The EV Fight in Congress: California Here We Come…

As the budget fight in Congress moves toward EV subsidies, there is certain to be a Congressional effort to overturn California’s pending ban on the sale of new gasoline powered cars and light trucks by 2035.  These “bans” are a favorite EV bashing message of the Trump administration (even though it is a locally created California rule, not the Federal diktat the Trump administration often falsely claims.  After the smog filled 1960’s and 70’s California’s voters are particularly sensitive to clean air topics.)

This NYT article yesterday is a good summary.

Last summer, anticipating this looming fight, we did a little polling in California on this entire “gas car ban” topic.   Since California has an open-seat gubernatorial race in 2026, we think the issue could emerge as a public topic as a wide field of likely candidates slug it out for the Governor’s office.

Our initial guess was few Californians even know about the pending 2035 ban and even in blue California it would have some headwinds.

So, we wrote a campaign style polling question, pushing a few buttons on each side (climate/clean air vs government over-reach.)

We asked Californians on the poll this question:

“The California Air Resources Board is a state government agency that sets clean air regulations for our state.

This board has ruled that by 2035 all new cars, SUVs and pick-up trucks sold in California must be zero-emissions vehicles, like Electric or Hydrogen powered cars.  Any sale of gasoline or diesel vehicles will be banned – including hybrids – except for used vehicles.”

The results were slightly better than we expected.  You can see them here:

The bottom line?  The CARB ICE ban has majority support in California, but only barely.  Our hunch is that under a long public debate in a campaign year, support would sink.  We’ve always thought the “ban” issue is a political vulnerability for electrification messaging and if a big political war breaks out between CA Gov Gavin Newsom and President Trump on this issue, they could both claim a victory of sorts; Newsom polishing his potential Democratic Primary campaign for the 2028 nomination by fighting with Trump on an issue Democrats like (note above; CA Dems are 65/26 in favor of the ICE 2035 ban), and the President will do well politically playing to states beyond California by fighting an imaginary, but scary, ICE car ban.  (The Trump campaign used the phony “ban” issue effective in Michigan during the campaign, as our research clearly showed.)

We think the best way to sell EVs is to make great cars and sell attributes not politics and this fight will not help that cause.  For the policy impact we’re happy to see the CA regs remain, but the smartest political strategy is to always pick the fights you want, not your opponent.

So buy some big popcorn and stay tuned.