Decades of government vehicle standards to improve vehicle efficiency and cut down on tailpipe pollution have saved car and truck drivers trillions of dollars at the pump, saved countless lives from reduced exposure to toxic air pollution, and avoided the extraction and burning of billions of barrels of oil.
On its first day in office, the Trump administration has indicated it wants to send the latest versions of these effective standards to the trash heap, issuing a directive to regulatory agencies to suspend, revise or rescind regulations inconsistent with the new national policy of “ensuring a level regulatory playing field for consumer choice in vehicles.” In other words, if a regulation mentions “electric vehicles,” it’s probably on the target list. Agencies will have 30 days to compile a list of offending regulatory actions, which are sure to include federal rules that would reduce pollution from new cars and heavy-duty trucks sold through 2032 and to undermine California’s clean car standards which are effective through 2035.
The executive order also attacks clean vehicle incentives and federal support for electric vehicle charging stations, important complementary policies helping families around the nation make the switch to cleaner vehicles.
What’s at stake? Our health, some of the largest climate actions in US history, and more
Transportation is the largest source of US climate emissions, so it’s not surprising that undermining recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) actions targeting climate emissions from cars and trucks will be a major setback in meeting climate targets. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
In the US, automakers are subject to vehicle standards set by both the federal government and California. California is allowed to set standards stronger than the federal government under the 1970 Clean Air Act provisions in recognition that California, and many other states which have adopted CA standards, serve an important role as laboratories of innovation controlling air pollution in novel ways. President Trump is targeting both federal and California vehicle standards in his recent executive order—standards that not only reduce climate emissions but also slash air pollutants like nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. Undermining these rules will have major negative environmental, health, energy, and consumer impacts. A number of standards covering different types of vehicles and emissions have been updated and finalized during the Biden Administration’s term. If rolled backed, the enormous health, climate, and consumer benefits of these rules would be reduced or completely eliminated.
Vehicle standards likely to be targeted include:
EPA’s Multi-Pollutant Passenger Vehicle Emission Standards—These standards apply to model year 2026 through 2032 vehicles and will lead to reduced greenhouse gases, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and other pollutants from new vehicles. The benefits are enormous—the rule is the largest climate pollution reduction regulatory measure ever taken by the federal government. Eliminating these standards would increase climate emissions (measured in carbon dioxide equivalent or CO2e) by more than 7 billion metric tons and result in an estimated $13 billion in health costs from increased hospitalizations, illness, and premature deaths caused by exposure to dirtier air. In a direct hit to consumers pocket books, eliminating the rules would increase fuel and maintenance costs for new vehicles by $6,000 over the life of the vehicles as estimated by EPA.
Despite reports to the contrary, these rules do not require a specific level of electric vehicles to be deployed—automakers can choose what technologies to employ and the types of vehicles to produce to meet the emissions-based targets. However, the global and US trend toward increasingly affordable and capable electric vehicles means that EVs are expected be an increasing part of the vehicle mix. In the US, electric vehicle sales continued to grow in 2024, approaching 10 percent of all new purchases—and drivers in every state in the country are poised to reap their benefits, even rural drivers. The EV market is becoming more diversified with Tesla market share declining, and 2025 promises more, lower cost models for sale. The EV market is likely to continue to grow even without standards in place, albeit more slowly. But without standards in place, automakers would no longer be required to make fleetwide improvements and whatever clear air and climate benefits from continued EV sales could easily be undermined by selling higher polluting gasoline cars and trucks.
NHTSAs Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards—In addition to EPA’s passenger vehicle standards, complementary but separate fuel economy standards targeting improvement in miles per gallon efficiency were also updated and finalized by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in June of 2024. These standards are also under threat by the Trump administration, which has falsely labeled them as an “EV mandate.” In reality, NHTSA is prohibited by law from considering or requiring the adoption of alternative fueled vehicles, like EVs, in setting CAFE standards. Rolling back these commonsense standards would increase fuel costs by $23 billion, increase gasoline consumption by 70 billion gallons through 2050, while adding more than 700 million metric tons (CO2e) of climate pollution, according to NHTSA.
