SACRAMENTO, California—California has set itself on a path Thursday to end the era of gas-powered cars, with air regulators adopting the world’s most stringent rules for transitioning to zero-emission vehicles.
The move by the California Air Resources Board to have all new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs be electric or hydrogen by 2035 is likely to reshape the US auto market, which gets 10 percent of its sales from the nation’s most populous state.
But such a radical transformation in what people drive will also require at least 15 times more vehicle chargers statewide, a more robust energy grid and vehicles that people of all income levels can afford.
“It’s going to be very hard getting to 100 percent,” said Daniel Sperling, a board member and founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. “You can’t just wave your wand, you can’t just adopt a regulation—people actually have to buy them and use them.”
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom told state regulators two years ago to adopt a ban on gas-powered cars by 2035, one piece of California’s aggressive suite of policies designed to reduce pollution and fight climate change. If the policy works as designed, California would cut emissions from vehicles in half by 2040.
Other states are expected to follow, further accelerating the production of zero-emissions vehicles.
Washington state and Massachusetts already have said they will follow California’s lead and many more are likely to—New York and Pennsylvania are among 17 states that have adopted some or all of California’s tailpipe emission standards that are stricter than federal rules. The European Parliament in June backed a plan to effectively prohibit the sale of gas and diesel cars in the 27-nation European Union by 2035, and Canada has mandated the sale of zero-emission cars by the same year.
California’s policy doesn’t ban cars that run on gas—after 2035 people can keep their existing cars or buy used ones, and 20 percent of sales can be plug-in hybrids that run on batteries and gas.
Though hydrogen is a fuel option under the new regulations, cars that run on fuel cells have made up less than 1 percent of car sales in recent years.
The switch from gas will drastically reduce emissions and air pollutants. Transportation is the single largest source of emissions in the state, accounting for about 40 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. The air board is working on different regulations for motorcycles and larger trucks.
California envisions powering most of the economy with electricity, not fossil fuels by 2045. A plan released by the air board earlier this year predicts electricity demand will shoot up by 68 percent. Today, the state has about 80,000 public chargers. The California Energy Commission predicted that needs to jump to 1.2 million by 2030.
The commission says car charging will account for about 4 percent of energy by 2030 when use is highest, typically during hot summer evenings.
That’s when California sometimes struggles to provide enough energy because the amount of solar power diminishes as the sun goes down. In August 2020, hundreds of thousands of people briefly lost power due to high demand that outstripped supply.