Washington State Plans to Ban Sales of Gasoline Cars after 2030

• The state of Washington passed "Clean Cars 2030" through the legislature this week, and if the governor signs it, the bill would give automakers the earliest deadline in the country for ending sales of gasoline-powered cars.

• That deadline could come in 2030, but the actual date will be set by the percentage of vehicles in the state that pay for road use through vehicle miles traveled instead of by taxes on gasoline.

• Last year, Washington became the 12th state to adopt a zero-emission vehicle program and incentives to make the switch to an EV already exist at the state level, for new and used models.

Clean Cars 2030 is the short, simple name for a new piece of legislation that has passed the Washington State legislature this week and could set up a complicated, first-in-the-nation ban on the sale of gasoline vehicles. As the Seattle Times put it: "It's a 'fringe, crazy' bill no longer."

While other states—California, Massachusetts—have also set up such targets, none would kick in as soon as this new one in the Evergreen State. As with so many of these kinds of upcoming bans, the details remain a bit fluid a decade or so before they’re supposed to go into effect.

Despite the straightforward name, the 2030 date is not a specific mandate in the law. Instead, Clean Cars 2030, an amendment to E2SHB 1287, a state bill that would require local electric utilities to get ready for more electric vehicles, looks for a time when at least 75 percent of the vehicles registered in Washington pay to use the roads through a vehicle miles-traveled tax. A VMT can be used by governments to collect money to pay for roads as an alternative to a gas tax, which EV drivers obviously don’t pay.