California regulators on Thursday will vote to put in place a sweeping plan to restrict and ultimately ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars,
a move that the state’s governor described as the beginning of the end for the internal combustion engine.
The new policy, detailed Wednesday morning in a news conference, is widely expected to accelerate the global transition toward electric vehicles.
Not only is California the largest auto market in the United States, but more than a dozen other states typically follow California’s lead when setting their own auto emissions standards.
If those states follow through, and most are expected to adopt similar rules, the restrictions would apply to about a third of the United States auto market.
“This is huge,” 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. As additional states put in place their own versions of these policies, “they will drive the market, and drive innovation,” she said.
The rule, issued by the California Air Resources Board, will require that all new cars sold in the state by 2035 be free of greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide.