New York passes law that will ban all gas-powered car sales by 2035

Changes like this affect action today. If you are an automaker, are you going to spend limited development money on cars you won't be able to sell in NY in the future? Investors are already pricing in how well automakers are going to be prepared for bills like this and EU/UK laws. So bills like this actually cause a lot of positive change today.

Its a general pattern with politicians. Announce a seemingly ambitious goal, but make sure that its date is a few years after you are likely out of office.

Most people don't pay attention to the details.

If you think about the kind of development schedules auto manufacturers do, this makes some sense. A lot of manufacturers seem to do a major refresh of a model every 5 to 10 years and and do incremental updates in between every year or two, so putting this kind of sunset on it says to each manufacturer that it doesn’t make sense to do more than about one major refresh or new model of ICE car. So this will see new models getting fairly scarce by 2030 I think. By then, they might keep a couple of lines going for those few years, but basically 100% of the new and exciting cars will be electric. (This is assuming similar laws in most Western markets).

> On the other hand, 14 years is quite a while

14 years is nothing when electric vehicles are only 1% of the current market. There is a wide range of vehicles that have no electric alternative available yet, such as vans and off road vehicles. I will be surprised if it doesn't get extended.

I think this action is as good as we can actually do right now. There's basically zero infrastructure to support everyone owning an electric car and it takes time to build. There's a long long tail of edge cases that need to be accounted for before you can just pull the rug out from everyone with a petrol car.

* Every single parking space in the city that can or is used for residential street parking needs to have an electric hookup.

* Charging stations need to be at least as dense as gas stations and scaled up since the throughput of an individual station is lower.

* Electric vehicles need to get an order of magnitude cheaper both in terms of purchase price and total cost of ownership as well since people seem to underestimate the sheer number of people who drive sub $5k vehicles. Battery degradation absolutely destroys the used used market for cars.

* Commercial vehicles that by their very nature outrun the range of a single charge need accommodations so businesses can get deliveries and people can take taxis and busses that run 24/7.

Non-Solutions I've heard from around HN:

* "Just improve public transportation" If you can't afford to live in NY or $big_city but work there then you need a car. You literally cannot fix the physics reality of as you expand out the area you have to hypothetically cover with public transportation increases on the order of radius squared. You can try to have a hub/spoke model (and cities like Boston do) but surprise poor people get priced out of those too!

* "Get rid of street parking -- it's ugly anyway. If you can't afford $some_arbitrary_number then you shouldn't have a car anyway."

I want to disagree with you on the timeline issue, but I think 14 years was probably chosen for it not to be too economically disruptive.

I live both in NYC part of the time and in Vancouver part of the time and I see a lot more hybrid and totally electric vehicles in Vancouver, despite the fact it should be theoretically easier in NYC due to the density.

There's a large environmental push on the pacific northwest, but there are practical reasons people choose electric cars here- namely that there are taxes coming on non-electric cars soon. Driving a gas car will cost you $1000 a year soon, and then that rate will go up.

You can only avoid that tax with a hybrid or fully electric car.

Other incentives and taxes are coming that only allow plug-in-electric and fully electric cars. For example they allow electric and PEVs to use the HOV lanes on the highway, and there's rumor of possible parking and other benefits.

Back to the timeline... the problem right now is how little plug-in infrastructure NYC and NYS have. To pull off electric vehicles, you need plug-in stations everywhere. You want people to be able to charge their vehicles easily and nearly everywhere.

That's because charging time for cars is significantly slower than gassing up, and electric cars typically have shorter range than gas, so you need to make it convenient to charge up in more places in order to offset the inconvenience of time.

It's also going to be disruptive to various NYS industry, such as the gas stations, which will see a decline in their gasoline business and need money and time to switch over to offering electric charging.

14 years is a very long time, but I suspect if they had said ten years, people would have revolted at the inconvenience/impossibility of retrofitting or building so much electric infrastructure.

It shouldn't take this long, but I think this is the best they could have done politically.

You need a long on ramp for things like this so manufacturers start making more cars and there are enough to actually make the transition. This also aligns with California's date for ending new ICE car sales. This is one of many things states are trying to do, they're making both long and short horizon changes.

It's definitely too little too late and, what's worse, they are still going to build tonnes of destructive infrastructure for private cars, like massive new highways and bridges, while neglecting to fund and maintain the public alternatives like trains, buses, and bicycles, despite them being century-old proven green technologies.

A carbon tax was a good idea 30 years ago. Now we need more direct regulation.

Could we not just reuse an existing gas car for these cases? It seems preferable to repair those than build new ones if we’re talking about environmental impact.

Loopholes create perverse incentives. You can see this in things like regulations on certain vehicle sizes. "But what about trucks" turns into "pickups and SUVs grow to monstrous proportions".

If it turns out that in 15 years there is some grievous need for gas cars then, as you say, the legislation can be walked back. But that isn't a reason to not make it bold to start with.

My hot take:

The range of electric cars degrades considerably at low temperatures in my experience (75% of range sometimes). There is no scenario where gas trucks cars will not be utilized in Canada and the northern united states until this type of technological issue is resolved. Not to mention, the number of chargers would have to increase exponentially to support all of the electric cars coming online.

There are simply places in North America where electric cars will never probably work.

> There are no situations where a gas car is preferable or necessary?

For a passenger car? No, not really. And it's getting better and better as more fast charging services come online. Electrical infrastructure is extremely cheap relative to other costs like roadbuilding, there simply aren't any places you can go with roads but not efficient grid connectivity, all that's needed is building the right kind of outlets.

