WASHINGTON – The American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear called upon the nation’s heavy-duty truck and engine manufacturers to abandon their agreement with California regulators to abide by the state’s increasingly untenable and unachievable zero-emission vehicle regulations.
“By strong-arming our industry into unachievable targets and timelines void of operational and economic reality, the California Air Resources Board’s mad dash to zero has set our industry up for failure, sowing the seeds of another supply chain crisis,” Spear said in a letter to the nation’s truck and engine makers. “California’s ideological approach has cratered the truck market; sales are down by over 50 percent compared to last year. Availability of California-certified diesel engines are hard to come by and expensive, rationed due to zero-emission truck sales requirements.”
According to to an ATA press release, Spear decried the agreement CARB struck with the Clean Truck Partnership, a consortium of truck makers, as “deeply flawed and coercive,” and urged the organization to vacate the pact, citing a lawsuit filed by Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers and the “shifting political landscape,” which should allow the manufacturers to partner with their customers to advance their shared goal of reducing emissions.
“As your customers and partners, we ask that you work with all members of the American Trucking Associations to forge a viable path forward. Abandon the CTP and work with us and the incoming Administration in Washington to reopen Greenhouse Gas Phase 3 and revise it with achievable, national standards that put our industry on a sustainable and successful path towards a zero-emissions vehicle future,” Spear said
To read the letter in full, click here.
Dana Guthrie is an award-winning journalist who has been featured in multiple newspapers, books and magazines across the globe. She is currently based in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.
