The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday released its proposed emissions standards for diesel trucks and buses, triggering a backlash from the trucking industry.
The new standards will begin with the production of 2027 model-year vehicles and apply to short-haul and long-haul tractor-trailer trucks, in addition to vocational trucks such as delivery vehicles, garbage trucks, buses, concrete trucks and fire trucks, according to Fox News.
“Small business truckers, who happen to care about clean air for themselves and their kids as much as anyone, make up 96 percent of trucking,” said Todd Spencer, president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. “Yet this administration seems dead set on regulating every local mom-and-pop business out of existence with its flurry of unworkable environmental mandates.”
The EPA has estimated that the standards could require 50 percent of vocational trucks, 35 percent of short-haul tractor-trailers and 25 percent of long-haul tractor-trailers being electric by 2032.
That’s a steep increase from the roughly 1 percent of such vehicles currently classed as zero emissions, according to the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association.
“This is yet another example of the Biden administration’s whole-of-government effort to eliminate choices for American consumers, businesses and industries,” according to CEOs Chet Thompson of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers and Mike Sommers of the American Petroleum Institute.
“There is significant uncertainty regarding the technological and infrastructure capability to comply with this rule, which may threaten the speed and cost of goods moving throughout the country,” they said in a joint statement.
Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska said the proposal is the wrong rule at the wrong time.
“In the midst of sustained, crippling inflation, President Biden is choosing to add more regulatory dead weight onto our economy,” Sullivan said, per Fox News.
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The New York Times noted that the transformation envisioned by the EPA is a stretch from the current reality.
The Times said electric heavy-duty trucks would cost two to three times the price of gasoline-powered vehicles and be able to haul less due to the weight of the massive battery required to power them.
“Electric trucks also require extremely powerful chargers. Utilities may need to upgrade distribution lines, transformers and other equipment to deliver the energy needed to refuel several trucks simultaneously,” the Times said.
The Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association estimates that in contrast to about 200,000 public charging stations for electric passenger vehicles, there are about 5,000 charging stations able to serve heavy trucks. The association estimates that the new regulation will require a million charging stations.
Only nine public fast charging stations that can power heavy trucks exist, according to the Energy Department.
“If the infrastructures are not there, customers simply will not be able to operate zero-emission vehicles,” said Jed Mandel, the association’s president.
There also are practical concerns.
“They can’t haul as heavily. They can’t do as much work,” Wisconsin trucker Mike Nichols said, noting he would never swap his 18-wheeler for an electric version.
The American Trucking Associations and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association called the rule a de facto mandate to push electric and hydrogen-powered trucks, according to The Associated Press.
“The post-2030 targets remain entirely unachievable,” said Chris Spear, the trucking group’s CEO. “Any regulation that fails to account for the operational realities of trucking will set the industry and America’s supply chain up for failure.”
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