California is practically begging you to go electric. By 2035, the state wants to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars entirely. Sacramento has thrown billions in subsidies, rebates, and regulatory mandates at the problem. And yet, for a huge chunk of San Francisco residents, owning an EV remains somewhere between "impractical" and "laughable."

The reason is painfully simple: if you don't have a garage or a dedicated parking spot with a charger — which describes a massive percentage of renters in this city — you're basically playing a daily game of musical chairs with public charging stations. And anyone who's circled the block for 20 minutes looking for a regular parking spot in the Sunset or the Mission knows how fun that sounds.

This is the fundamental disconnect between Sacramento's green mandates and the reality of urban living in San Francisco. The city is dominated by renters. Many live in older buildings with no off-street parking at all, let alone wired-up parking. Installing chargers in multi-unit buildings is a bureaucratic and financial headache that most landlords have zero incentive to tackle. And the city's public charging infrastructure, while growing, is nowhere near sufficient to replace the convenience of plugging in at home overnight.

So what's the plan? Hope that everyone can charge at work? That's a fantasy for service workers, teachers, and anyone whose employer doesn't happen to be a tech campus with a parking garage full of ChargePoints. Build more public chargers on city streets? Great idea — now try getting permits through SF's legendary approval process before the heat death of the universe.

Here's the thing: we're not anti-EV. Electric vehicles are genuinely cool technology, and market competition is driving prices down. But there's something deeply unserious about a government that simultaneously mandates electric cars and makes it nearly impossible for average city dwellers to charge them. It's the California special: ambitious targets, zero follow-through on the boring infrastructure stuff.

If the state and city are going to push EVs this hard, they need to make charging as easy as filling up a gas tank. Until then, the EV mandate is just another example of policy designed for people with driveways — not for the renters who actually make up this city.