California regulators voted Friday morning to implement a ban on new combustion truck sales after 2036, and mandate all trucks be zero emission vehicles by 2042, significantly tightening the state’s already strict trucking emissions rules.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) finalized the Advanced Clean Fleet rule, which would mandate that 50% of all state and local government vehicle fleet purchases be 50% zero-emissions by 2024, and 100% by 2027, and create a registry for drayage trucks. The rule — which comes one day after the board voted to implement the state’s first-ever rules to limit train emissions — would go even further than recent California rules approved by President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency, which would cut diesel truck sales in half by 2035.
The measure has received pushback from the trucking industry, which expressed concerns about electric vehicle charging infrastructure and widespread deployment, according to The Washington Post. Mike Tunnell, director of environmental affairs at the American Trucking association, told the outlet that industry actors “would rather see the technology be proven and work,” before any action was taken.
“The amount of chaos and dysfunction that is going to be created by this rule will be like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” Chris Shimoda, senior vice president of the California Trucking Association, told San Francisco news outlet KRON4. “The likelihood that it is going to fail pretty spectacularly is very high. It’s very unfortunate”
After crippling our supply chains with the disastrous #AB5, Sacramento wants to go even further, completely banning diesel trucks.
This backwards attack on truckers will only serve to further harm our economy.https://t.co/DQNfO952DT
— Rep. Michelle Steel (@RepSteel) April 27, 2023
Sydney Vergis, the head of CARB’s transportation division, argued to reporters that the regulation “accounts for the vehicles’ suitability for electrification,” the Post reported. Her comments were echoed by Paul Cort, an attorney with environmental law firm Earthjustice, who told the Post that electrification technology was sufficiently “advanced” despite “constraints” to charging infrastructure.
“There are real-world issues that need to be resolved,” Cort told the outlet, “but none of this is rocket science.”
Eight other states, which along with California represent 25% of the national trucking market, are poised to implement similar rules, according to the Post. Following the EPA’s approval of California’s previous rules, several experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that California’s economic size would likely prompt truck electrification nationwide, because it would be uneconomical for truck manufacturers to manufacture two types of trucks for two different markets.
California previously implemented rules that would ban the sale of gas passenger cars in the state by 2035. One week after the rules were implemented in late August, the state warned electric vehicle owners not to charge their cars amid a significant heat wave to prevent the possibility of blackouts.
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