GM Is Pushing Hard to Tank California's EV Mandate
69 comments
·May 18, 2025delichon
heresie-dabord
> Rep. Laura Gillen, a Democrat from New York, one of the states to adopt the mandate, said she supports the goal of reducing emissions but that the timeline is “out-of-touch with reality” and an undue burden on consumers facing a cost-of-living crisis.
US consumers are facing hardship directly caused by overtly erratic tariffing. US ICE makers are seeking protections. Consumers will not have smaller vehicles nor the affordable EVs they could use.
The air and water are fine, we never pollute, climate change is a silly leftist slogan, and Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
CaliforniaKarl
If the EV mandate is killed, I could see the California state government making that case before the courts.
Gibbon1
California should just place an excise carbon tax on gas and diesel cars.
How about $100/ton of CO2.
At 30 mpg that's 60 tons of CO2 so $6k.
lotsofpulp
Why on cars? If carbon emissions are the problem, why not tax fossil fuels themselves (or tax them more if emissions are still too high)?
tzs
I wonder if history is going to repeat itself?
In the '70s the US changed emission standards to be quite a bit more strict, as part of the Clean Air Act of 1970. The problem of smog in major cities was getting out of hand.
Also in the '70s there were periods of gas shortages and high prices due to world events that messed up oil markets, such as the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973 and the Iranian Revolution in 1979. This led to demand for more efficient cars.
US automakers were slow to respond. The often just retrofitted existing engines with emission control equipment that significantly lowered performance and reliability.
Japanese automakers, who at that time had only a small share of the US market and were not really taken seriously by most consumers, were also dealing with new strict emission standards in Japan. But they responded by quickly designing new engines designed with low emissions and better mileage. And they exported those cars to the US.
By the time US automakers finally started making new design decent low emission cars with better gas mileage instead of badly retrofitting existing designs those Japanese makers had established with the public a reputation for making reliable, efficient, low emissions, and affordable cars.
Some people said the Japanese cars were only affordable because of cheap labor in Japan. (Japan in the '70s was like China is today when it comes to manufacturing). But then the Japanese car companies started manufacturing many models in the US, showing that affordable, high quality, reliable cars that met emission standards and were efficient could be made with US labor.
I wonder if we are going to see the same thing with EVs?
shawnb576
100% this
I noted below that I have recently moved from US to Australia
The Chinese cars are taking over here: it’s a product people want at a price they like
GM wants to monetize yesterday’s market, and are just going to fall farther behind.
When these cars eventually come in, EV mandate or not, the US car companies will get crushed
happyopossum
> Even in California, America’s EV market leader, sales are below the state’s own targets. Under the rule, in 2026, sales of zero-emissions vehicles should account for 35% of all vehicle sales. Right now, they account for 20% of the state’s automobile market.
Yikes. Sounds like if this mandate doesn’t get changed, Californians are staring down the barrel of a huge car buying crunch in ~7yrs, as people realize they only have a few more years to buy a gas vehicle.
I’m a fan of EVs - I think every family should have one or two, but I’d also never want to be without a gas vehicle. Not having the option to buy one under any circumstances is pretty onerous.
SOLAR_FIELDS
PHEV should be the intermediary solution IMO. It neatly solves 80% of the issues of owning either one or the other.
MBCook
Should have been. 15 years ago. We’re long past that point.
The automakers in the US mostly want to fight a war two wars ago. They’re careening towards international irrelevance fast with this crap.
And we’ll either be dominated by the players that saw the truth, or stuck with overpriced protectionist crap.
Uvix
The US is certainly not "long past that point" in terms of charging infrastructure. So on their home turf, EV-only is a losing proposition.
Which may drive them towards international irrelevance, but if they have to sacrifice one market or the other, that seems like the easier one to choose to lose.
Narkov
> Californians are staring down the barrel of a huge car buying crunch in ~7yrs
Yay the free market, hey?
kjkjadksj
This is why the automakers will win. People are turning on Tesla. And the rest of automakers offerings aren’t half as good. Automakers can put on the squeeze now by just continuing to let this market segment languish and then the legislature will have to do something in 2035 when not near enough people are switching to EV and there hasn’t been near enough infrastructure built due to the segment underperforming expectations and not getting sufficient infrastructure investment.
