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I feel conflicted when I see headlines like this. On the one hand, this is better than not having passed said law. On the other hand, 14 years is quite a while,

I feel conflicted when I see headlines like this. On the one hand, this is better than not having passed said law. On the other hand, 14 years is quite a while, and the current members of the legislature will likely have long since moved on. So this feels like a way to earn brownie points with their constituents who really care about this, without actually undertaking the hard work of making this a reality. > under the new law, several state agencies are required to work together to conjure a zero-emissions vehicle market development strategy by the end of next year I guess that's nice that the timeframe for coming up with a plan is shorter... but again, don't we need more action now, and not in a decade and a half?

greenonions 5y ago
Changes like this affect action today. If you are an automaker, are you going to spend limited development money on cars you won't be able to sell in NY in the future? Investors are already pricing in how well automakers are going to be prepared for bills like this and EU/UK laws. So bills like this actually cause a lot of positive change today.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  > If you are an automaker, are you going to spend limited development money on cars you won't be able to sell in NY in the future? If I were an automaker, I don't think I would care much about this. The writing is already on the wall for internal combustion engines (ICE) and ICE is already pretty established so I don't really need to innovate here anyway (as opposed to body style, electronic features, etc) and the time horizon is longer than a decade by which point I'm expecting ratio of EV:ICE sales to shift significantly. This shifts it a bit more. I think what it might do today is inspire other states to pass similar legislation and otherwise normalize the notion that EVs are the future for those who aren't technologists or early adopters.
- spankalee 5y ago
  Exactly. Electric cars aren't even a great answer - reducing vehicle miles traveled with more public mass transit and denser cities is needed - but there's far more opposition to that than electric cars.
jsight 5y ago
Its a general pattern with politicians. Announce a seemingly ambitious goal, but make sure that its date is a few years after you are likely out of office. Most people don't pay attention to the details.
stephen_g 5y ago
If you think about the kind of development schedules auto manufacturers do, this makes some sense. A lot of manufacturers seem to do a major refresh of a model every 5 to 10 years and and do incremental updates in between every year or two, so putting this kind of sunset on it says to each manufacturer that it doesn’t make sense to do more than about one major refresh or new model of ICE car. So this will see new models getting fairly scarce by 2030 I think. By then, they might keep a couple of lines going for those few years, but basically 100% of the new and exciting cars will be electric. (This is assuming similar laws in most Western markets).
driverdan 5y ago
> On the other hand, 14 years is quite a while 14 years is nothing when electric vehicles are only 1% of the current market. There is a wide range of vehicles that have no electric alternative available yet, such as vans and off road vehicles. I will be surprised if it doesn't get extended.
- dagw 5y ago
  such as vans Renault, Nissan, Opel, VW and Mercedes all have an electric van on the market and many more will no doubt be showing up within a couple of years. Now it could be that they aren't currently sold in the US, but that is an easier problem to solve off road vehicles Mercedes, Jeep and Humvee have all announced off road vehicles that will start being sold soon, and I'm sure others will follow
  - driverdan 5y ago
    > Renault, Nissan, Opel, VW and Mercedes all have an electric van None of which are cargo vans suitable for business use. They're all minivans. Mercedes and Ford have announced electric full sized vans but they are years away from general availability. > Mercedes, Jeep and Humvee have all announced off road vehicles that will start being sold soon That depends on what you mean by soon. Jeep has a plug in hybrid on the market now, so I guess that's a step in the right direction. Their full electric is only in concept and is years from production. The new Humvee is still vaporware. Mercedes has announced an SUV but it is not an off road vehicle.
    - dagw 5y ago
      None of which are cargo vans suitable for business use. The Mercedes eVito , Nissan NV200, VW Transporter and Crafter, Renault Kangoo etc. are all electric cargo vans specifically targeting commercial use. Admittedly, one problem they all share is that they are big heavy cars built on last gen electric platforms, meaning they have pretty crap range. But they exist and are available on the market today.
- ZetaZero 5y ago
Spivak 5y ago
I think this action is as good as we can actually do right now. There's basically zero infrastructure to support everyone owning an electric car and it takes time to build. There's a long long tail of edge cases that need to be accounted for before you can just pull the rug out from everyone with a petrol car. * Every single parking space in the city that can or is used for residential street parking needs to have an electric hookup. * Charging stations need to be at least as dense as gas stations and scaled up since the throughput of an individual station is lower. * Electric vehicles need to get an order of magnitude cheaper both in terms of purchase price and total cost of ownership as well since people seem to underestimate the sheer number of people who drive sub $5k vehicles. Battery degradation absolutely destroys the used used market for cars. * Commercial vehicles that by their very nature outrun the range of a single charge need accommodations so businesses can get deliveries and people can take taxis and busses that run 24/7. Non-Solutions I've heard from around HN: * "Just improve public transportation" If you can't afford to live in NY or $big_city but work there then you need a car. You literally cannot fix the physics reality of as you expand out the area you have to hypothetically cover with public transportation increases on the order of radius squared. You can try to have a hub/spoke model (and cities like Boston do) but surprise poor people get priced out of those too! * "Get rid of street parking -- it's ugly anyway. If you can't afford $some_arbitrary_number then you shouldn't have a car anyway."
emacsen 5y ago
I want to disagree with you on the timeline issue, but I think 14 years was probably chosen for it not to be too economically disruptive. I live both in NYC part of the time and in Vancouver part of the time and I see a lot more hybrid and totally electric vehicles in Vancouver, despite the fact it should be theoretically easier in NYC due to the density. There's a large environmental push on the pacific northwest, but there are practical reasons people choose electric cars here- namely that there are taxes coming on non-electric cars soon. Driving a gas car will cost you $1000 a year soon, and then that rate will go up. You can only avoid that tax with a hybrid or fully electric car. Other incentives and taxes are coming that only allow plug-in-electric and fully electric cars. For example they allow electric and PEVs to use the HOV lanes on the highway, and there's rumor of possible parking and other benefits. Back to the timeline... the problem right now is how little plug-in infrastructure NYC and NYS have. To pull off electric vehicles, you need plug-in stations everywhere. You want people to be able to charge their vehicles easily and nearly everywhere. That's because charging time for cars is significantly slower than gassing up, and electric cars typically have shorter range than gas, so you need to make it convenient to charge up in more places in order to offset the inconvenience of time. It's also going to be disruptive to various NYS industry, such as the gas stations, which will see a decline in their gasoline business and need money and time to switch over to offering electric charging. 14 years is a very long time, but I suspect if they had said ten years, people would have revolted at the inconvenience/impossibility of retrofitting or building so much electric infrastructure. It shouldn't take this long, but I think this is the best they could have done politically.
rtkwe 5y ago
You need a long on ramp for things like this so manufacturers start making more cars and there are enough to actually make the transition. This also aligns with California's date for ending new ICE car sales. This is one of many things states are trying to do, they're making both long and short horizon changes.
kiliantics 5y ago
It's definitely too little too late and, what's worse, they are still going to build tonnes of destructive infrastructure for private cars, like massive new highways and bridges, while neglecting to fund and maintain the public alternatives like trains, buses, and bicycles, despite them being century-old proven green technologies.

