The May 19th print edition of Automotive News ran two commentaries that debated California’s ability regulate pollution caused by the automobile industry.
In the first commentary, Reporter Larry P. Vellequette (2025) acknowledged that the industry has a responsibility to address the ways it contributes to climate change. However, he argued that the state Air Resources Board’s Advanced Clean Cars II regulations should be relaxed in order to give the industry and the public more time to ween itself from gas-powered vehicles. As it stands, the board has called for 100 percent of new vehicles sold in the state to have zero emissions by 2035. This timeline is also being followed by almost a dozen other states and the District of Columbia (Aronoff, 2025).
Vellequette (2025) implied that relaxing the board’s timeline could circumvent long and costly court cases on whether Congress can remove a waiver that allows it to establish regulations distinct from the federal government’s. However, he ended his column by saying, “Unfortunately, we all suspect how both sides will choose. And we will all be the worse off for those decisions.”
I get the journalistic allure of making a “bothsides do it” argument. That protects the writer from being labeled as in the tank with one of the sides. The problem here is that Vellequette may be painting with too broad of a brush.
The board has already told Automotive News (2025) that it will work with automakers to avoid penalties, which suggests that it may modify timelines.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has made clear that its goal isn’t compromise but rather to remove California’s authority to maintain its own standards. By the same token, Republican congressional leadership ignored a determination by the Government Accountability Office that it could not remove the waiver through the Congressional Review Act (Aronoff, 2025). In addition, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Budget Bill” passed by the House Republican majority appears to eliminate the federal government’s ability to enforce emissions laws (Vaughn, 2025). This is not your father’s Republican party.
Editor’s take at variance with GM’s and Keith Crain’s?
In the second commentary, News Editor Jerry Hirsch (2025) argued in favor of California’s ability to tailor regulations to the unusual geographic circumstances of the state. He pointed to his experience growing up breathing southern California smog that was so bad that he suffered from asthma.
“We can argue about the pace of EV sales and split hairs about decimal places for pollution levels, but California has a legal obligation to clean up its air for the safety and welfare of its residents,” Hirsch (2025) argued. He went on to note that motor vehicles create nearly 80 percent of smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution and 90 percent of diesel particulate matter in the state.
This perspective would appear to operate at variance with that of General Motors, which reportedly lobbied Congress to remove California’s waiver. Management even attempted to recruit staff in its lobbying effort by stating in an email, “Emissions standards that are not aligned with market realities pose a serious threat to our business by undermining consumer choice and vehicle affordability” (Peters, 2025).
Recall that it was only back in 2018 when then-Automotive News publisher Keith Crain denounced GM for endorsing a federal zero-emissions vehicle mandate and disagreeing with Trump’s proposed rollback of fuel economy standards.
“For GM to invite a bigger government role marks a big and surprising turnaround after years of resisting federal regulations on vehicle safety, emissions and fuel economy standards,” Crain (2018) complained. “GM’s decision is certainly out of character and could diminish its lobbying influence in the future.”
Automotive News: A voice of resistance to change
During his long stint as publisher, Crain arguably played an important role in enabling the U.S. auto industry’s resistance to taking responsibility for the problems that it helped to cause.
Of course, that reflected what the industry wanted. “They fight to prevent any kind of regulatory change,” analyst Maryann Keller told Frontline (2008). “I mean, they fought against seat belts because they said seat belts were going to cause injury.”
In a recent unsigned editorial, Automotive News (2025) called on California to relax its zero-emissions mandate. However, in doing so it didn’t acknowledge that the reason why the current timeline is so tight is because the auto industry has been dragging its feet on this issue for many decades. Scientists at Ford and GM began to accumulate evidence in the early-60s that auto emissions contributed to climate change (Joselow, 2020).
I would imagine that Crain would applaud GM’s lobbying to revoke California’s waiver. The problem with that mentality is it effectively kicks the can down the road when it comes to addressing climate change. That could end up making life harder for automakers in the long run.
Alas, long-range thinking doesn’t seem to be in the driver’s seat. Vellequette and Hirsch presumably know that, so both of their commentaries have the quality of a soft-shoe dance. And curiously enough, I have yet to find either one posted on Automotive News’ website.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Aronoff, Kate; 2025. “Republicans Are Rewriting Congressional Rules So Cars Can Pollute More.” The New Republic via Yahoo!News. Posted May 22.
