Back in March 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reinstated the right for California to set its own emissions standards, not too terribly long after former (and future) President Donald Trump took action to strip it beforehand. Ford previously supported such a move, and an appeals court upheld that decision earlier this year. One of the actions California is targeting is the right to ban the sale of pure ICE models by 2035, and now, the Biden Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has grated it that right following a decision by the Supreme Court that allows the state to set its own emissions standards.
According to the EPA, it has granted two requests from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for waivers to implement and enforce its Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) regulations for light-duty vehicles, and its “Omnibus” low-NOx regulation for heavy-duty highway and off-road vehicles and engines, a move that has been expected for some time, “California has longstanding authority to request waivers from EPA to protect its residents from dangerous air pollution coming from mobile sources like cars and trucks,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “Today’s actions follow through on EPA’s commitment to partner with states to reduce emissions and act on the threat of climate change.”
California’s proposed rules – which dictate an 80 percent all-electric and 20 percent plug-in hybrid sales mix by 2035 – have been adopted by a dozen other states, and would begin being phased in starting in 2026. The rules call for a reduction in pollution from light-duty vehicles of 25 percent by 2037, and mandate that 35 percent of all new vehicles sold in the state must be electric or PHEV by 2026, a number that would rise to 68 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2035. By comparison’s sake, the EPA’s own rules call for a 35 percent EV sales mix by 2032.
Automakers have varying opinions on this particular topic, with Ford supporting the right of California to set its own emissions standards for some time now – even if it has already resulted in certain models being pulled from that market. However, others – including Toyota – have warned that the mandates are simply “impossible” to meet, and recently warned that they will lead to fewer choices for customers in not only that state, but the dozen others that are set to adopt the same rules.
Comments
Authoritarian garbage. Why do they hate freedom so much?
Biden’s just a bitter old shell of a man. He wants to take as many people down with him as possible. This virtue signalling mandate has about a 33 day shelf life.
Trump is a old fool.
Biden is a brain dead one.
California roads will be empty and quite if this goes through. People will leave, business will leave, state will fail. They don’t have enough electricity to run what they have now… More demand will not make it better.
Funny how the needle keeps moving out in lala land.