California’s Zero Emissions Vehicle Mandate: Issues, Possibilities, and Challenges

This study focuses on issues, possibilities, and challenges surrounding California’s net zero-emission mandate (the Mandate) for all new vehicle sales by 2035. Research methodology involved secondary data analysis of government and automobile industry websites coupled with a literature review, leading to new, original data analyses, with projection models generated by these authors. Considering normal annual new vehicle sales in California of roughly 1.8 million per year for all fuel types, based on data from 2018 to 2024, converting to the Mandate of EV sales only by 2035 indicates only 450,000 annual sales of new EVs by that time per these authors’ projections. This assumes consumers who normally buy a new gasoline-powered or hybrid vehicle convert to purchasing a new EV. Other challenges include insufficient lower-income household demand for EVs, inadequate purchase subsidies, a predictable lack of charging stations, and no evidence of a strategy for enforcing compliance with the Mandate.