GM is actively pushing back against California’s mandate to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, a policy that has since been adopted by several other U.S. states.
Despite GM’s public commitment to fully electrify its light-duty portfolio by 2035, the automaker is now saying that California’s aggressive EV mandate threatens consumer choice and vehicle affordability.
Per a report from The Wall Street Journal, GM recently send thousands of its white-collar employees an email urging them to contact members of the U.S. Senate and voice opposition to the California EV mandate. The move precedes a vote in the Senate that could revoke California’s authority to set its own emissions standards.
According to The Wall Street Journal, a GM spokeswoman states that the company has argued for a single emissions mandate and that regulations should consider market demand.
“GM believes in customer choice, and we continue to focus on offering the best and broadest portfolio of vehicles on the market,” the GM spokeswoman said.
California leads the U.S. in electric vehicle adoption, however, EVs currently account for just 20 percent of new vehicle sales in the state, well below a state-set target of 35 percent by 2026.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group representing GM and several other major OEMs, including Stellantis, Ford, Volkswagen, Hyundai, and Toyota, recently stated that California’s mandate could lead to job losses and disrupt manufacturing operations if the industry cannot meet the ambitious EV sales targets.
Critics of the California mandate also warn of other potential consequences, saying that a rapid shift to EVs could lead to higher vehicle prices and place a major strain on the U.S. power grid.
Meanwhile, support for California’s EV mandate seems to be waning as Vermont, one of the states which originally adopted the more aggressive EV rules, is now set to pause requirements, citing a lack of charging structure and insufficient technological advances in heavy-duty EV technology.
In addition, the Trump administration is expected to roll back emissions standards and scrub the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.
Comments
I’ve been told by some posters here and on other car sites for years that there were no and would be no ICE ban mandates. Weird.
Battery Technology needs to exceed 600 mpe before the main stream will take an interest. In the mean time EV’s are generally good for around town, no motivation to spend $40 – 100K for that.
EVgo, sounds like EZgo. Reminds me of a ninety year old grandma without a driver’s license driving across the yard in a golf cart.
Talk about GM mixed messaging. If they are going all EV, what’s the hubbub about saving the ICE?
Because Barra and company bet the house on the EV craze and they lost. So many plants and resources were devoted to EVs and the demand is nowhere near what they expected. I guarantee there are many sleepless nights at GM these days.
I think we need to be mindful and use lowercase letters for this new, EV centric,
overly effeminate “gm”.
My bad 😂. Speaking of stupid, if you go to gm’s career site, you have an opportunity to chat with “EV-E” if you need assistance. No kidding.
Hey, I’m sure the group of freshly out of college girls that sold the idea to a group of old, rich, out of touch Boomer execs were super excited about that project!
There should be more than sleepless nights. Somebody should lose their job over this massive blunder. In the ’80s, Roger B. Smith bet the farm on FWD and wanted to transform everything, including once highly profitable luxury cars to that format. GM followed his orders and pretty much lost the entire segment to the Germans. Cadillac never again dominated in the luxury sedan and coupe markets. Nobody ever paid a price for this.
Today, in an ever bigger blunder, Barra has pushed GM to go all-EV, even in the highly profitable pickup truck segment. So far, they too have been a disaster for the company. The saving grace is that the ICE products are still available. Nonetheless, nobody seems to be being punished for the costly error that has been made. One has to wonder whether they just didn’t do any market research at all to determine whether pickup truck buyers were also EV buyers.
In today’s world, the hedge funds/WEF are the largest shareholders and set the agenda and usually the board members, who set the contracts and bonuses for the execs to follow their agenda. It’s not as much about money anymore as control at a MUCH greater level. MB is seen as “great” for following orders, that’s it.
The market research gets done a lot by consulting firms, owned by the same shareholders, with the same agenda.
yup
Hey, sleep with dogs you get fleas. Barra and Farley thought they were smart buying into the leftist agenda and allied themselves with idiots like Gavin Newsome. Now gm is trying to clean up the mess they made by begging the white collar workers they treat so shabbily to help them out.
Now it’s time to fire mary barra.
spot on
Looks like gm’s cognitive dissonance is snapping back to reality that they are an ICE truck company with a smattering of ICE CUVs.
Support SEMA, they’re fighting for us on these idiot manadates
100% member
Hydrogen powered please.
