There may still be a choice, I'm preparing to go carless in a few years.

I’m afraid these bans get systematically sabotaged by well funded ice lobby groups.

Just look at what happened to the EU’s ice ban for personal vehicles.

Spoiler: while new gasoline burning cars are technically banned after 2035 it will be completely legal to sell new gasoline burning cars by labelling them e-fuel only…

Why would anyone want to use e-fuel in 2035 instead of electricity?

(Except for "luxury" brands that just want to be special to distinguish themselves from the rabble.)

> Why would anyone want to use e-fuel in 2035 instead of electricity

It will depend on their needs and if the device covers them. For example (as said already even here): long distance travel, practicality of refuelling (no, the need of some will not be fulfilled by leaving the car in charge nightly), decent technology (e.g. some will refuse to own an internet connected vehicle).

Long distance and refueling will be solved by 2035. They’re close now. I’m will to bet all new gas cars are going to be internet connect too, it’s already heading that way, and has little to do with EVs

> I’m will to bet all new gas cars ... little to do

Would you drive them? Would you own an internet connected door, vehicle, pacemaker? Some would rather find the keys out of the asylum.

You say «little to do», but the point was that we are informed of «gas cars» without wireless connection, whereas word is that for some reason all electric vehicles seem to be.

The very article you are responding to is touting energy densities that could lead to 1000 km in Teslas next year and the super chargers planned for the same time period would charge those cars in 15 mins. You do not even have to go out 5 years before “long distance travel, practicability of refueling” will favour EV owners. I just got back from a 2000 km EV road trip through the worlds second biggest country ( and one of the sparsest populated ). The longest leg between charging networks was about 300 km in the Rocky Mountains. The longest we sat at a charger was around 20 minutes. Most of that time was spent placing take-out dinner orders for the 5 of us in the car.

This is my first long trip in an EV vehicle but my wife drove about a 1000 miles through eastern Washington State a few weekends ago ( also mountains - even more remote ). She had to plan but there was certainly no risk of getting stranded. At least one of the hotels had overnight charging for free.

All this is today. These are going to be non-issues 5 years from now.

The core of the matter is this:

They are only LABELED as e-fuel cars. You can run them just fine with classical fuels.

EDIT: emphasis

A lot of gas stations have differently-sized nozzles for regular gasoline and diesel, and the fueling opening in the car is sized so that a diesel nozzle does not fit in a gasoline car. They should do something similar for e-fuel so people don't "accidentally" fuel them with classical fuel.

What you are forgetting is that diesel engines only work with diesel and gasoline ones only work with gasoline. This creates a natural incentive for the customers to not mix this up.

In the e-fuel vs trad-fuel story you do not have that incentive.

What you DO have, is an incentive to actually do the switch. Projections put e-fuel production costs at a 1500% premium over fossil fuels and wide spread availability is actually a hard scientific problem as even the announced global production capacity* of e-fuels is only enough for a few thousand vehicles.

* Apparently, to date, the biggest portion of announced e-fuel production misses either an energy provider or financial backing or both.

A good German summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnrudYCzh2E

Well the FDP party which is in the coalition govt of Germany and torpedoed the EU ICE ban in the last minute and forced the inclusion of this e-fuel nonsense for the whole EU is run by a dude who likes to drive a Porsche and who is friends with the Porsche company. Porsche is the only major car producer in Germany that favors efuels. So uh, I think the FDP doesn’t like the ICE ban, because as a Laisser-faire party, they favor “open technology solutions” and want the “market” to decide on the best technological solutions for the climate problem.

braBRAAAAAAP, that's why

Long distance trucks?

That was exactly my thinking actually..... I own an equestrian property as a hobby, I need a big diesel truck (1 ton) to haul horses, hay, tractor, etc... Sometimes for very long distances (>1000kms) for shows, etc... There are no viable options today, or in the near (10-15 years) future that offer viable alternatives in the form of an EV... at least not from traditional HD truck vendors.....

The EU ICE ban discussd here only targets personal vehicles. The trucking and aviation industroies are different discussions.

I'll still be driving my land cruiser in 2035.

The ban is for new vehicles so that's not relevant.

The timelines for ICE bans within a decade are ridiculous from a technology and market standpoint and terrible for the environment.

The best car technology is the one you don't use much. And we already have decades of cars in good enough condition to be driven weekly rather than daily.

EVs will barely scratch the surface of environmental issues with transportation. And they will create a new range of supply problems while also not solving traffic congestion issues that plague our cities.

It would be far more preferable to encourage people to use the same car for longer and especially to leave it in the garage when they can use other modes of transportation. Or, use car sharing rather than a personal car.

I think you should read up on what ICE bans in countries where they are implemented actually means.

Hint: You can continue to use the ICE vehicle you bought in 2034 in the EU until infinity.

> You can continue to use the ICE vehicle you bought in 2034 in the EU until infinity.

Sure, if you can find fuel. By 2034 EVs will be enough of the market that gas stations are already closing (remember today new cars are 10 year old used cars, and there is every reason to think EVs will be half of all cars). There is still one on every corner, so you might not see this trend, but it will be in the statistics. By 2038 you will noticed it because many corners won't have a gas station at all. And of course the stations will already see this on the bottom line and will be less interested in replacing their pumps when the get old, and if they break they might just close that one island instead of fixing it. By 2045 fuel will be special order in most places.

Note that construction, freight, and other high energy use niches will still use a lot of fuel, so diesel will be available for a while longer. However those vehicles tend to use larger nozzles that won't fit in your diesel car. Gasoline will be hard to find - you can still make road trips, but you will need to plan your fuel stops like people plan EV charging today (on some roads you don't need to plan your EV charging, but there are others you must).

I dont see how in 10 years most cars will be evs, when the ev sales percentage is 12% as of now. Which equals to 9.5% of electric vehicles on the road today. The increase in ev sales is in the low single digits per year, the math just doesnt check out.

EVs are not expected to have a constant growth curve. With the expected ban of ICE EV will be the majority in a few years, and by 2034 few ICEs will be sold.

I do expect ICEs will be just under 50% of total cars, you could argue they are more like 55% of all cars, but it won't be 75%.

Another example of humans not understanding the exponential function

EV production increased by 5 million cars last year (most in China). Total ICE market is 65 million. ~10 years is a simple linear projection.

How much did total vehicle production increase in China last year?

They said something similar about radios and books quite a long time ago.

