Biden Regime Finalized New Set of Strict Regulations for Heavy-Duty Vehicles
Jose Nino
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On March 29, 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) put the finishing touches on strict emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles. According to a Daily Caller report, this new regulation will mandate massive increases in the number of electric or zero-emission buses and trucks that are sold over the course of the next decade.
The agency is estimating that the heavy-duty vehicle emissions standards for vehicle models in the years of 2027 to 2032 could generate an auto market in which zero-emission or electric vehicles (EVs) comprising 25% of new long-haul trucks sold and 40% of all new medium-sized truck sales by 2032, per a report by The New York Times. The EPA’s final emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles piggybacks off of the agency’s recent publication of the final tailpipe emissions standards for light-and medium-duty vehicles that has been labeled as an “EV mandate.”
At the present, electric trucks can be three times as expensive as diesel-powered models, and the size of their batteries lowers the amount of freight that a truck can haul on the road. On top of that, electric trucks require the use of powerful chargers, which would require upgrades to the power grid to deal with the daunting task of recharging multiple trucks at the same time. Currently, there are roughly 5,000 electric truck chargers nationwide.According to estimates, roughly one million will be needed to maintain pace with the EPA’s regulation.
On top of buses and trucks, the regulation is applicable to vehicles such as ambulances, garbage trucks and cement mixers. Although environmentalist organizations praised the rule, multiple trucking industry trade associations, which includes the American trucking Associations (ATA), have been critical of these new standards due to how they have the potential of causing economic destabilization.
“ATA opposes this rule in its current form because the post-2030 targets remain entirely unachievable given the current state of zero-emission technology, the lack of charging infrastructure and restrictions on the power grid,” ATA President and CEO Chris Spear declared in a statement. “Given the wide range of operations required of our industry to keep the economy running, a successful emission regulation must be technology neutral and cannot be one-size-fits-all. Any regulation that fails to account for the operational realities of trucking will set the industry and America’s supply chain up for failure.”
The ATA manifested concerns that the regulation will destabilize supply chains and how freight is hauled across the US — all at the expense of consumers. The trade organization also suggested that the technologies which the EPA believes will replace diesel fuel are still “unproven.”
Overall, regulations should be perceived as an assault on the middle class, which usually has the bear the compliance costs of new regulations and has to enjoy shoddier or less services.
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