Supply Chain Digest Says...
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| American Trucking Association’s CEO Chris Spear said that “The trucking industry and American consumers can breathe a collective sigh of relief today after CARB finally bowed to reality and shelved its job-killing Advanced Clean Fleets regulation.” |
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California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) has just pulled out of its efforts to mandate many trucks and bus fleets start phasing in zero-emissions vehicles in their fleets, but still is behind a deadline for truck makers to sell only ZEVs in the Golden State.
The Advanced Clean Fleets Rule, as the first of regulations is known, saw significant push back from trucking companies, which argued that EV technology was still immature and not able to meet truckers’ operational needs, with no clear timeline of when that might be.
The Clean Fleets rule required a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency to become law, but now CARB has withdrawn (for now, we’d guess) its request for a waiver.
But CARB says it is not backing off another set of emissions rules for trucking. Those rules, known as Advanced Clean Truck requirements, would mandate that truck manufacturers operating in the state can only sell zero-emission trucks starting with the 2036 model year. The rules apply to manufacturers of Class 2b to Class 8 vehicles to sell zero-emission vehicles as a gradually increasing percentage of their annual California model year sales, leading to a complete ban of non-ZEVs by 2036.
These rules also require an EPA waiver, which CARB has requested.
The Transport Topics web site reports that truck manufacturers have negotiated independently with the state on that proposal, and currently have an agreement in place, under which the truck makers agreed not the challenge the CARB rules.
“The Advanced Clean Trucks regulation will still be in effect, [and] it will likely put the onus on truck manufacturers to continue to make zero-emission trucks,” Mike Tunnell, California-based senior director of environmental affairs/research for American Trucking Associations, told Transport Topics.
Given the size of the California market, truck makers are naturally very concerned with these types of rules, but more generally many shippers and truckers as usual are worried that what happens in California will spread to other states.”
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 Tunnell added that “I think things are going to slow down, and it’s going to take away the situation where fleets in California were going to be required to put them into service where they didn’t even work.”
In a statement on the news, American Trucking Association’s CEO Chris Spear said that “The trucking industry and American consumers can breathe a collective sigh of relief today after CARB finally bowed to reality and shelved its job-killing Advanced Clean Fleets regulation.”
But the situation is complicated by a new Trumped administration, with the President vowing to pull back many EV requirements.
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