By Jeff St. John
David Deon doesn’t downplay the challenge trucking companies will face in complying with California’s sweeping new mandate to decarbonize its trucking sector. But as president of Velocity Truck Rental & Leasing, a major provider of commercial trucks, he is preparing to help them do it.
“I believe zero-emissions vehicles are the future. You can’t ignore it,” he said.
And now that the California Air Resources Board unanimously approved an Advanced Clean Fleets rule on Friday, he foresees plenty of demand from customers looking to rent or lease the 200 battery-electric trucks his company will be bringing to Southern California over the next two years.
Velocity’s 200 electrified trucks are just one small step toward meeting the nation’s most aggressive clean trucks rule, which calls for the conversion of California’s fleet of 1.8 million commercial trucks to emissions-free vehicles over the next two decades. In almost all cases, that’s going to mean electric vehicles. Companies will have to figure out a way to comply in spite of the fact that electric trucks — and the infrastructure necessary to charge them — remain costly and in relatively short supply.
Most truck fleet operators in California aren’t ready for this massive shift, said Alex Voets, general manager of Velocity EV, which, like Deon’s company, is a subsidiary of Velocity Vehicle Group.
“It’s a big investment — electric trucks are expensive, infrastructure is expensive,” he said. “But very few people have run them with their own operations, seen them with their own eyes.”
Getting polluting commercial trucks off the road is a climate, health and equity imperative. These trucks make up 7 percent of vehicles but are responsible for more than a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions and more than half of the smog-forming nitrogen oxides and health-harming fine-particulate pollution from vehicles, Sam Wilson, senior vehicles analyst at the Union for Concerned Scientists, noted in an April blog post.
But the new rules will be hard to meet.
Between now and the middle of next decade, companies with more than 50 vehicles or more than $50 million in annual revenue will need to hit zero-emissions targets for half of their long-haul trucks, 75 percent of work trucks and daily-route heavy trucks, and all box trucks, delivery vans and “yard trucks,” which serve the state’s busy seaports. After 2036, all new commercial trucks sold in the state must be zero-emissions, and by 2042, all fleets must be emissions-free.
That’s a big stretch even for California, by far the U.S. leader in deploying electric vehicles. Just over 300 electric heavy-duty trucks were on the road in the state as of mid-2022. According to data collected by CARB from 2021 onward, less than one-third of companies large enough to be subject to the new mandate had sustainability plans in place, and only one-quarter included emissions reductions in their future plans.
As with previous truck emissions rules that California has imposed, many industry groups are fighting the new clean fleets mandate. “The amount of chaos and dysfunction that is going to be created by this rule will be like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” Chris Shimoda, senior vice president of government affairs for the California Trucking Association trade group, told CalMatters.
Others, like the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association trade group, have reacted with more measured statements of concern in advance of the rule’s approval. “Adequate lead time, regulatory stability, and the necessary zero-emission recharging and refueling infrastructure are imperative for manufacturers” to meet the mandate, said Jed Mandel, the association’s president.
CARB has left wiggle room for fleet operators that can’t meet its deadlines through no fault of their own. The rule offers exemptions that allow companies to buy internal-combustion-engine vehicles if they can’t obtain the zero-emissions vehicles in the configurations they need or with the ranges they require. And companies can receive exemptions for up to five years if needed charging infrastructure is delayed.
But if there are too many exemptions, it could undermine a policy seen as critical to combating climate change and reducing air pollution that is largely concentrated in low-income and disadvantaged communities.
California’s success or failure could have repercussions across the country. Besides being the home of more electric heavy-duty vehicles than the rest of the states combined, California is also a climate policy leader. As of now, 13 states and the District of Columbia, representing 45 percent of the country’s population, have agreements to match or consider matching California’s policies for electrifying medium- and heavy-duty vehicles.
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