Automakers Oppose Zero Emissions Vehicle Bill
SAN FRANCISCO — A California lawmaker said she will withdraw a bill in the state Legislature that would have required 15 percent of new car sales be zero emission vehicles by 2025 due to opposition from automakers, the oil industry and labor.
“With just a week and a half to move the bill through, there just wasn’t enough time to overcome the opposition,” Allison Ruff, a spokeswoman for bill author Assemblywoman Autumn Burke, D-Inglewood, told Reuters in an email Thursday.
Burke plans to meet with stakeholders and introduce a new version of the bill in 2017, Ruff said.
The move will not affect the state’s zero emission vehicle program, which seeks to help the state achieve its goal of putting 1.5 million zero emission vehicles on California roads by 2025.
The California Air Resources Board has for years operated a program designed to speed the commercialization of zero emission vehicles in the state, a regulation that has been adopted by nine other states.
The program includes a clean car credit system, which has been criticized by environmentalists and electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors Inc., who say the system suffers from an oversupply of credits.
They have argued recently that auto manufacturers can meet their sales target by submitting credits instead of building and selling cars in the state. -AutomotiveNews.com
