Trucking industry accused of ‘undermining’ zero emission vehicle mandate

TJ Martinell
The Center Square Washington

As Congress contemplates repealing California’s ability to impose stricter emission standards than the federal Clean Air Act that is currently also implemented in Washington state, the trucking industry continues to receive criticism for not cooperating with its implementation. Meanwhile the trucking industry continues to reiterate its stance that the regulations are not based on the realities of existing technology.

Under the Advanced Clean Trucks regulation, zero-emission vehicles must make up a certain percentage of sales, depending on which class, and that percentage increases incrementally over time.

However, the latest Electric Vehicle Coordinating Council report blamed “market failure” for the increased price in EV trucks “that may require policy.”

At the council’s Wednesday meeting, Jeremy Hunt with the nonprofit Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management said “truck manufacturers are taking every single  opportunity to undermine the success of the Advanced Clean Trucks regulation by stipulating  for their dealers that you have to sell a zero emission truck before you can fulfill an order  for a diesel truck. So there’s lots of things happening in the market that are questionable.”

However, Washington Trucking Associations President Sheri Call told The Center Square that  trucking companies are “not doing it to undermine it. They’re doing it out of necessity to avoid fines for noncompliance. It’s really the vehicle capability that is undermining the ability of industry to make it happen. There are operational limitations., there are infrastructure limitations.”

She noted that the industry has repeatedly asked for a pause in implementation so “we can have time to have the technology catch up.”

“All we’re trying to do is get a seat at the table, so we’re partners in this,” Call said. “You cannot take people who don’t know anything about the industry and have them setting policy to basically tell the industry how they’re going to operate. Unfortunately, in my world, people are just looking at the Idaho border. That’s (move) all they have to do, then do the same thing they already do here.”

At the EVCC’s meeting, Hunt observed that “the EV investment pipeline for medium and heavy duty zero emission vehicles is not as developed as for light duty vehicles. When we look at the light duty investments, we’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars. When we looked at medium and heavy duty manufacturer investments in electric technologies,  we were talking tens of millions of dollar.”

Nick Nigro with Atlas Public Policy told the EVCC that the EV industry has “a lot of strain put on it right now. When you think about what’s at risk, it’s not just the lives of many everyday people  who are trying to build these cars and build  these batteries … there are clearly those jobs that are at stake for those everyday  people, but it is also our security and our ability to compete globally.”

“I frankly think that it is an existential crisis for the automotive industry more generally  in the United States,” he added. “If we do pull back too harshly from the transition that was well underway in the last several years, we’ll not only lose some of those jobs, but we might lose the  doing a phenomenal job of producing very high quality vehicles at a very affordable price.”

Created in 2022, the EVCC is composed of members from state agencies that develop and submit recommendations to the Legislature on how to achieve EV adoption in both the public and private sector.

This report was first published by The Center Square Washington.