Those looking to buy a new gasoline-powered car in New Jersey may only have a few more years to do so if Gov. Phil Murphy gets his way. The governor says he wants only new electric vehicles sold in the state beginning in 2035.

The Murphy administration is moving forward with the proposal following the lead of states like California.

“I think it’s important to acknowledge that the climate crisis is here. It’s existential. We’re already seeing it happening,” says Allison McLeod, of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters.

McLeod says she fully backs the governor’s proposal that was announced in February.

Murphy said that it would start with 2027 models. He said 35% of those new cars sold in the Garden State would have to be electric and mandated that the percentage for sales would increase every year.

“A lot of this is about consumer choice and incentives and continuing to incentivize making it affordable for folks to purchase an electric vehicle,” McLeod says. “It increases the supply for consumers, but it isn’t a mandate on consumers.”

The Coalition of Automotive Retailers – an interest group representing car dealerships in New Jersey – is against the plan. It’s not because they have an objection to electric vehicles, but because they say it will drive prices up, and that could cause consumers to make different choices.

“Cars are just much better built today than they were in the past. They last longer,” says the coalition’s president Jim Appleton. “People are going to hold onto those cars even longer.”

Appleton says Murphy’s proposal “will make a new car virtually unaffordable for working- and middle-class families in New Jersey.”

“Restricting the number of vehicles that can be sent into the state, with an increasingly high percentage of those vehicles that have to be electric vehicles, will ensure that high car prices become the norm, not the exception,” Appleton says.

Murphy’s office says it’s fast-tracking the rulemaking process and wants the regulation on the books by the end of this year.

A 60-day public comment period on the rule will likely start in late August.