.

Overfelt High School, Clyde Fischer Middle School, Donald Meyer Elementary, a boys and girls clubhouse and Hank Lopez Community Center, along with scores of homes, all are located with a block or two of the crash site.

The storm is expected to bring at least 1½ inches of rain to much of the Bay Area, and perhaps totals in excess of 2 inches in the North Bay and coastal ranges, according to the National Weather Service. The full onslaught for the first showers to reach the region was expected Thursday afternoon or evening.

“We’ve got the cold front knocking on the North Bay’s door,” meteorologist Dalton Behringer said Thursday afternoon. “It’s gonna come on in and then cover the whole region.”

Some rain fell early Thursday, but barely any of it was measurable by noon. Up to one-tenth of an inch fell in Marin County and areas of the Peninsula saw about five-hundredths of an inch.

But more was coming.

“After (the main band) goes through (Thursday), we will have scattered showers into Friday,” Behringer said. ” Then on Friday, we’re going to get another heavier push.”

Weather forecasters also expect at least 5 to 12 feet of snow to fall above 5,000 feet. Authorities urged anyone not already in the mountains not to go and said roads and highways are likely to be shut down.

A blizzard warning issued Tuesday for the Northern and Central Sierra Nevada went into effect at 4 a.m. Thursday and was set to last until 10 a.m. Sunday. The warning affects Lassen and Shasta counties, as well as Lake Tahoe to Tuolumne and Mono counties near Yosemite National Park.

PG&E in a statement said it was pre-staging crews and materials to tackle power outages that the storm may bring and that they are prepared to use helicopters, snowcats and vehicles with four-wheel drive to gain access to areas that need repair. Still, they said customers in remote areas “should prepare for extended outages given the unique circumstances of this storm.”

Early Thursday, widespread power outages affected the west San Jose and Campbell areas from south of Interstate 280  in the Meridian area over to south of I-280 at Bascom and south. Power also went out at one business corner of Hamilton Avenue and Bascom Avenue.

Power outages in Woodside, Redwood City and Campbell also had up to 500 customers in the dark in each of those stories, according to the utility.

The storms have been generated by a large low-pressure system that’s descending from the Gulf of Alaska and bringing cold air with it. Low temperatures are expected to dip daily until they go into the 30s in most places in the East Bay by Saturday night into Sunday morning.

Temperatures are expected to bottom out in the low 40s in San Jose.

The storm also is expected to bring wind gusts that could get as high as 40 mph. A high-surf advisory also is likely, according to the weather service.

Joby Aviation, with its recently established headquarters in the Harvey West area of Santa Cruz and offices and facilities also in Marina and San Carlos, is currently developing electric air taxis for commercial passenger service, which it hopes to launch in 2025, and recently moved closer to that goal after completing another phase in the process to becoming certified by the Federal Aviation Administration.

“It’s going to have ridesharing networks, which is one of the things we are excited about in Santa Cruz, particularly with Highway 17,” said Santa Cruz Economic Development and Housing Director Bonnie Lipscomb at the meeting. “Joby also fits in with our community values of providing sustainable solutions to today’s challenges of congestion and climate change.”

According to the agenda report associated with the motion to approve the $500,000 loan to Joby, the funding would be provided to Joby on a reimbursement basis based on an annual survey of its job generation and employee retention. The agreement is meant to incentivize the hiring of 250 new, full-time employees in the city in total, which includes positions for technicians, engineers, machinists and managers, among others.

“That’s really the crux of what this agreement is about, is the creation of local jobs in our community,” said Lipscomb. “This incentivizes up to 250 jobs.”

The report points out that the loan is taken from the economic development trust fund and does not impact the city’s general fund, and that the loan funds “will be used for testing, manufacturing and safety equipment, including communications, safety, and other advanced specialized manufacturing equipment for the facility, such as CNC machines, lasers, and grinders.”

According to the report, the terms of the employment incentive loan include that it will be disbursed over no more than five years and with installment payments based on the annual employment survey. For each full-time employee that Joby hires, the city would loan the company $2,000. However, Joby cannot claim more than 100 new employees in a year, which means that the maximum loan amount awarded for a year is capped at $200,000.

