California Punishes the Poor by Banning Gas-Powered Cars

The ‘uncomfortable truth’ is that electric cars are ‘aimed at the affluent,’ the New York Times reported

Karl Salzmann • August 25, 2022 5:00 pm

California bureaucrats announced on Thursday that they will ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars as of 2035, the New York Times reported, even though electric cars remain “much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans.”

The unelected California Air Resources Board passed the rule, which requires that “all new cars sold in the state by 2035 be free of greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide,” an attempt to slow the effect of global warming. By 2026, just four years away, the rule requires that 35 percent of new cars produce no emissions. By 2030, that requirement rises to 68 percent.

California governor Gavin Newsom (D.), who appointed 6 of the board’s 14 members, said that “our kids” will view a gas-powered car “like it’s a rotary phone.”

The Times‘s report comes just weeks after the liberal paper published a piece on the “uncomfortable truth” that electric vehicles, the most common alternative to gas-powered cars, are “too costly for many” and “aimed at the affluent.”

“Carmakers have little reason to target budget-minded buyers,” and even President Joe Biden’s hundred-billion-dollar climate law will do little to reduce the cost, the Times reported.

Cost is not the only problem with electric vehicles. China, which is committing a genocide of its Uyghur minority and threatening the island democracy of Taiwan, manufactures most of the semiconductors necessary for electric cars.

Carmakers, meanwhile, have pulled the plug on multiple electric vehicles because of safety concerns. An electric bus in California caught fire while it was charging, the Washington Free Beacon reported last year, though the company denied its technology had anything to do with the fire. Ford this year recalled a Mexican-made electric SUV purchased by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg because a defect “could result in a loss of power [while driving].”

While the rule only affects California, “more than a dozen other states typically follow California’s lead” on auto emissions, and the regulation may “influence a new federal standard” from Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency, the Times reported.