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.
I remember acid rain, but am too young to remember leaded fuel (or, maybe, that’s part of the joke that we all don’t recall it?).
But would like to I thank the coordinated governments across party lines, state/province lines, and multiple countries, that got together to take action to severely reduce acid rain.
Acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer gave me an unrealistic expectation in the willingness of the leaders of the world to address climate concerns.
It’s might be easy to make skeptical comments on the ozone layer, but the immense visible damage done by acid rain during the 80’s/90’s was hard to ignore – including dead lakes, and dissolving concrete.
…not to mention bubbling & flaking clearcoat.
From the perspective of the commercial side of the industry this is a huge win. The few electric trucks that are available are 3 to 4 times more expensive, and they aren’t available it large enough quantities from OEMs to satisfy the percentages the CARB states demanded. Couple that with not enough range, and a complete lack of publicly available charging infrastructure (here in NJ there isn’t a single one!), and this was dead in the water. The bureaucrats at the state houses and unelected activists that make up CARB simply don’t understand that these standards are unachievable for commercial vehicles. We have a long way to go
The good news for them is that the new set of cleaner diesel engines from Cummins, who is by far the largest engine manufacturer, are already too far along production for them to roll back to the previous engine
I agree the mandate was never entirely realistic, and most likely the timeframe would have been pushed back. It does feel helpful though, has no doubt pushed technology/adoption along, and was within the state’s rights. However, I feel like there are other options if the waiver disappears…
If Ohio makes me pay an extra $100/yr to register my (hybrid) Land Cruiser, and an extra $200 to register my wife’s i4, what is stopping California from charging an extra $10,000/yr to register pure ICE cars? Perhaps that cost could only apply to cars after a certain model year, to not punish those who can’t afford a new EV. Or maybe the registration fee is based on a percentage of personal income (like nordic countries do with speeding tickets) so that pure ICE cars don’t become a status symbol toy off the wealthy. Hybrid, PHEV, EREVs and such could also see higher registration costs than pure EVs, proportionate to the mix they are hoping to achieve.
The other option is a sharp increase on gasoline taxes. If gas is $15/gallon most people will choose an EV, or at least something extremely fuel efficient. Or switch to public transportation. Again though, this punishes the working poor the most, and makes pure ICE cars a flex for the rich. It would also be rather annoying for anyone visiting from out of state.
An increase in the cost of gasoline and/or decrease in the cost of electricity is the ONLY method that was ever going to work, and no one has ever seriously considered it because an extra $80/month on gas in the average person’s budget will lose the average swing state politician an election.
I’d argue that all you really need to do is make electricity cheap. $.05/kWhr will make electric options very desirable for every purpose, not just transportation.
That’s been my argument for the past few years. I’d take it even further and make Electricity completely gratis. It’s (almost) already that with everything else in our lives that use electricity. We don’t hardly concern ourselves with the energy cost required to charge our electronics or heat a pot of water on the stove. Imagine that sort of mentality with our cars. I reckon that would be a huge incentive for a lot of people to consider an EV.
And also, a world in which Electricity production is our number one concern is a pretty damn good world if you ask me. There’s so many different ways to increase our production. Whereas, with Oil, we’re beholden to just one substance that has wide-ranging geo-political supply and demand consequences.
There’s a few orders of magnitude difference between the amount of electricity you need for heat, AC, and transportation and the amount you need for everything else in your life, but the cost has to make it to the decision maker, for the same reason that making it cheap will work for promoting electrification. Separating decision-making and bill-paying responsibilities is how we’ve ended up with runaway costs in higher ed, health care, executive compensation, military technology… You get the idea.
What’s so backward is that personal light duty transport fuel is oil’s “killer app” and logically would the last sector we electrify. It represents only 6% of greenhouse gasses and offers no net cost savings without heavy subsides. There are huge sections of the economy (including most non-personal transportation) that stand to be made MORE cost efficient with electrification, but only if we can keep electricity costs flat or drive them down, and the lower those costs get, the sooner personal transportation will follow the leader.