During the public comment period, Joby Aviation’s Head of State and Local Policy George Kivork called into the meeting to speak to the process of the loan agreement and the company’s commitment to the city.

“We have spent the last year making sure that the agreement and the private partnership that we enter here together would be for the public interest,” said Kivork. “We put a very long range timeline of us not going anywhere for the next 10 years to commit ourselves to Santa Cruz.”

The City Council approved the motion in a vote of 6-1 with Councilmember Sandy Brown voting no.

To read the loan agreement, visit cityofsantacruz.com.

The incident happened around 6:18 p.m., Caltrain spokesperson Dan Lieberman said.

Lieberman initially said southbound train #310 hit a person, but San Jose police officers later determined it was a “near miss.”

The person was still taken to a hospital, Lieberman said. An update on their condition was not available.

The train was carrying about 39 people at the time of the incident, Lieberman said.

Roughly 2½ hours later, a different Caltrain collided with an unoccupied vehicle on the tracks at Scott Street in San Bruno, Lieberman said. No injuries were reported.

Check back for updates.

They were awakened when a Jeep plummeted off a 40-foot cliff and landed on its roof in the ocean’s rocky shallows. The driver reportedly climbed out through the passenger side, then fell into the water and was swept about 100 yards out to sea.

The witnesses helped him get back to shore, and he was taken to a hospital for examination and treatment of mild hypothermia, the Hawaii County Fire Department said.

The crash took place about a mile from a tourist destination known as the South Point Cliff Jump, where people can jump from the overhanging cliff into 20 feet of water and then climb back up on a ladder built into the cliffside. An unmaintained road runs within a few yards of the edge, and there is no barrier.

The Hawaii County Police Department told Island News that the man driving the Jeep is 27 years old and was visiting from Canada.

The vehicle was recovered from the ocean.

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Joby has been doing business and developing a manufacturing facility in the city of Marina for the last six years where it launched production of its aircraft at its Pilot Production Plant with the first aircraft rolling off the line in June 2023, to begin flight testing.

Joby’s electric air taxi is designed to carry a pilot and four passengers at speeds of up to 200 mph, offering high-speed mobility with a fraction of the noise produced by helicopters and zero operating emissions.

A “type certificate” is a document granted by the National Aviation Authority of the country in which an aircraft is intended to operate. It confirms the airworthiness of the aircraft according to its manufacturing design and is required in order to fly commercial operations. It is separate from the “production certificate” which is focused on the manufacturing process itself, according to company documents.

Joby submitted certification plans during the third stage of the process that cover all of the aircraft’s structural, mechanical and electrical systems, in addition to Joby Aviation’s intended certification approach to cybersecurity, human factors, and noise.

These certification plans, which detail the tests and analyses that Joby will use to certify every aspect of its aircraft for commercial use, have now all been reviewed and accepted by the Federal Aviation Administration, laying the groundwork for Joby to submit test plans and begin for-credit testing across every area of the company’s aircraft program, according to a press release from Joby.

“Joby continues to lead the industry towards bringing electric air taxis to the commercial market,” said Joby Aviation Founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt, in the release. “Our certification and engineering teams are best-in-class and, working closely with the FAA, continue to support U.S. leadership in this new area of aviation.”

Joby says it considers the type certification process in five stages, with the first three stages considered the “definition” phase, while stages four and five are the “implementation” phase.

Stage One is Certification Basis where the company works with the FAA to define the scope of the type certification project, reaching an agreement on what type of aircraft is being built and which set of rules and regulations will therefore apply.

Stage Two is the Means of Compliance where the company scrutinizes the safety rules and identifies the means of demonstrating compliance with them.

Stage Four is for Testing and Analysis where the company plans, documents and completes thousands of inspections, tests and analyses in accordance with the certification plans previously drawn up in the third stage.

Stage Five is for Showing and Verifying where the results of the testing are verified by the FAA. Upon successful completion of this stage, a type certification is issued.

