Because Trump would be unlikely to approve them, California has no choice but to abandon its groundbreaking rules for zero-emission trucks and cleaner locomotives.
not abandoned… just postponed for four years, because the diaperking would have shot down the requests for waivers from the feds for these anyway.
That’s a huge impact. 4 years of delay means that nothing can change for 5 or 6 years
This retreat is going to have huge impacts on anyone that lives next to a major freeway, warehouse, or port
I mean, it’s not truly surprising. Electric trucks are not ready for prime time, either from range, infrastructure for them, or cost. And while Cummins actually does have plans for hydrogen-ification of their engines over the next few years, I have my doubts those will actually be all that effective (they are essentially just changing the heads to burn hydrogen, get the same general mpg which isn’t great), which mostly just leaves you with hybrids, like Edison is testing. So long as they aren’t abandoning Carb, it should be OK for now, although I have a bad feeling that Trump might try to mess with that too.
In large part, the question isn’t about right now. The question is when the regs would kick in - which for some categories is years and years from now.
CARB needed those regs to get some of these owners to start cleaning up their fleets. Particularly locomotives and harborcraft which are super super powerful and dirty.
It starts with requirements to do a small percent - for the jobs that can do it - like short haul from truck to warehouse near a port. And the tech and regulations expand from there
Oh, I understand it was for future plans, but it would probably be much easier to force people to phase in diesel-electric hybrids, and eventually force those to go fully electric (that is generally the idea of the hybrids, the battery tech kinda sucks for long haul right now, but in the future it won’t and you could retrofit the battery where the generator is now while slightly lowering emissions now and offsetting costs for the future). I don’t disagree with the stupidity of the boat stuff though, that needed to have been fixed years ago. That being said, some of the stuff regarding trucking was generally considered in the trucking community pretty close to impossible, so I’m not surprised it went on the chopping block.