California is not going to outlaw internal combustion engines yet; it’s just going to set up areas where ICs can’t go. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
The Chimp turned free speech – the idea that people had a right to speak their minds anywhere they liked, or at least, anywhere in public – into a conditional privilege people were allowed to exercise in zones.
Speech was thus corralled, in the manner of cattle.
California appears to be on the verge of becoming the first state in the United States to do the same to cars – and driving.
If you do not drive a government-approved EV.
These – and these alone – will be allowed to proceed into (and transit through) Zero Emissions Zones, which will be anywhere the state’s regulatory apparat says:
“These zones could be at the city level involving all vehicles or focused on and encouraging the adoption of zero emissions delivery trucks through localized green loading zones that preferentially allow zero emissions deliveries or green logistic zones that restrict internal combustion delivery trucks at certain times and locations such as those in effect in Shenzhen, China.”
Italics added. To emphasize the Chyna model that the California Air Resources Board used to promulgate the regulations that will be used to out-regulate vehicles that aren’t government-approved EVs. These are the only vehicles that qualify under the regulations as “zero emissions,” even though their manufacture and use generates more “emissions” in the aggregate and far more resource-wastage (viz, the massive quantity of raw materials that must be extracted from the earth and then refined and made into such things as the massive battery packs that store electricity in an EV).
Just make sure you don’t breathe out Co2 in these emission-free zones.