The car market in several areas could look a whole lot different in a few decades, as Car and Driver reports that a handful of states and countries want to ban the sale of new gas- and diesel-powered cars by 2050. That means we’ll need a few more outlets, because apparently, battles over charging stations are a real thing.
Governmental bodies from eight U.S. states and five countries—all members of the zero-emissions vehicle alliance—joined the bandwagon favoring sales of solely electric cars just a few years down the road, as announced at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change. Areas include California, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Vermont on the U.S. side and the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, and Quebec from a global standpoint.
In just under 35 years, those governments claim that they will only allow zero-emissions vehicles to be sold within their borders. The move would certainly cut global emissions, but with how (not so) far along the electric-car market is at the moment, economic impacts could be huge if significant progress isn’t made.
According to Car and Driver, sales of electric cars are only at 1 million worldwide and 400,000 in the U.S.—meaning that President Barack Obama’s prediction of 1 million sold in the U.S. by 2015 from four years ago, well, it only amounted to the global total. Ouch.
The totals are rising fairly dramatically—at least, as dramatically as electric-car sales can rise at the moment—as of the past few years. At the beginning of 2015, the U.S. numbers hovered around 280,000 sold after growing by 120,000 the year before.
But that’s still nowhere near 1 million. And if the sales are that far off track, it’ll be interesting to see how well this new timeline holds up—if it even happens.
As far as if the ban on sales of gas- and diesel-powered cars can actually occur, Car and Driver reports that it remains unclear whether the zero-emissions alliance has the legal power to implement such a standard.
The future continues to get weirder, and the goals continue to get more ambitious.
Photo credit: AP Images/Steven Senne
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