Another state discovers California-style mandates are not workable given the current technologies and infrastructure.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
In the summer of 2024, I reported that the state of Connecticut opted to forgo adopting California-style electric vehicle (EV) mandates. Additionally, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin put the brakes on his state’s EV mandate at the end of the year.
Just last month, Maryland’s governor delayed its sad attempt to be East Coast California via a similar mandate.
Now Vermont Governor Phil Scott issued an executive order halting the enforcement of the state’s electric vehicle (EV) sales mandate, which had required that 35% of all vehicles delivered to Vermont dealerships be zero-emission starting with the 2026 model year.
This pause affects passenger cars and medium—to heavy-duty trucks and continues the trend of progressive states following California into a progressive blackhole of senseless energy policies.
Vermont is one of 11 states including New York, Maryland and Massachusetts that have adopted California’s zero-emission vehicle rules, which seek to end the sale of gasoline-only vehicles by 2035. California’s rules require 35% of light-duty vehicles in the 2026 model year to be zero-emission models.
Scott cited warnings from automakers that they could limit supply of gas-powered vehicles to dealers in the state because of the EV rules.
“It’s clear we don’t have anywhere near enough charging infrastructure and insufficient technological advances in heavy-duty vehicles to meet current goals,” said Scott.
It’s important to note that according to an analysis by Here Technologies and SBD Automotive, Vermont has one of the more favorable EV charging networks in the country, with a +1.3 charger-to-electric-vehicle ratio. That means if the mandate can’t work there, it won’t be working anywhere…and that includes California.
Local automobile dealers, who have to address the realities of customer preferences, are delighted with this news.
Vermont’s auto dealers, meanwhile, welcomed news of the executive order. The California rule doesn’t obligate local dealers to sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles, rather it requires car and truck manufacturers to, starting in model year 2026, ensure that 35% of vehicles shipped to those dealers be zero emissions.
Matt Cota, with the Vermont Vehicle and Automotive Distributors Association, said that demand for those EVs doesn’t yet exist in Vermont (about 14% of new cars registered in Vermont last year were zero emission).
Cota said manufacturers would likely comply with the mandate by sending fewer total vehicles to Vermont dealers. And he said dealers in New Hampshire, which has not adopted the California rule, will be well-positioned to satisfy demand for gas-powered vehicles that are no longer delivered to Vermont.
“In a way, if you don’t create the demand of electric vehicles, all you’re doing with this regulation — you’re not putting more electric vehicles on the road, you’re harming the local businesses that sell vehicles of all types,” Cota said.
It must be noted that the rollback of a federal waiver of the special California rules is poised to occur, which means these governors are simply getting ahead of the likely regulatory changes related to energy policies.
The governor’s decision is a setback for California, whose 2022 Advanced Clean Cars law makes it possible for states to mandate EVs. The 1970 Clean Air Act allows California to obtain a federal waiver to issue vehicle emissions regulations that are stricter than federal emissions standards and for other states like Vermont to adopt those regulations.
In December, the Biden administration issued a waiver green-lighting California’s Advanced Clean Cars rules, which a dozen states have adopted.
The House recently passed a bill to revoke that waiver, but the Senate has yet to take it up. The Trump administration said in February that it would support revoking the waiver.
I predict other states who followed California’s lead are going to rethink their plans. Furthermore, given Gov. Gavin Newsom’s hot, new, centrist rebranding….I foresee him “delaying” the EV mandate for California on the way out the door.
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Ideology, meet Physics!
Democrat stupidity meets Republican reality
Reality wins big time, as it should.
More states will follow, as otherwise no Democrat politician will get re-elected in 2026, and beyond
The wake up of the woke is finally happening, as it should..
We fervently hope!
A question is forming – if “they” do not do it now, did “they” ever really want to do it?
Only partly, wilpost
They’re seeing the consequences, but still not connecting them to the actions.
In MA, no politician that I’m aware of is brave enough to back away from the green new deal and probably don’t need to to get elected or reelected. Sure, there’s probably a few who don’t support the green thing- but they’re quite about it- keeping their heads down. Cowards, all of them.
Rubber, meet the road.
The EV mandate should remain in effect for the state governments, themselves.
If this idea was so good to begin with, they should carry it forward within the state government.
Well, someone’s got to buy all those surplus EVs!
Not for emergency services though. Just for vehicles provided to government “officials” aka the politicians that enact such idiotic policies.
