The Nissan Leaf electric vehicle is seen during the 2017 North American International Auto Show in … [+]
It’s tough to predict the future, but sometimes it’s pretty clear that Cause A will lead to Effect B. That’s why Plug In America, a leading electric-vehicle advocacy group in the U.S., said this week that attempts by the Trump Administration to roll back national fuel efficiency standards will dramatically cut EV sales.
To recap, under the Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published the new Clean Car Standards rule – called the SAFE Vehicles Rule Part One: One National Standard – that would take effect November 26, 2019. The EPA said this is all part of Trump’s efforts to, “address and correct the current fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards.”
Those standards, of course, were the result of difficult discussions the federal government, California, the automakers and other stakeholders during the Obama Administration. While the end result wasn’t perfect, everyone at least agreed to raising the national MPG average to 54.5 miles per gallon for new vehicles by 2025. Instead, the Trump Administration said last year it wanted to lower the standards to 37 mpg in 2020 and take away California’s right to set its own, higher standards. The California part has national implications, since nine other states follow California’s rules when it comes to cleaner vehicles. This includes the state’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate.
Which brings us back to Plug In America. In an article published this week, the group says that, “There’s no doubt the single biggest policy driver for the EV market is the ZEV mandate, which requires that an increasing percentage of new cars sold in the state be zero-emission. This forces the automakers to actually make EVs or to buy credits from other automakers who are making these clean cars.”
Without the ZEV mandate and strong Obama-era MPG rules, the share of purely zero-emission vehicles sold in 2035 could drop by up to eight percent across the U.S., resulting in up to 14 million fewer EVs on the road, according to a report PIA published from the Rhodium group. The report continues:
The rollbacks could also boost GHGs by more than a gigaton from 2020 to 2035. This will impact California’s ability to meet air quality and climate targets and the US’s ability to stay within striking distance of GHG reductions needed to limit global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
PIA is not a neutral bystander (it is part of the National Coalition for Advanced Transportation, which is part of the lawsuit against the federal government for its clean vehicle roll back plans), but the cause and effect it is warning about here seem pretty straightforward. The legal battle continues, and even if the federal government is able to take California’s rights away, the state might still be able to negotiate directly with automakers (something that is already happening).
