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Designing car bans for sustainable transportation

Nature Sustainability volume 2, pages 534–536 (2019)Cite this article

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Car bans could contribute to both climate change and air-quality goals. However, most car bans announced to date lack enforcement mechanisms and are therefore not bans at all. Here, we provide recommendations to design car bans as a more-effective policy tool for sustainability.

Typically, the idea of a car ban is to somehow prohibit vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE), namely those powered by diesel or gasoline1. Such an ICE ban would only allow the sale or use of zero or near-zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) for passenger travel, including battery electric, plug-in hybrid electric and hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles2. A large number of studies indicate that wide-scale ZEV adoption will have to play an important role in achieving long-term greenhouse gas (GHG) targets, while also offering air-pollution benefits3,4.

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Fig. 1: Announced car bans worldwide.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Patrick Plötz, Simon A. Funke & Till Gnann

  2. School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

    Jonn Axsen

Authors
  1. Patrick Plötz
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  2. Jonn Axsen
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  3. Simon A. Funke
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  4. Till Gnann
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Correspondence to Patrick Plötz.

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Plötz, P., Axsen, J., Funke, S.A. et al. Designing car bans for sustainable transportation. Nat Sustain 2, 534–536 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0328-9

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