Instead, I pay more for fewer kW-hrs every year.
This used to worry me, but with EV sales being all time high in the parts of the world, that has the required infrastrucuture, it will simply leave the US even further behind.
Best of luck
The US is currently in a state where you warn people that they might shoot themselves in their foot. Next they DO shoot themselves in their foot and then they blame -the others- for the fact that the healthcare is so expensive. Or something. It never is -their- own fault. “I’ll sue you for telling the truth!”.
EV sales are at an all time high everywhere because the bar for past sales is low, and EV tech development is a good thing that we’re going to have less of for a long time now, but the only parts of the world with anything resembling mainstream adoption are those with the necessary mandates and subsidies.
I don’t think I would call that falling behind. To extend the analogy to absurdity, the US has fallen FAR behind North Korea in construction and operation of fake cities with fake businesses staffed by actors to create the illusion of economic prosperity.
All time high as in 83% and 95% of all new cars sold in Denmark and Norway. (not hybrids, but pure BEV).
I get the unwillingness, to switch to electric cars, in countries with a less developed electric infrastructure, but at the same time stating that once the infrastructure is in place, it is an easy decision to make.
I am not claiming that the US is behind in tech related to BEV, but behind in the supporting infrastructure all the way to the fuse box in many american homes.
Who needs clean air? We want to roll coal and f00k that South African guy with his electric puzzy cars.
/sarcasm
One Nation, One Standard. End CARB exemption to set emissions standards for motor vehicles.
All about states’ rights until states actually want rights to do something good instead of own slaves huh?
Yeah these people are all about “sTatEs RigHtS!!1!” until one state wants to do something they don’t like.
Yup, mandates don’t suddenly spawn what was mandated into existence.
I consider myself to be a BEV convert, I doubt I’ll buy another ICE powered vehicle again unless it is to convert it to electric power, yet I admit most BEVs made today are not competitive, even in things that are completely unrelated to the electric drivetrain.
I was able to find all of 1 BEV that worked for my use case that had enough features I do like (manual door handles, manual seats, mechanical parking brake, etc.) to offset the things I don’t like (electric windows, electric mirrors, electric rear hatch, electric charging port door, meh windshield defroster, etc.) and really the reason that took me off the fence for getting my 2025 Nissan Leaf S was I could get a NISMO LSD for it (made by Quaife for NISMO).
Not every BEV has to be technophilic, if Jeep would have produced their mass production ready original Wrangler Magneto concept I would have bought one. Even if the range was 30 miles I would have bought one, but instead of making it they spent several hundreds of thousands of dollars on making completely custom Wrangler Magnetos that had no hope of ever being put into production
If my Leaf dies an early death in the next couple of years I’m replacing it with a Polaris Ranger XP Kinetic electric UTV as I can get it licensed here and it’s a lot more capable than the Leaf, albeit for $50,000. 2025 is the Last Model Year for this generation of Leaf, and the next gen looks to be yet again another Tesla Model Y knockoff.
What about the upcoming Slate truck? That one looks as “analogic” as EVs can get. It even comes with crank windows.
Already have a preorder for one.
If it was in production several months ago I would have bought it as it would have been almost perfect for my current use case (except for the lack of a limited slip differential and it being RWD only currently).
That being said approximately 2 years from now I’ll probably be living in an Airstream Basecamp Xe with some BEV as a tow rig (preferably a Telo, but possibly a F-150 Lightning), and the Slate can only tow 1000lbs.
In that case I’ll probably get the Slate for my mother to replace her rusty 4th gen Mazda B series pickup.
With his requirements, I reckon he’s in the … 0.01% of the Population demanding these items. And yet, somehow, an OEM listened and are (supposedly) delivering the Slate exactly how he likes it: empty. lol
“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.”’
