What’s Happening

The planet is choking and blistering, and one of the primary causes of this climate calamity and health menace is spewing from our tailpipes.

We must search for ways to curb the pollutants and turn down the heat – immediately, if not sooner — and following California’s example seems like a great place to start.

The Golden State already leads the nation with 18% of new cars sold being the electric or hybrid variety, and now its regulators have announced it will ban sales of gas-only powered vehicles entirely by 2035. Going from 18% to 100% in 13 years is a massive undertaking, and it represents a tectonic shift in the national effort to reduce tailpipe poison.

California has been the trendsetter on climate. The Clean Air Act gives California the ability to set stronger standards than the federal government, and allows other states to follow its lead. New Jersey and 15 other states routinely get in line, but the Murphy administration will not commit to signing on to this EV initiative, as Massachusetts and Washington already have. That raises the question: Can we really afford not to?

The simple answer is that we must find a way to jump on this electric bandwagon, because our lives could ultimately ride on it.

Combustible fossil fuels from our transportation sector accounts for 42% of New Jersey’s carbon pollution, and the health impacts of other car pollutants are palpable, in the form of respiratory issues, higher cancer rates, and other adverse impacts. A recent study from the Harvard School of Public Health even linked 17,600 deaths each year in our state to “moderate” levels of air pollution.

We don’t have to go on like this, and now we have a road map showing us a viable escape route. There’s no greater incentive than this: California said the shift to electrics will cut greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles in half by 2040.

But we’re still waiting to hear from Murphy, who can be squishy when it comes to transit and climate issues, even though he wisely followed California’s lead by adopting the Advanced Clean Trucks rule last year, which requires an annual 5% ramp-up for sales of zero-emission trucks.

The governor’s spokesman only said that our state is “on track to achieve its emission reductions goals” and will continue to promote EVs.

The facts, however, don’t support that. Murphy’s goal is to have 330,000 electric vehicles registered in New Jersey by the end of 2025 – and more than 2 million EVs by the end of 2035 – but we’re not setting a torrid pace. As of June, there are only 80,500 electrics and plug-in hybrids in the state, according to the DEP. That’s double the number we had in 2020, but behind the pace that’s needed.

Jeff Tittel, former director of New Jersey Sierra Club, rang this alarm: “If we don’t adopt the California rule, we will never meet our climate goals,” he said. “It also means that all his talk on climate change is hot air. He recently said, ‘What’s the big deal about widening the Turnpike? We’ll all be driving EVs by the time the job is done.’ Well, not if we don’t adopt this rule, we won’t.”

Granted, the transition to 100% electric will be an enormous task – here, there, anywhere.

But the manufacturers have already jumped in with both feet. General Motors and Ford announced years ago that they’ll be all-electric by 2035. America’s largest car maker, Toyota, will have 30 different electric models by 2030.

It was only two years ago that Toyota locked arms with the Trump Administration and challenged California’s power to regulate vehicle emissions. That’s how fast attitudes and markets change.

What was a niche product just a few years ago will soon be mainstream, and with buyer incentives built into state and federal legislation, the transition to electric has been turbocharged. Battery plants are sprouting throughout the Midwest. The passage of the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act are keeping businesses at home and triggering massive investments in technology.

There are still many challenges to meet. The infrastructure for such an ambitious rollout is inadequate: New Jersey is dead last in EV-per-charging station ratio. Raw materials, such as lithium and cobalt for batteries, are not always widely available to manufacturers.

And most important, EVs are still not affordable for average New Jersey consumers – the average MSRP is $66,000 – so the equity issue is foremost in the mind of Assembly Transportation Committee chairman Dan Benson (D-Mercer).

The federal incentives are higher for cars in the lower price ranges, which is how it should be. But New Jersey’s Charge Up program lowered its maximum incentive this year to $4,000 – down from $5,000 – and that program has run out of funding in recent cycles. We need to explore other ways to make EVs more affordable, and Benson vows to do that.

As Princeton energy scientist Jesse Jenkins said last week, action on the federal level should make every state rethink its transition to carbon-free options: “Whatever level of EV adoption we thought made sense before, we can accelerate,” Jenkins said. “That means more charger infrastructure and state support for lower-income consumer access – EVs should not be just for the wealthy.”

A historic opportunity has arrived. The internal combustion engine has dominated auto production for more than 130 years, and our lungs and our environment have been through enough. It’s time to move on, and New Jersey must help lead the motorcade.