OPINION – New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has a plan. That plan is to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in his state by 2035. The plan is a simple one. Force New Jerseyans to buy electric vehicles and junk their old fossil fuel burners.
While the plan appears to be a noble one, there are a lot of moving pieces the governor and his office consistently leave out of the picture.
What happens to all of the gas stations in New Jersey? Do they simply shut down, or will these local franchisees be forced to invest millions of dollars into electrical charging stations?
What happens to the gasoline tax that supposedly pays for so much in New Jersey? If everyone is driving an EV, the sliding gas tax could end up going up to a few dollars per gallon!
That is, until Murphy’s complete eradication of gas-powered cars is complete, then there won’t be a gasoline tax. Instead, there could be an EV mileage or EV charging tax; we can be sure. Either way, the cost per mile for New Jerseyans to move around will significantly increase, if not double or even triple.
Where do all the gas powered junkers go? Junkyard, you ask? Not likely. Like all other vehicles, they will be sold around the world in the secondhand market. Murphy won’t be getting rid of those cars; he’s just going to make those cars and their ‘climate killing’ exhaust another country or state’s problem.
Nobody is in the business of junking a perfectly good car.
Maybe there are logical answers to these questions. Or, Maybe there’s not. We’re still waiting for Murphy to explain the side effects of his gas-powered car ban, which could read like the side effects of a new experimental medicine commercial on television.
If the future is EV cars dominating the roads, the future also means remedying the gas stations on nearly every corner in the state and vastly increasing taxes to everyone who drives.
As intended.