As long as one of the big levers is the 1,161 Chinese coal plants.
The love of Communist China never stops at The Autopian.
Yeah China’s probably not the best example, I’d have gone with Norway, use surplus money from selling oil to electrify, most of their power is from hydro, tax the heck out of gas cars as a way to incentivize people.
China is a great example. It’s an authoritarian repressive country that has nonetheless managed to reduce its emissions year-over-year (https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-just-put-chinas-co2-emissions-into-reverse-for-first-time/)
Problems are solvable given the will to solve them.
Man…if we only had oil….
Right? I mean we’re bigger than Norway by a lot, so we’d have to be like the biggest producer of oil in the world or something, oh well dare to dream.
More people ; more plants.
They also have 2.5 times more solar power than the US. Should we list that as a bad or a good thing in this conversation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
Feel free to roll coal, but do understand it is that pollution which is going to give your (grand)kids all kinds of respiratory diseases eventually.
Fast forward to say 2035 and China might still have 1000 (coal) power plants but likely 50% or more of their cars, trucks and buses will be fully electric, keeping their cities cleaner than in the US. And the energy independence resulting from using electricity instead of oil/gas/fossil fuels in general will lower costs for them as well.
By creating more and more solar, wind, hydro, even tidal and (thorium based) nuclear.
It’s going to be a brutal decade for the US -if- we keep thinking like it’s 1980.
US currently gets 20% of its Electricity from Nuclear power plants. China gets 5%, and you’re right, the vast majority of the rest is from Coal. But China wants to get that Nuclear number up to 20% to match the US’s percentage. So what are they doing about it? They’re currently building 28 Nuclear plants. The US is currently building 1.
(Also, compared to France: China currently has 55 Nuclear plants, France has 56. France gets 60% of its energy from Electricity, where, again, China only gets 5%. Gives you an idea of the energy needs of those two countries)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WKQsr9v2C0
I think EVs in 2035 will be appealing enough and the barriers to adoption low enough that consumer sentiment will shift to EVs for almost all daily-driving purposes.
Consider where the EV market in the US was 10 years ago to get an idea of how much can change between now and 2035. The only realistic main-car EV in 2015 America was a ~260mi Tesla Model S with a $70k+ MSRP ($96k in 2025 USD). Today, we have many options from multiple brands with much more than 200 miles of range that cost less than half of the 2015 Model S. The price of batteries is expected to continue to drop as technology improves and supply chains are built out.
Charging times also continue to drop and more charging infrastructure is being built. A 2015 Model S 10-80% charge took ~40min; today it is ~25min for a Model 3 with the same range. Not to mention the thousands more EV chargers that are available today than in 2015. I feel safe saying that range anxiety concerns will become a problem of the past in the next 10 years.
EVs in the future will be cheaper, quieter, more reliable, and no less convenient (more convenient for homeowners, in fact) than gas-powered cars. I see nothing about a 4-cyl turbo 4 CVT (even a hybrid one) to recommend it over an EV in 2035.
Lastly, keep in mind that the policy banned only *new* gas car sales after 2035 *in CA*. Used gasoline-powered vehicles and new vehicles purchased in other states could still be purchased after 2035.
Considering the above, I don’t think that a 2035 new gas-powered sales ban is as crazy as it might seem at first blush. Given the myriad societal benefits (lower noise pollution, smog pollution, and lifetime CO2 emissions), as a Californian I think the policy is laudable and I would directly benefit from it. It is a shame that federal government ideologues feel differently.
Unless battery progress grinds to a halt on all fronts somehow, I expect ICE cars to be uncompetitive across a lot of segments by 2035. Not HD trucks or semis, but passenger cars, most SUVs, probably a lot of local box/straight trucks, etc. EVs are already not far off price parity.
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.
