Electric cars

Trump vs. California Round 1: The future of electric cars

The Biden administration’s approval of California’s electric vehicle mandate sets up a protracted fight.

By Alex Nieves and Mike Lee

Donald Trump is resuming his slugfest with California — this time over the future of the car industry — more than a month before he takes office.

The Biden administration on Wednesday approved California’s request for stricter-than-federal vehicle emission standards that will require automakers to sell more electric vehicles, before effectively banning the sale of new gas-powered cars in 2035.

That policy is the centerpiece of California’s climate agenda and — given the state’s size and share of the national car market — has the potential to reshape the trajectory of the American auto industry. It’s also a major point of attack for Trump, congressional Republicans and industry groups, who’ve made it clear they aren’t ready to cede control to California and are prepared to do battle in court to decide the fate of electrification.

“Everybody’s gearing up for a showdown on zero-emission vehicles,” said Bill Magavern, policy director at environmental group Coalition for Clean Air.

Biden’s move gives California more legal cover to push forward with its aggressive embrace of battery technology. It does that by complicating Trump’s plan to undermine the state’s authority to set its own emissions standards under the Clean Air Act.

If the Environmental Protection Agency hadn’t given the approval prior to Trump taking office, his administration could have immediately denied the request. Instead, it now will have to undertake a lengthy administrative process to revoke the waiver that could take years to complete and is destined to end up in court.

California is already preparing for that scenario. Gov. Gavin Newsom called a special legislative session — which started earlier this month — to increase funding for the state attorney general’s office, in preparation for a slew of legal fights over immigration, health care and other policy venues where the state has clashed with Trump.

Electric vehicle policy is the first political fight on the agenda.

Newsom used the announcement to jab Trump, whom he’s clashed with over climate, federal disaster funding, immigration policy and more.

“Naysayers like President-elect Trump would prefer to side with the oil industry over consumers and American automakers, but California will continue fostering new innovations in the market,” he said in a statement Wednesday.

A Trump spokesperson said Wednesday that the president-elect has “a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, including stopping attacks on gas-powered cars.”

“When he takes office, President Trump will support the auto industry, allowing space for both gas-powered cars AND electric vehicles,” said Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s incoming White House press secretary.

The dispute is a holdover from Trump’s previous stint in the White House, when his administration became the first to revoke California’s tailpipe emissions rules for passenger vehicles in 2019. That move drew a lawsuit from California and environmental groups, but a court decision wasn’t reached before Biden’s EPA reinstated the rule, known as Advanced Clean Cars, in 2022.

The Trump administration isn’t alone in the brawl.

Both the oil and the car industries plan to fight the waiver approval. They’re worried not just about the impact on the California market, but on the 11 other states that have adopted an updated clean cars rule, called ACC II.

“These policies will harm consumers — millions of whom don’t even live in California — by taking away their ability to buy new gas cars in their home states and raising vehicle and transportation costs,” Chet Thompson, chief executive of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association, said in a statement.

EVs make up about a fourth of new car sales in California, but the share is as low as 10 percent in New York and other states that follow the regulation, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation said in a Dec. 11 memo.

The auto industry trade group said Wednesday that it expected the waiver to be approved and then revoked under Trump next year. It’s memo argued that most states don’t have the charging infrastructure to follow California’s electric car mandate, and customers aren’t ready to make the switch at the pace proposed.

“We expect President Trump will revoke the waiver in 2025,” said John Bozzella, the group’s president and CEO. “We’ve said the country should have a single, national standard to reduce carbon in transportation, but the question about the general authority of California to establish a vehicle emissions program — and for other states to follow that program — is ultimately something for policymakers and the courts to sort out.”

Some states are waiting until 2027 to begin complying, but it’ll still be a stretch — especially in economically distressed areas where EVs are out of reach for many drivers. In New Mexico, where the poverty rate is roughly 50 percent higher than the national average, EV sales make up about 5 percent of the car market.

While California has a unique power among states to set its own emissions standards for cars, trucks and other vehicles, the state doesn’t have blanket authority to set its own course.

The waiver system originated in 1970, after Congress established the Clean Air Act as the nation’s overarching pollution control policy. California — which had already developed its own pollution regulations in the 1960s and had the worst air quality in the country at the time — was given a carve-out.

While California has made progress in cleaning up the thick smog that once blanketed cities like Los Angeles, the state’s expansive transportation sector and a valley topography that traps pollutants have kept it well out of compliance with federal air quality standards.

California air regulators argue that regions like Southern California — home to nearly 24 million people — can’t reach federal compliance without drastic emissions cuts from sources like cars, trucks, trains and ships. Staying out of compliance could allow EPA to withhold critical federal highway funding, as the Trump administration threatened to do in 2019.

“On the one hand, we’re going to keep you from complying, and on the other hand, we’re going to penalize you for not complying,” said the Coalition for Clean Air’s Magavern. “There is a certain vindictiveness that Trump has expressed towards California leadership, and that vindictiveness may be more important than any subsequent facts.”