WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th September, 2020) California, the largest US automobile market, is moving towards zero emissions in the next 15 years by banning the sale of new gasoline powered passenger vehicles starting in 2035, Governor Gavin Newsroom said on Wednesday.
"We're not going to take away the gasoline cars that you drive now but we are committed to getting to zero emissions by 2035," Newsom said in a live-streamed event.
Under the executive order by Newsom, which he symbolically signed on the hood of a Ford "green car", California would end the sales of new gasoline-powered vehicles in a state of nearly 40 million people.
The largest economy of America's 50 states, California leads on auto emissions standards. The order by Newsom is likely to run into stiff opposition from President Donald Trump, who champions fossil fuels and America's shale fracking/drilling industry and has been trying to force California to comply with his move to roll back tougher Obama-era auto emissions standards.
"I want to put fracking in perspective: It's less than 2 percent of the [oil] production in the State of California but we're 50 percent of the [automobile] market," Newsom told a news conference after the signing. "We just want to fundamentally reconcile with the fact that we're no longer living in the 19th century, and we don't need to drill things, extract things in order to advance."
The governor also said that California will likely roll out from January incentives for buying electric and other cleaner emissions vehicles, acknowledging that the present price tag of more than $30,000 for a so-called e-vehicle like Tesla remained out of the reach of many Americans.