If you look at the actual text of the bill, it already includes several "where feasible" caveats which will presumably be carved into more specific exceptions a decade from now if there are places where we can't transition to electric.

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/a4302

A carbon tax (along with rebate & tariff to make it fair) is much more fair and effective than a gas car ban, because it impacts old vehicles as well a new ones. It can be brought in gradually.

A complete ban is not a great idea because there's always somebody somewhere who need a new gas vehicle for some essential reason or another. There might be 5 of these people in the whole state but they'll dominate news stories as the date gets closer.

There are lots of effective ways to ban things without going for the full ban -- ICE vehicles are environmental disasters, put limits or even better, fees on some of those things. Like particulates, or CO2. The European fleet CO2 limit is a great example of such an approach.

And don't assume that a carbon tax is a complete non-starter. Here in Canada we have a Federal election in a few days. The 5 mainstream parties all include a carbon tax as part of their platform. Sure, the right wing party's carbon tax is ineffectively small and counter-productively structured, but it's symbolically there. The narrative has shifted from massive opposition to a feeling that any party without a carbon tax in their platform are climate change deniers.

Also possible in 2035: Ban on gas-powered car sales in New York delayed due to X.

I would be more considered about remaining petroleum infrastructure entering a death spiral as demand drops rapidly. The cost per mile to drive an EV is about half that of a combustion vehicle, so the heaviest consumers will move to EVs rapidly, leaving the stragglers to shoulder petroleum supply costs.

It's new car sales.

Engadget left out that crucial detail, but no. It’s for new vehicle sales.

> The state has passed a new law that bans the sale of gas vehicles starting in 2035, requiring all new cars to be zero emission.

It appears that this only applies to sales of new vehicles. More details: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/09/landmark-new-york-law-p...

Everyone replying to you seems to be missing what I think is the obvious implication that new car sales won't really matter because if used car sales are still allowed dealers will just import those to sell and people will buy them if they are what they want. And if there is not enough charging infrastructure and whatnot gas cars will be what people want.

Could you provide some substantive backing you your claims? Why won't this ever happen? Why do you think this is about "being bold" rather than "managing things rationally"? What's irrational about electric vehicles?

This is signal to automakers that they must transition to EVs as they will no longer have a market for combustion vehicles to sell into. The more jurisdictions that enact these regulations, the greater the signal. Once automakers have retooled supply chains, the capital costs would be too great for them to switch back to fossil fuel vehicle manufacturing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic... (Places with planned fossil-fuel vehicle bans)

> More generally, I'm growing tired of how signaling is usurping rational behavior.

In what way is retiring gas-powered vehicles by 2035 not "rational behavior"? Climate change is very real and the deadline is 14 years from now. If anything you could argue that this law isn't rational enough because it doesn't take quick enough action.

Please don't use "rational" to mean "agrees with the axioms I've chosen to be important." These people are acting rationally, but reason doesn't govern what you value in your starting assumptions, only the conclusions you draw from those assumptions. Signalling is the rational outcome of the core values encouraged in our politicians.

Why won’t this happen? Remember the state of electric cars are at the worst point now than they ever will be again, and they only fall short of ICE cars on a few factors and are already better on many. Every year they improve at a strong pace, whereas ICE technology is close to as developed as it will ever be.

There’s no reason to believe that EV cars will be worse than ICEs in any way in 10-15 years.

The only manufacturer-owned dealership, no? I would be surprised if I couldn't go to a Ford dealer in NYC and buy an EV.

I don't this is correct. Most major manufacturers have an EV or plug-in line now, which you can buy at their normal dealerships - the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Chevy Bolt for example. VW group and Nissan have their own lines.

> And you can fund infrastructure for EVs

Or, better, build more rail and bicycle infrastructure, more green spaces in place of more car lanes, and stop building so many roads which induce demand

Good point. Here's the text of the bill, it specifies that it applies to new cars.

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/a4302

>average lifetime of American cars is 8-12 years

Just a small bit of nuance, but the age at which a consumer trades up their car shouldn't be conflated with the design life. Design life is based on a certain reliability level and the reliability of cars is generally increasing; 25% of vehicles are over 16 years old [1]. The 'lifetime' of cars may be independent from when consumers decide to upgrade.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/25percent-of-cars-in-us-are-...

The early 2030s will see a heck of a lot of gas sedans sold as the people who put on tons of miles buy them in anticipation of needing something to get them through until EVs meet their needs.

Is the calculation not a lot more complicated than that?

E.g. i can imagine they are predicting higher rates of walking and cycling in cases that would otherwise have been a 2-3minute car journey. You’d expect that to have a visible effect on public health at a state level at least.

Health, renewable energy storage, pollution, safety, there’s surely more factors than just pollution in that calculation?

Why? There should be significant cost down as battery tech improves, increasing accessibility. By 2035, why would electric cars be worse in any way than an ICE car anyway? All the exciting and interesting new cars will be electric, and there should be plenty of 2030-2034 ICE cars on the used car market for a few years after as people upgrade.

Engadget’s article is kind of awful. It’s a ban on new gas-powered car sales, older cars can still be bought and sold.

NYC has a plan to install the largest EV charging network in the US. Federal incentives encourage local communities to adopt EV readiness plans to obtain federal grants (I contribute to and help develop EV readiness plans in my spare time).

https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/electrifying-new...

Yeah, it's too bad nobody will be working on that issue over the next 15 years.

My gas car has a range of ~400 miles, then requires a ~10 minute stop. A lot of the experiences in this article linked below don't seem showstoppingly different to me, as my appetite for hours behind the wheel in a day is rarely > 10 hours.

Fun read: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a36877585/ev-1000-11-e...