I'm afraid the problem of generating/transporting enough electrons to all places where cars, buses, trucks, need charging will not be solved completely within 10 years.

Turning gasoline into electrons is fairly straightforward. It doesn't make much sense for daily use, but for occasional corner cases (emergencies, backwoods, etc), it does. And corner cases are one of the big reasons people give against electric cars.

> Sure, if you can find fuel.

Of course you'll find fuel; ICE trucks aren't being banned. You can use their fuel.

Might be slightly inconvenient to have to drive to a depot once a month, but people will do it if the economics are right.

This assumes regulations will allow you to this. There are already examples of commercial fuels today that sell fuel only to commercial customers at a different rate.

See "red diesel" in the UK - its just plane ole diesel taxed differently for commercial use, but illegal for use in privately owned vehicles. It's dyed red to allow its use in private vehicles to be discovered from the discoloration of engine parts etc.

I'm quite certain the rules on what can be pumped into what will be different by 2045, and while it might still be possible it may not be simple.

> https://www.crownoil.co.uk/faq/red-diesel-questions-and-answ...

But that's the thing, the only difference is tax. It's pretty unlikely you'd be unable to just pay the tax for gas.

> See "red diesel" in the UK - its just plain ole diesel taxed differently for commercial use, but illegal for use in privately owned personal vehicles. It's dyed red to allow its use in private vehicles to be discovered from the discoloration of engine parts etc.

Maybe, but we're talking about the banning of ICE vehicles, not the banning of fuel.

I mean, "you won't find fuel because it will be illegal to possess it" is a substantially different argument from "you won't find fuel because no one will produce it anymore".

I don't think fossil fuels will ever get completely banned from private use. Think of all the old timer drivers.

> Maybe, but we're talking about the banning of ICE vehicles, not the banning of fuel.

This is a bizarre point to make? Regulation of fuels and regulation or bans of ICE vehicles would obviously go hand in hand (it already does today!), if ICE vehicles were to be banned as discussed here. You can't have combustion without fuel...

My point also is not that fuel may be banned - it's that the regulations governing the pumps may be different than today, and that there is international precedent for this. If combustion really is largely relegated to commercial trucking by 2045, I'd be honestly shocked if the rules governing the pumps didn't change too in a lot of places.

I mean, come on.

Infinity might be a long time, but we had fuel stations when there were 25% of the cars on the road that there are now.

There are around 25-50 petrol stations within 30 mins drive of me.

There is no reason to believe that it will be impossible to fuel your car until ICE cars become collectors' items.

In the very most remote areas, maybe.

And the very remote areas that may have just 1 gas station are also least likely to have high EV penetration until the absolutely tail-end of the ICE-era.

I'm sure this will happen. But I think your timeline is way faster than it will happen.

I highly doubt gasoline will be hard to find in most places by 2045; I'd expect a lot fewer fueling stations, but I think even at 10% of the station count, gasoline will still be convenient and easy. And, if gasoline is less convenient, you can always use gas cans to extend your range. They're not too expensive, and not too inconvenient (epa 'anti-spill' nozzles that make it hard to fill without spilling not withstanding); long term storage is problematic, but if you're regularly using it, no big deal. Most gasoline powered vehicles have at least a 300 mile range, and it's not hard to find vehicles with a larger range.

Yeah, if 80% of gas stations close, I probably wouldn't even have to change my route to get gas. I pass...I think 7 on the way to the grocery store.

I live in a bedroom community of a major city. There are about 25,000 people in my town and there are 7 gas stations. There could be a single station in town and it would still not be inconvenient. Some basic math implies that this one station would be as viable a business as it is today even if only 14% of the vehicles on the road use gasoline. I would be shocked if there are fewer ICE powered cars on the road than that in 2035.

I pass multiple stations when I leave town to get to work. Where I work looks like here ( home ) from a station density point of view.

For longer trips, you may be right that you may have to plan. But there could be very few ICE cars on the road before one station every 400 km ceases to be profitable. And, unlike electric, nothing is stopping me from filling up a gas can before hitting a leg I am really worried about.

I cannot see “lack of stations” being a problem for ICE for a long time.

The cost of fuel could be a thing I guess but, if demand drops faster than supply, the economics of that do not really make sense.

Also, if I am somebody that uses a vehicle “once a week”, is this really the car I am going to take on a 1500 km trip through unpopulated areas? I cannot rent or borrow an EV for that trip?

What you are suggesting seems to be that ICE vehicles are going to end up being errand vehicles for farmers, or the old truck hooked up to the boat to go fishing once a month. Or that people that live and work locally need them for the occasional errand. For the latter use case, where I live at least, just the insurance cost would incent me to replace such a vehicle with a ride share subscription even now.

I think it is going to stay viable to run an ICE vehicle for a long time yet. I also expect fewer people will want to.

This announcement has the potential to push things like Teslas to 1000 km of range. What happens when it hits 2000 ikm ( over 1300 miles ). What are you going to want to head out of town in?

10 years from now, people that can afford it will have all gone EV. People who cannot will drive their ICE until it needs a major repair. And then they are going to go EV.

In my country (Poland) gas stations get more income from selling other things, mainly alcohol, because unlike other vendors they can stay open overnight. Margins on gasoline are extremely thin already. It makes sense for them to stay open regardless of the demand for actual gasoline.

ICE bans apply to sales of new cars. It will take another 20 years or so after a ban before most of the existing stock of ICE is actually replaced.

It will be faster than you think, mostly because gas stations will be closing and so the inconvenience of fueling you car will cut that tail of - except for niches where EVs are particularly bad.

Right because ICE trucks will also magically stop existing /s

If you're the only gas station in an area, raising prices should be a better strategy than closing.

By then people who need fuel will know to special order it. Because if you are the only one selling gas that means someone lives in a less dense area that can't get fuel at all. Either that or you have competition, they are just not across the street and so you have to keep prices low enough people won't drive the extra miles to your competition.

Spare parts and maintenance are likely going to be a problem first for ICE owners, rather than fuel availability. Who would be crazy enough now to invest in (and maintain) a factory for producing ICE-specific parts? Parts and skills for ICE will become scarcer and more expensive, making a new EV look economical to ICE owners in very short time. It has already been a few years now where it has been uneconomical not just to build a new fossil fuel power plant, but also to continue operating them due to maintenance costs. I'd suggest the same thing with ICE vehicles--it becomes easier/cheaper to run an EV rather than an old ICE quicker than people may usually assume.

