California's electric vehicle mandates, which go into effect next year, are “impossible” to meet and will result in reduced choices on dealer lots.
“I have not seen a forecast by anyone," Jack Hollis, chief operating officer of Toyota Motor North America, said on a Friday roundtable discussion, "government or private, anywhere that has told us that that number is achievable. At this point, it looks impossible."
Hollis continued, “Demand isn’t there. It’s going to limit a customer’s choice of the vehicles they want.”
That's thanks to California's Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II), adopted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in 2022. CARB consists of 12 lackeys appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, two more members appointed by the state legislature's environmental justice committees, and two non-voting members providing "legislative oversight" for the Assembly and State Senate.
CARB enjoys broad regulatory powers and isn't shy about using them. ACC II requires that 35% of 2026 model-year cars and trucks sold in California be zero-emission vehicles. Mostly that means electric vehicles, although fuel-cell cars (anyone still making those?) and certain plug-in hybrids also qualify.
"It’s going to distort the industry. It’s going to distort the business," Hollis also said. "Why? Because it’s unnatural to what the current demand in the marketplace is."
How will those marketplace distortions work out in practice? Shortages? High prices?
There's also the wee tiny little problem of providing juice for all of those EVs in a state where brownouts are already a common occurrence. The folks who run Arizona's Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station might already be shopping for second (third?) homes.
Sure, it's easy to point and laugh at Californians getting what they voted for, good and hard, but the Once-Golden State wields considerable regulatory influence across the entire nation. The legislatures of nearly a dozen other states have adopted ACC II as their own. The list includes Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
D.C., Maine, and Rhode Island are in the process of adopting ACC II regulations, bringing the total number of states up to a baker's dozen plus our nation's capital.
That's an awful lot of Americans who are soon to discover that their feel-good (I.E., brainless, ill-considered, etc.) voting habits will force them to hang on to their old cars maybe years longer than they'd planned.
Here in Colorado, we're experiencing something just as stupid.
The Democrats who dominate my once-fine state's government passed a law in 2020 requiring that all eggs sold in the state be laid by cage-free chickens. "Sold in the state" means that we can't even buy reasonably priced eggs from other states.
HB20-1343 goes into effect in two stages.
Starting last year, hens had to be provided with at least one square foot of living space. I don't know anything about chickens, but since last year, eggs have gotten more expensive and the quality is less consistent. On Jan. 1, 2025, hens must be kept in cage-free systems with the ability to roam freely.
Well, guess what: Colorado’s cage-free law spurs egg shortage, shoppers turn to local farms.
Local farms can't keep up, either, but, "according to producers, it may be some time before the state’s egg supply fully recovers as farms adapt to these cage-free standards." Big producers have had since 2020 to prepare for this day, just like carmakers have known for years that California would require them to go all-electric — and yet nobody is prepared.
That isn't because egg producers or carmakers are inept. It's because Democrats believe the law is a voodoo spell that can make their dreams real. Frustrated car- and egg-buyers would like a word.
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