New Jersey is the next state to ban light-duty ICE vehicle sales by 2035

In 2021, Reuters reported that 12 state governors wrote to President Biden requesting he "back ending sales of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035." Those states were California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington. Four of those states have enacted their own legislation to head down that path, in addition to Maine, Vermont, and Virginia. New Jersey, the fifth state of that 2021 cohort, could become the next. Gov. Phil Murphy issued three executive orders, one of them adopting California's Advanced Clean Cars II (ACCII) mandate that means 100% zero-emission car and light-duty truck sales from 2035.

The rules regarding vehicles come with additional decrees for the state and other energy applications. The governor wants 100% of state energy to come from clean sources by 2035, wants 400,000 homes and 20,000 commercial properties to have zero-carbon HVAC systems installed by then, and wants 10% of low-to-moderate income properties ready for electrification by 2030. The New Jersey Sierra Club said the 12-year timetable for the first two edicts scrubs 15 years off the state's previous timeline for going zero carbon.

There are plenty of rules and refinements for New Jersey to make on the way to the target. At the moment, the base ACCII rules don't outline what range and performance requirements an EV must provide to the customer come 2035. On California's ACCII FAQ page, the answer to whether a zero-emission vehicle can "get me where I need to go" is an open-ended, "New battery electric vehicles typically have ranges above 200 miles which will meet most people’s day-to-day driving needs. If you need to go farther, public DC Fast chargers are becoming widely available throughout California and the United States."