The investment in parts is already made. All they need to do is not scrap the tooling. Until the car the part went to is 15 years old that isn't worth doing as you will make more from selling parts than from the cost of storing the tooling. Common parts like filters will be around for much longer. Parts that rarely break will have the tools destroyed sooner, but with millions of ICE cars on the road there will be a lot of needs for parts even if the need is less than today.

The biggest cost of producing parts is making the tooling to mass produce them. Manufactures will retool to produce other stuff once they have enough of a given part, but if there's a shortage (or they think there will be one soon) they'll bring the old tooling out of storage and set up the line again. It's common for auto companies to supply new parts for decades after a car is made.

Heck, Mazda makes new parts for the original Miata.[1] While the first generation Miata is a recognizable car, it's not very popular. A total of 433,000 were produced. Maybe half are still on the road today. That may sound like a lot, but twice as many Ford F-150s are sold every year. If it's profitable to keep making parts for 200,000 vehicles, it's going to be a long time before most ICE cars run into shortages.

1. https://news.mazdausa.com/2019-10-28-Mazda-Expands-U-S-MX-5-...

It seems reasonable that most gas stations will add fast charging stations no? And then maybe add a coffee shop or quick food place that you can spend money at and be the real source of revenue for these locations.

Its not going to be a cheap or painless conversion, but there is absolutely a path forward for most gas stations I think.

some of them. I think most will drop fuel completely, some will turn into stores where local buy milk or something, but many will close completely as not needed since people charge at home.

In denser areas charging will move to mall like areas where people will get out of the car for longer. Gas stations are not generally not setup for people to hang out for 30 minutes, they don't have enough space for people to park that long. They are setup for use the bathroom, grab a snack and get out. Most people charging will want to get groceries or other supplies they are getting anyway (which is to say since they can't charge at their apartment they are going to look for places to shop where they can recharge)

In rural areas (truck stops) are more setup for spending more time. They often have small restaurants already so you can eat inside. They are more general purpose stores and often serve the locals as the place to buy things between trips to dollar general or the city. They have more parking (land is cheap so they will buy more if needed), so there is place to put in all the needed EV chargers. Plus they get a lot more customers who are on trip so long they couldn't charge at home.

It's an interesting problem. Aside from the toxic cleanup issue when decommissioning the underground fuel tanks or an attached service garage, the layout of a traditional gas station is also limiting. Unlike a modern truck stop off a major highway, the majority of urban stations have a small footprint optimized for road access and throughput, but not simultaneously lingering customers.

Even without the pump islands, there isn't much room for customer parking. These stations are often situated at corners with multiple driveways, small parking areas, and no adjacent street parking. Unless you can merge adjacent parcels for redevelopment, these small stations may only be able to support a convenience store, coffee shop, drive-through food stop, or some other quick turnaround. They don't have the right layout to support lots of simultaneous customers unless they are arriving on foot or by mass transit instead of personal vehicles.

Probably not, people charge at home or apartment and start everyday with 300 miles of range. No need to ever visit a charger unless you're on a long trip.

That combined with bigger stores like 7-Eleven, CVS, Walmart, etc.. adding their own charging stations will kill most gas stations.

I haven't heard of any country that wants to ban existing ICE cars.

The urban greens in the previous Swedish government coalition wants to ban fossil-based petrol from being sold starting 2030 - which economically speaking is kind of the same thing.

not if existing ICE vehicles can be sold -- unless they can't, that'd be an incredible waste

Maybe the ban should have specifically stated that all ICE cars must be convertible to EV ten years before the expiry date. DIYers are doing it all the time but not with newer cars as they are too locked down and complicated.

How is that the same thing?

Every ounce of oil coming out of the groud and getting burned ends up as CO2 in the atmosphere. Banning that has nothing to do with ICEs.

You can run an ICE on synthetic fuels. It's not as energy-efficient but only half the efficiency from a renewable source is still better than "full" efficiency from a fossil source. If you _really_ must use an ICE, there will be a way. It won't be cheap, but it's your choice. There is no human right for cheap ICE fuel.

It’s more or less the same thing because if your fuel price doubles you’re going to scrap that car and buy an electric.

Nobody is forcing you to do so, it just doesn’t make much sense to keep driving that ICE. When everybody is making that decision parts and maintenance will be more expensive and harder to come by too - accelerating the transition.

IIRC it was discussed as closer to a 3x price jump (but don't quote me on that).

"Half the efficiency" is highly optimistic. Afaik making synfuels loses about 70% of the energy and then you burn the stuff in an engine that is at best 40% efficient. Meanwhile EVs have >70% wind turbine to wheel motion efficiency.

You can do better than that if you use the waste heat from thermal plants. Both for hydrogen production and co2 capture.

Do you have any papers about this? How much better is it? How much waste heat is available that can't be used for something better?

I'm not disputing any of that. It's just that in an EV you currently drive around over half a ton of battery with you on your 20 miles a day commutes. That's highly inefficient as well. You need energy to drive it around, you need a bigger car to house it, better safety systems to prevent that solid fuel bomb from going off, you need to source its raw materials, manufacture it, recycle it.

Imagine saving all of that for a much smaller battery (say, 100 miles range) which is enough for 45+ weeks of the year, and then for the rare case of driving further than that you bring gasoline with you, with its vastly superior energy density and thus range. Only for those few trips. It can well be super expensive, but who cares, it's only for that rare trip to the grandparents or the skiing resort. And then you don't need to care much about the bad end-to-end efficiency. After all, you don't care about that when taking a plane to Hawaii either, do you?

Currently, plug-in hybrids tend to just be used as gasoline cars because people are lazy and don't charge every night. There are gas stations everywhere, fuel is cheap, and you are used to filling up gas anyway. But once gasoline prices spike to 3x-5x because it's synthetic fuels, the dynamic will change, fewer gas stations around, the reduced economies of scale lead to further price hikes and boom, everybody will use their plug-ins mainly as EVs. Which is what I'm describing above. Which could outperform pure EVs because you don't need a 500 miles EV range anymore, you can make do with 100 miles.

If you want the same car to run 100 miles on battery and have the option to fuel it with synfuels you need to lug around useless drivetrain most days. The better option is to just rent a car with sufficient range for the long trip you want to make.

Or build public transit for the commute and don't use a car at all.

I'm personally on board with rentals for the occasional long trip or using and building out public transit. But most people are not. Especially not in NA.

