California expected to ban sale of new gasoline cars

[C C]

California to Ban the Sale of New Gasoline Cars
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/clima...sions.html

California regulators on Thursday will vote to put in place a sweeping plan to restrict and ultimately ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars, state officials said, a move that the state’s governor described as the beginning of the end for the internal combustion engine.
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Cynic's Corner: Another "magic cure" virtue stunt, that's handshaking with corporate greenwashing, ignoring the cost hardships to consumers and the array of new problems EVs will introduce. Which includes the dawn of obsolete vehicles cluttering the world that have far less secondhand value (adios used car salespeople) along with the difficult-to-recycle batteries littering and contaminating the environment (somewhere).

Progressive politicians are the sneaky, opportunistic capitalists who parasitize on or hijack leftist propaganda and activism for profit and career gain. They're the equivalent of Elmer Gantry evangelists who exploit religious do-gooderism for lucre. The last thing its operators of distinguished rank want to do is truly diminish a socioeconomic-ecological problem, unless the process substitutes a replacement woe.

[Zinjanthropos]

I don’t know the answer to this and maybe the question is stupid but how much did the ICE contribute to our technological advancement? Do we owe it anything or was it the biggest gaffe in human history?

[C C]

I don’t know the answer to this and maybe the question is stupid but how much did the ICE contribute to our technological advancement? Do we owe it anything or was it the biggest gaffe in human history?

The internal combustion engine was highly important in terms of yielding mobile, independent equipment that was less bulky or cumbersome than steam powered equivalents. Large, electric industrial work-vehicles would have been limited in freedom due to being tethered to their external, distant power sources. (Big Brutus: It required 6,900 volts of electricity just to start Big Brutus.)

Electric cars were hampered by inadequate batteries and other deficiencies, and the fuel cell vehicle didn't become quasi-practical until after the mid 20th-century.

But OTOH, due to the convenience of the ICE, it's not like research investment was knocking itself out to improve the viability of the alternatives. If not for the incentive of WWII, the atomic bomb would not have been realized until decades later. If not for the Cold War, the following prediction from a Popular Mechanics issue in 1950 would probably have indeed applied fifty years later:

"[In the year 2000] nobody has yet circumnavigated the moon in a rocket spaceship, but the idea is not laughed down."