The United States Senate just voted to strike down California’s ability to set its own environmental standards, an ability Congress gave the state over half a century ago when the skies over many of its cities were clogged with acrid smog. In the 60 years since, America’s cars have become way more efficient and pollute a lot less. This is a good thing for everyone, and California’s waiver had a lot to do with it.
Besides a general dislike of any policy from California, the move was a reaction to the state’s aggressive stance towards electrification. While the United States has no EV mandate, California (and the 11 states that follow its guidance) do. Because of the size of these states and the importance of those markets, California’s specific requirement that all new cars and light trucks be zero-emission vehicles by 2035 functioned as a quasi-EV requirement for most automakers.
Automaker groups and aftermarket organizations, like SEMA, have applauded the move:
“SEMA thanks the lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who stood up for Americans’ freedom to determine which vehicles are best for them,” said SEMA President and CEO Mike Spagnola. “We thank those in the nation’s community of automotive enthusiasts and the aftermarket businesses who engaged in the advocacy process, many for the first time, to remind lawmakers that this is the United States of America, not the United States of California. Congress’ vote gives the nation’s automotive marketplace much-needed stability, which will deliver renewed investment and sufficient resources to aid our industry in doing what we do best: innovating the future of automotive technology.
On the other side of the aisle, climate groups are complaining. Here’s Natural Resources Defense Council President Manish Bapna:
“This vote is an unprecedented and reckless attack on states’ legal authority to address the pollution causing asthma, lung disease, and heart conditions. After a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign from Big Oil, Republicans readily jettisoned their long-held view that states can best enact measures that reflect the values and interests of their residents.
Halting these standards makes no sense: They reduce costs for drivers, boost domestic manufacturing, improve air quality, and help address the climate crisis.
If other states don’t like California’s approach, they don’t need to follow it—but federal lawmakers shouldn’t be intervening to block states from providing cleaner air and a healthier environment.”
Currently, only around one quarter of new car sales in California go to EVs, and that number seems to have stalled out. The goal was to hit 35% EV (including some plug-in sales) by 2026. That almost certainly wasn’t going to happen, ban or no ban. While it’s possible that advances in battery technology, changes in market tastes, or more affordable products will result in mass electrification by 2035, I think the more realistic outcome is a mix of hybrids, PHEVs, EREVs, and more electric cars with a small handful of straight-ICE vehicles (mostly trucks).
The election of a Republican Congress and President that largely doesn’t seem to believe climate change is real, and a desire to undo most of the initiatives of the previous administration, means that the otherwise lofty goal was even more unrealistic than when it was last proposed.
China has shown that if you get all levers of society working towards the goal of electrification, it’s possible to quickly transform your national fleet. President Biden, with the Inflation Reduction Act, and similar laws, was attempting to do just that. There were huge incentives for companies to electrify, including a $7,500 tax credit for most new electric cars. There was money for new battery plants and money given to states to put up new electric chargers.
That was the carrot. California was the stick. One can’t really exist without the other.
While not final, the text of this morning’s big tax/budget bill from The White House guts almost every way that Democrats tried to reduce energy consumption and pollution, according to Politico:
House Republicans escalated their effort to gut Democrats’ clean energy tax credits, releasing updated text Wednesday night of their mega-reconciliation bill that would eviscerate former President Joe Biden’s trademark climate law despite resistance from moderates within their own party.
The revised bill expected to receive a floor vote — likely Thursday — contains language pushed by hard-line conservatives speeding up the phaseout of tax credits after they protested the Ways and Means Committee’s draft that was already set to severely restrict the subsidies. The amended language was released after President Donald Trump went to Capitol Hill to warn lawmakers in his party not to vote against the bill.
And here’s Wyoming Senator John Barrasso on the move:
“They were losers going out the door and they said ‘we’re coming after you — the American people — with our leftist dreams,’ ” Barrasso said. “This is a whole new meaning in California of fantasy land…America can’t meet these impossible standards, not next year, not in 10 years, and the American people don’t want to meet those standards.”
