California last week resolved to push full speed ahead with its greenhouse-gas emissions standards and zero-emission-vehicle (ZEV) program for 2022 through 2025. Some see this as strong pushback against the leadership of the federal EPA, which is signaling a more lax approach to climate-change-related regulation, including a pending review of federal fuel-economy requirements.
If federal mileage requirements are relaxed, there will be less pressure on automakers to build advanced-technology vehicles such as electric cars, plug-in hybrids, and fuel-cell vehicles. However, California?s own Advanced Clean Cars program continues, to varying degrees, to be effective at mandating these in the Golden State?and soon, more aggressively in nine other states that use the California emission standards. Twelve states have adopted California?s emissions standard; together, their total population of 113 million?35 percent of the U.S. population?accounts for 30 percent of U.S. new-vehicle sales. And nine of those 12 states?Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont?are partners in something called the ZEV mandate. Pennsylvania and Washington use California rules but haven?t embraced the ZEV mandate.
In a series of formal hearings last Friday, attended by officials of several of those other states and followed by a vote of the California Air Resources Board vote, regulators reaffirmed a plan to ramp-up requirements for ZEVs, with ...