So came here to say this. The idea that most people can’t charge their vehicles at home due to no outside power access or affordability of the connection leaves a big gap in access. I think the extreme of electric or not is the problem a Plug in hybrid is a good middle all purpose car but it just needs to be less techy and more normal experience.
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.
Half the country truly despises the idea of those goals even being mentioned.
I think, and hope, you are grossly overestimating. Sure, the implications that we must be better stewards of our biosphere and require changes to the way we utilize resources is off putting to those currently profiting from abusing them. Some will resist change, worrying that it won’t benefit them, but if you ask them if they like clean air, water, food, and want that for their grand-kids too, that should be something we all agree to.
Personally, I only drive 5k miles a year, and it makes no sense for me to upgrade my well maintained, under 70k. mi., 3rd owner, 2010 MB that gets 27mpg.hw. Consumerism run amuck is a big part of the problem. It is far better to keep a (relatively) clean running, modern car going, than scrapping, and buying new. I did switch mowers, trimmers, and chainsaws to battery power years ago.
We really need to envision the positive future for our kin, and stop dwelling on dystopian views.
I am just reflecting the reality of how and what is currently, factually evident. Fantasizing one way or the other isn’t helpful.
Just because some of us protest something being done by the government doesn’t mean we’re protesting that thing being done at all. We can agree on goals while strongly disagreeing on methodology.
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.
So toll roads all around and a pollution tax on everything to remove the negative subsidy that allows general harm for personal gain. Rural areas would be ghost towns immediately since they are the ones most dependent on subsidies.
Exurbs and outer suburbs would actually be the ones hardest hit. In rural areas people mostly either live in the tiny town and only drive a mile or two or live far enough out that they plan a weekly trip instead of daily.
Nope. Just completely wrong on multiple levels.
Rural households, on average, have an annual vehicle miles traveled (VMT) of approximately 24,465 miles, which is about 50% higher than that of urban households. This increased mileage is attributed to longer distances to services, employment, and limited access to public transportation. It would be hard for you to be more wrong.
The issue can also be viewed as exponential. Every product or service in rural areas needs to travel further, which would result in substantially higher costs. In turn, it pushes some of the stores and service providers out of business and forces the remaining population to drive even further for basic items.
Rural areas are 100% dependent on massive subsidies from urban and suburban areas. Without them, rural areas would be completely depopulated. That is before even mentioning the fact that their primary industry, agriculture, is also completely dependent on welfare and protetionism. Rural communities have zero ability to sustain themselves.
Interesting. That would seem to contradict the results here that found suburban emissions were even higher than rural: https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332
Note that contrary to the straw man you gave such a thorough beating to, at no point did my post say urban areas were worse. Just that suburban areas were even worse than rural.
There is no contradiction because the article you are referencing provides no information that would lead to your conclusion. Your statement is just a massive, unsupported leap based on nothing.
The original point is about funding, not carbon footprint, and a study in Austria about carbon emissions is about as applicable to the topic as your favorite kind of candy.
Rural areas don’t pay the cost of their transportation. It is subsidized through petroleum industry subsidies (both direct and indirect) and tax dollars for roads, which come from urban and suburban residents. Especially given the fact that roads in rural areas are mostly state and federally funded, while urban and suburban areas have a much higher percentage of streets funded by their local government and taxes.
Suburban numbers are harder to find than those in urban or rural areas because the term “suburban” has a fuzzy definition, so the default is urban vs rural. But here, since you can’t be bothered to put in any effort, I’ll do it for you.
Rural households ≈ 28,238 miles
Suburban households ≈ 21,000 miles
Source
A recent BTS analysis (using 2017 NHTS data) likewise confirms that daily VMT is significantly higher for rural than urban households (suburban households fall in between).
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.
This is the way. Making people pay the actual cost of polluting is the best incentive.
Up until recently you only had to pay a “road tax” for ICE and I think hybrid vehicles, electric cars were exempt. Now, although less, BEV vehicles need to pay too, so this particular perk doesn’t carry the weight it once did.
