Electric cars join the San Clemente Car Show

Car show goers, estimated to be around 15,000, walk up and down Avenida Del Mar in San Clemente for the annual Sept. 11 San Clemente Car Show. Marcus Rentziperis | Lariat

San Clemente held the annual San Clemente Car Show on Sept. 11. After not being able to have one in 2020, the city was ready to bring close to 15,000 people together again on Del Mar again to look at and talk about cars, more specifically the changes in old to new cars.

The San Clemente Car Show has typically been a place for classic cars, but with recent times newer cars are being added into the show. Electric cars are showing up more at these historically classic muscle car shows. There are people who are for and against the rise of electric cars and  whether or not these cars should be involved in these shows.

“I think the culture will evolve with the changing industry. I go to car shows and see modified Teslas oddly frequently,” said Josh Nelson, a student in car mechanics and engineering. “The industry is going to be playing catch-up with Tesla as their battery technology is far superior to anyone else.”

Nelson’s stance on the gas versus electric car debate is not an uncommon way of thinking now. With the increase of electric cars taking to the road, a standard has been made and no longer holds the stigma of being a weak car. But could the implementation of more electronics make it harder for mechanics to work on cars?

“Even before the implementation of electric motors, I thought that adding computers and sensors made it more difficult to work on a car from a physical point of view,” said Koji Nakatani, student at UC Irvine. “However, there is a trade off, because having things like electronic sensors makes it fairly easy to diagnose problems, which could save mechanics time.” 

The ideas on these cars might be shared among young people who are growing up with electric cars, but what about people who have grown up around gas powered cars?

“I know they are eco-friendly but what about the processes in how they make the batteries and cars,” said Andy Hernandez, a retired fire chief of LA County Fire. “They make sense for driving on the road, but I couldn’t even think of how much work would have to be put into a battery for a larger size vehicle.” 

Hernandez’s points about how emissions for making the batteries and cars are just as harmful as the average gas powered car is common among people against electric cars. But when researching this topic, wildly different results are brought up. 

In the case of the popular Tesla Model 3, the electricity that is used to make the batteries in factories are powered by renewable power such as solar. The data argues that while the production of electric cars are not as clean, the long term effects of electric cars are seen as a better alternative to the gas powered cars. 

“EVs are responsible for considerably lower emissions over their lifetime than conventional vehicles,” according to Zeke Hausfather, an author from CarbonBrief, a website based in the UK that specializes in the scientific and political aspects of climate change.

The world is changing in the world of cars. They are the very things that keep the United States running as an economy. The White House released a statement that President Joe Biden signed an executive order with the “target of making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 zero-emissions vehicles.” 

They affect the world scientifically, culturally and economically with people modding their cars for these very car shows, restoring, getting to and from work and keeping the effort to keep the planet clean.

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