Oil Industry Launches Ads Targeting California’s Vehicle Rules

April 15, 2025

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by Alex Nieves (Politico Pro Enegywire) The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers unveiled a campaign focused on lawmakers in six states. -- The oil industry launched an advertising campaign Monday aimed at pressuring congressional lawmakers to revoke California’s vehicle emissions rules.

What happened: American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represents oil and gas companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobil, announced an eight-figure ad buy targeting local markets in Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Texas and Washington.

The campaign includes TV spots and digital and print ads specifically targeting a handful of lawmakers, including Democrats the industry is hoping to turn against California's car and truck standards.

“Congresswoman Angie Craig needs to stand up for American consumers and our vehicle freedom,” says a TV ad running in Minnesota targeting the House Democrat. “Tell Angie Craig to overturn the car ban.”

Chet Thompson, president and CEO of AFPM, said in a statement that California’s nation-leading car emissions rule requiring auto manufacturers to increasingly sell higher percentages of EVs, culminating in a 2035 ban on sales of new gas and hybrid cars, is unlawful and will be felt around the country. READ MORE

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Electric trucks face a rough road with Trump (E&E News)

Excerpt from E&E News: His administration has asked Congress to rescind the 2022 climate law’s financial incentives for factories and tax credits for truck buyers, frozen some of that grant money unilaterally and promised to undo regulations that promote electric trucks. Trump has also implemented tariffs that could make electric trucks more expensive.

Still, analysts say electric trucks are likely to continue an uphill grind toward acceptance — just in a slower gear. Truck manufacturing is an international business, curbing the impacts of U.S. policy on the industry, and truck-makers have incentives to move away from diesel power beyond tax credits and pollution limits.

While diesel trucks comprise the overwhelming majority of today’s truck fleet and will be on the road for the foreseeable future, cleaner-running trucks will make up an increasing percentage of sales, said Andrej Divis, an analyst at S&P Global Mobility.

“If you’re looking 20 years down the road, I think we would say the energy transition is still happening,” he said.

And in a perverse twist, the most anticipated new electric model — the one that some think might finally turn the trucking industry toward acceptance — is the Tesla Semi, the brainchild of none other than Trump’s right-hand man, Elon Musk.

Finding customers

The hesitance to embrace heavy-duty electric trucks makes American an outlier among its global economic peers.

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The average U.S. battery-electric truck is 2 ½ times as expensive as a diesel truck, costing almost $429,000 for the 2024 model year compared to under $171,000 for a diesel model, according to data compiled by ICCT.

“The biggest challenge right now is finding enough customers,” said Adam Browning, the policy head of Forum Mobility, which is constructing heavy-duty charging stations near West Coast ports. “And the biggest challenge there is the cost of the trucks.”

In just the last few months, two promising electric-truck-makers have collapsed. Nikola, a maker of electric and hydrogen-powered heavy-duty trucks, went belly-up in February. Lion Electric, which offered a heavy-duty tractor, went bankrupt in December.

Now, Bollinger Motors, a commercial-truck-maker outside Detroit, faces rumors of insolvency.

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At the same time, reports suggest Tesla is struggling to meet its costs and deadlines.

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Trump stomps the brakes

Analysts say EV truck adoption is most threatened by the Trump administration’s efforts to cut financial incentives and water down regulations meant to spur production of zero-emission trucks. The president’s new tariffs don’t help either; they may raise prices for all sorts of vehicles and parts, including large trucks.

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EPA has also asked Congress to roll back California’s Advanced Clean Truck Rule. The rule would phase out the sale of most new diesel-powered trucks by the mid-2030s across California and 10 other states.

That rollback faces an uncertain fate in Congress. The Government Accountability Office said lawmakers can’t legally overturn California’s regulation using the Congressional Review Act, as did the Senate parliamentarian, but Republicans have indicated they might vote on it anyway.

California itself withdrew another regulation that it had submitted for EPA approval, known as the Advanced Clean Fleet rule, shortly before Trump took office. The rule was designed to help create a market for emissions-free trucks by requiring fleet owners to buy them.

The state killed its own regulation because it knew that the Trump administration wouldn’t grant a required waiver. Even before that, California’s govern

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ment had suspended its fleet rule in the face of legal challenges from truckers.

The collapse of the ACF rule caused an immediate downturn in demand for electric trucks from those fleet operators who saw only obligation and no opportunity.

“It’s closed down the reluctant fleets,” said Kocher. “They gleefully abandoned their plans.”

Even the states that have piggybacked on to California’s Advanced Clean Truck rules are having misgivings. Legislatures in at least five states — Maryland, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon and New Jersey — have considered bills that would delay implementing the rules for two years.

Used-truck market

At the federal level, the Republican-controlled Congress is planning to roll back the tax credits for emissions-free trucks that were created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

The law sparked a boom in battery production and truck building across the country, much of it in Republican-led states. More than 20 Republicans in the House have said they oppose eliminating the tax credit, and its fate is unclear.

But the Trump administration is trying to claw back other IRA programs without waiting for Congress — an effort that has sparked numerous legal challenges. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s attempt to cancel $20 billion in climate grants is already affecting the electric truck industry by delaying the market from learning an important number: the price of a used electric truck.

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The tariffs that Trump announced on the auto industry are aimed at passenger cars, but they could hit the truck industry’s supply chain.

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Some big companies, from PepsiCo to Ikea, are deploying electric fleets to ship their goods because they face pressure from their customers to cut pollution.

A sign of the industry’s staying power is that several companies still see opportunity in offering the large — and dauntingly expensive — charging stations required to make electric trucks run.

Building such a station can be a herculean task. A truck-charging site needs to provide prodigious amounts of electricity, which utilities are slow to provide. The site also needs to be close to shipping routes, with enough room for trucks to maneuver.

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Size is not the station’s only unusual feature; it also operates independent of an electric utility. The facility has a 9-megawatt microgrid that runs on natural gas generators and a giant battery bank.

Prologis plans to build six more stations in Southern California, and that may just be the start. READ MORE