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.
Eh, I got my 2025 Nissan Leaf S for $21,500 Brand New.
Just a few comments:
Banning ICE vehicles is not extremism.It is what governments are there to do.
Wear your seatbelt, stop beating your wife and kids and no, you cannot smoke here.
Regarding the ‘gradually improve‘. I think we tried that for a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time.
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.
In plenty of European cities you cannot drive your old car because it’s polluting too much. Mostly older Diesels, but the only people who complain are the drivers of very old pollution diesels that cry ‘freedom’ while they could also NOT drive a very old polluting Diesel.
It only makes sense, especially if you walk or bike on the streets which happens a lot in Europe because -reasons-.
If Europe cities said they were going to ban ICE inside city limits or on time of use I would beleive and support it.
If an entire state as varied as California with a completely unreliable electrical grid said they are going to do the same in just 10 years I would call them liars. It was never realistic and everyone knew it.
If they had instead focused on realistic goals or more electrified options they might have less pollution today without all the alienation of regular people.
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.
Or Mexico, Canada and California could become a new country. A good name could be “New MeCaCa”
The Jimny would be excellent as an EV. Not for long journeys, but for what it is built for. A little workhorse.
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.
Hey… if Alaska can be part of the USA, then all those states can become Provinces of Canada…
It’s ok. We have enough Maple Syrup for everybody.
Only CO and NM don’t create a border with Canada proper. I think it’s fine, create a NH and NM/CO set of enclaves/exclaves. https://kortx.io/wp-content/uploads/carb-blog-post.png
Ohhhh CAN-A-DA…….
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.
While it has made a difference, the real difference was made during COVID when noone was driving.
I went to LA several times during COVID, and they were the only times I’ve seen LA with clear blue skies.
Call me old fashioned, but translucent SMOG isn’t appealing to me, just like how a shit sandwich with less shit isn’t suddenly appetizing because it has less turd filling, it’s still a shit sandwich.
Ambition with awful follow-through is not praiseworthy.
So if you can opt to pay less taxes then you still will say “Nahhh, I want to pay ZERO taxes, so I will keep paying the old amount”. Makes sense.
In regards to your analogy:
It’s more like you’re paying Zero taxes and a place’s tourism board is advertising that you pay a ton more taxes to live in their city for a worse experience than where they came from.
That certainly wouldn’t convince me to move there.
“The US will be an island with ancient technology.”
Did you write this sentence 20 years ago?
The correct sentence today is more something like:
“Has made the US an island with ancient technology”
Yes it happened that fast, pretty strange considering that the comapny that made this happen is in the US.
States’ rights!! Except the states we don’t like!!
So much this. Hypocrisy IS the Republican way.
Vote Republican so you can pollute the shit out of your state!
We no need no stinking clean air!
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.
They didn’t revoke the CARB OHV ban on letting 2022+ race bikes get off-road stickers. I’m onboard with CARB for the most part but that law makes no damn sense at all.
“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.
What’s the issue with Jackson? The only thing I was able to find was Jackson not paying Veolia in a timely manner:
https://www.wlbt.com/2023/04/20/jackson-wastewater-plant-operator-not-paid-least-four-months/
It is strange but they were there. Its always the same with them. The guy brought into fix their mess is trying to get them out of waste water now because they made a mess there too. They were apparently kicked out of France for doing this so decided to do it in the US. https://www.wlbt.com/2025/05/08/city-attorney-henifin-immediately-cease-efforts-replace-savanna-plant-manager/
That link isn’t much of a smoking gun. Its a city official trying to dump Veolia for a supposedly cheaper competitor with somewhat vauge accusations that Veolia isn’t doing a good job. It could also be an unrealistic low ball bid to get the contract then renegotiate a higher price later.