No for so many reasons. It takes 1679 gallons (by volume) of hydrogen at atmospheric pressure to equal the BTUs in one gallon of gasoline. You can compress H to a very dangerous 5000 psi (max allowed by DOT for safe transportation) and your fuel tank will still be 3 times larger taking up passenger space and storage. If you get in an accident carrying 5000 psi of ANYthing, you have a flying torpedo that will travel a mile or two before stopping. Plus, H is the smallest molecule known. It leaks out of solid steel tanks, then flys upward to destroy the ozone layer. Gaseous fuels are a non-starter – hard to store and transport. If they worked well holistically, the 1970s/1980s trendy craze to convert gasoline cars to natural gas would have changed the world. Just a few things to think about…
So they think 10 years from now EV’s will be the #1 seller in the auto industry and anyone with an ICE will send them to the junk yard in favor of one? Think again. Hybrids? Maybe, but EV’s? No way.
Battery Technology needs to exceed 600 mpe before the main streem will take an interest. In the mean time EV’s are generally good for around town, no motivation to spend $40 – 100K.
exactly..
The present federal administration is removing the needed infrastructure advances required to allow EV’s to become user friendly and practical. Back when gas stations were few, and far between, horses and horse pulled wagons remained the predominate means of transportation. Get my drift?
Ah yes, the trusty ol’ stupid horse & buggy rubbish…
Thank you. That horse and buggy nonsense is intellectually dishonest. Remember they made EVs in the late 1800s too. And the best technology for transportation won.
Well back in the day, my horse got better mileage than your horse. You ride a fat overweight horse, and I have the small economy type. LOL
GM has not been consumer friendly for years…I have had 2 sold order vehicles in the que that were never picked up….Buick has abandoned their US market, Chevrolet no sedans or Camaro (they only built what they wanted anyway) no coupes only Cadillac has some diversity in the lineup….GM guy all my life..only Tahoe and Silverado left…and no ability to order a cool V8 short box regular cab with options….
right with ya
Hey, remember when a GM executive said not to worry, that PHEVs would be treated the same as BEVs?
Yeah, we remember. Alpha remembers.
What California really needs is an STD Ban .
Why is GM asking only their white collar workers?
Are their blue collar workers not capable of contacting the government?
Sounds like a discrimination lawsuit in the making.
Ev s just will never be anything to be excited about, oh look a battery cart . Give us a real car built by people with real heart . ICE please
WOW—You mean Mary finally woke up that NO ONE wants EV’s ???
ha ha, He said woke.
Oh the people with money please save our butt for making terrible choice . Hahah good job Mary
SOMEBODY has to be responsible lets start with Mary
exactly
About time to cut Calif out of the regs. By making their own regs, they make cars more expensive by making all either meet california emissions, or making two tiers. We don’t need cleaner air where I live, I get it the cities might be a different story. So make all city buses and vehicles tagged inside city limits EV. Or better yet remember we used to be a democracy, why let some numbskull regulate what we can and can’t buy? If the market was only for EV’s or a high enough percent that ICE pricing went up due to low demand, fine. But gas guzzler taxes and emissions regs suck….
Mary Barra caved on Bidens EV mandate like, to quote Al Bundy, a bag of wet hair. That was the time to say No. You know who never caved? Toyota. So GM, walk away from California if you can’t get relief. If the others did that too, CALIFORNIA would cave.
leave california and better yourself.
Gm has always made the worst-case for what they build… the mandate for all ev is just crazy… too many decisions by people who are just stupid.
Lost in all of the Barra vs Newsome vs the orange man comments is a harsh fact: Pollution. While not in all of California, L.A. was in a particularly bad situation with winds blowing from the ocean side and being stopped up by the mountains on the east side. It created a terrible bottled up air pollution effect for the cities residents. I personally remember it when I had to travel there for work 10 years ago. To be fair I’m not sure what the current pollution condition is or how the historic fires affects the city now.
Did the L.A. air pollution contribute to the California EV mandates? – of course it did. Was the EV mandate necessary for the whole state? Probably not.
I don’t envy the politicians that need to solve this problem. Someone in one of the comments mentioned only using EV buses (and delivery trucks) in the L.A. area and that’s not a bad idea.
You got it right. California has the right to set its own air quality standards because of the extremely high air pollution levels. It’s written into the Clean Air Act. It was dangerously high in the ’70s when I was growing up in So Cal. CA needs cleaner cars to protect public health. Other states don’t have to follow.
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