I understand the drivetrain argument. What about a simple generator to recharge the battery on the go? Like the original BMW i3 had. That one didn't take off, but likely in part because it was ugly, too small to be practical, and the gas prices still being very low.

I don't know enough about generators to dismiss that design, it might make sense for some use cases.

It's particular ironic in China, where >50% of their domestic energy production is apparently from coal. That being said, it could improve metro air quality a large degree because I'm guessing coal power plants aren't built in downtown Beijing.

China's CO2 intensity is about 550g/kWh currently (and falling rapidly). An EV takes about 15kWh/100km. That's less than 90g/km. About as much as a Prius.

I don't really see what CO2 has to do with the point I am making. It's massively better for air quality to have the coal burnt at a distant powerplant than to have a car burning coal (or fossil fuels) in downtown Beijing.

I dont know, but London is pushing very agressively towards that goal.

I am not sure if its a good idea, nothing seems to be a good idea in London, but the congestion charge and the newer diesel charges surely add up.

And predictably, some of the worst usual suspects are exempt.

Only ~50% of households in London own a car anyway. And that number is tilted towards households in the outer suburbs that aren't subject to the congestion charge https://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-12-how-many-cars-a...

Exactly. The answer to the problems of ICE cars are not EV cars. It's boring stuff like trains, public transportation, or walkable urbanism.

> I’m afraid these bans get systematically sabotaged by well funded ice lobby groups.

They'll be sabotaged by reality. Thinking ICE cars and gas stations will become a fading memory by 2035 is wishful thinking. Politicians get big headlines and praise for proposing ICE bans and such, but as the date draws closer the reality of "OK, maybe we're not quite there yet" sets in and the date will be pushed back again and again. There is a very long tail with ICE, and it's going to take a very, very long time to replace them. Wholesale upheavals of established technology are difficult.

For a noteworthy example in another domain, IPv4 has been on its last legs for how long now?

They're banning new ICE car sales in 2035: existing ones can continue to run. So the aim would be to mostly phase out ICE cars by something more like 2050-2060 (bearing in the mind the last generation of ICE cars will probably get a slightly extended lifetime to smooth the transition). That seems pretty realistic to me, perhaps with some exceptions for certain niche uses (which would probably be <5% of vehicles).

Sure, I’m mostly addressing the folks in this thread who are musing on whether there will be more than a few gas stations total in the country by 2035…

How is this related to IP? We are talking about legislature being written to force us to be more Eco friendly. No politician ever wrote or proposed legislation for IP versions.

> How is this related to IP?

It’s an analogous situation demonstrating how hard it is to unseat an incumbent, ubiquitous technology with another, and how long it takes, even if that alternative is superior.

No politician ever wrote or proposed legislation for IP versions.

> I’m afraid these bans get systematically sabotaged by well funded ice lobby groups.

Nonsense; it's just harsh reality landing on green wet-dreams.

They effectively propose a ban on cheap cars, and you expected ... what, exactly?

The only way they're replacing ICE vehicles is by making the EVs cheaper, and there is a limit to how high they can tax sales of ICE vehicles or fuels without a population revolt.

"The only way they're replacing ICE vehicles is by making the EVs cheaper"

Even if electric cars would be cheaper, faster and longer running - some people would rather die, than give up their ICE cars and motorcycles.

The strong lobby in germany against banning aren't the poor, but the rich who want to drive their roaring Porsche till eternity. They literally say that.

I can somewhat understand the appeal of an loud engine, the feel of the road etc., but personally I will indeed celebrate the day, all those loud polluting machines are gone from the cities and one other bright day also from the mountains.

But I am not sure if I will see that day, as cars have allmost a religious meaning to quite some people, especially here in germany, but not only here. But yes, the bigger problem in the short run will be economics. Otherwise all the old cars just will get sold to africa and go on running there. But china is mass producing cheap electric cars for example, so things are scaling up.

If it’s really only about the rich, then just tax the heck out of the cars, or better yet the gasoline. If the price of gas includes the full cost of carbon sequestration then sure, why not? It’s still not a great look from the perspective of income inequality, of course.

That would force all the poor Joe Schmoes to switch from fossil fuel-driven vehicles to electric ones, but the billionaires (and probably many [most?] of the multi-millionaires) would still be able to afford burning fuel. All the billionaires and even the single-millionaires could of course also afford to switch to electric vehicles... but the poor Joe Schmoes can't.

So what you're proposing is basically "Let's make using cars (even more than it already is) something for the rich only!"

> Even if electric cars would be cheaper, faster and longer running - some people would rather die, than give up their ICE cars and motorcycles.

Well lets stop calling this the reason for unbanning until EVs get cheaper, faster and longer running.

I mean, sure, some people are like that, but we won't know how many there are until EVs are cheaper, faster and longer running. Painting the opposition to ICE bans as "they will argue the same even when EVs are cheaper, faster and longer running" is irrational.

those will still exist. they will just become ultra luxury, like bugghatis today

In the 10-year timeframe it probably doesn't matter. Ev drivetrain's and batteries are going to drop well under what ICE drivetrain cost will be simply because there's just so many less components and announcements like this and the sodium ions stuff really leads out a path to that economic super advantage

They will definitely get “sabotaged” if they turn out to not be even remotely realistic, for example if lithium production is nowhere near what it needs to be to replace all new automobile production.

While this is true in theory I don't see how it is relevant. The battery industry is in overdrive right now, new chemistries are being put to the test daily and multiple manufacturers are already working on productizing energy storage that doesn't use rare earths at all. Also, breakthroughs like the main post mema that you need less and less rare earths for the same bang.

It becomes increasingly certain that we won't need as much lithium as the fossil lobby would like us to believe.

The recent announcement (also from CATL!) of sodium ion batteries that are competitive with typical vehicle grade Lithium cells (LFP chemistry) means Lithium is unlikely to be the blocker people argue either. Lithium Ion is already potentially no longer the only viable battery chemistry at scale.

> https://www.electrive.com/2023/04/21/catl-and-byd-to-use-sod...

VERY few places are even thinking of banning ICE sales within 5 years - most timelines are 15 years - at which point, if you're looking at realistic projections - you won't even need to ban them. The sales will already be very low (in the places that are thinking about the bans).

The reality of these bans is that exception after exception is tacked on for a long time.