He is the court appointed head to clean up the mess left. https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-08/2023.8.11%20Jackson%20Sewer%20Order%20Comment%20Period%20Fact%20Sheet%20FINAL.pdf Pittsburgh was one of the other ones they cought it fairly early. These people put together some info. https://corporateaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CA_JacksonsWaterCrisis_report_FINAL.pdf
Those links help a bit, thanks. The second one certainly paints Veolia as a corporate miscreant but it is a political flyer designed to demonize the competition while selling the sizzle of its own service.
The Pittsburg story sounds damming. Jackson OTOH sounds like like a CF all the way around. Veolia took over for Siemens who themselves failed. Veolia is accused of mismanagement but between the failure of Siemens and the story I found of very late payments I would guess there is plenty of mismanagement blame on the city as well and they are trying very hard to shift that off themselves.
Did Veolia have all the resources and authority to do what was necessary to prevent those spills before they happened? Were they waiting tor approval that never came? Or did they just sit on their hands, collecting what few checks came while Jackson drowned in sewage?
What that corporate thing doesn’t mention is veolia was the envomental consultant during the Siemens time. Siemens really messed up the meters and billing. I would think it’s more of a one off. Because they deploy tons of meters for gaswater and electricity worldwide. They also are all over with water purification with no to little issue. They make tons of r/o units. Apparently Mueller made the meters from what I understand they were captured by PE a while a go and their quality has gone down at least on the gas side. It’s always the same same with veolia. The whistle blower in the flint case was really a veolia whistleblower. They always switch to cheaper chemicals to save money. They have a history of coming for a contract like testing or environmental services with the goal of taking over from the municipality while making a big mess. Henfin maybe calling Veolia bluff he really knows his stuff and has a proven track record he has cleaned up a lot of messes for the navy and has gotten some water systems on the eastern short of Virginia as well as the city of Hampton fixed up. He has only been there a year and half though.
> 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
Why did the EPA (under Biden on Jan 6th of this year) ever need to approve the CARB rules if they were never meant to be Federal regulations?
Or put another way, if the Senate overturns the EPA’s earlier approval of the CARB rules, what, in the end, does that ultimately mean for California?
I don’t see how it why it would be considered illegal to overturn an act by a Federal agency, isn’t that what the Congressional Review Act is meant to do? The question I think is, rather, (again, put a 3rd different way) what purpose does the EPA approving the CARB rules accomplish?
EPA has to approve CARB waivers because the Clean Air Act requires it. However, the CAA requires EPA to approve the waiver if the specific requirements of the CAA are met – the key criteria is that the CARB rule is as strict or stricter than EPA rules. EPA, under Democratic and Republican administrations have never not approved a CARB waiver.
There is no provision in the Clean Air Act to remove a waiver once it is approved. Trump tried that in his first term, it was tied up in court his entire term and then Biden dropped the case once elected.
Is a CARB waiver a Federal Regulation? The Senate Parliamentarian and GOA says no as it was not written by an federal agency and does not apply to all states. EPA is simply rubber stamping a state regulation and saying that it meets the requirements of the Clean Air Act. The court will decide if they are right on not.
If the case gets that far. The Congressional Review Act has specific time limits – both for the look back period and for the number of days after a new administration takes control. From what I’ve read at the National Law Review that clock reached zero on May 8th. (Congress started action on 55 items to be overturned with the Congressional Review Act but didn’t come close to getting all of them over the goal line in the short time limit)
More CRA trivial. It was passed in 1996, was used 1 time by Bush in 2001, 16 times by Trump in 1997, and 3 times in 2021 by Biden.
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!
This is the “freedom of choice” V10omous wants
As funny as this response is, I actually know our friend V10emous has good intentions. I think he made a comment that went over like a lead balloon here and I think he lives a very cushy existence that kind of clouds his judgment at times…but he’s a good dude and I hope we don’t chase him away for one unpopular comment.
No one is chasing me away and I really don’t give two shits if people find this comment or any of my comments unpopular.
