Home>Articles>California To Ban Sale Of All New Diesel Trucks, Buses Beginning In 2036

Truck on highway in Bakersfield, CA. (Photo: Clari Massimiliano, Shutterstock)

California To Ban Sale Of All New Diesel Trucks, Buses Beginning In 2036

New CARB rule to also have all trucks in California be zero emission by 2042

By Evan Symon, April 29, 2023 2:24 am

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) announced on Friday that the sale of all new diesel big rig trucks and buses are to be banned in the state of California starting in 2036, coming in a year after a similar new gas-powered car bar that was previously voted on.

In addition to the 2036 sales ban on new diesel trucks and buses, CARB, voted on Friday for these new regulations, also announced that all trucks in California are to be zero-emissions by 2042. Under these new regulations, also known as the Advanced Clean Fleets rule, CARB hopes to achieve a total zero-emissions truck and bus fleet by 2045, as well as have at least 1.6 million zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty trucks operating in the state by 2048.

However, some deadlines under the Advanced Clean Fleets rule come sooner than 2036 or 2042. According to CARB, drayage trucks, which carry cargo to and from ports, must have 100% of new sales starting next year, with 100% of drayage trucks being fully electric by 2035. Service vehicles, such as garbage trucks and school buses, need to be zero-emissions by 2039.

The new truck and bus rule is only the latest to be approved by CARB and Governor Gavin Newsom in the last few years. Amongst them include a new gas-powered car sale ban set to be fully implemented in 2035, a law requiring that half of all new sales of heavy duty trucks need to be electric by 2035, and a new law just passed earlier this week that bans the use of trains that are older than 23 years starting in 2030, with all locomotives needing to be emissions free by 2035. The total goal of all these regulations is to make California 100% carbon neutral by 2045.

CARB noted that the truck and bus rule passed on Friday would specifically cover a quarter of all on-road greenhouse gas emissions and over a third of the state’s emissions of the harmful air pollutant NOx despite large trucks only accounting for 6% of all of California’s vehicles. The new rule is also expected to generate $26.6 billion in health savings, and fleet owners will save an estimated $48 billion from the transition to cleaner vehicles.

New Truck Regulations

“The future happens here first, and California is once again showing the world what real climate action looks like,” said Newsom in a statement on Friday. “Last year, our state approved one of the world’s first regulations requiring all new car sales to be zero emissions. Now, with these actions requiring all new heavy-duty truck sales to be zero emission and tackling train pollution in our state, we’re one step closer to achieving healthier neighborhoods and cleaner air for all Californians.”

Will Barrett,  national senior director for clean air advocacy for the American Lung Association, also noted that “You can’t overstate the importance of the actions taken in California today from a public health perspective.”

Despite support for the new regulations, those in the industry said that what California is asking for is unrealistic, and that they would need a longer timeline to come anywhere close to being realistic.

“I’m no longer convinced that California knows what reality is,” explained Simon Bernard, a trucking advocate who works with many trucking and shipping companies on logistics and fleet issues, to the Globe on Friday. “If we start under these new regulations beginning next year, we would need severe port improvements, including a hell of a lot more space, more chargers, and new schedules around charge times. You need to remember, electric vehicles don’t charge as fast as filling up a gas tank, so speed goes way down on truck turnaround.”

“And that’s just for ports. When these new regulations kick in in throughout the 2020’s and 2030’s, we’re going to need technology to catch up for faster charge times to make this even remotely feasible. We’re also going to need a huge new nationwide charger network. And we’re going to have to start replacing vehicles even if some are still in operating condition, so that will be costing these companies even more money, because many are going to be screwed waiting on battery charges.”

“CARB did not do their homework here. A gradual shift based on capacity and technology? Sure. That’s fine. But California has set all these unrealistic dates, and you just know these deadlines are going to be broken. As soon as people start complaining about trucking delays and stuff taking much longer to reach them because of all the snafus that are going to happen here, you are going to see a lot of exceptions and delays sprout up. Fleet electrization in China and Europe brought up similar issues.”

