Sure, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) may be transitioning California’s electric grid to less reliable energy sources and forcing people to buy electric vehicles, but at least he promised to help lower electric vehicle costs for Californians.

He isn’t going to keep that promise, of course, but it’s the thought that counts.

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Upon taking office, President Donald Trump ended the federal tax credit for people who purchase electric vehicles. In November 2024, before Trump took office, Newsom pledged that “California will step in to provide a California ZEV rebate,” for zero-emission vehicles, “if the incoming Trump Administration follows through on its threat to eliminate the federal tax credit.”

Trump did exactly that, and now, 10 months after making his grand promise, Newsom has admitted that California will not be “stepping in” to make EVs cheaper for Californians. Newsom whined that “federal vandalism” killed the federal tax credit and that it couldn’t be replicated at the state level. That would be because it would require the California legislature to delegate even more money that the state doesn’t have in the midst of a budget crisis. Having very publicly reneged on his promise to lower costs for Californians, Newsom is now instead bragging about how many public EV chargers the state has.

None of this would be a problem in the first place if Newsom weren’t forcing Californians to buy EVs in the first place. Newsom and California Democrats intend to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 as the state phases them out, forcing drivers in the state to spend more money on electric vehicles. Newsom and the California Democratic Party have made life progressively more expensive for state residents, and are now saddling them with an extra cost that Newsom explicitly promised he would relieve.

Newsom is trying to force people to spend more on electric vehicles while forcing car manufacturers to spend more on making and selling them, but that is failing, too. The 2026 deadline for car manufacturers requires that 35% of the new cars they sell be EVs, but only Tesla is on track to hit that number because Tesla only sells EVs. Manufacturers will either have to pay fines or restrict the sale of gas-powered cars to hit those marks.

UNINTENTIONAL OR ON PURPOSE, CALIFORNIA CAN’T KEEP THE LIGHTS ON

When Newsom isn’t forcing people to buy EVs or manufacturers to sell them, he is forcing the state’s electrical grid to rely on unreliable forms of energy as part of a “green” transition. This happens to be one of several other promises that Newsom has broken, motivated by avoiding the negative headlines about rolling blackouts that plagued him years ago. Newsom has reversed course and expanded natural gas facilities and tried to keep the state’s last nuclear power plant running so that the grid doesn’t fully collapse. And all this worry is over the grid before Newsom forces 100% of drivers into EVs that must be regularly charged.

Newsom’s presidential audition in California has been a bust, but he has shown that he has the “make unkeepable promises and then break them” part of politics down pat. It is about the only thing he has actually accomplished as governor of California.