No more petrol vehicle sales in the US after 2035, orders Joe Biden government

The US government is planning to end sales of petrol vehicles by 2035, under an executive order signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday. This move comes in an attempt to reduce vehicular emissions and also to promote electric cars. However, the new policy allows some exceptions for military and space vehicles.

The US government currently owns more than 650,000 vehicles and it purchases around 50,000 vehicles every yearAs per Joe Biden's executive order, light-duty vehicles acquired by the government will be emission-free by 2027. Also, the executive order mandates total federal government operations to reduce emissions by 65 per cent by 2030.

The US government will also seek to consume electricity only from carbon-free and non-polluting sources on a net annual basis by 2030 and have net-zero emissions by 2050, says the order.

Before becoming the US President, Joe Biden was promoting electric vehicles. In January 2021, he vowed to replace the US government's fleet with electric models. The latest executive order comes in line with that. In the last few months, Joe Biden was seen promoting the electric vehicles of Ford and General Motors. He took the wheels for test driving electric vehicles such as the Ford F150 Lightning pickup truck and GMC Hummer EV as well.

Overall, Biden has been very much vocal about the battery-electric and zero-emission vehicles. This has encouraged the automakers who aim to enter the EV space.

Biden in August 2021 launched a plan to make half of all new US vehicles electric in 2030. That included plug-in hybrid-electric models that also have petrol engines.

In 2020, only 0.5 per cent of the total government vehicle fleet were electric. Last year, the US government spent $4.2 billion on vehicle costs including $730 million for fuel, reports Reuters.