One of the cool things about this type of political maneuver is that it's a bit like the Fed Put. You can get the market to move in the direction you want without actually shooting your bazooka. Just by saying your thinking about banning ICE cars - you're going to get manufacturers and sellers preparing for that and shifting over as much sales as they can to non-ICE cars.

With Sodium batteries, range and infrastructure improvement and BYD showing they can make EV as cheap if not cheaper than ICE. I'm convinced a EV future in Eurasia is secured, how it will be handled in the west im not so sure given how they are Isolating themselves more and more becoming fortress NATO.

Not banning per se, just stopping sales of new. So there will still be plenty of used ICE cars knocking around for a good few years.

Which would make them antiques in a decade or two. Time to start the collection!

Will there be gas stations, though?

And will there be enough power stations to generate all the electricity?

Yes, but what will they be powered by?

not sure why you're so confident of that when we don't even produce enough power for our current needs let alone powering millions of cars

How much more generation do we actually need. For one, charging typically does not happen when the grid is at peak load, so a lot of spare capacity is available. Second, it takes approximately the same amount of energy to refine a tank of gasoline as it does to completely charge an EV, so it'll be a wash.

If it’s like how analog photography shops were going, no not really. Perhaps you will get specialized shops for fuel and biofuels?

Or we'll just go full circle and gasoline will be available at pharmacies:

https://radair.com/blog/2011/11/10/automotive-history-benz/

Wondering… Is it possible to make tiny refineries for say a town or area? So locally produced or is that a environmental nightmare?

There's a refinery next to one of the highways exiting Vienna, Austria:

https://www.google.com/maps/@48.147145,16.5005479,3a,75y,168...

People live on the other side of that highway, so I guess it's possible, but I used to drive through that area on a regular basis and the smell hard to forget.

Apart from that such facilities need to be large to be cost-effective.

Many engines can be converted to run on ethanol.

This gets thrown out quite a bit but I don't really buy it. If it is not designed for alcohol, it probably isn't going to work. Alcohol has too many weird interactions with stuff like aluminum.

Many countries are running on part-ethanol already; the UK is on "E10" (up to 10%)

partial ethanol and full alcohol are not even close.

Close enough. E10 is enough to see most of the issues you will see with pure Ethanol. Most engines just need to run is different fuel maps. ideally you would make other changes (increase the compression ratio), but they are expensive.

Some engines (SAAB, I'm looking at you) will detect knocks and adapt the map on the fly.

Then, there's the more insane stuff:

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1024086_ethanol-powered-...

* * *

Which was why I didn't say "all" or anything like that. But basically a lot of engines from Ford and Volvo can run on ethanol. Any old iron block can if you replace pipes and hoses. And so on.

Sure, if you rebuild an engine to run on ethanol it'll run on ethanol.

Which is why I said converted. The wrong kind of rubber will get brittle from ethanol. But for an iron block, it's not rocket science. Any shade tree mechanic could do it.

It's not economic and it's both an environmental and safety nightmare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire "largest peacetime explosion in Europe"

I live in Edinburgh, and there's regular complaints about flaring from the Mossmorran refinery, which lights up the night sky, produces smoke, and is incredibly loud.

Wow, that’s a gigantic fire right there. So it seems local refineries are not very interesting.

It makes orders of magnitude more sense to have one centralized large refinery and then many dispersed holding tanks to distribute fuel. This model may sound familiar.

It's like people have forgotten that ICEVs started without any of that infrastructure in place. Even if we can't buy petrol from pharmacies, methanol and ethanol engines are a mature technology and the fuel is both cheap and easy to get. The practical reality is that lack of fuel stations is a pain in the ass, but the strength of ICEs is that they can be modified to run on different fuels. And fueling them is easy.

> plenty of used ICE cars

Hence plenty of customers for gas stations

I'm not so sure.

I think at some point, the cost of operating gas stations will fall below a threshold that it doesn't justify keeping them open, even if there is still _some_ demand.

E.g. imagine if demand were cut in half -- I think more than half of the gas stations would shut down.

It will happen, but I reckon it'll be more like 2045 than 2035 (and even then they'll still be some gas stations, just far fewer and you might have to start keeping emergency supplies with you).

Here in the UK, we call them petrol stations. But "gas" is still appropriate, because 15 years ago LPG conversions were all the rage, and every petrol station had gas too.

Nowadays I can only think offhand of a single local retail fuel establishment that will sell you both US and UK "gas".

Would running one of those off a gas drum be possible? Most petrol stations around me stock them. Need to match brands to return a drum though.

I assume the 11-ish litre butane capacity wouldn't be enough to be practical.

Certainly "for a few good years."

No, not for another ~15 years and then I'll still be able to buy ICE car. EVs in current state are not so good and what's even worse new ICE cars are becoming shittier and shittier because of restrictions imposing on them

In ~15 years if you buy an ICE you also need to afford the gas.

in 15 years there will be so few ice cars on the roads that gas could very well be cheaper than electricity.

Finding a gas station may be problematic ( although i doubt truck will move to electricity that soon)

I would say it depends on the country. Russia is still a major exporter of petroleum goods and can make the price very appealing to it's neighbors (but yeah, after they started the war, the situation is not so strightforward)

Average car age in US and EU is somewhere around 12 years. EVs are still a minority (growing, but less than 50 % and it will stay that way for a few years).

Most of the ICE cars sold now will be on the roads in 15 years.

At some point dramatically lower demand will start to push the gas price higher.

Not really because some amount of a barrel of oil is gasoline. The other uses of oil will still want their fraction and be willing to pay. The refineries will need to get rid of the parts of the crude that doesn't have a market to sell to the market they have.

There will of course be much less refineries. The other uses of oil are small niches, and so the world needs one-two small refinery to supply their needs. So there will be price shocks as the large refineries close.

The reverse scaling will be the problem more than the commodity price. As gas stations close, finding a refueling place will similar to what early adopters of EVs faced, but without the ability to do >90% of fueling at home or anywhere else the electrical grid reaches. Although maybe it'll become a thing for some people to store tanks of gasoline at their home. At that point I'd trade for a diesel vehicle, though, if I had a hard requirement of an ICE.

Farmers already keep tanks around to refuel at home. As do several of the other niches that I see as more likely to keep a gasoline car. If you live in the city you won't have a place to store fuel - but also won't need to since an EV is more likely to meet your needs.

My biggest problem is that they target the individuals, rather than the actual big polluters. (Hell, carbon footprint was coined by the oil lobby.)

