Current:Home > FinanceGiving up gas-powered cars was a fringe idea. It's now on its way to reality -Streamline Finance
Giving up gas-powered cars was a fringe idea. It's now on its way to reality
TrendPulse Quantitative Think Tank Center View
Date:2025-04-11 11:49:52
A few years ago, when the advocacy group Coltura called on America to stop using gasoline, it prompted mockery.
Coltura had been waging a war against gasoline for a few years by this point, but its primary weapons were things like music and performance art. One piece featured actors inside a clear plastic bubble panicking as it filled with simulated exhaust.
Then in 2017, Coltura's co-executive director, Matthew Metz, published an op-ed calling for Washington state to phase out gas-powered cars completely. A Seattle columnist wrote an article about Metz, with the word "crazy" featuring prominently.
A lot has changed in four years. Tesla is now the world's most valuable automaker. Multiple automakers say they will cease production of gas- and diesel-powered cars within the next two decades.
And what was once a fringe idea is now part of a global trend: momentum is building for the idea that zero-emission vehicles, primarily electric ones, are the future of the auto industry.
"More and more countries are announcing targets to to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles at the national level," Sandra Wappelhorst, who has tracked this trend for the International Council on Clean Transportation, told NPR earlier this year.
She also pointed to individual cities such as London or Oslo, which are not just focusing on new car sales, but proposing bans on all combustion vehicles in the city center in years ahead.
Plans for 100% electric vehicle sales go mainstream
The climate talks that recently wrapped up in Glasgow featured a non-binding call for all vehicles sold worldwide to be zero-emission by 2040. The European Union is considering a zero-emission mandate that would kick in five years earlier, in 2035.
The idea is percolating from the heads of government down to individuals. A recent poll commissioned by Coltura, conducted by well-regarded national polling groups, found that more than 50% of U.S. voters support requiring all new cars to be electric within a decade.
"In, like, 10 years, you probably won't even have gas cars anymore. Right?" asked Elle King, as she looked at an electric vehicle on display at a mall in Northern Virginia this week. "And good thing, because gas is expensive."
In the United States, the federal government has not embraced a full phaseout, instead calling for 50% of new cars sold to be electric. But California, Massachusetts and New York have all set plans to end gas car sales within 15 years.
And these state proposals to transform our automotive lives have not prompted a widespread political backlash – despite Americans' obsession with cars and the country's huge dependence on gasoline.
"I think more people in New York were mad about soda limitations than they'd be about, like, gas-powered vehicles," says Trina Saha, who lives in Queens.
She just got a new Toyota Corolla, a traditional one, fueled by gas. But she says a car's features are more important than what it's powered by, and she fully expects that eventually she'll buy an electric vehicle.
Huge challenges remain before achieving targets
Eventually may be the key word here. Phasing out gars cars by 2035 — the date under consideration by the EU and many states — may feel far away, which could help explain why people are not up in arms about the policies.
That could be a problem, says Jasmine Sanders, the executive director of OurClimate. Actually ending gas car sales by 2035 would require a tremendous amount of change over the next 15 years — from infrastructure investments to shifts in consumer thinking and behavior.
"We have to go ahead and start doing this now," Sanders says. "We cannot wait until 2034 and then [start] telling people, 'No, you can't buy that gas vehicle.' "
And the scale of the proposed transformation is immense. Right now, gas and diesel vehicles make up 97% of the U.S. auto market. Electric vehicles still cost more upfront, and America doesn't have the electric grid or charging infrastructure to support a fully electric fleet.
These are hot topics in boardrooms as well as state houses.
Automakers are increasingly accepting the idea that electric vehicles are the future, but they are also acutely aware of the scale of change involved, and there is no consensus on how quickly it will actually happen.
Environmentalists are pushing for a gas car phaseout as early as 2030, while some skeptical automakers think even 2040 is too ambitious.
In short, America has not yet broken up with gasoline. A few Democratically-controlled states setting targets is no guarantee that it will happen.
But what's clear is that in just a few years, the idea of having no more gas cars has moved from the fringes to the center of attention.
Today, Coltura isn't just writing op-eds about the end of gas cars. It's helping to write legislation to make that a reality, state by state.
Coltura's shift from the outskirts to the halls of power also shows up in unexpected ways. A woman named Jennifer Granholm made a cameo appearance in one of the anti-gasoline music videos Coltura released a few years ago.
At the time, she was the former governor of Michigan and a noted electric vehicle enthusiast. Today, she's the U.S. secretary of energy.
veryGood! (9)
Related
- Newly elected West Virginia lawmaker arrested and accused of making terroristic threats
- Rescuers search off Northern California coast for young gray whale entangled in gill net
- Experts say Wisconsin woman who at 12 nearly killed girl isn’t ready to leave psychiatric center
- Here's what's different about Toyota's first new 4Runner SUV in 15 years
- Costco membership growth 'robust,' even amid fee increase: What to know about earnings release
- A brief history of the Green Jacket at Augusta National
- Chad Daybell's desire for sex, money and power led to deaths of wife and Lori Vallow Daybell's children, prosecutor says
- 'Daunting' Michael Jackson biopic wows CinemaCon with first footage of Jaafar Jackson
- Megan Fox's ex Brian Austin Green tells Machine Gun Kelly to 'grow up'
- Delta is changing how it boards passengers starting May 1
Ranking
- Matt Damon remembers pal Robin Williams: 'He was a very deep, deep river'
- Psych exams ordered for mother of boy found dead in suitcase in southern Indiana
- Off the Grid: Sally breaks down USA TODAY's daily crossword puzzle, Coco
- Making cement is very damaging for the climate. One solution is opening in California
- NHL in ASL returns, delivering American Sign Language analysis for Deaf community at Winter Classic
- Henry Smith: Challenges and responses to the Australian stock market in 2024
- Report: Arizona Coyotes' 2024-25 NHL schedule has Salt Lake City relocation version
- New Jersey officials say they are probing hate crime after Islamic center is vandalized at Rutgers
Recommendation
RFK Jr. closer to getting on New Jersey ballot after judge rules he didn’t violate ‘sore loser’ law
There's a new apple hybrid that's both 'firm and tasty.' And the public gets to name it
Iowa will retire Caitlin Clark's No. 22 jersey: 'There will never be another'
Biden awards $830 million to toughen nation’s infrastructure against climate change
Megan Fox's ex Brian Austin Green tells Machine Gun Kelly to 'grow up'
WIC families able to buy more fruits, whole grains, veggies, but less juice and milk
Inflation has caused summer camp costs to soar. Here are tips for parents on how to save
Jake Paul: Mike Tyson 'can't bite my ear off if I knock his teeth out'