I agree that few Americans want to be told they have to drive an electric car, but a majority of Americans are at least open to the idea of owning one. Polling also shows that about two-thirds of Americans consider global warming/climate change a real concern.
Carmakers are going to continue to build more efficient cars because federal-level regulations still exist (even if the Trump Administration is trying to roll them back at the EPA). It’s also what people want. Few motorists desire to pay more for gasoline or have cars that are worse for the environment. While carmakers may be slower to make changes, they’re not going to suddenly swap hybrids for V8s.
The two biggest issues with electrification are cost and the fact that the world relies too much on China for the technology and materials necessary to make batteries. What the combination of the Inflation Reduction Act and California waiver did was pressure various industries to make the changes required to correct those issues, while also providing a lot of incentive to do so.
If there had been a Democratic President and/or Congress and none of these changes had happened, then I think it’s very likely that you’d have seen the money continue to pour in for new projects while the requirements were getting pushed back a little, as this was already happening during the Biden Administration.
While California’s specific goals were probably loftier than reality, in their absence, I’m worried the car industry is going to be slower to change. While the impetus to make cleaner cars will be there, the lack of money from the Feds and requirements from California is likely going to combine to set American automakers back even more on developing electric cars and EREVs, which are the future.
When President Kennedy said America would put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, no one at NASA was sure how to do it. I don’t know how to get to 100% electrification by 2035, and I’ve always been skeptical that we’d get there. At the same time, reducing pollution and preventing climate change is likely an existential requirement (I have a kid with asthma, so it is to me at least).
Trying something hard; in this case, was better than not trying at all.
Range anxiety and the ability to charge at one’s home are the two biggest sticking points for wider EV adoption. Nobody wants to wait half an hour to charge, and they sure don’t want to wait in line for a charger to open up on a road trip.
Consider what we all can agree on;
We need clean air, we need clean water, we need clean food. We need adequate housing, and we need a reasonable expectation that future generations will receive the same.
I can’t see how any human on the planet could oppose these goals.
We are curious proven problem solvers and creators.
Local problems usually need local solutions. Global problems need global solutions.
Imagine we all live in a snow globe, a sealed system, because we do.
Passing the costs from the buyer to the taxpayers is not reducing any costs. If all the incentives couldn’t get more than 25% of buyers to buy EV throwing more tax dollars at everything isn’t the answer.
Supply-side mandates are stupid. Want people to wholesale switch to EVs? Fine, tax the bejesus out of gasoline and ICE cars in general as Europe does. And watch Americans flee to EVs as Europeans are. And/or do as Norway did and give incentives on EVs that made a Model S cheaper to own and run than a VW Golf.
Realistic levels of car taxation also has the added benefits of providing money for alternatives, money for infrastructure, and incentives for people to not only commute to work in 15mpg pickup trucks, but also arrange their lives to drive less, which is an all around benefit to everyone.
But this is ‘Murica, so gas-swilling trucks for everyone! You get an F-OneFiddy, and you get an F-OneFiddy, and he gets an F-OneFiddy, and she gets an F-OneFiddy, and he gets an F-TWOFiddy that can roll coal and is jacked up six feet in the air ’cause he has a small weenie.
Even Europe is rolling back their EV mandates so it was a little unrealistic. Also this isn’t stopping automakers from pushing forward with cleaner vehicles, just a few articles down mentions the Rav4 will be hybrid only going forward, not like Toyota was dropping Hemis in them to begin with but still.
As for the moonshot reference, that was all done at the expense of the government, yes the general population paid for it with taxes but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an extra $10k out of everyone’s pockets. For the mandate to work, that means everyone has to also buy an EV, the cheapest deal right now is the Equinox, or used but they’re not counting used, so ok the Equinox, can be had for about $30k, compared to a Trax which is about $20k. I guess if we really want a depression we can go that way.
This is my issue with the extremism of politics. Yes, we could mandate only electric cars, only solar/wind power, only recyclable materials, and everything goes up 25% in cost causing the middle class to be lower class and upper middle class to scrape by.