Who do you think purchases the products that heavy industry makes?

> EVs in current state are not so good

Well then, good thing the world's largest battery maker is starting to mass-produce batteries with twice the energy density.

It solves only one of multiple problems new generations of cars (EVs especially) are facing

As an EV owner, I'm not sure what problems you're referring to.

Sure the infrastructure has a bit to catch up, but even without infrastructure, we're completely fine to use our EV for 90% of our commute (and our ICE car the other 10%).

But if density -- thus range -- were to double, infrastructure becomes even less of a dependency.

It's the main problem, as far as I can tell. I guess charging / "pump" time is an issue for cross-country road trips, but my personal needs would be entirely met by home charging.

Home charging isn't a thing for vast majority of car owners

Anyone with a house and an EV can do it. I don't have an EV yet but some friends just stayed for a week with a rented Tesla, and charging it up in the garage every night worked great, even with just a regular 120V outlet available.

> Anyone with a house

So how many people is that? Don't estimate house ownership or house rents on your circle of friends. What about cities, apartments with no means to install chargers? World is not urban sprawl where houses have garage and power available for charging cars.

70% of Americans live in houses:

https://www.builderonline.com/money/economics/80-percent-of-...

Got it, world is America.

Also, the way North Americans are developing their dwellings and neighborhoods/suburbia is absolutely horrible

As of 2019, 53.3% of Europeans lived in houses: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/flats-houses-types-ho...

"In 2008, it was estimated that six out of ten Japanese lived in single-family houses." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_Japan

I'm not going to keep googling this for everywhere but in developed countries at least, it doesn't appear that "home charging isn't a thing for vast majority of car owners."

EVs are amazing already. Great performance, quiet, convenient for many use cases. How are ICE cars getting 'shittier'?

You should buy what works best for you. But if you really believe an EV is not better than an ICE car in nearly all objective metrics, you are doing yourself a disservice.

They're unlikely to succeed because if the massive tax on poor people (ICE bans) actually gets implemented, all of the poor people who are forced to buy an unaffordable EV will vote for populists promising to unwind the bans.

At least in the U.S., poor people buy used cars, while existing and proposed ICE bans effect new car sales. Any real economic effect will be delayed until after the ban, and in any event they'll still be buying used cars. I suppose used EVs might end up costing more, but they might end up costing less. Also, the immediate effect of bans might actually be to create a glut of cheap, used ICE cars.

None of that implies less risk of a populist backlash, though; not for any class of 'mericans, rich or poor.

At least in the US, poor people used to but used cars, until the used car market tanked in 2021 or so. Now they buy new, but finance for 84+ months.

In much of the world, owning a car at all puts you above "poor people". While owning a car is sadly needed in some parts of the world to get to work or even the stores (US..), it's a massive financial burden for most people. If you care for poor people, thinking about how people can go about their daily lives without spending thousands of dollars each year on owning a car would be the way to go.

If a comment on hackernews seems like it’s only written about the US, then it probably is.

If you can afford a car you are not poor. In the US (and Europe) there are almost no poor people. What we call poor are still middle class by world standards.

This is getting away from the relevant definition of poor. The person above was talking about how people will vote, so what matters here is whether they're poor relative to other voters within their own country.

> If you can afford a car you are not poor

I'm not sure I agree with this. In many parts of the US or Europe, you could easily be in a position where you can afford a car (and need one for work), but cannot afford housing. It's true that you might well still be well off by world standards (a car roof is still a roof), but I think I'd require "food, clean water, clothing and reliable shelter" to be a bare minimum for "not poor".

They’re only banning sales of new EVs in the short term, and poor people don’t buy new cars anyway. By the time they are buying EVs, they’ll be much cheaper.

I doubt this.

The manufacturer are pushing subscription-base model. Used electric car won't become cheap

Manufacturers are also pushing this for ICE cars, so that’s not really a differentiation point between ICEs and electric. Hopefully we will get legislation to tame this trend for cars and other goods.

When I bought my used EV there were 2 options: Leaf or Zoe. As a high percentage of Zoe's had rented batteries, and the websites didn't have a filter for that, I didn't even bother test driving one.

You missed out - they’re giving away the batteries for almost nothing now to get rid of the lease. Mine was manufactured in 2011 (!) and is still at 93% of its original 22 kWh capacity, which is amazing compared to a Leaf.

I doubt that. They are trying the subscription model, but used car drivers are more price sensitive and are likely to not fall for it. If the car doesn't have a lifetime subscription included used car drivers will soon get the word out don't buy that car. Car manufactures depend on their cars having a good resale value - people who buy new cars tend to trade them in every 3 years, and that only works out because the car has value to someone else.

It will take time for this to work out in the market. BMW is small enough to trick people, but the large car makers are not.

This might be true in USA where society have built itself to be almost fully dependent on cars. As a non-american: I have not owned a car in 10 years. You are not forced to have to own a car by some force of nature.

> You are not forced to have to own a car

Well, no, but

> society have built itself to be almost fully dependent on cars

You don't state where you live, but odds are good your country is mostly car dependent. Sure transit is useful for a few (10%) of people who live in the city, but if you look at the numbers in almost every country cars are the vast majority of transport if the country is rich enough to afford them. If the country isn't that rich you will see other things, but as they become richer they become car dependent.

For what it's worth, you might find this list handy the next time you find yourself in a discussion about car dependence and how it varies across the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...

Not all countries are car-centric as USA

That's objectively true because it's an absolute. Most advanced nations are pretty much car-dependent, however.

Isn't it populist to call this a tax on poor people?

It's not populist to call things what they really are.

You know how I know you aren't poor? You think anyone in the bottom quartile will buy a new car. This is hardly a regressive policy. It directly targets the wealthier populations.

That said, in the interest of honest debate, it will shift the used car market prices significantly initially until supply of used EVs spins up. Although this is very secondary.

Partly the use market exists in ICE because there isn't really a cheap new ICE, but with stuff like sodium ions and the fundamental simplicity of the EV drivetrain, what I think is going to happen is that you're going to get a much wider range of electric cars that will suit a lot more modes of transportation and people won't have to use old ICE Used cars to get around.

I think it's going to happen is essentially you're going to get like a $10,000 new EV you can buy that's going to be cheaper to use energywise/ fuel-wise than a clunker ice.

