Electric car plan is out of juice

In 2021, Gov. Hochul signed legislation making it an official goal of the state that by 2035 all new passenger cars and trucks sold in New York would be zero-emission vehicles. This was further underscored in the recent CLCPA Scoping Plan, published in the twilight of 2022.

These edicts taken together show that the New York State government has no problem redesigning a broad swath of the economy — despite evidence that, even without government coercion, the transition to electric vehicles will likely happen naturally via the market by about 2051.

By rushing the transition unnecessarily, climate advocates in government threaten to hurt moderate- to low-income New Yorkers who will need a new vehicle before the transition is complete — and likely long after.

In its effort to meet the promised 2035 mandate, New York has set wildly implausible intermediate targets. To meet sales goals, 35% of new cars sales in 2026 will need to be zero-emission vehicles — a tenfold increase in just four years.

An even loftier goal, state officials predict — or hope — that there will be 850,000 zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025, representing an 877% increase in just three years from the approximately 87,000 in the state today.

The goal is so improbable that even if New York met its 2026 sales goal next year and continued that sales rate for three years, it would still fall short.

Meanwhile, the actual purchasing decisions made by New Yorkers show their reluctance to support these goals with their wallets. New York currently ranks only 17th among the 50 states and D.C. in battery electric vehicles per thousand passenger vehicles owned.

When the ban on sales of internal combustion engines comes into force, expect many New Yorkers to get around it either by crossing state lines to buy a new car or by purchasing in droves very lightly used cars imported from out of state. And prohibitive prices on electric vehicles may force many consumers in need of a replacement car into the used car market, when they might have otherwise bought a new internal combustion engine vehicle. If so, this could drive up used-car prices, harming low-income auto buyers the most.

The mandate also has disparate regional effects. Except for New York City, where auto ownership overall is lower, downstate New York has much higher rates of electric vehicle ownership than upstate regions. Zero emissions vehicles are also notably more common in counties with higher median household incomes. In fact, despite years of government support, the average electric vehicle owner is still a white male with a household income of more than $125,000 per year.

The electric vehicle mandate is clearly a policy driven by those who want more of what they already have — and can afford — without regard for others. If state officials would step back and take another look at existing research on the subject, however, they’d see that such a mandate isn’t only wrong for New York — it’s entirely unnecessary.

The irony is twofold. First, the share of global greenhouse gas emissions produced by New York passenger vehicles is less than of 1%, an amount too small to affect global temperatures, especially in a world where China and India are still increasing their greenhouse gas emissions.

Second, zero-emissions vehicle sales are already growing, even if not as fast as advocates want. In addition to increasing intrinsic demand for vehicles that do not emit greenhouse gases or other pollutants, vehicle range is improving, the buildout of infrastructure will allay concerns about recharging, and prices will eventually reach parity with the price of internal combustion engine cars.

In New York, electric vehicle sales have increased an average of 33% per year over the past five years. Under the conservative assumption that the growth rate of EV sales is only 30% per year for the next five years, then continues to fall slightly each year thereafter, the portion of the state’s vehicles that are zero-emission would reach 85% by 2051.

By 2050, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act requires an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions statewide. Even without the zero-emission vehicle mandate, the light-duty vehicles’ share of that reduction is likely to be accomplished on time or just slightly late.

That happy result could be achieved without coercion or unintended consequence, simply by letting the free market take the wheel.