Or on the other end we could have no emissions regs, cars getting 8mpg, cheap gas, coal power, everything in plastic containers that at Walmart gets their own individual plastic bag, everybody living the dream with cheap tract housing made with drywall that emits sulfur.
Or we could balance that all out and gradually improve. The problem is we’re on a 4 year cycle and can’t just plan things out for a decade cause the next guy will f it up. /rant.
Useful? No, the only use that the California EV did was give Republicans headlines about how the left wants to ban your gas car, and telling the truth in the process.
As a California gearhead I’ve been conflicted on this.
I’m all about states’ rights but this seemed to be a pretty lofty goal. I also don’t like freedom of choice being taken away.
On the other side, I’ve seen with my own eyes and lungs how much the emissions standards here have greatly improved air quality over the last 40 years or so, and so I generally support the sentiment of tightening standards for the benefit of the greater good.
But the reality is I probably won’t be in the market for a 2035 or later model year car until like 2045, so in the 20 years between now and then I probably won’t care all that much if I have to drive an EV as long as I can keep my other IC cars (and I’ve already chimed in a lot on DT’s post about that earlier today).
I believe the solution to this is for California (and other CARB states) to break away from the USA and join Canada!
California will make for a great 11th Province!!!
I would rather join Mexico. They get the Jimny and GR Yaris there.
You can get a Sentra with a manual transmission up here in Canada!
And you can get used Mercedes A-Class and B-Class vehicles up here.
And you only need to wait 15 years to import JDM vehicles or other vehicles from other markets.
That would be a bit difficult considering the geography
CARB states: California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont,, Virginia, Washington, Washington D.C.
As a life long California resident I can tell you first hand that CARBs work has made a difference. It’s a measurable difference in air quality. Maybe the target was ambitious but that’s what California is, it’s a leader and its goals are ambitious. It’s why the biggest companies are incubated here. I have lived long enough to see LA and the Central Valley in the 1980s to today and it’s so much better. It’s also a measurable difference, Cal Matters has some of the data in their article.
All that will come of this is that Chinese auto makers are going to absolutely destroy US auto makers. The US will be an island with ancient technology.
CARB made a *massive* difference. And California needed it. Even in my lifetime the difference in air quality is noticeable. I first went to LA 30+ years ago and every time you could basically never see the mountains surrounding the city due to the thick smoggy haze. Go there today and you usually can. But California is also a fairly unique environment. Los Angeles in particular is just about the worst possible natural environment for a massive city full of ICE cars. But what was needed there isn’t really needed in Portland, ME, a city that does not sit in a mountain bowl subject to smog-trapping temperature inversions.
Personally, I think CA emissions standards should simply be the standard for the whole country, because why not? There is really no good reason to roll back emissions standards at this point. Really what should happen is they should be harmonized with the rest of the civilized world so there aren’t multiple standards.
States’ rights!! Except the states we don’t like!!
So much this. Hypocrisy IS the Republican way.
So was the EV mandate the excuse the Republicans needed to revoke the CA emissions standards, or could they have done it without that?
Republicans did not revoke all CARB emission standards. They revoked the EPA approval of California’s waiver for Advanced Clean Cars II which was approved in December 2024. Previous waivers stand. California is free to submit new waivers though good luck getting any of them approved.
“SEMA thanks the lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who stood up for Americans’ freedom to determine which vehicles are best for them,”
Translation: Screw any collective action! ‘Mucrans are individuamlz…*
*Yeah, user name checks out.
There is some truth on both sides. I think the biggest issue with CARB is they went rouge and just starting doing things. That coupled with more states going with carb standards and the failure of the EPA advanced standard. There was no mechanism for residents of states that had signed on with carb to protest policies or get waivers. To those people a California agency was dictating their livelihood. There is something very wrong with that. People forget the CARB predates the EPA by 5 years and originally was a coalition of states that had signed on. Virginia was one of the original states and one of the few possibly the only one that stayed the whole time until very recently when CARB went too far. Many in trucking say it’s impossible to do business in California now there are some in agriculture saying similar things. On top of that the EPA is very happy to find and shut down a small business tuning things sometimes for race cars or off road use but when a corporation poisons the water or dumps extremely toxic chemicals all over organic farm land they turn a blind eye and do nothing. I knew people at water and envomental scientists at EPA who didn’t even know about Veolia after they had gone around to a few different water companies and caused unsafe water. Things have been wrong there for a long time.
