Trump Faces Uphill Battle in Eliminating California Regulations – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
While President-elect Donald Trump has once again pledged to block California’s ability to regulate its own vehicle emissions, he faces a legal structure and industry agreements that will make dismantling the standards a challenge, according to an Automotive News report by Molly Boigon.
The presence of a contractual agreement between the state and automakers, including BMW, Ford, Honda, Stellantis, Volkswagen and Volvo, plus the state’s continuing responsibilities under the Clean Air Act to maintain a certain air quality will complicate a Trump administration effort to block California’s green energy push.
“It’s obviously open to some question, but I think that the core structures are actually pretty favorable” to California, said Craig Segall, senior vice president of environmental group Evergreen Action and a former deputy executive officer with the California Air Resources Board.
While California has several options for maintaining its regulatory autonomy, Trump also has several ways of attempting to strip it. The state is bracing for a regulatory battle over environmental protection rights it has claimed since 1968, a sign of just how politicized electric vehicles have become.
“It’s really a period of massive uncertainty for the automakers,” said Robert Fisher, domain principal of electrification at consulting firm SBD Automotive. “They’re looking at billions of dollars worth of investment for clean tech, for sustainability, for low-emission vehicles” and trying to figure out what to do.
