Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

California is set to ban gasoline cars by 2035

According to this recent New York Times article, California is set to put into effect a new mandate that would require 100% of passenger vehicle sales in the state to be fully electric by 2035. Included within this mandate are also interim targets: 35% of all sales by 2026 and 68% of all sales by 2030.

When I first read the article, my first thought was: “Isn’t 2035 kind of far away? Can’t we do this sooner?” And this is usually how my mind works when I see some date in the future. But then I remembered that EV sales last year in the US only totaled somewhere around 5% of all sales.

So there is work to be done, and mandates like this will certainly help. As I understand it, this will be the first mandate of its kind in the US and also one of the strictest in the world. A lot of other countries have simply set targets, rather than all-out bans.

This is what it means to lead. You do things before others.

One response to “California is set to ban gasoline cars by 2035”

  1. doug pollard Avatar
    doug pollard

    There also has to be time to put into place a FULL recharging network if anyone wants to mandate electric car sales. That includes those wide open spaces between pockets of urbanity

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