- Automotive News; 2025. “Editorial: To avoid sales crisis, CARB states must ease ZEV mandates.” Posted May 11.
- Crain, Keith; 2018. “GM’s latest plea for federal help is a mistake.” Automotive News (subscription required). Posted November 5.
- Frontline; 2008. “Interview: Maryann Keller.” Posted Oct. 21.
- Hirsch, Jerry; 2025. “Automakers ignore human cost in quest to overturn [CARB ACC II] rules.” Automotive News. Published May 19, p. 12-13 (no link).
- Joselow, Maxine; 2020. “Exclusive: GM, Ford knew about climate change 50 years ago.” E&E News (subscription required). Posted Oct. 26.
- Peters, Adels; 2025. “GM wants to be all-electric by 2035. Why did it lobby to kill California’s EV rule?” Fast Company. Posted May 23.
- Vaughn, Mark; 2025. “Congress Rescinds California’s Ability to Set Its Own Emissions Standards.” AutoWeek. Posted May 23.
- Vellequette, Larry P.; 2025. “$20,000-per-vehicle fine, low EV demand a recipe for disaster.” Automotive News. Published May 19, p. 12-13 (no link).
PHOTOGRAPHY:
- Los Angeles smog (banner photo): By Downtowngal (2006) via Wikipedia Creative Commons 3.0. Image lightened and cropped.
- Maryann Keller: Photo by Jalicandri (2013) via Wikipedia Creative Commons 4.0. Keller delivering the keynote address at a NADA/JD Power Automotive Forum at the 2013 New York Auto Show.
It would be rather interesting, if it has ever been done, to estimate the impact of the automobile and truck production process in case of a switch to an exclusively Battery EV production.
I feel that with mass EV adoption what would most likely occur is that pollution would move away from the enacting countries (basically NA and most of geographical Europe) and instead massive pollution would arise for the extraction of battery materials and the likes.
What would happen to the US automobile industry in case the whole of the US enacted an EV mandate like California is likely forecasted by what is happening right now in the EU (and the Brexit UK even earlier, in 2030!).
What is happening in the EU?
Well, Stellantis and Volkswagen are in very dire straits and this means that in one stroke, Italy’s, France’s and Germany’s car manufacturing is in disarray, with models being delayed or heavily redesigned and plans ditched and remade all over again.
Rather, here is a controversial perspective: as a pedestrian, most modern cars I see around me are just a nuisance, noisy, hot (exhaust gasses do heat up the street) and ungainly to look at. Most of the good that could have been done with the mass-produced passenger car had been done by the early-to-mid 1970s, therefore I’ d propose instead to massively upgrade public transportation (think Japan-grade high speed rail and their upcoming magnetic levitation, tramways, etc) and make people choose that instead of the private car even if they live in small towns (of course with a frequent service even in those areas).
The automobile industry should be downsized to just sports cars, super-luxury cars and of course vintage/antique automobiles.
There’s quite a bit of credible research that EVs generate less pollution than gas-powered vehicles. For example, MIT’s Climate Portal states that in “countries that get most of their energy from burning dirty coal, the emissions numbers for EVs don’t look nearly as good — but they’re still on par with or better than burning gasoline.” In addition, a U.S. Dept. of Energy study found that using “the nationwide average of different energy sources, DOE found that EVs create 3,932 lbs. of CO2 equivalent per year, compared to 5,772 lbs. for plug-in hybrids, 6,258 lbs. for typical hybrids, and 11,435 lbs. for gasoline vehicles.”
Meanwhile, the Yale Climate Connections article asked the question: “But do EVs really lower carbon emissions, even when the electricity feeding the car comes from heavily polluting sources? (Looking at you, West Virginia.) The answer – thankfully – is a resounding yes. Compared to gasoline-powered vehicles, electric cars emit substantially less carbon dioxide pollution, no matter which form of energy is used to recharge them.”
Despite these advantages, the percentage of the American public that believes EVs pollute less has declined in recent years. Why? NPR noted that one reason is the complexity of the calculations, but another factor is that EVs have “gotten caught up in the culture wars, where complexity and nuance go to die. EVs are associated with coastal, urban progressive elites. Plans to phase out gas cars in California and other regions have sparked fierce and sometimes misleading resistance from the fossil fuel industry. Memes that exaggerate or distort the real harms of EVs — or that simply fail to compare them with the damage caused by gas cars — frequently circulate online.”