greenonions 5y ago

Changes like this affect action today. If you are an automaker, are you going to spend limited development money on cars you won't be able to sell in NY in the future? Investors are already pricing in how well automakers are going to be prepared for bills like this and EU/UK laws. So bills like this actually cause a lot of positive change today.

throwaway894345 5y ago
> If you are an automaker, are you going to spend limited development money on cars you won't be able to sell in NY in the future? If I were an automaker, I don't think I would care much about this. The writing is already on the wall for internal combustion engines (ICE) and ICE is already pretty established so I don't really need to innovate here anyway (as opposed to body style, electronic features, etc) and the time horizon is longer than a decade by which point I'm expecting ratio of EV:ICE sales to shift significantly. This shifts it a bit more. I think what it might do today is inspire other states to pass similar legislation and otherwise normalize the notion that EVs are the future for those who aren't technologists or early adopters.
spankalee 5y ago
Exactly. Electric cars aren't even a great answer - reducing vehicle miles traveled with more public mass transit and denser cities is needed - but there's far more opposition to that than electric cars.

jsight 5y ago

Its a general pattern with politicians. Announce a seemingly ambitious goal, but make sure that its date is a few years after you are likely out of office. Most people don't pay attention to the details.

stephen_g 5y ago

If you think about the kind of development schedules auto manufacturers do, this makes some sense. A lot of manufacturers seem to do a major refresh of a model every 5 to 10 years and and do incremental updates in between every year or two, so putting this kind of sunset on it says to each manufacturer that it doesn’t make sense to do more than about one major refresh or new model of ICE car. So this will see new models getting fairly scarce by 2030 I think. By then, they might keep a couple of lines going for those few years, but basically 100% of the new and exciting cars will be electric. (This is assuming similar laws in most Western markets).

driverdan 5y ago

> On the other hand, 14 years is quite a while 14 years is nothing when electric vehicles are only 1% of the current market. There is a wide range of vehicles that have no electric alternative available yet, such as vans and off road vehicles. I will be surprised if it doesn't get extended.

