California puts forth plan to phase out sales of gas-powered vehicles by 2035

A new proposal to phase out new sales of gas-powered cars by 2035 was put forth by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). The plan would mandate that 35 percent of new cars sold in California be either battery- or hydrogen-powered by 2026 in an attempt to meet its initial goal.

In 2020, California became the first state in the nation to set a goal to end the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

“There’s no excuse for California to take the slow road to an all-electric future when we’re being gouged at the gas pump and facing epic drought and wildfires,” Scott Hochberg, a transportation lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said. “The nation needs strong rules from California that force auto companies to make the electric vehicles we need. California has to lead on clean cars, or we’ll all be left choking in the dust.”

In California, “transportation accounts for around 50 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions and 80 percent of the emissions that contribute to ozone,” according to the proposed rule as reported by EcoWatch.

“Emissions from motor vehicle engines hurt public health, welfare, the environment, and the climate in multiple interrelated ways,” CARB said.

The sale of electric vehicles is on the rise in California jumping from 7.8 percent of new-car sales in 2020 to 12.4 percent in 2021, CNBC reported. The new plan would increase it to 68 percent by 2030.

“Other countries and other states, they watch what California does,” Daniel Sperling, CARB member and University of California, Davis Institute of Transportation Studies director, said. “And so this will reverberate around the world.”

California’s new proposal will be voted on by CARB in August.