In typical markets, the better value product wins – because customers like the features, the price and relative delivered for the price.

California, Oregon and Washington have announced they will ban the sale of all new gas-powered vehicles beginning in 2035. In just over 12 years, gas vehicle sales are ended. In that 12-year period, we need to construct a massive EV charging infrastructure; remember that people living in apartments, townhomes and condos may not have access to garage or curbside chargers. In most areas, this may require bringing in new, larger power lines through the local community to source the required power capacity. Most infrastructure projects take a long time – where I live, it takes the local government 2-3 to approve a new subdivision before the first shovel of dirt is moved. In California, it is taking 25 years to build half of a high-speed rail line in the state. In Portland it is taking 20 years to construct a new major water pipeline.

Politicians enforcing EV purchases implies they do not believe customers will willingly choose EVs over gas vehicles.

Rather than fix actual or perceived deficiencies in EVs, the politicians choose government coercion: you will be made to comply even if the result is higher costs, less capabilities or lacking features that meet your needs.

This is not the way this should be going. The government is trying bribery (subsidies) in advance but will then switch to coercion.

This is not the way we should be doing this. We should be striving hard to make EVs more appealing and delivering better value. This is the right way forward. Politicians are signaling that they do not believe EVs will be a better value – and thus, will force everyone to make economically inefficient purchases.

The primary purpose for the mandate, presumably, is to help manufacturers. They can then plan on shutting down all ICE vehicle manufacturing on a specific date, whether customers want that or not.

While I see EVs having important advantages (or eventually having them) for me, I can also see significant draw backs in the next 10-20 years for many others. The solution is to fix the problems to make EVs appeal to everyone – not to involuntarily force their purchase via coercion.

Note – someone will point to externalities not being paid for by gas vehicle purchasers and this not being included in their valuation. There will also be externalities for EVs but we do not yet know what those will be. Second, a precise value for externalities is frequently a speculation – and we end up with wild estimates, often rigged to make a decision go one way or the other. Almost no one is basing decisions on externalities, even if we had good estimates.

Coldstreams