With three of its area-specific certification plans accepted by the FAA – and the majority of the remainder ready for submission – Joby is now fully focused on the fourth stage of the certification process, where the company will complete tests and analysis for FAA credit covering every component and system on the Joby aircraft – as well as the entire aircraft itself.

“With all of our certification plans accepted by the FAA, we are now completely focused on the execution phase of the certification process,” said Didier Papadopoulos, President of Aircraft Original Equipment Manufacturer at Joby, in the release. “We have a clear path to certifying every aspect of our aircraft and the team is full steam ahead on executing against that path as we continue to lead the industry to commercialization.”

In the fourth quarter of 2023, Joby completed 30 for-credit tests covering a number of flight electronics units as well as structural materials. The testing methods and processes validated through these tests lay the foundation for the company’s continued expansion of FAA for-credit testing.

Joby also recently received its Part 145 Repair Station Certificate from the FAA, allowing the company to perform select maintenance activities on aircraft and marking another key step on the path to commercializing Joby’s electric air taxi service.

Joby Aviation is headquartered in Santa Cruz and has facilities in Marina, San Carlos, Washington, D.C., and Munich Germany.

California Highway Patrol Lt. Joe Dominguez testified under oath that if Officer Alfredo Gutierrez had reported his impaired eyesight, he would have been removed from motorcycle duty pending medical clearance. The testimony was included in court papers filed this week in a wrongful death lawsuit against the CHP by the family of Cezannie Mount, the 24-year-old pedestrian killed in October 2019.

The documents filed by attorneys Eric Dubin and Annee Della Donna said there is no evidence Gutierrez was examined or cleared by CHP-contracted doctors.

“Dominguez testified the most important issue was ensuring that the officer could safely operate the motorcycle without harming themselves or the public, and made clear Gutierrez would not have been allowed on a CHP motorcycle at the time he hit and killed Cezannie without the mandated CHP doctor’s clearance he could safely perform his duties,” the attorneys said in the documents.

“Either (the CHP) knew and they didn’t care or Gutierrez never told them,” said Della Donna, explaining that Gutierrez has said his supervisors knew everything. “Somebody’s lying.”

Medical records show that Gutierrez was diagnosed five days before the accident with central serous chorioretinopathy, a condition that distorts vision because of a build-up of fluids beneath the retina.

Gutierrez’s medical condition was not known by prosecutors or jurors during his criminal trial in May for Mount’s death.

Gutierrez was charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter because he was traveling at nearly 70 mph in a 40-mph zone. A mistrial was declared after jurors were unable to reach a verdict. The Long Beach City Prosecutor’s Office announced it would not seek a retrial, partially to spare Mount’s family from another protracted proceeding.

Long Beach City Prosecutor Doug Haubert has said his office would have introduced Gutierrez’s eye condition as evidence of recklessness if prosecutors had been told about it.

A medical expert contacted by Southern California News Group likened chorioretinopathy to the vision someone would have if grease was smeared on their eyeglasses — they can still see but it’s blurry. The condition generally clears up on its own in two to three months.

Mount was killed while walking at 4:40 a.m. beside the median on Del Amo Boulevard near Cherry Avenue on Oct 27, 2019, on the officer’s left side — the same side as Gutierrez’s ailing eye.

Mount played basketball at Long Beach Poly High School and was an aspiring hip-hop artist, his family has said. After earning a degree in music from Earlham College in Indiana, he had returned home and was working at Raising Cane’s restaurant in Lakewood to pay for studio time to make music.

Gutierrez, who worked out of the South Los Angeles CHP office serving the South Bay and Long Beach, sustained serious injuries in the crash and took a medical retirement.

An 85-year-old Boulder Creek woman was driving a blue Kia Forte northbound when she veered off the roadway and hit four bicyclists riding southbound on the east dirt shoulder, according to Murillo. The Kia then struck a tree, where it came to a rest.

Murillo said the bicyclists were taken to area hospitals, two of them with major injuries. The woman also suffered minor injuries. However, she was not taken to a hospital.

