WASHINGTON — California’s government has hit back at automakers that sided with President Donald Trump over the state on fuel efficiency standards, saying Sacramento will halt all purchases of new vehicles from General Motors, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler and other automakers that backed stripping California of its authority to regulate tailpipe emissions.
The ban, which the California governor, Gavin Newsom, plans to implement in January 2020, is the latest shot in the intensifying battle over climate change between Trump and the state, which he appears to relish antagonizing.
“Carmakers that have chosen to be on the wrong side of history will be on the losing end of California’s buying power,” Newsom said in a statement Monday.
A spokeswoman for GM said the state was depriving itself of the low-cost electric vehicles it needed to meet its environmental objectives.
“Removing vehicles like the Chevy Bolt and prohibiting GM and other manufacturers from consideration will reduce California’s choices for affordable, American-made electric vehicles and limit its ability to reach its goal of minimizing the state government’s carbon footprint, a goal that GM shares,” the spokeswoman, Jeannine Ginivan, said.
Representatives from the White House, Fiat Chrysler and Toyota did not respond to requests for comment.
The fight over planet-warming auto emissions has split the nation’s auto industry: Four major companies have sided with California on its legal authority to set tough state-level standards on tailpipe pollution, while at least five others have sided with Trump, who is rolling back Obama-era fuel economy standards and moving to strip California of its authority to set its own.
In a statement published late Friday, the California Department of General Services said that, effective immediately, all sedans purchased by the state would have to be electric or hybrid vehicles.
Beneath that announcement was a little-noticed policy that, starting in 2020, state agencies will only purchase vehicles from manufacturers that recognize the authority of California’s clean air agency to set its own greenhouse gas emission standards.
Although the statement does not mention GM, Toyota or Fiat Chrysler by name, the new policy amounts to a ban on state purchases of vehicles made by those companies and a handful of others, represented by the lobbying group Global Automakers, a spokesman for Newsom confirmed Monday.
Going forward, California’s state agencies will chiefly purchase cars from Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW. In July, those companies sided with California when they struck a deal to follow California’s more stringent standards, which are close to the original Obama-era rules.
Also Friday, California filed its second lawsuit against the Trump administration over its revocation of the state’s legal authority to set tougher pollution standards. The revocation was put forward jointly in September by the Transportation Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. The state filed suit against the Transportation Department in September, then followed up last week with its suit against the EPA.
It was not clear how much impact California’s new buying ban would have. California’s government has about 51,000 vehicles but only purchases 2,000 to 3,000 vehicles a year, according to data provided by the state. Of the vehicles it owns, roughly 14,000 are made by Ford, 10,000 are made by GM, 4,000 are made by Fiat Chrysler and 1,200 are made by Toyota.
About 17 million cars and light trucks were sold across the United States last year.
The ban on new purchases does not apply to some public safety vehicles, including California Highway Patrol cars, allowing the state to continue to purchase muscular vehicles like Fiat Chrysler’s Dodge Charger, according to Newsom’s spokesman.
California’s pact with Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW embarrassed the Trump administration, which assailed the move as a stunt. The Justice Department subsequently opened an antitrust inquiry into the four automakers on the grounds that their agreement with California could potentially limit consumer choice.
Since the opening days of his administration, Trump has been boasting that his rollback of vehicle pollution rules would help both automakers and car buyers. The Obama-era standard would have required automakers to build vehicles that achieve an average fuel economy of 54.5 mpg by 2025, which would eliminate about 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide pollution, one of the chief causes of global warming, over the lifetime of the vehicles.
The Obama-era standard was modeled after a rule crafted by California, which was granted authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act to enact stricter vehicle pollution standards than those set by the federal government.
Trump administration is planning to roll back the fuel-economy standard to about 40 mpg.