Federal Heavy-Duty Truck Standards—Heavy-duty commercial trucks are the second largest source of transportation climate emissions behind passenger vehicles. In March of last year, EPA finalized the “Phase 3″ Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for heavy-duty vehicles that would reduce pollution from new trucks between model year 2027 through 2032.
These rules are expected to result in more than $13 billion in net societal benefits coming from a combination of avoided hospitalizations and illness like asthma attacks, and climate impacts. The Phase 3 standards alone are expected to result in annualized net savings to truck owners and operators of more than $2 billion as a result of lower operating costs from lower emission diesel and gasoline trucks as well as electric trucks.
These new standards are more than feasible and, as UCS pointed out during the rulemaking process, don’t take full advantage of the fuel saving and zero emission technology available to reduce truck pollution. But they are an important step forward and rolling them back will result in more pollution, more illness and hospitalizations, and higher costs for industry and consumers.
California’s clean cars leadership at risk
In addition to targeting federal rules, the Trump Administration is also targeting California’s leadership on clean cars and trucks. California is allowed under federal law to set standards for cars and trucks that are equal to or stronger than federal standards and has exercised this right for more than 50 years. Other states have the ability to adopt these more health protective standards and more than a dozen have.
The last Trump administration attempted to withdraw a previously approved waiver for California to implement its standards for light-duty vehicles and it appears positioned to do so again with waivers approved by the Biden Administration’s EPA on the chopping block. The two most significant rules under threat are the Advanced Clean Cars II (ACCII) regulation—and the Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) rule. The ACCII rule gradually ramps up new vehicle sales requirements to 100% by 2035. This rule is often mischaracterized as a gasoline vehicle ban, when in actuality, 20% of sales could be plug-in hybrid vehicles which have a gasoline combustion engine, but can travel some distance on electric power. ACT on the other hand requires manufacturers of heavy-duty trucks to sell an increasing share of zero-emission trucks with annual targets that vary based on the different sizes and types of trucks and is the driving force for clean truck manufacturing and deployment across the country.
California’s requirements for passenger cars and heavy-duty trucks have been more aggressive in pushing deployment of zero-emission vehicle technology and instrumental in expanding the electric vehicle options currently available today to car buyers and trucking fleet owners all around the country. Evidence of California’s leadership is widespread: more than 25% of new passenger vehicle sales in the state are electric, gasoline consumption is declining, and electric truck sales are on the rise. California is demonstrating that slashing climate and air pollution from cars and trucks is possible, and it’s unique authority under the Clean Air Act provides other states to follow it’s lead if they choose to.
Attacking CA’s ability to implement its standards will have lasting consequences—not just for the golden state, but for all the states looking to protect their residents from vehicle pollution and ultimately the nation as consumers across the country have fewer clean vehicles to choose from.
These rules work! Vehicle efficiency is at an all-time high—thanks to common-sense vehicle standards
It’s hard to overstate the importance of standards in making progress in making real world impacts on reducing air pollution, cutting climate emissions, and reducing petroleum use. Sure, auto industry innovation is rarely standing still, but history has demonstrated that safety, efficiency and pollution innovations don’t deliver without standards in place
A quick glance at average fuel economy of new vehicles over the last 50 years illustrates this clearly. Fuel economy standards were first established in the 1970s and average new vehicle miles per gallon (mpg) increased significantly. For the next two decades standards barely budged – fuel economy got worse but auto industry kept on innovating away. Finally, with new standards in place in the late 2000s auto companies were compelled to make improvements across the board, with average new vehicle fuel economy now approaching 30 mpg.
