The Electric Vehicle Fight Turns to California

California loves its electric cars. More than 2.1 million battery-powered vehicles are driving around the state, and last fall, over a quarter of new cars sold there were electric. Lawmakers are trying to ensure the future holds even more. In December, California received special permission from the US government to enact regulations that would require automakers to sell only zero-emission new vehicles in the state by 2035.

The permission, in the form of a federal “waiver,” should extend well beyond California’s borders. Seventeen other states have said they would follow California’s lead on stricter emissions standards, with 11 targeting the 2035 gas car phase-out. Together, these states account for more than 40 percent of US new light-duty vehicle registrations.

Or maybe not. Last week, in a wide-ranging executive order targeting green energy policies, the Trump administration said it would seek to “terminate” state emissions waivers “that function to limit sales of gasoline-powered automobiles.” The order, at this point more political messaging document than anything with the force of law, puts California’s clean car goals in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. Whoever wins this fight could determine the future of electric vehicles not just in the US, but—given the number of vehicles both sold and made in the country—globally, too.

The Trump administration has not yet officially moved to revoke the waiver, but California says it will not back away from its more stringent vehicle emissions standards. “California will continue to defend its longstanding right and obligation to protect the health of its residents,” Liane Randolph, the chair of California’s emissions regulating agency, the Air Resources Board, wrote in a statement.

Old Fight

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because the country has sort of been through this before.

California’s waiver dates back to 1967, when congressional lawmakers decided to create a special California exemption within national air regulations because the state had such a thorny air pollution problem, and because it had been a pioneer in regulation, creating its own vehicle emissions regulations for more than a decade. Since then, California has applied for more than 100 waivers.

In 2019, President Donald Trump announced by tweet that his administration would revoke the California waiver allowing it to set its own auto emissions standards. The move, he said then, would increase auto safety and create “JOBS JOBS JOBS.” But even as the first Trump administration moved to withdraw California’s waiver, state lawmakers struck a deal with four global automakers—Ford, Volkswagen, Honda, and BMW—to preserve some auto emissions standards.

Automakers were willing to come to the table with California six years ago because they feared a market in which they must make two sets of vehicles—one cleaner fleet for the California-and-its-allies market, and another for the rest of the country.

The California market is large enough that even automakers with headquarters far from the US are paying attention to how this shakes out. The state’s aggressive stance towards climate regulation would require automakers lagging on electrification to race to catch up. Toyota, for example, has argued that consumers aren’t ready for battery electrics, and followed a strategy that has seen the automaker churn out more hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Last year, an executive for Toyota Motor North America said the California rules “look impossible.” But keeping those rules in place would require Toyota to invest more in getting electric vehicles on the road.

The Biden administration reissued the waiver in 2022. Last year, it approved a new California program allowing the state to, over the course of a decade, ratchet up the share of zero-emission cars sold in the state. Under the rules, 35 percent of model year 2026 cars must be zero-emission; 68 percent of model year 2030 must hit that goal. The state says the rules will, by 2037, reduce light-duty vehicle emissions by a quarter. Automakers will be able to use plug-in hybrid vehicles, not just all-electric ones, to reach their goals.

This month, the country’s lead auto lobbyist seemed to praise the Trump administration’s new waiver threat. “There’s a mismatch between current EV market dynamics and the emissions and EV sales targets called for in recent regulations—especially in the states that adopted California’s gas-powered vehicle ban and EV sales requirements,” John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, wrote in a statement. He called the California rules “by any measure not achievable.”

Legal Tussle

Because the feds approved this particular waiver before President Joe Biden left office, revoking California’s zero-emission car rules will prove legally tricky for Trump, and cannot be done by fiat. The US Environmental Protection Agency will have to go through a months-long public rulemaking process to nix the waiver. If the federal government goes through with revoking it, experts say, that move will be challenged in court.

Any effort to get rid of California’s 2035 rules “stands on shaky legal footing,” says Julia Stein, the deputy director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA’s School of Law. For one thing, California’s special waiver ability is explicitly written into the landmark Clean Air Act. And the state needs the vehicle emissions rules to achieve its federal ambient air quality standards. Some 10 million people in the San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles areas live where ozone levels are far above federal rules, and suffer from higher than average rates of asthma and heart disease.

“Zero-emission vehicles are a critical part of the plan to protect Californians,” the California Air Resources Board says.