My opinion on mandates has, I hope, been clear and consistent throughout my time commenting here and elsewhere. My judgment is not clouded; believe it or not it’s possible to disagree about contentious political topics in good faith. I could just as easily say your judgment is clouded living in a 90+% blue city as you do. We all bring our own perspectives and lived experiences to debates.
I’m on record both here and in other comment sections advocating for higher carbon/gas taxes, removal of fossil fuel subsidies, building out of abundant clean electricity, etc. I am willing to pay the cost of my own externalities, I’m not willing to have my choice of vehicles constrained artificially while jet-setters emit more carbon in a day than my cars do in a decade, while China builds coal plants day and night, while industry pollutes without limits, and so on. I reject entirely the notion that individual car drivers bear the burden of solving climate change, and that EV mandates are our path to salvation.
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.
Serious question, in what place have you travelled where public transportation compared to or beat the travel time of a personal car?
I agree that the time added in your situation is difficult to reckon with but that’s simply the way of public transportation, is it not? It doesn’t matter how much traffic you can beat on a dedicated light rail system if you have to stop for five minutes every three miles.
Osaka, Japan. I used to work for a company headquartered there and it is hands down faster to get around by train than car. I made the mistake of taking a taxi only once. Trains don’t stop for 5 minutes at a stop – more like 45 seconds to 1 minute. They also have local trains that stop at every stop and express trains that skip a bunch of stops to get to the other side of town faster.
My last trip to London we only used public transport. Didn’t try cabs as they were expensive and at least according to google maps slower than transit. Same on our trips to Edinburgh. Munich, Krakow, and Budapest. Public transit got us around fine.
City to city I’ve done London to Edinburgh and Frankfurt to Munich. Edinburgh it was maybe 30 minutes faster to drive – on a 7 hour trip. Frankfurt to Munich is 45 minutes faster by train. (I have driven that in the past)
Stop. I can only get so erect
The trains in Germany are very often quicker than the Autobahns. Nevermind the clusterfuck of parking in a city with a road plan that was made in the 1300s when you get to your destination.
At home in California the ACE train is a godsend for those of us who live in the central valley but work in the Bay Area. That commute will suck your soul dry in a week.
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.
California’s mandate did not threaten to restrict the selection of vehicles available in the Midwest. Capitalism did that. If the various vehicle manufacturers did not think that they could sell a profitable quantity of vehicle XYZ in non-California emissions states, then of course they would not produce such a vehicle. But no governmental entity was PROHIBITING the manufacture and sale of such a vehicle in the Midwest.
Thank you for the reasoned comment. I lived in the LA basin in the ’60s and ’70s and people who didn’t regularly experience the air quality of that era would be astounded at how much it has changed through the implementation and enforcement of vehicle (and industrial) emission standards, even with the huge increase in the number of motor vehicles since then.
A personal example: I lived in a house facing a street that Google says is about 800 feet long. In the ’60s and ’70s, there were probably 100 afternoons per year when I literally couldn’t stand in front of my house and see the end of the street. 500 foot visibility on a normal sunny day. Ozone levels 300% higher than current “Spare the Air” days in Southern California. In school we’d sit indoors during PE because it was actually dangerous to be physically active outside.
In the early ’70s, my Dad was one of CARB’s early research scientists (one of many who were PhDs in chemistry, math, or physics). He occasionally took verbal abuse from people who assumed that the physics of air pollution was some kind of political ploy. Ironically, the early CARB researchers included a lot of “car guys.” One of my Dad’s coworkers owned the Jaguar C-Type that won Le Mans in 1953, and Dad’s BMW was so unusual, even in Southern California, that people would stop us at gas stations and say “Who makes this car?”
What I find funny, yet sad, is that the same arguments against those 1960s-70s California environmental standards are being used now:
“Car manufacturers can’t possibly meet these standards in such aggressive time frames”
“Pollution controls will add so much to the cost of new cars that average citizens won’t be able to afford them”
“Unleaded gas will add 10¢ per gallon. Why should commuters have to bear that unreasonable burden?”