The cause of the crash is under investigation, but alcohol and drugs are not believed to be factors, according to Murillo.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

“If people are not already up here by Thursday morning, do not come,” said Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist at the UC Central Sierra Snow Lab at Donner Summit near Lake Tahoe. “It’s a shelter-in-place situation. People up here are buying fuel today for backup generators and boarding up their windows. It’s like watching people prepare for a hurricane.”

On Tuesday, the National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning — its first of the year — for the Northern and Central Sierra Nevada. The warning extends from 4 a.m. Thursday to 10 a.m. Sunday from Lassen and Shasta counties through Lake Tahoe to Tuolumne and Mono counties near Yosemite National Park.

Snow will begin falling Thursday, and become most extreme on Friday at amounts of 2 to 4 inches an hour, posing “near to impossible” conditions for drivers, winds up to 65 mph and power outages, the National Weather Service warned, with extended road closures possible on Interstate 80 and Highway 50, the main two routes that Bay Area residents use to go to Lake Tahoe area ski resorts.

“This will be the coldest system of the season so far, with the most snow,” said Courtney Carpenter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

Donner Pass along I-80 is expected to get 6 to 8 feet of new snow through Sunday.

“It’s really going to be dangerous to impossible to travel over the weekend,” she added.

The Bay Area will be spared much of the fury from the storm, a cold low-pressure system moving in from the Gulf of Alaska. Moderate rain is forecast Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with about half an inch expected each day for most Bay Area cities before dry conditions return Sunday and Monday.

An inch or two of snow could fall on some of the Bay Area’s highest peaks by Saturday, including Mount Hamilton and Mount Diablo, forecasters said.

The powerful blizzard is the latest and most dramatic example of a winter that started slow but has steadily increased, improving California’s water picture with every passing week, and all but guaranteeing that there will be few, if any water restrictions this summer for most communities in the state.

On Jan. 1, the statewide Sierra snowpack — the source of nearly one-third of California’s water supply — was just 28% of its historical average. After a wet February, it rebounded in two months to 82% on Tuesday. That number is very likely to go above 100% by Monday.

“We definitely started the winter off on the warmer and drier side,” said Jeanine Jones, interstate resources manager for the California Department of Water Resources. “Then things started picking up. The month of February was a big help in moving the snowpack numbers along.”

Californians have suffered through serious droughts in eight of the past 12 years. The dry conditions, exacerbated by climate change, have brought heat waves, urban and farm water restrictions and huge wildfires over the last decade.

The state’s most recent drought, from 2020 to 2022, ended last year when dozens of atmospheric river storms left the Sierra Nevada with its biggest snowpack in 40 years. Those storms, and the melting snow, also filled reservoirs around the state, many of which remain at high levels now.

On Tuesday, Shasta and Oroville, the two largest reservoirs in California, and linchpins of the water supply for more than 20 million people from the Bay Area to San Diego, each were 84% full.

“As we get later into the spring, the flood-control requirements will be lifted and reservoirs will be storing snowmelt runoff,” she said.

The wet February has also sent precipitation levels in Northern and Southern California to healthy totals. On Tuesday, San Jose was at 130% of its historical rainfall average for late February, San Francisco was at 116%, Sacramento was at 106% and Oakland was at 86%.

Farther south, Santa Barbara was at 159% of normal rainfall, Los Angeles 170% and San Diego 138%.

Heavy storms in recent weeks have created a temporary lake in Death Valley, usually the hottest spot in the United States. The waist-deep lake has drawn tourists with kayaks and paddle boards, creating a rare scene on the site of Lake Manly, a former lake in the low-lying Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park that evaporated tens of thousands of years ago.

So far, the winter has unfolded in a very advantageous way statewide, Schwartz said. Flooding has been minimal, and two back-to-back winters with above-average to average rainfall mean drought conditions aren’t in the cards for 2024.

“This is the year that we wanted to have after last year,” he said. “We aren’t looking at such a deep snow pack that it is going to pose flooding issues. And we aren’t looking at a moisture deficit. It’s kind of the best of both worlds.”

Sales of electric vehicles in California hit an all-time high at the start of last summer. But registrations declined in the third quarter of 2023 and slipped again in the final three months of the year.

Is it a statistical fluke, or does it indicate a trend?

