The auto industry initially supported the fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards the Obama administration finalized in 2012. The standards were set through 2025, and a federal review in 2016 reported that industry was technologically on track to meet them. It also projected fuel savings and public health benefits for the public. But when President Trump took office, the auto industry asked the administration to revisit the issue.
The recent workshop wasn’t the first time Nichols had pointed words for the auto industry. At a public meeting in 2017, she asked automakers: “What were you thinking when you threw yourselves upon the mercy of the Trump administration to try to solve your problems?”
It’s not even the first time she’s talked about a ban.
Perhaps that’s why when the auto industry heard Nichols’ latest message, it didn’t appear to worry. Gloria Bergquist, vice president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said if the state banned the sale of traditional gas-powered vehicles, the industry would wind up selling more electrified ones.
“We’d move them from dealer’s lots and get them into people’s garages. So that’s good — good for automakers,” said Bergquist, who added the automakers she represents have a stake in selling the electrified models they’ve invested in.
The concern would be in areas where automakers don’t yet have enough options — like work vehicles, for instance. “There are very few electrified pickups that could do the work that [farmers] need to do,” Bergquist said.
Is a Ban Feasible?
No matter the action — bans, status quo or a continued battle with the Trump administration — California can expect to spend time in court to protect its air. But Bergquist declined to speculate whether the auto industry would fight a gas-powered car ban in court.
“We haven’t focused on it, just because we think it might have been some hyperbole,” she said.
The threat might not be real now, but it’s not an empty one. Nichols said they could do it, if it came to that.
“A requirement for 100% of all sales to be zero emissions vehicles means that no internal combustion engines would be able to be sold after a certain date,” she said.
The agency, she clarifies, isn’t proposing to do this right now. But, she said, “It’s something we would have to consider.”
Still, Meredith Hankins, Shapiro fellow in Environmental Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, warns it won’t be easy to go through the EPA to make that kind of change.
“It may be sort of dead on arrival under this current administration,” Hankins said. And going around the EPA is “an untested legal question.”
While other legal experts agree the air board probably could find a way to ban combustion engines, the question is whether it should.
“That would be a very blunt, last-resort approach,” Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis and a member of the air board, said in an email.
Sperling said he thinks a better strategy would be a legislative one called “feebates,” which use fees to discourage dirty car use, and rebates to encourage people to drive cleaner vehicles.