A few years ago (2-3 if memory serves) there was a major snow storm in Virginia that closed a long stretch of I-95 for 26 hours. One has to wonder what the casualty rates would have been if those cars had been EVs.
To get cabin heat in an EV you run off the battery. When the battery hits the minimum capacity threshold (10% but some higher) the battery stops delivering electricity due to recharging reliability issues. However, the battery also powers a heater system to prevent the batteries from freezing. If the battery freezes, it must be replaced. I do not have the data on how long a battery can power the heater before it depletes, but it is doubtful is could for 26 hours. So, given a caravan of EVs what would have resulted is a large number of cold related injuries and potentially deaths along with hundreds of owners having to pay towing and battery replacement expenses. Getting charging stations to cars along a 20 mile – plus stretch of road is not possible.
With a gas car, the heater runs on the battery, which is recharged when the motor is running. The heat pushed into the cabin comes from a large thermal mass called the engine block. What a person does in that kind of scenario is run the engine long enough (10-15 minutes) to warm up the block and charge the lead acid battery, then turn the engine off and stay warm from the thermal mass. This can go on for hour and hours. In addition, cans of gas can be hand carried to rescue drivers who run out of gas. Difficult, of course, but not impossible. The drivers themselves can walk to the tanker truck and, if planned correctly, get a can of gas. Lots of cans needed, but those can be delivered to the tanker trucks.
The point? Vermont is known as a winter wonder land. I have seen traffic snarls in Rhode Island that lasted for hours. Can one envision the disaster of Vermont going all EV?
Someone failed to assess the unintended consequences. Regardless of which side of the CO2 debate one aligns with, one should appreciate the high risk of a place like Vermont going all EV.
Leftists seem to be totally incapable of ever thinking things through properly.
And it’s not as if adequate information about probable effects & consequences about their ideas weren’t available from the get-go.
But that’s where ideology blankets rationality, and everything predictably turns to shit.
I believe you are incorrect, sir.
The heat in an ICE car is not provided by the battery, but instead, it is the waste heat of internal combustion. The explosion in the cylinder that powers the engine produces much waste heat. That waste heat is removed from the engine by circulating water which is dissipated through the radiator into the air and through a system which circulates water on demand to the passenger cabin, where a fan blows the waste heat into the cabin to warm the passengers. The fan runs on battery power. The heat is not produced by the battery. The rest of the heat goes out the tailpipe, along with other byproducts of the combustion process.
There are two purposes in occasionally starting the car when stuck in winter. One is to make the engine produce waste heat that can be blown into the cabin. The other is to recharge the battery so that the engine can be restarted again later.
I wasn’t going to say, but I have 1st hand experience changing the heater core in a large 1980’s ICE car – for that case DonK is correct.
You missed the relevant sentence in my post.
“The heat pushed into the cabin comes from a large thermal mass called the engine block.”
You are correct. I should have used the word fan.
With a gas car, the heater fan runs on the battery, which is recharged when the motor is running.
Yes. It was simplified. I did not see the need to do a full description of how a gasoline powered internal combustion engine work, nor a complex explanation of how cabin heating and cooling were accomplished.
The point the post attempted to make was survivability under those conditions in a gas car compared to an EV.
I think it was a little unclear, Sparta – I got the same impression. Those two sentences seem slightly contradictory.
Either way, the fundamental point you made remains the same. (and has prompted my curiosity as to how my new cars are able to provide heat so quickly)
The controls in the cabin are generally called the heater and the AC (and vent).
Given I am an advocate for language precision, I must admit and apologize for my gross language error.
I remember that snowstorm. I was comfortably not on I-95 at the time and also had a gas powered 4WD 4Runner. Although I don’t recall all of the details, I think the stalled traffic was made much worse because in fact there were EVs on I-95 with dead batteries from the cold.You can bring a gas can to a gasoline vehicle that is out of gas. An EV with a dead battery, not so much.
I was unaware of the composition of the traffic by vehicle types.
I just recall that traffic was stalled for more than a day.
At that time, EVs weren’t as common as they are today, but in the miles of stuck traffic there were several EVs that were stuck because their batteries drained. Maybe I’ll see if I can look up some better info.
Hopefully such data will clarify the warning signals to northern areas going full on EVs. It does not paint a pretty picture.
You do raise an additional point. If an EV is trapped between two depleted EVs, it is as good as dead even if the road opens.
