Banning gas cars was a good start. Now California needs to make electric vehicles affordable

In late January, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to target state funding to focus directly on building out electric vehicle infrastructure and subsidies to help low-income car buyers afford EVs. The order is a step in the right direction, following his September announcement banning the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles (ICE), but is hugely inadequate to the scale of the challenge.

Newsom needs to recognize past failures and take bolder action to make EVs more affordable, accessible and practical for everyone. If he does, the ICE ban will be more than a symbolic gesture.

The car isn’t going anywhere — meaning EVs are critical for reducing transportation emissions.

Today, EVs are largely a luxury good out of reach for most of the public. The cheapest ICEs are still around half the up-front cost of the cheapest EVs. Tesla, for instance, has long promised a $30,000 EV with a range of over 200 miles. Thus far, the average Model 3 has sold for more than $50,000. Even then, many Californians, especially those most dependent on their vehicles for economic survival, are not in the market for a $30,000 vehicle. For this reason, most still choose to purchase gasoline-powered vehicles (if they are buying a new vehicle at all).

California’s path to an all electric future depends on steps the government takes to build out EV charging infrastructure and encourage continued broad adoption of EV technology at all income levels. The state might have failed to meet previous EV targets, but can vastly increase its odds of success with bold action today.

Major investment in new EV infrastructure is critical to reach higher levels of EV penetration. The California Energy Commission recently released a report indicating that more than 1.5 million chargers are needed to support full vehicle electrification, 22 times the amount available today. Building more infrastructure can reduce the burden of consumer EV adoption. When potential buyers see EV infrastructure on their street and don’t have to worry about finding a charger near their apartment or on road trips EV ownership becomes a more realistic prospect.

In addition to rapidly expanding and building EV infrastructure, California will need to stimulate continued technological improvement with a buyback program for old vehicles to accelerate the transition to EVs.

A well-designed buyback program in California will need to learn from this more successful effort as well as from the failures of the Obama-era Car Allowance Rebate System (Cash for Clunkers) program. While popular, Cash for Clunkers’ modest success as a stimulus program came mostly through acting as a handout to car dealers and upper income households while only achieving minimal emissions reductions. Many of those who used the program were already planning to purchase a new car anyway and the cars bought to replace “clunkers” were only marginally cleaner (but newer) ICEs.

There are simple steps to avoid these failures and achieve the connected goals of making EVs more practical and affordable while achieving greater emissions cuts.

One such step is scaling the “cash” bonus based on the emissions cuts delivered from the vehicle replacement. While the benefits of any ICE being replaced with an EV are substantial, an older and dirtier vehicle being traded for an EV should receive greater incentives than a newer and relatively cleaner vehicle being upgraded to an EV. The incentive could be scaled to keep the CO2 abatement cost at a certain level, or to include the substantial benefits of cleaner air. This would also be a progressive solution, as individuals with lower incomes tend to hold on to older and dirtier cars for longer.

California, for all its efforts and rhetoric on cutting emissions, is not doing enough to decarbonize its transportation sector. The longer it waits to take decisive action, the more daunting the challenge of meeting its own goals becomes. California needs to rapidly build EV infrastructure and implement a well-designed buyback program with the intent to dramatically lower costs and increase the practicality of EV ownership for all Californians.

Banning the sale of ICEs in 2035 is an ambitious goal. But ambition doesn’t reduce emissions, action does. California needs to act.

This story was originally published June 16, 2021 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Banning gas cars was a good start. Now California needs to make electric vehicles affordable."