Are you talking about this?
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/lawsuit-south-bay-international-water-treatment-plant-operators/3679532/
If so that discharge was from Mexico. Maybe that and Veolia being a French company complicated the situation?
That’s just the newest incident. Veolia is somehow allowed to run free and leave a path of destruction. They were responsible for flint and the Jackson water issues. Countless others you don’t hear much about too. Basically they go in fire the scientist and get rid of the lab then use potash and other cheaper things that don’t work as well. Water becomes not safe and in older systems with lead leaches out essentially because the water is different. On the sewage side they don’t treat it to previous standards and again cheap out of chemicals. Being French probably does complicate things. There is a Spanish company that does alot of big capital road projects in north America that has similar but less deadly record.
> Republicans readily jettisoned their long-held view that states can best enact measures that reflect the values and interests of their residents.
Oh, it wasn’t that long and it wasn’t really held, so much as wielded like a club to justify gridlocking the federal government when it threatened to do something by or for the people. As soon as they proved the point of government not working by, uh, making it not work, they tossed that aside and started ginning up creative new bullshits to justify sending America back to the feudal ages.
Then again, 1/3 of the population not “believing” in climate change – as if it were a Ouija board or a ghost – proves that 1/3 of Americans are pretty goddamn stupid.
What it proves is that America ain’t great and most people are idiots.
No, Congress didn’t just strike down California’s right to set their own emission laws. They voted to revoke a very specific waiver that was just approved by the Biden administration.
More importantly – they did it using the Congressional Review Act – which allows Congress to repeal federal regulations published within a specific time frame with a simple majority vote in the Senate. They did that despite the fact that both the Senate parliamentarian and GAO said it was illegal to use the Congressional Review Act as California’s waiver is not a federal regulation. California has already said they will sue – as will other state that use CARB rules.
This will take years and now automakers will have to decided whether to continue with their current plans to meet the CARB timeline or to scale back and risking a $5,000 per vehicle fine if California wins in federal court.
This waiver has been in place for years and has been approved multiple times. The language around this from Republicans has been specifically focused on California not having the ability to set its own policy.
The bill that passed the Senate specifically addresses California’s Advanced Clean Car II waiver setting standards from 2026 – 2035 for light duty vehicles and the Omnibus” low-NOx regulation for heavy-duty highway and off-road vehicles and engines. Both were approved by the Biden administration EPA on December 18th, 2024 and published in January 2025.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/06/2024-31128/california-state-motor-vehicle-and-engine-pollution-control-standards-advanced-clean-cars-ii-waiver
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/06/2024-31125/california-state-motor-vehicle-and-engine-and-nonroad-engine-pollution-control-standards-the-omnibus
I think we’re saying the same thing, but your level of detail and specificity is appreciated.
No, I don’t think we are saying the same thing if you are saying that California can no longer set their own emission rules and have to use EPA rules.
This the text of what passed the Senate today. They address 2 very specific waivers:
https://d1dth6e84htgma.cloudfront.net/Omnibus_N_Ox_CRA_Obernolte_f5225d8789.pdf
https://d1dth6e84htgma.cloudfront.net/ACC_2_CRA_Joyce_3c47d01625.pdf
I’ve done the calculations in previous posts here so I’ll spare everyone the details, but every consumer grade vehicle in the US could be an EV overnight and global emissions would drop 1% or less.
There was never any justification to handicap our freedom of choice and industry with these mandates. EVs will succeed or fail on their own terms as they always should have.
EVs are about more than global CO2 emissions. More importantly they are key to reducing local smog forming pollution in US cities.
Why don’t we just encourage people to stop driving in cities? Personally I already avoid it as much as possible, unfortunately there’s a giant unavoidable one between my house and the airport.