With a gas car, the heater runs on the battery
I haven’t paid much attention with my newer cars, but the older ones I’ve owned got heat from the radiator. You didn’t have hot air until the car had been running a while.
It may have changed though – thinking about my newer cars, they are able to provide heat almost right away.
There was a clarification posted. The heater fan runs on the battery. The sentence after that defined the heat source (aka engine block).
“One has to wonder what the casualty rates would have been if those cars had been EVs.”
Or the snow plows.
If the snow plows were EVs, ambulances, etc. also, they would still be recovering bodies the following spring.
If it turned out that most personal vehicles were EVs, then no company would make the utility vehicles.
I believe we are seeing a shift to not using ERs for emergency response and utilities (except the forklifts, of course) and that is in absence of a snow road closure disaster.
“If the battery freezes, it must be replaced.”
hmmm…. so if an EV is left outside during freezing weather it must be kept charged or the battery dies? Let’s say the temperature was 10 deg F for several days in a row- how long would it take for the battery to freeze and die if not kept charged?
The battery needs sufficient charge to power the battery heating elements.
The time is dependent on a number of factors.
Think back to January, 2014, in Chicago. There may have been a WUWT page on it.
Also:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-vehicles-arent-ready-for-extreme-heat-and-cold-heres-how-to-fix-them/#:~:text=Scientists%20generally%20consider%20lithium%2Dion,Celsius)%2C%20but%20estimates%20vary.
As stated, it depends on a variety of factors, but in general the freezing occurs within hours of battery depletion, not days.
The question is whether the greens should be rescued from their folly, or just let it melt
down to make it obvious they are fools?
As attractive as the 2nd option sounds, if we don’t adopt the 1st one we’ll all suffer…
Unfortunately that drags in the near half of the residents that voted AGAINST the stupidity.
Electric golf carts are pretty good as they don’t have far to go and have a convenient recharging station every night….electric factory forklifts are pretty good as they don’t have far to go and don’t emit carbon monoxide in occupied spaces and they have a convenient recharging station every night. Members of the public are OK with EV’s if they don’t have far to go and have a convenient charging station every night. Then they check on battery life and what new ones cost and what the resale value of their vehicle is. Then they realize EV’s make good golf carts.
From my own experience in industry, you are exactly right that “electric factory forklifts are pretty good.” It can be an ideal use case. In 2011 I was involved in a refrigerated warehouse project where there was a charging rack and a mechanized battery-swapping system for the fleet of battery-powered high-reach forklifts. Those lead-acid batteries were huge.
Been a couple of years since I worked on cold storage..but I think the batteries have mostly gone Li now. You can usually pick up old forklifts with dead batteries including the chargers for about $3500, pretty much the price of scrap cuz of replacement battery cost. There is also an interesting niche market in hydrogen generators by electrolysis for forklift use. Haven’t seen one yet, but am led to believe that the hydrogen is just used as fuel in an ICE replacing the usual propane fuel.
Hydrogen is not an energy SOURCE but an energy SINK.
It has to be “produced,” which will always use more energy than will ever be gotten by burning it.
Ideally each truck needed 3 batteries, one on charge, one on the truck, and one on rest. Resting for 8 hours after an 8 hour charge gave the batteries longer life
Many forklifts run on propane which burns relatively cleanly so little problem with the air quality in a large facility. Those large facilities- big garages, warehouses, etc. often have doors open for vehicles so having an EV forklift wouldn’t be needed to avoid poising people with carbon monoxide.
Fine, but not more subsidies. If someone likes EVs, they can pay the full price themselves.
No more mandates needs to be coupled with no more subsidies.
Hello reality. No need to mandate if the public does something without prompting. CA has the most EVs of any state. High people density, short or within the battery capacity commutes, no weather extremes (for the most part), mostly single family homes for charging, give it the ideal environment for EVs. And CA is dropping the EV mandate. Forcing NetZero, as the world is learning, is a losing proposition. We’ll look back on the last couple of decades and be ashamed of how much money was wasted, environment destroyed, wildlife eliminated, and all for a utopian dream that was just a dream with no substance.
Ashamed should apply to the politicos who fed and gaslit the masses. The masses need to shoulder their own blame for allowing themselves to be gulled.
Mostly agree, but then I start thinking of how our public schools fail to teach critical thinking skills and insert ideological “training” instead. Might have to cut the masses a mote of slack.