“The industry isn’t against the shift to electric and zero emissions vehicles. That’s becoming inevitable. But give a realistic timeline, or at the very least, coordinate with other states so that long-haul truckers can have a proper charger support network first. They’re basing a lot of this on projections, but those always change. You can’t force rapid change to happen the way you think it will.”

The first parts of the new Advanced Clean Fleets rule are expected to be enforced beginning next year.

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22 thoughts on “California To Ban Sale Of All New Diesel Trucks, Buses Beginning In 2036

  1. This will never work and I am getting extremely annoyed by these bureaucrats making ridiculous rules. Will there ever be pushback????????

    1. Agree,Enough Already!
      The push back will only come too late.
      When the grid cannot support all the buses, trucks and cars,
      The independent truck driver will stop coming into California and we will have supply chain issues that make the recent ones insignificant.
      As long as we have commissions ruled by elite politicians nothings changes it only gets more ridiculous, sigh.

  2. Does Mary Nichols really think she is going to be crowned and given a special throne from which to rule in the Brave New World these creeps have planned for us? Uh, I don’t think so.
    Disband CARB now, they are a group of un-elected bureaucrats

  3. Is anyone surprised that authoritarian, dictatorial and totalitarian Democrats and their minions on the California Air Resources Board have decreed that diesel trucks and busses will be banned by 2036? Their CCP and WEF globalist masters must be pleased with them and no doubt the payoffs to them will soon begin?

    1. Well, TJ, they’d better hope they collect billions, or more, and also have the necessary “social status” for a seat at that future table, because otherwise they will be end up being just as screwed and sidelined as the “commoners club” they inexplicably think they are no longer members of.

  4. Do the people who make these insane rules, even live in the REAL WORLD?? Or are they living in some made-up world in their own mind?? Right now there are truckers who will NOT come into California to haul produce to other states. So instead of fairly cheap foodstuff. It’s now way more expensive to deliver the foodstuff. Fairly soon all the trucking outfits located in other states are going to not come in. And all these goods will sit in border states waiting for some local outfit to bring them in. Until the cost will shut them down as well. And the people who voted these morons in will be the first to complain about the lack of or price of said products.

  5. Food prices will go thru the roof because of this. If truckers have to buy new battery powered trucks and chargers , they will pass the cost to consumers.
    The politicians have basically forced a price increase on consumersd.

  6. Food prices will go thru the roof because of this. If truckers have to buy new battery powered trucks and chargers , they will pass the cost to consumers.
    The politicians have basically forced a price increase on consumers.

  7. The critical question for entrepreneurs in California is: where will the pack stations be for the mule and camels trains that will soon become essential to moving goods and people across the state?

    This ban means that every base-line piece of infrastructure (roads, pipelines, grid operations, commodity shipping) will quickly fall into ruin.

    If you can find diesel, you won’t be able to find the required additives, you won’t be able to get the vehicle running, and if it runs, there won’t be any good roads or tracks to run it on – since they all rely on the efficient diesel engine to maintain.

    This leads inevitably to two ways of moving goods and people in the state: by sea (which is pretty straightforward and will be able to pick up right away when costs for other types of shipping make literally using a ship cost competitive) and pack animals like mules and camels.

    All those animals will need to have pack stations, water, forage or hay, leather goods, etc. available on their long journeys across the Sierra Nevadas or up and down the state.

    It is gonna be awesome if you love animals and shooting at bandits, or being a bandit, or love the romance of the West. Yee haw!

  8. One aspect of this that isn’t being talked about more is that cities will need to starting buying 50% EVs for their fleets starting next year. Which is highly unfeasible given the costs and unavailability of many classes of vehicles. The California League of Cities strongly warned CARB that this deadline will not be possible to meat for most cities in the state. Most likely cities will just ignore these rules as they will still need to buy trucks regardless.

    1. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, Otakuon? Some of us would LOVE to see cities ignore the rules dreamed up by tyrannical unelected bureacrats who have no business intruding into our lives and businesses.

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