dagw 5y ago
such as vans Renault, Nissan, Opel, VW and Mercedes all have an electric van on the market and many more will no doubt be showing up within a couple of years. Now it could be that they aren't currently sold in the US, but that is an easier problem to solve off road vehicles Mercedes, Jeep and Humvee have all announced off road vehicles that will start being sold soon, and I'm sure others will follow
- driverdan 5y ago
  > Renault, Nissan, Opel, VW and Mercedes all have an electric van None of which are cargo vans suitable for business use. They're all minivans. Mercedes and Ford have announced electric full sized vans but they are years away from general availability. > Mercedes, Jeep and Humvee have all announced off road vehicles that will start being sold soon That depends on what you mean by soon. Jeep has a plug in hybrid on the market now, so I guess that's a step in the right direction. Their full electric is only in concept and is years from production. The new Humvee is still vaporware. Mercedes has announced an SUV but it is not an off road vehicle.
  - dagw 5y ago
    None of which are cargo vans suitable for business use. The Mercedes eVito , Nissan NV200, VW Transporter and Crafter, Renault Kangoo etc. are all electric cargo vans specifically targeting commercial use. Admittedly, one problem they all share is that they are big heavy cars built on last gen electric platforms, meaning they have pretty crap range. But they exist and are available on the market today.
ZetaZero 5y ago

Spivak 5y ago

I think this action is as good as we can actually do right now. There's basically zero infrastructure to support everyone owning an electric car and it takes time to build. There's a long long tail of edge cases that need to be accounted for before you can just pull the rug out from everyone with a petrol car. * Every single parking space in the city that can or is used for residential street parking needs to have an electric hookup. * Charging stations need to be at least as dense as gas stations and scaled up since the throughput of an individual station is lower. * Electric vehicles need to get an order of magnitude cheaper both in terms of purchase price and total cost of ownership as well since people seem to underestimate the sheer number of people who drive sub $5k vehicles. Battery degradation absolutely destroys the used used market for cars. * Commercial vehicles that by their very nature outrun the range of a single charge need accommodations so businesses can get deliveries and people can take taxis and busses that run 24/7. Non-Solutions I've heard from around HN: * "Just improve public transportation" If you can't afford to live in NY or $big_city but work there then you need a car. You literally cannot fix the physics reality of as you expand out the area you have to hypothetically cover with public transportation increases on the order of radius squared. You can try to have a hub/spoke model (and cities like Boston do) but surprise poor people get priced out of those too! * "Get rid of street parking -- it's ugly anyway. If you can't afford $some_arbitrary_number then you shouldn't have a car anyway."

emacsen 5y ago

I want to disagree with you on the timeline issue, but I think 14 years was probably chosen for it not to be too economically disruptive. I live both in NYC part of the time and in Vancouver part of the time and I see a lot more hybrid and totally electric vehicles in Vancouver, despite the fact it should be theoretically easier in NYC due to the density. There's a large environmental push on the pacific northwest, but there are practical reasons people choose electric cars here- namely that there are taxes coming on non-electric cars soon. Driving a gas car will cost you $1000 a year soon, and then that rate will go up. You can only avoid that tax with a hybrid or fully electric car. Other incentives and taxes are coming that only allow plug-in-electric and fully electric cars. For example they allow electric and PEVs to use the HOV lanes on the highway, and there's rumor of possible parking and other benefits. Back to the timeline... the problem right now is how little plug-in infrastructure NYC and NYS have. To pull off electric vehicles, you need plug-in stations everywhere. You want people to be able to charge their vehicles easily and nearly everywhere. That's because charging time for cars is significantly slower than gassing up, and electric cars typically have shorter range than gas, so you need to make it convenient to charge up in more places in order to offset the inconvenience of time. It's also going to be disruptive to various NYS industry, such as the gas stations, which will see a decline in their gasoline business and need money and time to switch over to offering electric charging. 14 years is a very long time, but I suspect if they had said ten years, people would have revolted at the inconvenience/impossibility of retrofitting or building so much electric infrastructure. It shouldn't take this long, but I think this is the best they could have done politically.

rtkwe 5y ago

You need a long on ramp for things like this so manufacturers start making more cars and there are enough to actually make the transition. This also aligns with California's date for ending new ICE car sales. This is one of many things states are trying to do, they're making both long and short horizon changes.

kiliantics 5y ago

It's definitely too little too late and, what's worse, they are still going to build tonnes of destructive infrastructure for private cars, like massive new highways and bridges, while neglecting to fund and maintain the public alternatives like trains, buses, and bicycles, despite them being century-old proven green technologies.