The Ford-backed lobby group known as the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AAI) has long supported President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back what he calls an EV mandate set to take effect in several U.S. states in the coming years, all of which originated in California. After Maryland Governor Wes Moore opted to delay that state’s EV mandate back in April, AAI issued a statement praising that decision, and now, it has done precisely the same thing after Vermont Governor Phil Scott decided to follow suit.
“Governor Scott did the right thing by standing up for Vermont’s drivers and protecting vehicle choice with his order delaying the state’s unachievable gas vehicle ban,” said John Bozzella, president and CEO Alliance for Automotive Innovation. “Governors in Connecticut, Minnesota and Maine – that were part of an earlier California EV sales requirement but declined to join the ACC II program – and recently governors in Virginia and Maryland opted out of these wildly unachievable EV mandates too. Why? They understand what is happening in their states. Not enough customers and insufficient charging for these unachievable EV sales requirements.”
“Vermont wasn’t ready for these EV mandates. The Senate should follow the House and reverse EPA’s permission to California and other states to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Other ACC II governors facing these challenges should stand up for vehicle choice and pull their states from the gas vehicle bans too.”
As Bozzella mentions here, AAI also recently sent a letter to Congress asking it to repeal the waiver granted to California by the EPA allowing it to set its own emissions rules independent of the federal government, which would impact 11 other states that have adopted those same rules. It claims that those mandates would mean that automakers will be “forced to substantially reduce the number of overall vehicles for sale to inflate their proportion of electric vehicles sales.”
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