California Banning Sale of Gasoline-Powered Vehicles by 2035

Current gas vehicle users will be allowed to keep using them.

QUICK FACTS:
  • The state of California has moved forward with its ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles after the year 2035.
  • The new legislation was put to a vote Tuesday by state regulators who chose to phase out the sale of gas cars within the next 13 years.
  • Californians who have gas-powered vehicles will be allowed to keep driving them and buying used internal combustion engines, but no new models will be sold in the Golden State after that time.
  • “This is monumental,” said Daniel Sperling, a member of Carb, to journalists. “This is the most important thing that Carb has done in the last 30 years. It’s important not just for California, but it’s important for the country and the world.”
  • The rule requires that the state reach 25% electric vehicle (EV) sales by 2026, 68% by 2030, and 100% by 2035. 
SUPPORTER’S STATEMENTS:
  • “It’s ambitious, it’s pioneering, it’s what we must do if we’re going to leave this planet better for future generations,” Lauren Sanchez, senior climate adviser to Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, said Wednesday on a conference call.
  • “California will now be the only government in the world that mandates zero-emission vehicles. It is unique,” said Margo Oge, an electric vehicles expert who headed the Environmental Protection Agency’s transportation emissions program under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. 
  • “This is a historic moment for California, for our partner states, and for the world as we set forth this path toward a zero-emission future,” said Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board (Carb), the regulatory board that voted on the plan.
  • “The climate crisis is solvable if we focus on the big, bold steps necessary to stem the tide of carbon pollution,” Newsom said in a statement.
BACKGROUND:
  • Currently, only 12% of the new cars sold in California are zero-emissions, but that number increased to 16% in the first three months of 2022.
  • California is currently the nation’s largest car market and climate change experts believe that the move to EV’s will substantially change their climate change projections.
  • Some have argued that replacing gas-powered vehicles with zero-emissions vehicles will actually increase air pollution and have a negligible effect on “climate change.”

LATEST VIDEO