How Popular Are Low Emission Vehicles in California?
By Laurine Lassalle
12/11/2020
California is ready to ban gasoline-powered cars by 2035. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Sept. 23 that will require all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California to be zero-emission vehicles.
More than 28.4 million cars were registered in California in 2019, but only 2% of them were zero-emission vehicles (ZEV), according to the California Energy Commission.
ZEVs include plug-in hybrid (PHEV), battery-electric (BEV) and fuel cell electric (FCEV) vehicles. A PHEV is a hybrid car that can be plugged into an outlet or charging station, a BEV only relies on electricity, and an FCEV runs on liquid hydrogen that needs to be refilled.
This small share of the automobile market has been growing over the last ten years, even though gasoline vehicles were still accounting for 88% of the vehicles on the road in 2019.
Annual ZEV sales in California jumped from 661 in 2010 to 147,347 in 2019, and most were sold in urban areas, especially in the Bay Area and around Los Angeles.
Source: California Energy Commission
Note: Cumulative ZEV sales from 2010 to 2020(Q3).
California has been leading the electric vehicle (EV) sector for years. In 2017, nearly 40% of all EVs in the U.S. were registered in California, with more than 3,000 EVs, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
But ZEVs only represent 2% of California’s automobile market — and so their environmental impact is still limited. The transportation sector is responsible for more than half of all of California’s carbon pollution.
“Californians shouldn’t have to worry if our cars are giving our kids asthma. Our cars shouldn’t make wildfires worse – and create more days filled with smoky air. Cars shouldn’t melt glaciers or raise sea levels threatening our cherished beaches and coastlines,” Newsom said.
What about hybrid vehicles?
Zero-emission vehicles have been often supplanted by hybrid vehicles (HEVs), which do not need to be plugged in and still are low-emission vehicles as they release less CO2 than traditional cars.
On average, a gasoline car releases about 11,400 pounds of CO2 equivalent, while an HEV produces about 6,300 pounds of CO2 equivalent, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Hybrid vehicles, also called gasoline-hybrid, represent 3.8% of the total registered cars in California, about two times the total of all ZEVs.
But HEVs’ emissions are still three times higher than EVs, and therefore will be banned by 2035. “EVs and PHEVs running only on electricity have zero tailpipe emissions, but emissions may be produced by the source of electrical power,” according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
In Alameda County, 109,782 low-emission vehicles were on the road in 2019, including 42,887 ZEVs.
Like ZEVs, low-emission vehicles, which include gasoline-hybrid vehicles or HEVs, are mostly concentrated in metropolitan areas.
In Alameda County, about 81 per 1,000 vehicles on the road in 2019 were low-emission vehicles, while in Humboldt County, low-emission vehicles were only found in 35 cars out of 1,000.
Source: California Energy Commission
Source: California Energy Commission
Methodology: the total number of low-emission vehicles per county was divided by the total number of registered cars per county, and then got multiplied by 1,000.
Zero and low-emission vehicles are known for their higher sales costs. On average, an EV’s sticker price in 2019 was $10,000 higher than for all vehicles, according to Kelley Blue Book.
But buying an EV should be cheaper in the future.
Battery prices went down from above $1,100 per kilowatt-hour in 2010 to $156/kWh in 2019. By 2023, average prices will be close to $100/kWh, according to the research company BloombergNEF (BNEF).
Experts said that battery costs below $100/kWh would start making EVs cost-competitive with gasoline vehicles.
California will be the first U.S. state to ban gasoline-powered vehicles, joining 15 countries, including Norway, France and the UK, in their effort to reduce CO2 emissions.