The European Parliament approved legislation Tuesday that will ban the sale of new gas-powered cars in the European Union after 2035.
The new legislation mandates that all passenger cars and light commercial vehicles sold in the 27 member countries of the European Union (E.U.) have zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2035, a requirement which will effectively ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles in the bloc, Reuters reported. The E.U.’s new rules come months after the U.S. states of California and Washington announced similar bans in August 2022 on new gas-powered vehicle sales after 2035, a target that president John Bozzella of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a international automotive lobbying group, said would be “extremely challenging” to meet, and dependent on “external factors” in the broader economy like inflation and availability of key minerals.