Automotive mandates within the Global Warming Solutions Act will hurt local auto dealers

By Paul Bean 

President Trump’s rollback on President Biden’s initiative for electric vehicles to make up 50 percent of new cars by 2030 will not affect Vermont’s automotive carbon-reduction mandates as defined by the Global Warming Solution Act. 

In the Vermont House Committee on Transportation, Matt Cota, a representative of the Vermont Vehicle and Automotive Distributors Association, explained that per the Global Warming Solutions Act, “It’s not a mandate on consumers to buy these cars. It’s not a mandate on dealers to sell these cars. It’s a mandate on manufacturers to deliver to Vermont 35% battery electric vehicles starting model year 2026, scaling up to 100% in 2035, where all you’ll be able to purchase for a new vehicle in Vermont is a battery electric vehicle.”

In September 2022, Vermont adopted California’s Advanced Clean Car and Advanced Clean Truck Regulations, in accordance with the GWSA as a means to meet the ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Vermont. The act aims for a 26% reduction by 2025, 40% by 2030, and 80% by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. 

Vermont adopted the policy to push automakers toward meeting stricter tailpipe emissions standards and ultimately to meet the carbon reduction goals of the Global Warming Solutions Act. However, the implementation of these regulations is raising concerns among local vehicle dealers, who are concerned about the impact on consumer choice and the ability of manufacturers to comply with the state’s mandate.  

“Vermont dealers are supportive of EVs,” said Cota. “They’ve made significant investments in charging infrastructure and training for EV technicians. But navigating between federal policies, California’s requirements, and Vermont’s own rules is a complex and challenging task for small, locally owned dealerships.”

This mandate has raised concerns for auto-dealers in Vermont because of the potential loss of business. If they are required to have 35% of their inventory as electric vehicles, there would need to be an increased consumer demand for electric vehicles. Otherwise they will lose out on business to out of state auto dealers who are not required by the same regulations. 

Auto dealers would be either stuck with inventory that they cannot sell (and eventually would be forced to buy), or manufacturers would be forced to send less inventory, decreasing the size of the dealership, limiting sales, jobs, and putting small car dealerships out of business. 

“We’ve got 10 years to go from 35%, to 100%. Where are we right now? 12%,” said Cota during a VDC interview this morning in reference to the percentage of new vehicles sold today in Vermont that are electric.

“They used that same regulatory structure, that same approval, to create a new mandate to require manufacturers to deliver to California, an increasing number of battery electric vehicles,” explained Cota in reference to a 1970 Federal law called “The Clean Air Act that gave California permission to regulate tailpipe emissions. “Vermont and eleven other states [or ten other states and Washington, DC]  adopted the similar mandate. So we are copying California…And despite what you may have heard or read from the Trump administration and their unleashing energy report, that was a different set of regulations that he promised to unwind,” he explained.

Cota also pointed out to this reporter in our brief interview this morning that the law will in fact not only hurt local auto dealers, but will actually benefit companies like Tesla and ultimately Elon Musk.

Cota: “The law allows them to purchase credits– sound familiar to the clean heat standard? So manufacturers, Ford, GM, Niesan, they can buy credits and sell gas vehicles… Guess who owns the credits? The manufacturers of electric vehicles that produce more electric than gas. Who is that? His name is Elon Musk and he has a corner office in the White House next to Donald Trump. We have created a law in Vermont passed mostly by progressive democrats who want to reduce fossil fuel consumption, that inadvertently enriches the richest man in the world.”

“The President could, and the Republican congress could, pass a new law that says, ‘yeah you had the right before you don’t now,’” said Cota in reference to the Clean Air Act that gave California permission to regulate tailpipe emissions. “As long as Vermont says ‘nope we’re going with California, than that’s the rule that’s going to be imposed here.” 

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