The growing concern about global warming, and about the harmful effect that nitrogen oxide emissions have on public health, is making more and more countries set targets to increase sales of electric and hybrid vehicles. Some go further, calling for eliminating diesel and gasoline cars entirely in favor of cleaner cars. The governments of France and the United Kingdom recently announced that they aim to ban new fossil fuel-burning cars from 2040.

On July 6, French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot announced that the government plans to ban the sale of oil-burning cars by 2040 – in addition to other measures closer to home in time, such as the closure of coal-fired power plants by 2022, to comply with the Paris Agreement against climate change –. The plan to achieve this, according to Le Monde, would also include offering money to households that meet certain requirements to replace pre-1997 gasoline cars and pre-2001 diesel cars.

A few weeks later it was the UK government who joined the goal of banning fossil-burning cars by 2040, citing air pollution as the biggest public health risk, costing 2,000 a year. £7 billion on productivity.

Previously, Norway, the country that is considered a leader in this matter, set itself the goal that 100% of passenger cars and vans sold by 2025 be electric or hybrid. Despite being an oil-producing country, already in 2016 40% of the vehicles sold in the Scandinavian country were electric and hybrid. On the other hand, the government of India, a country where some of the most polluted cities in the world are located, proposes that all cars be electric by 2030.

At least others 10 countries have set official sales targets for electric vehicles: Germany, Austria, China, Denmark, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Korea and Spain. Currently, according to IHS markit, only 3% of the vehicles sold in the world are electric or hybrid. However, according to a Bloomberg report , within 20 years electric vehicles will outsell internal combustion vehicles, due to the fall in the price of batteries. This prediction improves and speeds up your previous forecasts.