Trucking companies left in limbo after California abandons plan to ban diesel vehicles
In his inaugural address, President Trump took aim at California's mandate banning gas-powered vehicles. But even before he was sworn into office, the state accepted the new reality and abandoned a similar plan to ban diesel trucks.
The latest impact of the new administration can be found at the Port of Oakland. Soon after Donald Trump was elected president, California officials realized that they had lost all friends in Washington, D.C., and withdrew their request for a waiver that would allow the state to ban the sale of diesel trucks after 2035.
"The waiver was pulled back from the EPA," said Bill Aboudi, president of AB Trucking in Oakland. "So the first reaction is what's their game plan? They're going to come up with something else. We've been living with uncertainty for a long time. And so, we get a little breathing room for buying trucks that are very expensive that don't work. We're hoping that these trucks will materialize. They haven't yet."
Aboudi said he's not against EVs. In fact, he was one of the first to purchase electric tractors for moving trailers around in his yard and encourages others to do so. But he said the technology for long-haul trucking of heavy loads just isn't there yet.
Aboudi pointed to a pair of new hydrogen-powered trucks that cost about twice the price of a diesel vehicle, but are so heavy they have a hard time hauling enough cargo to make a profit.
"They do run. They're beautiful -- when they run," he said. "But they're just not suitable for the workload."
Aboudi said the state is blaming the waiver withdrawal on President Trump, but he thinks they knew the diesel ban was not going to work and were looking for a way out of it. But beyond the trucks, in his inaugural speech the president also talked about regulations requiring electric passenger vehicles.
"We will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American autoworkers," he said during his inauguration speech. "In other words, you'll be able to buy the car of your choice."
California already has a ban in place on the sale of new gas cars after 2035, thanks to a waiver from the EPA. It's unclear whether federal officials will now be able to rescind that. EV industry analyst Loren McDonald said the Republicans were successful in convincing people across the country that the government was coming for their cars.
"There never was a law that said you can't buy a gas car, but Trump and the Republicans basically owned that and made it sound like it, countering 'all things Biden' that sort of hinted at, sounded like, 'We're telling you what you need to do,'" McDonald explained. "And so EVs were sort of an easy target of that."
McDonald said other states have been lagging far behind California in the adoption of electric vehicles, with or without a ban, and the new direction is liable to delay the transition by decades. But no matter what happens to cars, the ban on diesel trucks is dead in California, at least for now. And that's the biggest problem for fleet owners like Aboudi.
"We don't know what the next move is," he said. "Do we just expand and get more diesel trucks? I have to do it with a truck that works."
California saw itself as charting a course for the rest of the country in banning fossil fuel vehicles. Now it may be finding itself alone on an island.