This was tried by New York with Congestion Pricing, which this administration is also trying to kill.
Which is also, by all appearances, working fine.
Which also means they’ll be trying to kill it harder.
You can either drive an F350 on a 120 month loan at 13% APR to work or you can get FUCKED!
That would be great as driving in cities is soul sucking anyways. However, that would require the USA investing in public transit – and we simply do not seem to want to do that. Every time I travel and experience good public transit I wonder why the average person in the USA hates the idea so much.
I would love to take a train or bus to work everyday and leave driving / riding to the weekends. Technically I could do that as Portland, OR has the best public transit of any US city I’ve lived in. Unfortunately it would add an hour to my current one way commute of 40 minutes even though I live and work 1 mile from a metro station. I’d love to take the train to the airport – it goes there but again 2 hours vs 35 minutes driving makes it a no-go.
This. I have to commute right through the heart of DC and it sucks mondo ass. It’s taken a lot of the joy out of driving for me and my next car is absolutely going to be electrified in some capacity. While I don’t like the styling I will say the new RAV4 with the GR Sport package is kind of compelling for our needs on paper…
That being said, I can’t take public transit to work…and I live in a city that has very well laid out transit. Driving to work takes me 30-60 minutes depending on the day and traffic and uses less than a gallon of gas round trip.
Taking transit to my job would take 90 minutes or more, involve busses and trains, and cost me 10 bucks-ish. It would also involve having to walk through some pretty dicey areas…and everything to be running on time, which happens never. Realistically there’d probably be up to 30 minutes of variation in how long it would take.
I can’t rely on that, especially considering I’m in upper management and rolling in at varying times every day would be a very bad look that would get me in hot water quickly. Getting to work on time is a simple thing that goes a long way and is mostly in your control.
It sucks! I’d much rather not drive, and my car gets mid teens gas mileage during rush hour with me hyper miling it as best as I can. I’m literally sitting in traffic getting progressively more irritable and harming the environment while I’m at it. But unfortunately it’s far and away my best option.
I commute in a 2017 Bolt – which is about perfect for the task.
I used to love commuting on my motorcycles but sitting in gridlock in the rain is no fun. I might as well be sipping coffee and listening to a podcast as we inch along.
Global emissions dropping by 1% would be an incredible achievement, but I think local emissions are more of an issue in California. This is the difference between Euro 3-7 and Tier 2, Bin 5.
Is the belief really that this mandate is needed for smog? Or if it didn’t exist the previous 60 years of emissions laws would roll back?
Hasn’t smog improved by something like 95% already?
I’m skeptical that the benefits of this smog-wise are worth the cost.
California’s geography is unique and local emissions make a big difference. Emissions in the LA basin can’t get over the mountains, so having less is always better. Same for the central valley: emissions can’t get over the Sierras.
While the emissions laws have helped, we still regularly have “spare the air” days where air quality can be dangerous. In the early 70s, you couldn’t see the surrounding mountains most days. You can see them now, but there are still days where you can’t even though there’s no cloud cover.
I think that the way to make decisions most effectively is not to look at what we’ve accomplished but what we have left to accomplish.
May I assume you are not a resident nor have spent time in California? The combination of constant onshore winds and mountain ranges means emissions stay right where they’re generated, not blown out to see like the eastern seaboard or midwest.
I hope that’s helpful.
I have visited LA and understand the geography involved.
I will not pretend to be an expert on the current situation vs the past.
I will say that a statewide ban, which when matched by many other states amounts to a near nationwide ban (unless automakers are going to invest in a completely parallel set of vehicles) is an insane overreaction to one city or metro area with unfavorable geography.
If Los Angeles the city or LA and Orange counties decided to ban combustion engine operations within their limits, that would bother me, but not as much as restricting what I can buy thousands of miles away because of their outsize influence on automakers.
“Freedom of choice” is such a bogus concept. You’ve already lost the freedom to choose to haul more than 26,000 lbs without a CDL or drive your M1 Abrams to Target. And maybe you’re real worked up about that. The rest of us understand there are societal externalities, positive and negative, associated with personal decisions and they need to be regulated for society to function.
