The European Union (EU) Parliament last week voted to ban the sale of new gasoline- and diesel-powered cars after 2035. But, in classic European style, they carved out an exception for the kind of rare, beautiful hypercars that line the streets of Monaco and Luxembourg.
Like bans passed in California, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, and Washington, the ban won’t remove gas-powered cars from the streets. Europeans will still be allowed to buy and sell used cars of all fuel types. And it doesn’t require that new cars sold after 2035 be electric – just that they not use diesel or gasoline as fuel.
It also won’t apply in European countries that aren’t EU members, like Norway and Switzerland.
The rules will have minimal effect in the United States and perhaps even in Europe. Some automakers, like Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, have pledged to have all-electric lineups by 2030. Others, like General Motors, have promised mostly electric lineups by 2035.
A handful, like Ford, haven’t formally committed to any specific target but are well on their way toward electrifying their lineups.
So the new rules mostly order automakers to go where they were already going.
But the EU’s decision includes a carve-out not yet copied in the U.S. – automakers that sell fewer than 1,000 cars annually are exempt.
Italy’s best-known supercar manufacturers, Ferrari and Lamborghini, tend to sell more than 1,000 cars per year. So, the exemption will mostly benefit extremely low-volume companies like Rimac and Koenigsegg that you may not have even heard of.
