I don't see the problem with rewarding people for CO2 reductions so your argument has a weird and abrupt end to it. Especially since the low end EV and used EV market is growing so your argument is losing its strength with every single year.

The argument should have been that it takes time to transition off petrol cars and poor people need more time to transition so hasty decisions like banning gas stations should only be done in conjunction with policy that speeds up the transition.

So make a major push towards electric scooters and bikes in urban centres. Electric cars are an expensive joke at the moment. They can't compare to a diesel.

And can people even charge a electric vehicle at a public charger if they don't have a credit card or a smartphone or both?

Most level 2 public chargers are free. For level 3 chargers, it depends on the car and the network. For example, with Tesla Superchargers, you just plug the car into one, and the charging bill gets sent to the car's owner automatically. On other charging networks, you often do need a card or phone, but the plug-and-charge standard should take care of that once it rolls out.

Who doesn't?

There's a good chunk of lower income people who are unbanked and don't have smart phones.

However they typically live where they can get by without a car, as even a cheap car requires unexpected $700 repairs and can not be relied upon.

A lot of the car-dependent design of most of the US is to try to keep people like that out of neighborhoods.

Maybe I live in a poor blue collar town and have a warped view of the world but quite a few people I have known who are low income don't have a credit card.

Many don't even have a driver's license they get a "voluntary ID" card, government issued. At best they'd get a pre-paid credit card or maybe a debit card. But most often it's cash only. All those payday loan stores exist for a reason!

The nyms that I generally use at brick and mortar stores do not have cell phones or credit cards.

A growing set of conscientious objectors.

I would like to believe that but i think their numbers as a % of the population will make them less and less relevant. More people are adopting technology than giving it up.

Do minorities (as in groups, not race) matter? What happened to our pluralistic society?

The "punishment" is what here? Only the same amount of gas stations?

As for expense, the total cost of ownership for electric vehicles is often less than equivalent gas vehicles, even if the purchase price is slightly higher.

When a car is paid for by a loan, this lower total cost of ownership is directly realized in the monthly payment. If a person is paying up front with cash on a car, they are making their own value judgement about the time value of money, and can choose to finance whatever portion the prefer in order to realize this lower TCO.