I think the driver this will be the Chinese / India markets where you have basically two to three billion people that will want cars at that price point and that stuff will eventually make its way into the US

It's less populist and more a talking point. It's the perfect cover. "We can't stop allowing the rich to destroy the climate because we care so much about poor people."

In '35 it's doubtful ICE will be cheaper than EV anyway (look at price development over last decade...) Banning ICE will speed up this development.

Climate change will disproportionately affect people who are already vulnerable.

Tax carbon emissions and use the money to provide good affordable alternatives (public transportation) for people who don't afford an EV today.

ICE prices will continue to drop. SSD hard drives (the newer, more efficient and faster technology) prices have plummeted in the last 10 years, however spinning rust prices have also plummeted, making spinning rust the only choice if capacity-per-dollar is your metric.

You also mention climate change, but I don't see how an extra average degree of weather (if that materializes) will be worse than stripping poor people of transportation and condemning them to never having a job (since most lower rung jobs require a car).

Certainly, these poor people will absolutely eviscerate you at the polls if you level them with this massive poor tax.

As for public transportation, the US is incapable of building new rail infrastructure. California's $150,000,000,000 LA-to-SF train is an unmitigated disaster, Chicago's rolling stock is extremely old and falling apart and New York City takes 12 years to build 4 miles of new lines, at a cost that is quadruple what France would spend for identical infrastructure.

You're in a dream world. The same people who claim that a poor people tax helps them also support cash pits known as modern rail infrastructure in the US (it's more like grift and fraud, though).

You're the one dreaming.

The US is fundamentally incapable of building public transportation? Ludicrous. What's required is political will.

ICE prices will not drop faster than EV. It's much more mature technology.

If forbidding new ICE cars (in 7+ years) "strips people of transportation" we clearly need som kind of subsidies to alleviate that.

Climate change is a threat. It's not just something people talk about because it's fun. The current estimates predict 3 degrees of warming until the end of the century. That's assuming we stop burning fossile fuels some time this century. The disruption this would cause to agriculture and living conditions around the world are just staggering. If nothing else, consider the costs of 2 meeters sea level rise until 2100...

Preventing climate change is a cost saving measure.

Poor people drive buses, not cars.

The cheap EVs aren't here yet, but the technology has the potential to eventually become cheaper than ICE. 30% of EV cost is currently in the battery, and this will drop.

This! I mean, we saw the same with computing: the first PCs cost thousands of dollars, but by the start of the nineties they were much more affordable already. Mostly because of technology advances and mass production, but of course also because of moving chip/board production to cheaper countries. Same with mobile phones, smartphones, laptops etc. etc.

PCs still cost thousands of dollars. If you are interested in AI/machine learning then $2k is the bare minimum.

Nah, a GTX 1060 6GB for $100 + any 10-year old i5/i7 is still surprisingly capable for messing about with ML. It's not fast but it gets the job done. Also, getting free compute for messing around in, say, Google Cloud is still pretty easy. If you get to the point where those 2 options become a bottleneck, you're probably informed enough to find work in the field and afford something nicer.

People interested in AI/machine learning are a small niche. Your AI/machine learning computer is about as interesting to most people as large agriculture sprayer is to your average car buyer.

My PC cost about 400€ and I'm a professional user. Most people are fine with the capabilities of a Raspberry Pi.

People don't always manage to vote their interests even if/when they manage to rationally identify what those are. Welcome to politics.

> massive tax on poor people (ICE bans)

Don't blame EV and or the environment for this. Car culture in the US created unsustainable cities and destroyed public transportation.

Car ownership itself has always been a regressive tax.

ICEs also supplement power grids and enable agriculture. The car is not the centerpiece of fossil fuels helping the poor

The very poorest don't even drive and are also disproportionately impacted by pollution from driving. The strata above that buys used cars.

The poorest folks I know are driving used Bolts. Money talks. Aside from the recent pandemic-fueled car price bubble, compliance EVs were really cheap on the used market.

We do have a choice because, on paper, we do have a choice in choosing those countries’ politicians. I know I’ll never give my vote to a politician keen on banning gasoline cars.

It’s sadly also true that the technocrats actually taking those decisions are a lot less directly accountable, but nothing that a second “yellow vests” movement won’t be able to fix.

I on the other hand, I applaud the politicians who had the guts to push the ICE car sales ban against the push-back of the established cars manufacturers.

ICE cars are such a nuisance in cities by polluting the air. I look forward to a time when my children will be able to enjoy clean air in the cities.

Banning ICE cars in cities is completely different from banning ICE car sales in whole countries.

I call this egoism. Modern ecologism just aims to make a nice walled garden around their voters, they don't care what is happening outside this garden. In the reality, other parts of the country/earth is getting polluted to produce the goods.

I much prefer the older ways with polluting factory in the city, at least everyone could see what it takes to provide each good, and share its cost. The current way of doing things is to ban everything, which force manufacturers to produce elsewhere in the world and import it. Plus we are loosing knowledge in the process.

The thing is producing a product for the entire world in one place has massive economies of scale vs producing things locally in every other city or even 1 factory per country. While going back to Victorian-era local production would turn cities back into the garbage dumps they once were, I highly doubt it would end up lowering emissions.

Producing an ICE is also polluting. Producing gasoline is also polluting. This is not an argument against banning ICEs.

> I on the other hand, I applaud the politicians who had the guts to push the ICE car sales ban against the push-back

I can't agree, because forceful bans are not the best way to accomplish change.

Simply keep improving battery technology to bring prices down and range up and it'll take a natural course once buying an EV becomes cheaper than an ICE car. Implementing bans makes it political and builds resentment which is counterproductive. Building a better product and letting the market decide works so much better.

Why is it so important for you to be able to pollute a bit more when commuting?

Why is it so important to plant goal posts where parent doesn't?

Some people like to have the freedom to choose between things, it isn't about trying to be some kind of villain.

Then explain how polluting and making lots of noise is freedom? Is speed limits imposing on your freedom to drive as fast as you want? Seat belt laws imposing on your freedom to have your kids unsecured in the car? I seriously don't understand this mindset.

Of course it's about freedom.

What some people don't want to hear is that their freedom must be limited where it impacts other people. Nobody is alone in the world.

