It's less populist and more a talking point.
It's the perfect cover.
"We can't stop allowing the rich to destroy the climate because we care so much about poor people."
In '35 it's doubtful ICE will be cheaper than EV anyway (look at price development over last decade...)
Banning ICE will speed up this development.
Climate change will disproportionately affect people who are already vulnerable.
Tax carbon emissions and use the money to provide good affordable alternatives (public transportation) for people who don't afford an EV today.
ICE prices will continue to drop. SSD hard drives (the newer, more efficient and faster technology) prices have plummeted in the last 10 years, however spinning rust prices have also plummeted, making spinning rust the only choice if capacity-per-dollar is your metric.
You also mention climate change, but I don't see how an extra average degree of weather (if that materializes) will be worse than stripping poor people of transportation and condemning them to never having a job (since most lower rung jobs require a car).
Certainly, these poor people will absolutely eviscerate you at the polls if you level them with this massive poor tax.
As for public transportation, the US is incapable of building new rail infrastructure. California's $150,000,000,000 LA-to-SF train is an unmitigated disaster, Chicago's rolling stock is extremely old and falling apart and New York City takes 12 years to build 4 miles of new lines, at a cost that is quadruple what France would spend for identical infrastructure.
You're in a dream world. The same people who claim that a poor people tax helps them also support cash pits known as modern rail infrastructure in the US (it's more like grift and fraud, though).
The US is fundamentally incapable of building public transportation? Ludicrous. What's required is political will.
ICE prices will not drop faster than EV. It's much more mature technology.
If forbidding new ICE cars (in 7+ years) "strips people of transportation" we clearly need som kind of subsidies to alleviate that.
Climate change is a threat. It's not just something people talk about because it's fun. The current estimates predict 3 degrees of warming until the end of the century. That's assuming we stop burning fossile fuels some time this century. The disruption this would cause to agriculture and living conditions around the world are just staggering. If nothing else, consider the costs of 2 meeters sea level rise until 2100...
Preventing climate change is a cost saving measure.
In '35 it's doubtful ICE will be cheaper than EV anyway (look at price development over last decade...) Banning ICE will speed up this development.
Climate change will disproportionately affect people who are already vulnerable.
Tax carbon emissions and use the money to provide good affordable alternatives (public transportation) for people who don't afford an EV today.