The state of New York has passed a new bill that will essentially ban the sale of all gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035. By that time, the only type of cars that New Yorkers will be allowed to buy will have to use some form of a zero-emission technology, like electric motors, hydrogen cells, or liquid nitrogen units. Compressed air vehicles are also a possibility, although these aren’t very widely used right now due to their various disadvantages they have over other solutions.
By that time, agencies and car manufacturers will have developed a fully-fledged strategy on the production of zero-emission vehicles, so availability and choice for passenger cars shouldn’t be an issue. The biggest problem will be to cover the medium and heavy-duty trucks that haul cargo or deliver goods in New York, as replacing the internal combustion technology in these is a lot more challenging for a host of reasons. For this category, New York pushes the goalposts a decade down the road, so the deadline for this category was set to 2045 instead.
The way technology works, it is impossible to predict what the case is going to be in 25 years from today, so these laws are drafted, voted, and signed based on what we have available as estimates today. If zero-emissions tech becomes a lot more widely and cheaply available and with little to no drawbacks, obviously, the lawmakers will seek to speed up the transition.
The law also mentions the support of bicycle and pedestrian options, essentially promoting a primitive but very important aspect of zero-emission urban mobility. What it doesn’t outline yet is what will happen with internal combustion cars that will be sold to people up to 2034. These could stay on the streets for decades, joining populous fleets of older but well-maintained ones. Potentially, we will see a phasing-out plan imposed to deal with this, or the market dynamics will have shifted so much by then that it won’t be necessary.