Important also to consider the degree to which we choose (while improving our own environment) to get others to pollute on our behalf and suffer the consequences - as in the extensive environmental damage caused by lithium and cobalt mining. This is not an argument against EV or renewables by any means but let's ensure we maintain a realistic assessment of all pros and cons. Up to 70% of cobalt is produced in the Congo where up to 200,000 people work for around $3 a day. This is a good wage locally which conveniently translates to an excellent price for us in the West to enjoy clean air cities.

https://earth.org/lithium-and-cobalt-mining/

Yup, best would be to get rid of the car dependence. Make walk-able cities for people, not cities designed for cars.

People do not necessarily live in cities.

First of all, the poster was writing about the legal elimination of an option, which is does not fit such reduction.

Some people value the qualities that the current (pun happened) alternatives do not offer: they are inadequate for some use cases. This includes long travel and refuelling in minutes.

Furthermore, since societies are now suffering an epidemic of lunacy, electric cars can be extreme noise pollutants, because insane manufacturers and users have turned them into a loud cacophonic concert - I have seen them. They can be unbearable.

They also seem to be internet connected in a staggering amount of cases, and many refuse to drive "a smartphone with wheels", or more explicitly a madness with uselessly installed security holes and privacy compromisers. This is especially relevant for The Car, the device that was built for deliverance - "our way to escape", as Karl Kraus said.

> Furthermore, since societies are now suffering an epidemic of lunacy, electric cars can be extreme noise pollutants, because insane manufacturers and users have turned them into a loud cacophonic concert - I have seen them. They can be unbearable.

Well, isn't it then peoples choice to do that? Or do you instead argue for a ban of EVs? I don't get this point.

I've never heard an electric car making more noise than the road noise. Which of course is annoying in itself going at high speeds, but still less than an ICE. What you're describing is absolutely not something of the ordinary. ICEs revving their engine in residential streets, however...

> Well, isn't it then peoples choice to do that?

No, you cannot have any freedom to be uselessly bothersome. That is basic in social rules. If you are missing that evidence, it is because societies have become extremely lax (it's called a downfall).

> making more noise than the road noise

The topical noise is that which comes from the additional, artificial noises that are placed to warn the surrounding beings of the traffic, as a consequence of the fact that the vehicle would be less noisy because of the absence of the engine.

In a normal car you have the "natural" mechanical noises (hopefully muffled), whereas the lunatics have placed in a number of models a broadcast background sound that you could - if you never heard it - be assimilated to the starting sounds of operating systems in the nineties. Only, permanent during the running of the vehicle. The new noise is not "grey" as it was, but textured, like a chord of synthetic strings.

So, the prospect is of having streets full of running loudspeakers shouting their own unnatural chords. Which also means that even if you decided to live in an isolated spot you should not remain less then a few miles away from any street, if legislation and good un-common sense will not intervene.

> electric cars can be extreme noise pollutants

walk, bike and horse are better solutions for noise, not ICE cars. Ban all cars?

No: ban stupidity.

Solutions are chosen for the balance in cost, risks and benefits. Noisy but useful, within boundaries, ok. (Note: some of us are bothered already by motorways miles away when in otherwise isolated woodlands - but we are aware that traffic somehow must flow, and know that we have to select more distant places.)

Electric cars are becoming a massive threat in terms of noise pollution because people have become dumb and passive - cannot perceive and cannot react. The issue is not intrinsic in the technology, but it is part of reality: opportunity for madness + latent madness → disaster.

> not ICE cars

You do not seem to understand: the noise some fools put into electric vehicles is completely different. As in, "not a hum but brass" - where "hum" can be annoying and "brass" will surely be. See my other post nearby.

Could you help us understand why you would like to keep buying gasoline cars?

(Edit: I see that you are being down voted. Perhaps elaborating on your desire to continue to be able to buy gasoline cars might help clarify your position better)

Some people like freedom of choice, I guess. Like in a democracy, where you can vote whatever candidate you like, except here is with your wallet. Others like dictatures.

ICE produce proven carcinogenic pollutants.

Your freedom to intoxicate other people goes against their freedom to remain unharmed.

(Not to mention noise, environmental damage, geopolitical risks surrounding oil... all well proven stuff)

Oh, I am no fan of ICE engines, at all. Hate them, personally.

But I know how harmful heavy handed-mandates can be. I have seen the damage such mandates have already made in other instances with voters being recruited and radicalized by populist politicians.

This is a delicate issue, already highly politicized and deeply hypocritical for both sides. Completely curtailing people’s freedoms is not the way to approach it, if you want to change anything.

It's wild to imagine that people would widely violently protest against such a change. Like, I find it pretty amusing to look back at the old news broadcasts of people objecting to allowing women in bars or disallowing drunk driving or requiring cars to come with seatbelts, but those all just feel like they're from a completely different time. If people in this day will espouse similarly intelligent positions, it'll be so interesting.

If it was cheaper now for people to buy EV over ICE upfront (externalities be damned because "loin des yeux loin du couer"), there would be very little push back. It's really not that difficult to understand.

I guess the problem is electric cars aren't cheap, even in SH market and public transport in some parts of europe and us just sucks. For example I can totally see banning selling ice cars in netherlands, sweeden, norway, israel and other regions with good transportation and richer people, but banning them in us, italy, greece, romania and other similar states (either because they're poor or public transport is bad) is a hard sell

They will become cheap though. As manufacturers move downmarket and the used Ev market grows. Maybe even cheaper than gas in the end - simpler, more reliable etc

If they become that cheap, there won't be any need to ban ICEVs.

Yes and no - the incoming ban will force investment in downmarket EVs, helping make them cheap. If it works as planned then it won’t actually need to be enforced by the time the clock runs out, because EVs will be better all round. Funny little incentive paradox

One of the most popular cars in Romania (and a lot of EU)is 10k euro Dacia, it has a nice range and can be repaired pretty cheap. if you say electric cars with a somewhat similar range will get that cheap, even sh, well, I hope we'll get that future) For now we have a 12k euro dacia spring, that is heavily subsidized(18k normal price) and with a real range of 100-150km depending on weather and speed, so we have some way to go

It won't happen in USA until a majority of chips and EV batteries required can be reliably produced and sourced domestically. Until that point the continued production and sale of new ICEs will still be required as a matter of national security.

ICE bans won't prevent people from buying used cars.

Almost no one is banning existing ICE vehicles on the road; just sales of new ICE models.

Sure, but how long do the gas stations last?

This is not responsive to my comment, which is about ICE bans.

That's great but it seems prices of all new cars and especially EVS even with rebates are astronomically high.

I don't need launch control, giant screens, self drive etc. just a basic EV under $30K with standard dash gauges.