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Why reducing carbon emissions from cars, trucks and ships will be so hard

A growing number of cities, states and countries aim to to avert catastrophic levels of .

Ideas about how to get this done as soon as possible, including those Democratic lawmakers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have sketched out in the framework. But most energy experts see two basic steps as essential.

First, stop relying on fossil fuels to generate most electricity. Second, the whole world should – sooner rather than later – use to power transportation, agriculture and the heating and cooling of homes and businesses. The logical goal should be to get as many consumers to buy zero-emission vehicles as quickly as possible, right?

Maybe not. Our research on and the of automotive transportation leads us to expect that the transition to electric cars, trucks and ships will be dramatically harder that it sounds.

Tailpipe emissions

The roughly cars, SUVs and pickup trucks on U.S. roads today account for . The 11.5 million big trucks that move freight around generate another 23% and aircraft are responsible for 9% of those greenhouse gas emissions.

One reason why it will be hard if not impossible to convert all U.S. transportation to electric models within a decade or two is simple. Vehicles of all kinds are .

We've determined that the average American car, truck and SUV remains in use for with many logging or more.

When we researched how fast the , we found that even if every U.S. vehicle sold were electric starting today, it would take until 2040 for 90% of vehicles in use to be electric.

U.S. sales of electric drive vehicles have grown steadily since the all-electric launched in 2010. In 2018, Americans bought , and 2,300 , which like EVs produce no tailpipe emissions. Yet even following a big spike in sales in 2018 when Tesla's mass-market Model 3 was launched, EVs still only account for less than 2% of new vehicle sales.

The reality is most Americans buying new passenger vehicles today are .

EV improvements

, and have all made EVs much more affordable and functional.

Owning EVs, however, remains inconvenient. There are to make these vehicles viable for everyone and declines significantly in .

Also, with of the vehicles on the nation's roads being electric, EVs don't yet strike most Americans as mainstream. What's more, are getting more fuel-efficient, and gas prices are at , diminishing the financial appeal of EV ownership.

Government incentives

The federal government has been giving EV buyers a since 2010 that encourages more drivers to plug in. But the policy was designed to be phased out: Once a manufacturer sells 200,000 EVs, this incentive is phased out for their customers over the following 12 months. GM and Tesla, the two companies that have done the most to sell EVs in the U.S., will lose access to this incentive first unless becomes law.

Smaller tax credits are available for . However well-intentioned, this bias may be unhelpful because Americans who buy new vehicles have largely demonstrated they just aren't ready to make the leap to going fully electric yet.

States are also providing incentives. follow the that requires automakers to sell increasing numbers of EVs. The rest of the country follows the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, which instead require automakers to reduce the average emissions from the new vehicles they sell.

Seriously trying to reduce the carbon footprint of American transportation would require much more predictable policies sending a to American drivers that their next car should be environmentally friendly. A carbon tax, in our view, would work better than complicated fuel-economy regulations. But even if one could be , it might not suffice.

Ultimately, the switch from fossil-fueled to electric vehicles is a classic chicken-and-egg problem. Most drivers won't let go of their gas tanks until they are confident that finding a place to quickly charge their automotive batteries will be as easy as finding a gas station is today. But no one will spend the money building all that charging infrastructure until there's a bigger market.

The government can help solve this problem by subsidizing the chickens or the eggs or both. But before that happens, there would need to be more consensus on what the future carbon-free technology will look like. Battery-powered EVs are currently ahead of the pack, but many advocates of still trust that their technology of choice will take off.

Pragmatic solutions

One strategy we think could help is actively encouraging drivers to buy . These vehicles can go up to 50 miles or more , further than the .

Yet they still have a gasoline engine to overcome any range anxiety that drivers may experience brought about by the lack of recharging infrastructure they may encounter on long trips.

Getting drivers to buy more plug-in hybrids would also help to bring about a complete transition to purely electric mobility by continuing to bring down the cost of key components such as batteries, and building demand for charging stations from coast to coast.

Finally, we believe that strong new government incentives would be required to eliminate emissions from . The trucking industry is taking steps in that direction, such as and to make 18-wheelers powered by hydrogen fuel cells. But progress is slow.