Their teachers almost certainly listen to NPR. I listen sometimes when driving if I can’t find decent music. Today I heard people on NPR (Albany, NY) vigorously defending DEI. Made me puke.
I hope you were able to clean up afterwards. Such a pervasive stench can last a long time.
“short or within the battery capacity commutes”
You had been writing about CA right? What happened?
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-u-s-cities-with-the-longest-commutes/
Off-site link was Google’s first answer to “longest commutes usa”. 6 of top 10 cities are in CA, plus 3 NY and a Chicago
The fact of the matter is this: ALL efforts attempted by the State of California for forty years to reduce global warming has resulted in NOTHING. NADA.
They have exactly a 100% failure rate when it comes to changing the weather.
Don’t forget, in order to fight climate change you have to change the weather for 30 years first. That is the definition.
Fine, but time to end the subsidies and tax benefits of EVs.
Here in NY we have the same problem, so I hope the Trump administration can successfully bring pressure to bear for relief from the similar EV mandate we are facing.
Kathy Hochul would look right at home in an SS uniform.
there’s a chore for AI 🙂
So they actually thought that they could force people to buy EVs, simply by not having ICE cars available? That they wouldn’t just go to another state to buy one if necessary, or buy used? Because ready, fire, aim is a good policy to have? Are they really that retarded?
Yes, they are that retarded-or bought, hard saying. ICE cars would still be on the road but very run down oil burners. We’d look and smell like the 3rd world nation we’d become.
All one party states are convinced that they are the smartest people in the world and therefore their policies are the best. You just are not allowed to disagree with them because you’re obviously not qualified if you do. If you were, you wouldn’t disagree.
See how it works? Eternal dead ends that no one can criticize.
Time for automakers to apply malicious compliance. Just take those lots full of new, but unsold, EVs and “ship” them to states stupid enough to require such “mandated percentages” of “new” cars “shipped” to the state be worse-than-useless EVs. Then the dealers can “transfer” them out of state back to the automaker when they (inevitably) don’t sell. Then they can be “shipped” back to the Eco-Nazi states again the next year.
Rinse and repeat. They probably already built enough of that crap to make their numbers for years until sanity prevails.
All that shipping around costs money.
Connecticut, Vermont, Maryland… places just far enough North that a human could freeze to death on the side of a highway during daytime for a few months each year.
Virginia provided a case in point a few years ago.
“I predict other states who followed California’s lead are going to rethink their plans.”
I bet Wokeachusetts will be the last but it’s possible it won’t follow suit- it’s that crazy here.
Great, but not unexpected news today: Senate Majority Leader Thune stated he is bringing the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to a vote this week to revoke the California Clean Air Act delegation for its EV mandate, which kills it forever (it cannot be brought back up again by any subsequent administration or Congress – that’s the law!). The House already voted to revoke the delegation earlier this spring. Thune overrode the Senate Parliamentarian on this matter, just as I expected he and the Senate GOP would do.
The wicked witch is dead, which old witch? The CA EV mandate witch, that’s who’s dead. (apologies to the Wizard of Oz).
It’s another head long policy rush and backtrack in VT like their single payer heath insurance plan that almost bankrupted them before the plug was pulled.
Another example of crappy government. These government leaders were not operating in a vacuum, plenty of people warned them that these mandates were unworkable. Government needs to keep its nose out of our business. They do not know better than us, they do not know more than us, they do not know what is good for us. Whittle back the power and reach of government and most of our issues go away.
golf carts, wheel chairs, fork lifts, and kiddie scooters make sense. four season states not so much
Not sure how many who post here actually live full time in Vermont, but let me say that anyone who even seriously considers buying an EV here is b*tSh*t crazy. Well only if you have to drive once a week 5 miles to a local store. Possibly a hybrid would be at least on the road to sanity.
For winter storms (and they can become extremely heavy if you live near the Spine of the Green Mountains) people just hunker down and wait it out. Or buy a monster truck to plow it out.
Wife used to get up at 5AM to shovel out the front of the driveway in order to make her 20 mile commute over the Spine to her hospital job. The locals who lived there would call in because of the snow… Sometimes would stay near work overnight at a friends house because of a storm.
People moving into the area sometimes do not understand the rigors involved with living here.
It is hard to imagine what people endured when they first settled here. The old timers always say they were told it was hard.