California BansMore like California will lose tax revenue by banning gas vehicles and having the end user complete the transaction in another state and then import it and register the vehicle in California. California is only banning the sale, not the ownership of gas vehicles. They're betting that the EV adoption will get far enough along that by the 2030's they can quietly repeal the ban as unnecessarily restrictive or unaccountable by 2035, or just outright forego the tax revenue on them as a 15 years ahead of time virtue signal about how they're ushering in the age of electric vehicles. It's politicking and it's non-sense. Absent an outright federal ban on the sale of gas vehicles you will be able to buy a gas vehicle, provided the manufacturers make them.
IncentivesAnd no, the incentives are not a financial mandate. If the incentives were a financial mandate the manufacturers would have made more efforts towards manufacturing EVs before they came with restrictions. Prior to the IRA the credit was $7,500, had no manufacturing requirements and no income limits other than a minimum tax liability of $7,500 with no carryover (i.e. far more permissive than the current implementation). Even Tesla will be losing half of the EV credit on the RWD Model 3 in 2024. The only manufacturers that made any significant sales prior to the IRA other than Tesla were Nissan (Leaf, pure commuter car) and GM (Bolt).
PHEV and GasThe IRA also provides the same credit, with easier to meet standards (because the battery is so much smaller), for PHEV vehicles. All they have to have is manufacturing in NA, a battery of at least 7 kWh, and the same proportion of battery materials made from a country that the U.S. has preferred trading partnerships with. If anything gas hybrids are advantaged over EVs, rather than the opposite.
Gas, in some form, will survive for a long time and even the fuel efficiency standards aren't going to kill them. EVs substantially exceed the fuel efficiency standards, PHEVs exceed the fuel efficiency standards, and gas vehicles do not, but it is a fleet wide standard and companies that do not meet the standard are capable of buying credits from companies who exceed them.
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