The state of California has announced an aggressive plan for sales of electric car sales to triple in the next four years.
The groundbreaking plan calls for 35 percent of all new car purchases be those of electrical vehicles in the next few years – and 100 percent by 2035.
It’s all part of the Golden State’s goal to phase out the sale of cars with gas engines by the middle of the coming decade.
Here are some quick facts you need to know about the California EV proposal:
• The California Air Resources Board proposal would mean that 100 percent of all new car sales in the state are of EVs by the year 2035.
• The California plan is significant due to the fact that about 11 percent of all new passenger car sales nationally happen in that state – giving it a big influence over the national auto market.
• The plan only affects new car sales -Californians would still be allowed to drive gas-powered cars and sell used ones.
• It requires a big increase in charging stations – California has set a goal of having 250,000 charging stations set up by 2025. (Right now there are fewer than 80,000 public charging stations in California).
Check out our latest EV car inventory here.
The Biden administration recently restored California’s power to set its own vehicle emissions standards under the Clean Air Act and the federal government has committed $5 billion to build more charging stations throughout the United States.
Automobiles contribute about a quarter of California’s total greenhouse gas emissions, making cars the largest single source of emissions.
The EV program is just one of the state’s several efforts to massively reduce carbon emissions in the coming years.
The program is designed to reduce emissions by nearly 384 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent between 2026 and 2040.
That adds up to a little less than all emissions across California’s economy in a single year.
California’s rules would require 35 percent of new car sales for model year 2026 to be zero-emission vehicles.
That means: battery or hydrogen-powered, or plug-in electric hybrids.
It’s a sharp increase from 2021, when just 12 percent of all cars sold in the state were zero-emission, according to the state board.
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About 1 million of the 26 million cars currently on California roads are zero-emission.
Moreover, the coming regulations would also require electric cars to achieve at least 150 miles per charge, an increase from 50 miles. Most luxury EVs already far exceed that.
The rules would also establish an eight-year/100,000-mile battery warranty.
Under the new rules all carmakers that sell in California would be required to hit the 35 percent sales mark for EVs.
California is the first state in the union to mandate the phasing out of all gasoline-powered vehicles –the beginning of the end for combustion engines in the highly populated state.
Many luxury car manufacturers have already announced plans to take their fleets fully electric in the next ten years.
Audi, for instance, has announced it will end development of new internal combustion engine models by the end of 2026 and focus solely on full-electric from thereon.
After 2026, the automaker will develop only battery-powered models.
Take, for instance, the A3 and A4 models. They will not have combustion-engine successors but will be replaced by the battery-powered A3 e-tron and A4 e-tron.
The electric evolution of Audi’s A5 and A6 models will follow a similar timetable.
And the last internal combustion engine model built by Audi will likely be the Q8, which will launch in 2026 alongside an electric variant, the Q8 e-tron.
