President Donald Trump Thursday signed three resolutions that repeal a regulatory waiver that the Biden administration had granted California. The waiver allowed California and the more than a dozen states that have adopted California’s regulations to mandate that all cars sold in their states be electric by 2035. 

Moments after Trump signed the legislation, California and ten of the states that adopted California’s EV mandates filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California. 

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: California will not back down. We will continue to fiercely defend ourselves from this lawless federal overreach,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. California Gov. Gavin Newsom called it “the latest illegal action by a president who is a wholly-owned subsidiary of big polluters.”

Should the courts side with California and allow the waiver to stand, proponents of EV mandates may not find their goals coming to fruition. Electric vehicle sales are falling far beneath the mandate’s targets. Likewise, automakers are showing diminishing enthusiasm for going all electric. Bonta and Newsom may need more than a waiver to get America’s drivers into EVs. 

‘Back-door federal EV mandate’

California’s Advanced Clean Cars II (ACCII), which the state adopted in 2022, mandated that 100% of all cars sold in the state be electric by 2035. In order for the state to have emission standards more stringent than those of the federal government, the state needed a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency. Just as former President Joe Biden left office, California was granted the waiver. 

As of 2025, 17 states adopted all or part of California’s ACCII regulations. All combined, those states represent the lion's share of the car market. Should the courts side with the blue states’ lawsuit, most car buyers in America after 2035 would be prohibited from purchasing new gasoline-powered cars and manufacturers would be compelled to make a large portion of their sales EVs — regardless of whether they sell or not. 

The Biden-Harris administration finalized federal rules that require manufacturers to produce EVs to meet emission standards, but because of the widespread adoption of California’s ACCII, critics of the EV mandates argued that, to fully repeal the Biden-Harris administration’s EV mandates, the waiver had to go. 

“This wasn’t just a California rule — it was a back-door federal EV mandate that working families didn’t want,” Daniel Turner, executive director of Power the Future said in a mandate.

Consumers are taking a different road

Consumers, even in California, don’t appear to be on board with the blue states’ EV mandate. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, approximately 22% of light-duty vehicles sold in the first quarter of this year were electric or hybrid cars. 

This was up from about 18% in the same quarter last year, but the increase was due to the growing popularity of hybrid electric vehicles, which combine aspects of electric and gas-powered engines. Electric cars, on the other hand, went from less than 2% of sales in 2020 to just slightly more than 8% in 2024. In the first quarter of this year, those sales dipped below 8% again.

Even in EV-friendly California, where EV adoption rates have been the highest in the nation, consumer preference isn’t lining up with the targets of the ACCII. According to research from the Energy Policy Research Foundation, between 2021 and 2023, electric vehicles went from 13% of all new car sales to 25%. For the next two years, the figure remained unchanged, and it dropped to 24% in the first quarter of this year. 

To meet California’s standards, car buyers in the state would need to increase their preference for EVs by 11 percentage points by the end of 2026, to make up 35% of all car sales. Then, in a mere nine years, they would need to increase that by another 65 percentage points to reach the ultimate 100% target. After three years of zero growth, consumers -- increasingly wary of major purchases -- will need to develop a sudden thirst for EVs. 

The picture is even more dismal in the states that fully adopted the ACCII, which are Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, as well as the District of Columbia. In 2024, 14% of all car sales were electric in those states, and only 6% in the rest of the country. 

With consumers rejecting Newsom’s EV goals, it would seem a bad time to initiate a high-profile lawsuit aimed at maintaining the mandates. David Blackmon, an energy analyst who publishes his work on his “Energy Absurdities” Substack, told Just the News that Newsom is likely trying to save face and maintain an EV legacy, even knowing it might not pan out as planned. 

“I think his hope was to at least get there to the end of his second term in office with the thing intact, so that it falls apart by whoever his successor ends up being,” Blackmon said. 

Automakers say it "will take a miracle" 

It’s not clear that car makers are too hot on having the mandate stand, either. As the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress went after California’s waiver, the auto industry has been largely silent. 

After the House passed the measure repealing the waiver, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents the full auto industry, issued an enthusiastic approval. 

“Today’s vote was a welcome — and targeted — action by the House to prevent the inevitable jobs and manufacturing fallout from these unachievable regulations. Regulations, by the way, that everyone agrees are way ahead of the consumer and charging infrastructure in this country,” John Bozzella, president and CEO of the alliance, said in a statement. 

According to the alliance, achieving California’s forced EV adoption would “will take a miracle.” The states that have adopted California’s EV mandate lack sufficient EV customers to meet the targets, infrastructure is still inadequate, and the mandate will result in major job losses in the automotive industry. 

As if it was anticipating a shift toward consumer interest in gas-powered vehicles, General Motors announced Tuesday it would be investing $4 billion primarily in gas–powered vehicle manufacturing facilities. Publicly, however, the company is saying it’s committed to a transition to electric. 

“We still believe in an all-EV future,” General Motors CEO Mary Barra said last month at a conference. 

Now it’s with the courts

The House and Senate passed the resolutions under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Congress to block certain finalized federal regulations. Both the Government Accountability Office and Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough have concluded that EPA waivers aren’t eligible for CRA review. 

The courts will ultimately decide if the resolutions were based on solid legal grounds. Blackmon said that the courts will likely rule that states can’t set policies that impose mandates on the entire nation. 

“The courts have always held that regulating air quality is the prerogative of the federal government, and there are great reasons why that's the case. If you let every state do it, then it becomes impossible for the trucking and car industry to comply. I believe the courts are going to rule against California in this. And they'll have to find a different way to pursue their crazy agenda,” Blackmon said.