It was one thing to mandate emissions when it was just a question of a cleaner gas car. We are retooling with evs effectively. I think the legislature bit off more than they can chew with this unless they start heavily subsidizing this industry themselves maybe even making a public ev company. Hard to do in times of austerity when everything that presently exists is in need of money let alone new expensive ideas.
jkachmar
> And the rest of automakers offerings aren’t half as good.
This was true maybe even as recently as 5 years ago, but it certainly isn’t true now.
Tesla, at the top end, hasn’t been an attractive luxury proposition at least since the Hyundai Genesis & Mercedes EVs started rolling out. They had a shot at capturing the mid- to low-end market, but it looks like they’re in the process of blowing that as well.
> Hard to do in times of austerity [..]
The average American’s lifestyle is hardly austere — it _is_ precarious for very many (most?), but I don’t think that’s the same thing.
You can now get refurb EVs (e.g. a Hyundai Ionia) with <50k miles for <$15k, and that’s in a not-inexpensive part of the US (northeast).
Over the course of the next 10 years that used market is going to only grow, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that a battery swap will be less costly than the sorts of overhauls high-mileage gasoline cars require so there _will_ be a solid used market.
rangestransform
The fact that the existing automakers do not have competitive offerings when the model S came out in 2012 is entirely their own fault. For not figuring out where the wind is blowing and massively reorganizing their entire company, they deserve to die to Tesla, BYD, Xpeng, Nio, and everyone else who figured out how to build a usable EV. They could’ve also built charging infrastructure at their own expense, like Tesla did before the charging infrastructure tax credits.
shawnb576
I have recently moved from US to Australia and it is 100% clear to me the US automakers will get absolutely crushed by the Chinese companies if/when they are able to access US market.
Especially EVs and PHEVs. This place is awash with them, they are cars people want at the right price.
madhacker
"GM believes in customer choice" when it suits them. The state of EVs in America is akin to food desert, intentionally by design.
myko
Would love to see Chinese EVs in the US to get real competition
Uvix
See also, the recent removal of CarPlay from their lineup.
alephnerd
There will be bipartisan support for this (only 164 Ds voted against repeal in the house) - as long as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Illinois matter, California's EV mandate will be undermined.
Neither party dares alienate the UAW or Teamsters, and thousands of automotive employees.
HN needs to reconcile whether they support unions or whether they support EVs. It's a one or the other decision at this point in the US.
Amongst the younger (Gen Z/Gen Alpha) generations, the choice is unions due to idealism (despite havint positive sentiment for EVs). Amongst high earning members of Gen X (which I think seems to represent HN), the choice appears to be EVs.
baggy_trough
The law is an absurd overreach. The EV demand isn’t there, although it’s growing. There will be political consequences for trying to ram it through.
josho
Well if the demand isn't there then I suppose there's no need to have a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, right?
The reality is the legislation was to push industry and it seems industries response was ‘nah dawg we’ll just lobby our way out of this one’
MBCook
The people of California voted for it (through their representatives).
They’re free to change it at any time.
It’s not the federal government’s job to mess with it just because it doesn’t align with head-in-the-sand worldview on electric vehicles.
California didn’t mandate anything for any other state. The fact the automakers don’t want to bother to implement “the winning strategy” for every other state of pretending EVs suck either indicates it’s a terrible strategy or they think there is a benefit to their bottom line to follow demand.
How horrible!
baggy_trough
The representatives of the people of California make many inane and destructive decisions, of which this is one. Once the consequences start to bite, they may come to regret it, and I hope they do.
WWLink
RAM IT THROUGH! Like a drunk ram 2500 driver lol.
stickfigure
This is all so stupid. If we want to move people to EVs, put incrementally severe taxes on gasoline. "Mandates" without economic incentive are pure nonsense.
bumby
That creates a whole different problem. Gasoline taxes are a major contributor to infrastructure. If everyone moves to EVs, we need a an alternative, like a mileage tax.
neltnerb
What we need is fewer roads to maintain, but as you say a whole different problem.
It took a while to find numbers, but it seems like ~$80B in total gas taxes in a year is probably close. Meanwhile state and local governments (alone) spend over $200B on road maintenance and construction while the federal government spent about $60B on the interstates.
