Giovanni Circella, the director of the 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program at the University of California, Davis, affirms that e-scooters “tend to have somewhat positive effects in terms of environmental sustainability.”

The typical consumer, said Scott Hardman, a postdoctoral researcher in the Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Research Center of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, “just wants a car. They want a reliable car that gets them where they want to go. They are not interested in dealing with any inconvenience. They just want a car that is going to be effective.”

Debapriya Chakraborty, an EV researcher at UC Davis’s Institute of Transportation Studies, says government emissions standards will play an important role in the transition to EVs because they can force automakers to send more EVs to the market. But incentives will be necessary too, she says, at least as long as EVs cost more than their gas-powered counterparts.

California’s role as a shadow climate negotiator is only becoming more important as geopolitical tensions rise.