Vehicle standards have given consumers more choices, while saving them money at the pump
When Americans head to their local dealership to seek out a new or used vehicle, standards and regulations that automakers have to meet are very likely not top of mind. But the impact of these rules are clearly evident on the lot.
Consumers now have the option to choose pick-up trucks with 20-plus miles per gallon ratings, hybrid vehicles with 50 mile per gallon stickers, and plug-in electric vehicles. These options have all been spurred by standards and that ensure all automakers are moving toward a cleaner, healthier future, the nation is less vulnerable to global oil price shocks, and consumers pay less at the pump. The Trump Administration’s actions will take us backwards on all of these fronts.
A gift to oil companies sure, but also to US automakers’ international competition
The only beneficiaries from this proposed action to rollback standards are the oil industry and America’s auto industry competitors who will continue to gain global market share as US automakers fall behind. It comes as no surprise that President Trump is happy to hand out a present to the oil industry—he allegedly promised he would in exchange for campaign contributions in May of last year. And President Trump’s allies appear to be thanking him with an advertising campaign.
More worrying for the US auto industry is the decline in US automaker global competitiveness. Being at the forefront of technology innovation helped US automakers be competitive abroad. But global competition is heating up and US automakers are already behind. The combination of standards, consumer incentives, and investments in manufacturing, domestic supply chains, and EV charging infrastructure contained in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are a historic investment in the future of the U.S. auto industry. Yet all of this is now at risk – and somehow eliminating all of these investments and standards is characterized as good for the auto industry. You might think automakers understand this and would resist changes to rules that provide the benefit of regulatory certainty over the next several years. But their long history of resisting regulation (well documented in our Time for a U-Turn report) suggests the temptation of weaker rules is just too great.
Is this time any different than the last time President Trump did this?
These new attempts to rollback standards might all sound more than vaguely familiar. In 2017, the Trump administration took similar actions, with EPA revisiting a previous determination that passenger vehicle standards through 2025 were appropriate. In an about face, EPA under Scott Pruitt determined that they should be made less stringent, ignoring ample evidence that the standards were not only feasible, but positive for consumers as well as jobs and the environment. (My colleague Dave Cooke wrote about this in his blog, “EPA Rolls back fuel efficiency standards at the request of automakers”)
Ultimately, EPA proposed new standards despite their regulatory analysis clearly showing that the weaker rules would cost consumers more and lead to increases in premature deaths from increased air pollution. Though it took nearly President Trump’s entire first term, the rule rollbacks were ultimately finalized in 2020. Even many automakers were frustrated and ended up making separate agreements with California to comply with more ambitious targets. Over 175 members of Congress spoke out against these rollbacks. And the early part of the Biden administration was spent clawing back some of the benefits lost through President Trump’s rollbacks.
This time around, there is more at risk. Climate change is accelerating and the impacts on our daily lives is becoming all too clear as climate-fueled disasters occur on a regular basis. The longer we take to reduce emissions, the higher the cost. The administration may also try to move more quickly this time.
What happens next?
While the Administration would likely prefer to make these rollbacks effectively immediately, legally they can’t and the recent announcement is only the beginning of a process. EPA and NHTSA will need to justify any actions to modify their rules, including an opportunity for public input. And the incoming administration doesn’t have the legal authority to rescind or revoke the waivers already granted to states to protect their residents.
Just as we were last time President Trump targeted common sense climate, public health, and transportation policies, UCS will be there every step of the way. UCS provided evidence supporting the benefits of retaining strong standards, highlighted the ways in which the administration’s rollbacks would harm the public and supported successful state efforts to blunt the impact of federal rollbacks. We are again ready to track, debunk, and fight this attack on bedrock health and climate protections and will make it hard for the administration to ignore the facts.
And we need your help. Join the more than 50,000 people who have already signed our open letter to Congress to protect independent science and support science-based decision making. By signing the petition, you will also get notified about future actions and opportunities to protect important clean transportation policies in the coming months.