A special report prepared for Israel’s Transport Ministry and Environmental Protection Ministry offers a far more cautious picture of the country’s vehicle future than official promises of an electric-car shift. The study, due to be distributed in the coming days to local authorities, was developed as a learning tool by the OECD’s International Transport Forum and models how different regulations could change urban mobility, including private cars, shared vehicles and scooters.
The report lays out three scenarios, baseline, realistic and ambitious. In the baseline case, gasoline cars still make up 75% of Israel’s fleet in 2030 and remain at that level in 2035. Under the realistic scenario, gasoline falls to 65% in 2030 and 55% in 2035. In the ambitious case, gasoline cars account for 52% in 2030 and only 20% in 2035.
For hybrids, the baseline projects 7% in 2030 and 13% in 2035. The realistic scenario raises that to 8% and 22%, while the ambitious case sees 11% in 2030 and 27% in 2035. On electric vehicles, the baseline and realistic scenarios are identical, with EVs at 22% in 2030 and 40% in 2035, meaning the model does not expect additional regulatory support to expand their share. Only the ambitious scenario changes that, lifting EVs to 30% in 2030 and 50% in 2035.
The report also projects the shared-car market at about 4,000 vehicles over the next decade in the baseline case. The realistic scenario sees 5,500 shared cars in 2030 and 6,600 in 2035, while the ambitious scenario reaches 8,000 in 2030 and 11,100 in 2035.
On congestion pricing, the realistic scenario says only the Gush Dan area would face a charge. In 2030, the fee would be 10 shekels to enter Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Rishon LeZion, rising to 15 shekels in Tel Aviv and other central cities in 2035. In the ambitious scenario, those rates stay unchanged between 2030 and 2035. The report also says clean-air zones, now limited to diesel vehicles in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, would remain stagnant in the baseline and realistic scenarios, but could expand sharply in the ambitious one, covering 9% of Israeli city areas in 2030 and 15% in 2035. In central Tel Aviv, such zones could reach 10% in 2030 and 30% in 2035, while central Jerusalem could become entirely free of pollutant emissions for diesel vehicles.