$80B is a lot, but if gas taxes covered even just car infrastructure it'd be an extra $1 a gallon already. Even without EVs. In case anyone was under the misapprehension that roads are budget neutral. Frustrating (to get more off track) that other transit is expected to somehow be profitable when roads are subsidized so heavily. I wish it wasn't so critical for our supply chain, EV trucks probably works a lot better between a train terminal and final destination than it does hauling across I-40.
Sources:
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/gasoline/use-of-gasoline...
https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/
https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2024-03/D...
stickfigure
That is an entirely separate issue and would need to be addressed even if the mandates were to be magically effective.
bumby
It’s directly related to your point about increasing gas taxes as an incentive to build demand for EVs (and eventually reduce gas tax revenue). If it gets to the point where the only people paying gas taxes are ICE hobbyists, the scale won’t support the needs of infrastructure.
jmclnx
So isn't every other fossil fuel based transportation manf.
20 years ago this would upset me a lot.
Now I am resigned to the fact 2 or 3 generations from now people will live through a time that will make the mongol invasions look like a tea party ran by three 7 year old girls :(
No stopping Climate Change now
toomuchtodo
I am hopeful China’s EV, battery, and renewables manufacturing machine steamrolls the world. Developed world fossil fuel and legacy auto will try to slow down the transition, so only overwhelming force solves for it.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/byd-ai...
https://www.iea.org/news/more-than-1-in-4-cars-sold-worldwid...
https://about.bnef.com/blog/china-already-makes-as-many-batt...
https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-renewable-energy
Current US admin only has 3.6 years left, ~2M voters 55+ age out every year, etc. Maintain momentum, be ready to spin up faster after regime change.
mulderc
I have zero interest in an any car from an American company and by far the most exciting cars I have seen in recent years come from Chinese companies.
alabastervlog
I’m excited about lower prices from Chinese brands. The hikes in car prices in the US over the last decade or so have priced me out of new cars entirely, and I just about get sick even looking at used car prices these days. Need some price pressure on that crap.
gowings97
Millennial here, 3x Trump voter.
"Current US admin only has 3.6 years left, ~2M voters 55+ age out every year, etc. Maintain momentum, be ready to spin up faster after regime change."
The majority of Boomers are liberal - the demographic shift you perceive is not going to work out the way you think it will. Gen-Z is increasingly leaning right, especially males.
Most people just want a 2018 era car (there's diminishing returns for vehicle technology at this point and average vehicle selling price trajectory, Post-Covid, is unsustainable) at a decent price - something with a six cylinder engine that can be easy serviced / repaired.
erkt
Yeah, I have zero interest in an electric vehicle, nor a new ICE vehicle. They are all shit boxes designed to monetize everything they can from remote start, to your GPS location, to heated seats. No thanks, I'll take the 2004 Tacoma getting 16mpg that will run until the body rusts off.
null
pixl97
So we shut off cheap EVs from China so American car makers can charge as much as they want without changing their behaviors.
America doesn't have competition. You're prices aren't going to get cheaper. Meanwhile in China internal competition in battery chemistry and packs has massively dropped costs.
It's sad when the groups we call commies have a more open market than us.
Unfortunately we're going to wake up to that too late.
lolcatzlulz
[dead]
morkalork
Worse than choosing to do nothing, people chose to fight those who tried to fix it. Everything that happens will be deserved.
sneak
Collective punishment was banned by reasonable humans for a reason.
Most of the people who will suffer have done nothing wrong.
ninetyninenine
We are all guilty in a way.
ninetyninenine
People don’t like what you’re saying even when it is the statement most likely to be true.
gotoeleven
California has proven time and again that they are great at economic regulation so I think we should just go with it.
dyauspitr
>Warren Buffet doesn’t know how to manage his money
WWLink
GM just making some fucking cars people want to buy. Nobody wants to look like a fat grandma driving a Tahoe or a racist uncle driving a Silverado lol.
I mean I wouldn't mind a corvette if they didn't cost 80 fucking thousand dollars.
nichos
Please have a look at the guidelines before posting: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> A GM spokeswoman said the company has long argued that the U.S. should have a single emissions mandate and that any regulations should factor in market demand.
Yes, let us stipulate that uniform regulations that disregard the federalist design of the constitution are more convenient and profitable for huge corporations with top flight lobbyists to write the one law to be enforced from sea to shining sea.