Model 3

Make
Tesla
Segment
Sedan

Even in environmentally friendly cities like Los Angeles, owning an electric car is far from effortless. This will soon change as automakers like Volkswagen invest huge sums to build charging infrastructure - and of course, Tesla's massive Supercharger network makes things easier for its owners. But the path to an electric future can't be reached by automakers alone, cities need to be involved as well. And it looks like LA will be one of the first.

LA Mayor Eric Garcetti has just announced the city's "Green New Deal" Plan, which outlines plans for EVs and renewable energy. The full plan is 77 pages long but one of the big headlines is having all vehicles be zero-emissions by 2050.

The current adoption rate for EVs is low but LA plans to increase the percentage of zero-emissions vehicles to 25% by 2025, 80% by 2035, and 100% by 2050. This doesn't simply include passenger cars, but public vehicles like school buses and garbage/recycling trucks as well.

As part of this plan, LA will introduce 155 new EV busses the fleet, develop cleaner rail transport, support a cash-for-clunkers-style trade-in program, and install public charging points. LA doesn't currently have enough public chargers to support this kind of growth but the city plans to have 10,000 publicly available EV chargers by 2022 and 28,000 chargers by 2028.

We're not sure how LA plans to deal with existing ICE cars. This doesn't seem like a full-on ban on ICE cars, like the one in the UK, so we don't think enthusiasts will be forced to empty their classic car collections. The plan does mention a plan to develop a "Fossil Fuel Free Zone" by 2021 and implement it by 2030 so perhaps LA residents will still be allowed to own ICE cars, but will simply be limited on where they can be driven. We're sure more information will emerge on the details of the "Green New Deal" as more questions arise and the plan is fleshed out.