Menafn.com: The US state of California is aiming to have at least one million electric cars on the road by the year 2023.
The state has passed several laws to subsidize the price of electric vehicles to make them more affordable to poorer residents.
The goal is to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide from cars that run on petrol, which scientists say contributes to global warming. California's governor, Jerry Brown, is addressing a heads of state summit on climate change this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
"We are carrying on because we know in California that carbon pollution kills, it undermines our environment, and long-term, it's an economic loser," Brown said in a video speech before his UN appearance.
"We face an existential challenge with the changes in our climate," he said. "The time to act is now, the place to look is California. We're not finished, but we sure are setting the pace. "California already has the most electric cars on the road of any US state, an estimated 40% of all American electric vehicles. More than 100,000 cars that plug into electric power points were sold in California in the last four years, according to the Plug-In Electric Vehicle Collaborative.
The first fully-electric car was invented as long ago as 1859 in France and became popular in Europe and the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
But the discovery and mass production of petroleum led to the dominance petrol-burning cars. Concerns about global warming have led to a resurgence of electric cars and hybrid electric-petrol vehicles in recent years, though there are only 500,000 electric cars in the world as of June this year and 99.72% of American cars still run only on petrol and is not an immediate threat to the petroleum industry.
