California has come out swinging in defense of the hundreds of businesses across the US which have adopted thousands of electric trucks. An executive order by California Governor Gavin Newsom backs in rules to boost electric trucks and ensure manufacturers are following requirements to increase their sales. It mandates progress reports every six months upholding truck manufacturers’ commitments to the Clean Truck Partnership, signed in 2023, which binds them to the rules and prevents them from challenging them.

California will publicly list truck manufacturers which continue to follow the requirements, despite the votes against them by Congress and President Trump, and reward those who do through state purchasing schemes.

 

Boost for businesses

The executive order is a boost for businesses that have already adopted electric trucks and are trying to wean themselves off costly and polluting diesel trucks. A report out this week showed over 52,000 electric trucks have been deployed across the US, with the biggest takeup in California, Texas and Florida. For these fleets, and others already considering making the shift, these rules mean certainty for their investments in the medium and long term. 

 

Fighting regressive resolutions                                                  

President Trump signed Congress’s resolutions aimed at killing the electric truck rules, a regressive move that has left many businesses in limbo and will hold the US back on electric truck adoption, compared to other regions. In China, electric trucks made up 22% of light-duty commercial vehicle sales and 15% heavy duty truck sales in April, according to Bloomberg. Europe saw a steep drop of 17.7% in diesel truck sales and a jump of over 50% in electric truck sales between January-April this year, according to industry figures. 

 

Meddling manufacturers

At the heart of the pushback against electric trucks are wealthy truck manufacturers, such as Volvo and Daimler, which would rather keep producing diesel trucks because of short-term higher margins. They have been lobbying Congress through their industry associations to kill clean truck rules and undermining the rules in states by pushing the onus for their implementation onto trucking fleets and dealers. The truck manufacturers have recently been trying to weasel out of the Clean Truck Partnership to evade adhering to it in California. But the state’s executive order just made that a lot more difficult.