Combustion Going Bust: Global Phase-outs of Gasoline Cars

By Katharina Buchholz

The European Union last week approved a law that will ban the sale of combustion engine cars in its member states from 2035. For Germany and Italy as well as for Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Hungary, the new bill sets a first deadline for the sale of gasoline-powered cars. The current governments of the former two countries, however, have already spoken out against the ban – calling into question the timeline of the phase-out that climate scientists call absolutely necessary, but that could also face delays.

Other European Union countries had already embraced the phase-out of gasoline cars: The Netherlands, Belgium’s Flanders region, Sweden, Greece and Slovenia are all looking to end the sale of gas-powered cars even earlier, between 2029 and 2030. The only country in the world beating this is Norway, an electric mobility pioneer from outside of the European Union, where around 80 percent of new cars sold are already fully electric and 100 percent are scheduled to be in 2025.