Agreed. I’m not sure why “freedom of choice” is such an evergreen canard. Why doesn’t freedom of choice ever extend to things like freedom to choose breathable air, or freedom to drink unleaded water, or freedom to opt out of driving because you have infrastructure, freedom not to have coal rolled on me because I’m on a bicycle, freedom not stress about people strapping on guns to buy gas at 7 in the morning?
Why doesn’t freedom of choice ever come into the equation for anything except the notion of individual maximalism, irrespective on how that takes away from a healthy society?
Because the people screaming about freedom of choice loudest are usually screaming about privilege.
If everyone was willing to help other people and could be trusted to use their freedom to do the right thing then we wouldn’t even need regulations. Unfortunately the vast majority of Americans would rather use it to loudly say fuck you motherfucker and consume everything they can get their hands on until their dying breath…then act absolutely dumbfounded when their actions have dire consequences.
It’s simple really…if people didn’t suck we could live in a libertarian utopia where we don’t need any laws or government. Unfortunately a lot of people can’t be bothered to care about anyone but themself.
Never have disagreed with this, but the way to address externalities is through incentives, like taxes and penalties, not outright bans before a technology is ready for prime time.
Make gas $10/gallon and invest all the proceeds into carbon capture if the political will is there for it, but let people make their own choices.
I truly genuinely wish we lived in a society where that would work. Question: do you think consumers should be given the choice between buying an ICE car with a cat or one that is, say, $300 cheaper (I’ll leave it to one of our beautiful nerds to say what the real savings would be)? The ways things are going with this administration, we might actually have that “freedom of choice” a year from now. I’d say that’s a bad thing.
An EV is a major infringement on people’s lifestyles; we have basically never tried banning something so fundamental to normal life before.
A catalytic converter might be annoying or sap power but doesn’t change how someone needs to live. Its cost benefit calculation is an order of magnitude different than an EV.
Just to put some perspective here – note that the EV laws in California did not remove ICE vehicles from the road. You can continue to drive them after 2035, so if folks don’t want to drive an EV or it doesn’t work for them, they can continue to buy, sell and operate ICE vehicles.
Does that temper your “ban” comment a little? The only thing being banned would be new ICE vehicles after 2035, a full ten years from now.
I don’t buy used, so the first time one of my vehicles had a crash or catastrophic repair needed, it’s a very real ban to me.
I also don’t believe for a second that left to their own devices CA would continue to allow legacy ICEs to operate indefinitely.
The details of the actual regulation are important and often overlooked.
Personally I’m not a fan of Advanced Clean Cars II but I have read it.
Tax vehicles based on engine size. Europe used to have a VAT that was dramatically higher for with engines larger than 2000cc’s. There are all sorts of ways to incentivize and penalize people for driving an excessive vehicle. Make them pay for it – except that isn’t popular either.
Nonsense, constraints drive innovation.
I’d argue constraints drive innovation even more. Government constraints are how we have cars with good catalytic converters that no longer clog at the drop of the hat and cars that easily get 40 MPG. I’m not convinced those would have happened without mandates.
Did the oil and gas industry succeed on its own terms? There are sure a lot of dead Americans soldiers around the world who would disagree. How much gas and oil land was given to wildcatters for their claims? How much was stolen from Native American tribes?
That those industries have had time to accumulate massive amounts of infrastructure and funding does not mean they succeeded on their “own terms”, it only means that thanks to previous government support, there are now wealthy people with a vested interests in keeping the energy status quo.
For the long term health of our county and its citizens, the goverment often has to take sides. We know for a fact that CO2 emissions are problem. Doing nothing because it doesn’t solve the problem outright is just lazy, selfish, short term thinking.
As someone who experienced LA in the 1980s and today, its made a massive difference. You say they should succeed or fail on their own like the government does not pick winners all the time. Through various regulations the government has ensured that ICE cars are winners and required to exist in most of the US.