The future of electric vehicles is murky, but California still wants more of them

It was a A strange and confusing few weeks for the auto industry, especially for those who were hoping to see more batteries on the road in the next decade.

And just this month: Ford announced a reduction in the size of its electric vehicle business, canceling some battery-powered vehicle plans and postponing others; The European Commission has proposed retreating from its goal of transitioning completely to zero-emission cars by 2035. The US government said it would ease rules that would have required automakers to increase fuel economy in their fleets. BloombergNEF predicts that 14 million fewer electric vehicles will be sold in the United States by 2030 than last year, a 20 percent decline.

What has not seemed to change is California’s interest in switching to cleaner means of transportation. “The state is redoubling its efforts to deploy zero-emission vehicles, providing market certainty, and continuing to lead on clean transportation regardless of policy reversals elsewhere or shifts by automakers,” Anthony Martinez, a spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom, wrote in a statement to WIRED. “The governor’s commitment to accelerating California’s clean transportation transition has not changed,” he said.

In 2020, Newsom became one of the first lawmakers in the world to commit to all-electricity when he signed an executive order directing state agencies to create rules that would ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035. These rules ultimately aim to increase the share of battery-electric vehicles, with the ultimate goal of a mix of pure electric vehicles and hybrids. (PHEVs can only account for about 20 percent of sales.) Several other states, including Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Washington, have pledged to do the same.

Earlier this year, the GOP-led Congress repealed, through legislation, several California environmental rules that had historically been allowed in place because of rules written into the Clean Air Act. The state responded with a lawsuit that is still pending. Meanwhile, Newsom signed another executive order directing state agencies to advance the state’s electrification goals in other ways.

Now auto industry experts and players say the country’s determination to push through policy and market changes to meet its now half-a-decade goal may be overly ambitious.

“Getting to 100 percent can be difficult,” says Stephanie Valdez Streety, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive. “There are a lot of headwinds.”

A coalition of California business groups have argued that the state’s goals even for next year — a requirement that 35 percent of cars sold for 2026 be zero-emissions — are not realistic, and that California should roll back its targets for zero-emission new car sales. (Enforcement of the rules is being paused while the larger battle with the US Congress continues.) Zero-emission vehicles accounted for 21% of the state’s total annual new car sales as of fall, according to the California New Car Dealers Association, well below the 35% target. “The timeline needs to be adjusted,” says the group’s president, Brian Maass.