It’s a question with plenty of ramifications for the state’s clean transportation goals — especially since Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020 issued an executive order mandating the elimination of all new sales of gasoline-powered passenger vehicles in the Golden State by 2035.

Also see: Rivian to cut 10% of salaried staff as EV momentum stalls

Newsom and officials in his administration say the focus on the recent drop in sales numbers is overblown in light of California’s rapid adoption of zero-emission vehicles, with the pace especially accelerating in the last four years.

“I actually take issue with the contention that there is somehow bad news here,” said David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission. “The overall trend is very positive and it’s a big deal that one out of every four vehicles sold have a plug. So I think the larger story is that EVs (electric vehicles) are enjoying an unprecedented growth spurt.”

But some automotive analysts are not so sanguine, pointing to larger issues facing the transition to EVs and whether the industry ran too far ahead of what mainstream consumers really want when they pay the increasingly high price tag attached to new cars and trucks.

“Automakers said, ‘Let’s go all-in on EVs, that’s the real technology,’ but the problem is that consumers are not there yet,” said Ivan Drury, senior manager of auto insights at Edmunds.com. “Honestly, it’s a national problem.”

The numbers

California has set the national standard on EV sales. Four straight quarters of growth culminated with a record 122,387 registrations between April and June 2023, according to data of light-duty vehicles compiled by the California Energy Commission.

But in the third quarter, EV sales slipped slightly to 119,587 and the fourth-quarter numbers dropped to 103,127 — a decline of 15.7 percent compared to the all-time high in the second quarter.

Quarterly numbers posted by the California New Car Dealers Association showed similar declines.

The Newsom administration and officials at the energy commission say the numbers simply reflect the fact that overall car and truck sales — regardless of power train — dropped in the second half of 2023.

According to the car dealers association, registrations for all vehicles in the third quarter (451,889) were lower than in the second quarter (475,480) and the fourth-quarter numbers (426,150) were lower than the third quarter.

And despite EV sales declining in the third quarter, their share of the California market hit an all-time high of 22.3%.

“Do I worry about one quarter? No,” said Newsom when asked about EV sales at a news conference Tuesday in Sacramento while announcing the renewal of a climate partnership between California and Sweden. “That’s frankly a talking point. A talking point coming out of the fossil fuel lobby. … You saw automobile (sales) numbers drop generally in Q4. Unsurprisingly in the EV space, one quarter does not make a market — quite the contrary.”

The week before, the Governor’s Office touted on X, formerly Twitter, how EV sales in the Golden State are up more than 1,000 percent in the past decade.

Hybrids keep humming

While overall registrations declined in the second half of 2023, the sale of hybrid vehicles did not.

Hybrids without an electric plug-in experienced 3% growth in the third quarter and rose 7.6% in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to numbers posted by the California New Car Dealers Association.

When operating at low speeds, traditional hybrids without a plug rely on the car’s electric motor and then shift to the internal combustion engine when additional power is needed. By contrast, a plug-in hybrid runs on electricity for about 20 to 40 miles and then calls on its gasoline-powered engine to extend the vehicle’s range.

Going back to the introduction of the Toyota Prius in North America in 2000, “California consumers have seen the benefit of a hybrid vehicle,” said Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association.

“Especially for those who aren’t yet ready or can’t quite afford to switch to a full EV, a hybrid vehicle makes a lot of sense — better gas mileage, getting the benefits of electrification but you can still use gasoline on those long trips.”

Even though EV adoption rates have soared, one major hurdle continues to be “range anxiety” — the fear that the vehicle’s electric charge will drain, leaving the driver searching for a nearby charging station before the car conks out.

Also, EVs are typically more expensive than gasoline-powered vehicles. According to Kelley Blue Book, the average new car buyer in the U.S. paid $48,247 in November. The average for a new EV came to $52,345.

“I think consumers feel that the hybrid is one of those things where you kind of get the best of both worlds,” said Drury of Edmunds.com, which reported that national sales of hybrids near the end of 2023 were up 76 percent.

