California And 16 Other States Are Suing Trump To Stop Him Destroying Emissions Standards

May 01, 2018

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by Raphael Orlove (Jalopnik) Our emissions standards are probably the biggest booster to automotive performance in the past half century, making our cars not only more eco-friendly but more powerful, too. Trump has been trying to cut it all down, but now California and 16 other states suing to stop him.

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... AP’s Kathleen Ronayne has the full list of states (via The Seattle Times):

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Joining California are Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

If you’re wondering how many states conform to California’s standards, it’s 13, as listed by Green Car Reports, meaning that this is bad enough to piss off even a handful of non-CARB states:

Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. READ MORE

California sues over plan to scrap car emission standards (Seattle Times)

EPA sued by California-led coalition over plans to weaken vehicle emissions standards (CNBC)

California, 16 States, District of Columbia Are Officially Suing EPA for Slashing Fuel Efficiency, Emissions Rules (The News Wheel)

17 U.S. States Sue Trump Administration Over Vehicle Emissions (New York Times/Reuters)

California, 17 other states sue Trump administration to defend Obama-era climate rules for vehicles (The Washington Post)

States Sue The EPA To Protect Obama-Era Fuel Efficiency Standards (National Public Radio)

California Leads 18-State Coalition Suing EPA Over Car Emissions Standards (NGT News)

17 states sue Trump administration over rolling back vehicle emission standards (The Hill)

California and States Representing Over 40 Percent of U.S. Car Market Sue to Defend National Clean Car Rules (California Attorney General) Petition

EPA Can’t Keep Prior Fuel Economy Data in Its Blind Spot: Critics (Bloomberg)

Excerpt from Seattle Times: California officials say the standards are achievable and the EPA’s effort to repeal them is not based on any new research. They argue the plan violates the federal Clean Air Act and didn’t follow the agency’s own regulations.

California has a unique waiver that allows it to set its own tailpipe emissions standards for vehicles, which it has used to combat smog and, more recently, global warming. Thirteen other states and the District of Columbia have adopted the California standards as their own. READ MORE

Excerpt from News Wheel: Those standards, to be clear, would have nominally been to create fleet-wide average fuel economy of 54.5 mpg by 2025, but due to the fact that this is tested in a lab-like environment, it would have ended up in the real world amounting to an average of about 36 mpg.

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New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said that to justify slashing the rules, the “Trump administration conducted a phony study.”

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This comes after news broke in a letter from Senator Tom Carper to Pruitt and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao that, according to a draft proposal that he had obtained, the administration would attempt to freeze fuel efficiency and emissions standards through 2026, leading to an average of 37 mpg by 2026. Carper pointed out that it would result in Americans using 206 billion more gallons of gasoline through 2050 compared to using existing rules.

This also follows rumors that the Trump administration, through Scott Pruitt, would attack California’s right to declare its own emissions-control laws so long as they are more stringent than federal ones, potentially by claiming that a 1975 law would make California’s long-standing set of EPA waivers were illegal.

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By the way, this is probably not what the automakers would have liked to happen, since protracted legal battles over regulations mean uncertainty over the future and could make more fuel-efficient vehicle technology more of a gamble (not to mention a source of anxiety for executives).

Back in March 2017, President Trump told a group of auto workers, “The assault on the American auto industry is over.”

Apparently, that is because the fight above the heads of the auto industry has begun. READ MORE

Excerpt from The Washington Post: Automakers could wind up caught in the middle of a massive legal battle, and they are divided over the Trump administration’s latest actions.

The Auto Alliance, an industry consortium, has said it backs the EPA’s moves, but executives at major automakers have balked at the plans.

“We support increasing clean car standards through 2025 and are not asking for a rollback,” Ford’s executive chairman, Bill Ford, and president and chief executive Jim Hackett, wrote last week. A top executive at Honda has also voiced concerns about where EPA is heading.

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But even as the industry begins to electrify and sales for other types of green cars, like hybrids, have grown, there’s another current. Passenger cars as a whole are losing out to bigger luxury SUVs in sales trends, according to Edmunds, which collects information on automobile markets. READ MORE