“Cleaning up car emissions won’t make any difference. What about factories? What about ships? What about trees?”
“If people want clean air, they can buy cleaner cars. But don’t make the rest of us suffer for your air” (air pollution, of course, comes to a full stop when it blows to the edge of a county).
“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 way all these bans work is they “grandfather” existing owners’ property into being allowed, naturally said property eventually needs replacement, but the owners can’t replace it legally, eventually the percentage of the population that owns said grandfathered property is so small that when the Government does ban it all that there is left to due is sue the Government, which rarely works out, and when it does it costs you an obscene amount of money.
Also if said property is dependent on specific infrastructure (like gas for gasoline powered cars) the less people that utilize said infrastructure the more expensive it gets due to a reduction in economies of scale. California’s unique blend of gas and the regulations regarding it are what has made California’s gas so damn expensive relative to other states’ gas.
and like DT’s J10 article today addresses, “grandfathering” all but turns into an effective ban when given enough time.
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.
I haven’t read it in some time, but I recall the PHEV sales being capped at ~20% of total sales or something. It was in effect a mandate.
The $5K is new to me, I do not remember reading that previously.
“(b) For purposes of calculating the penalty for failure to meet zero-emission vehicle credit requirements pursuant to Sections 1962, 1962.1, and 1962.2 of Title 13 of the California Code of Regulations or any subsequent or related regulation, the civil penalty shall not exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000) per zero-emission vehicle credit.”
I don’t know about this, bans happen all the time its just not labeled as such. I mean, a minimum speed limit on highways are pretty much a ban isn’t it? Roll back a hundred years when the interstates are being paved. Weren’t horse carriages banned from using them from a safety perspective?
Anyway, I don’t think Cali’s rule is a ban as much as a gradual phasing out of older tech. You can still drive an ICE vehicle, it’s going to be harder and more expensive. And I generally agree with that from a perspective of progress. It reminds me of guys who were clutching on to their typewriters instead of moving on to PCs. EVs will get better and in that time you still can have your ICE cars, it’ll just be a bit harder.
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.
Funny you say that; https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2011/increasing-gas-prices-despite-subsidies/77911
The unsubsidized cost of gasoline in 2011 was calculated by an economist to be around $12 a gallon. Fossil fuel companies are some of the biggest welfare queens in the country, yet strangely, Republicans (and most democrats to be fair) never go after them.
Remove the subsidies!
You say this like some kind of gotcha, but I agree with you.
I do not care one bit if politicians want to take on the oil industry. I think it’s politically foolish, but I’d much rather see expensive gas than an EV mandate.
You hold this opinion because you and I both know that with current state of affairs, it’s too politically unpopular as it affects the common man too greatly. Ironically, the EV mandate is what is necessary to change the state of affairs such that it is possible to go after the fossil fuel subsidies.
But don’t do that silly thing where you pretend “this is the natural state of the market” when it is entirely contrived.
The solution to a mistake is not a greater mistake.
I never said this is the natural state of the market, but I did argue that’s what should be the case going forward.
You can believe me or not.
California already taxes a large amount on gas. The problem is Electricity is nearly as much, if not more, expensive! Rather than ban the sale of ICEs, I think California should heavily subsidize Electricity, at least for the purposes of transportation, and continue to tax Gas heavily.
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.
No we would not have cleaner cars without mandates. I work for an automaker and we very closely match our average fleet emissions to the regulation. When the EPA or CARB says we need to make our vehicles cleaner we do – but not before and we don’t exceed the requirement unless it is to build credits to burn later.
(Emission regulation now phase in over years and are based on fleet averages so engine x might exceed requirements while engine y doesn’t meet them)
Customers will not voluntarily pay extra for cleaner cars.
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.