Chris Bryant, Columnist

Banning Gas-Powered Cars Can't Happen Soon Enough

California’s prohibition on the sale of new fossil-fuel cars from 2035 doesn’t seem all that radical.

September 24, 2020 at 1:20 PM UTC

Chris Bryant is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies in Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for the Financial Times.

Over-heated.
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Banning dealers from selling anything but zero-emission cars from 2035, as California Governor Gavin Newsom decreed this week, sounds pretty radical on first hearing.

Electric vehicles are still a relatively niche pursuit. Charging them up isn’t always straightforward — especially if you live in an apartment — and battery-powered cars tend to cost more than gasoline-powered equivalents (although that won’t be the case for much longer). Predictably, the Trump administration attacked Newsom’s executive order and the fossil fuel industry is also unhappy.