The Wall Street Journal last month reported that dealers who sell General Motors cars and trucks, worried about customers who aren’t ready to switch to fully electric vehicles, are pressing company executives to introduce more hybrid models into the market.

Rental car giant Hertz recently announced that it is selling one-third of its EV fleet and reinvesting in gasoline-powered vehicles, citing weak demand and repair costs.

Last month, Ford said it is cutting production of its F-150 Lightning electric pickup due to weaker-than-expected sales. The truck had a deluge of customer reservations when it first rolled out but its sticker price starts at $51,990.

“The problem is that people were reserving multiple vehicles across multiple brands and whoever gave it to them first, they then canceled their reservations with the other brands,” Drury said. “So that sense of demand was actually much more over-inflated than anyone could have anticipated.”

California benchmarks are coming soon

Under standards passed by the California Air Resources Board, at least 35 percent of model year 2026 passenger cars and trucks sold in the state will be electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The numbers ramp up each year, going to 68 percent in 2030 and 100 percent by 2035.

Hybrids without a plug-in do not count.

Energy commission chair Hochschild said he “absolutely” has no doubts the targets can be reached in the long- and short-term.

“When Gavin Newsom began as governor, we were 8% of new vehicle sales being electric to last year being at an all-time record of 25% … So going another 10% or so in the next two years is absolutely within reach,” Hochschild said.

To help ease range anxiety, the energy commission is deploying about $4 billion in charging infrastructure projects across the state. Investor-owned utilities such as San Diego Gas Electric are also building charging stations, as are EV charging companies such as Electrify America, EVgo and ChargePoint.

To add customer convenience, major automakers are adopting the North American Charging Standard (NACS), commonly known as the Tesla plug, in which different brands of EVs can get charged using the same connection system. Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep, Ram and Dodge, earlier this month announced it will adopt the Tesla plug on its models starting in 2025.

By the way, the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y have been the two top-selling vehicles in California for seven consecutive quarters, according to California New Car Dealer Association numbers.

Hochschild accentuated positive developments in the zero-emission vehicles space, such as lower costs for the minerals that go into lithium-ion batteries and improvements in technology so that EVs can extend their mileage between charges.

“We’re seeing some real breakthroughs, both in energy density and in lithium costs, where we went from $80,000 a ton to $20,000 a ton in a year,” Hochschild said. “So these macro trends, I think, are more significant than fluctuations between quarters.”

The road ahead

But some auto analysts look at the EV numbers and while they acknowledge the year-over-year numbers are impressive, the slowdown in sales gives them pause.

“Policymakers need to realize that this is really happening,” Drury said, “and if (the lower numbers) last more than a few months or a few quarters, there’s something there and they really need to find out what they can do to combat it.”

Maas of the car dealers association said, “Nobody is giving up on electrification of the vehicle fleet, but it’s undeniable in our report and many other anecdotal reports that EVs are not selling as quickly as they were before.”

EarthJustice, an environmental group based in San Francisco, has been a longtime supporter of the EV transition as part of a larger effort to end the use of fossil fuels.

“Manufacturers intent on weakening California’s zero-emissions regulations are keen to sell us all a story about Californians not embracing clean vehicles in the big picture, but that couldn’t be (further) from the truth,” the group’s deputy managing attorney, Adrian Martinez, said in an email.

The purchases of zero-emission vehicles in the state are “actually ahead of schedule,” Martinez said, and “if anything, Gov. Newsom and the California Air Resources Board should look at the growing enthusiasm from Californians and consider speeding up life-saving regulations to protect our lungs and clear our skies of smog.”

The Pacific Research Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Pasadena that espouses free-market solutions to policy matters, has been a critic of the 2035 requirements.

“When you have these edicts, these mandates, it’s betting everything on one hand,” said senior fellow Wayne Winegarden, “and if that hand’s not a winner, then you have huge consequences.”

But even Winegarden is holding fire to see if the numbers represent a pattern or just a blip.

“It’s always important to to wait and see if a trend is developing before we say too much,” he said. “Certainly, next quarter’s numbers I think are going to be watched very carefully.”

Data points for the first quarter of 2024 are expected to come out in May.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.