Giving up gas-powered cars was a fringe idea. It's now on its way to reality.

[Joe Capitalist]

Giving up gas-powered cars was a fringe idea. It's now on its way to reality.
Phasing out the sale of gas-powered cars once seemed laughable. It's now inching closer to reality.
David Zalubowski/AP
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.
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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.

[Stringfellow Hawk]

its not even close, it creates a larger carbon footprint to produce and electric car, they only make sense in metro areas as their range is not high enough in rural communities. As of now they can't be used to pull boats or other RVs. Initial investment is too high for an average American to buy one. 2085 they might take over gas combustion engines but I doubt it

[Joe Capitalist]

This consumer gets it:


"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."

Expensive and explosive.