General Motors Plans Fight to Undo the California EV Mandate
The preference cascade has started, and its just a matter of time before the only market forces impacting car sales will be consumer preferences based on their own mobility and economy needs.
Sometimes, my ability to foresee the future via the quips I make at Legal Insurrection scares me.
Legal Insurrection readers will recall my continuing saga of the collapse of the state’s California-style electric vehicle (EV) mandates.
In the summer of 2024, I reported that Connecticut opted to forgo adopting these requirements. Additionally, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin paused his state’s EV mandate at the end of the year.
Just last month, Maryland’s governor delayed its sad attempt to be East Coast California via a similar mandate. More recently, Vermont Governor Phil Scott issued an executive order halting the enforcement of the state’s EV sales mandate.
In the piece on Vermont, I noted that California Gov. Gavin Newsom would like to end the original program in his continuing effort to rebrand himself as a “centrist Democrat” ahead of the 2028 presidential election cycle.
Well, those rules are likely to be going away…but perhaps not quite the way I had foreseen.
However, Newsom may be spared from acting alone to gut these disastrous requirements, with all the ensuing hysteria he would get from climate cultists. General Motors (GM) has recently shifted its stance and is now actively opposing California’s mandate to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.
The automaker is lobbying Congress to revoke the federal waiver that allows California to enforce stricter emissions standards, which seven other states have adopted. This marks a significant reversal for GM, which previously aligned its EV goals with California’s policies.
The automaker shared its stance in an email sent to thousands of its salaried employees last week. Here is what the email read:
“Emissions standards that are not aligned with market realities pose a serious threat to our business by undermining consumer choice and vehicle affordability.”
General Motors Company (NYSE:GM), once a strong supporter of California’s ambitious ban on gas-powered vehicle sales by 2035, is now lobbying against it. The company is urging employees to push Senators to overturn a waiver allowing California to set stricter emissions rules, which have been adopted by 11 other states. Although GM had previously aligned its own EV goals with the state’s, slowing EV demand and market challenges have prompted a shift.
EV sales are falling behind expectations—even in California—and automakers, including General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) and Ford, are pulling back on electric vehicle plans. GM has scrapped its goal of building 400,000 EVs by mid-2024 and delayed key launches as consumers turn to cheaper alternatives and federal tax incentives face potential rollbacks. GM has surged by nearly 12% in the past 12 months.
Every other aspect of the EV mandate I have described as problematic is being cited as the reason for GM hitting reverse on its decision.
The electric market is starting to slow, and sales are weakening. EV sales fell 5% in April even as the broader auto market grew by 10%. EVs represent just 7% of the overall U.S. car market. Even in California, the leader in electrification, EVs account for only 20% of the car market, significantly below the state’s 2026 target of 35%.
Affordability remains a significant concern. Federal tax incentives that historically boosted EV sales are under threat in Congress, and many automakers are scaling back or delaying EV production plans in response. Dealers nationwide, especially in mandate-aligned states, are reporting difficulty moving EV inventory even with manufacturer and government support.
While some EV makers like Tesla and Rivian remain committed to long-term electrification, GM’s recent pivot highlights the broader market reality. Without sustained consumer demand and supporting infrastructure, overly ambitious regulatory targets will outpace what the industry and American car buyers can reasonably deliver.
I recall when Toyota Motor chief Akio Toyoda said that he remains skeptical of moving to only produce REV and that most automakers agreed with him. That was back in 2022, and most of those automakers decided to remain silent and go along with the green energy fever dreams.
The preference cascade has started, and it’s just a matter of time before the only market forces impacting car sales are consumer preferences based on their own mobility and economy needs.
Meanwhile, more coins are going in my Legal Insurrection coin jar.
More coins going in the coin jar. pic.twitter.com/O2e5gCf2v2
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) May 19, 2025
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Comments
How cute. Where were they when the mandates were introduced? All in with the prevailing winds. Now that it’s safe they are stepping forward.
Different company
Different corner office
Different times.
GM was just coming off of their taxpayer funded bail out. They probably felt it was politic for them to go along with the electric nonsense to keep the wrath of the government at bay.
Even though Mary Barra (GM CEO) is an engineer, the direction of the company is still driven primarily by the accountants. The accountants LOVED the idea of electric cars because with a lot fewer moving parts and component assemblies, labor costs substantively less that what they are for ICE cars. They’re simply cheaper to make and they have less exposure on warranty claims GM management never gave any consideration to what the market wanted nor if they could deliver a competitive product in that space. So, here we are; they’ve built a company to meet a demand that never materialized even with government ‘mandates.’
At least GM has a robust truck segment that can, probably will, sustain them until they can redevelop future ICE cars. There are other automotive companies, especially in Europe, that are facing an extinction level event because they probably can’t pivot back to gas because they pushed all in on EVs.
And unfortunately, global markets are getting hit from the other direction by China dumping cheap shiny EVs. Chinese automakers are heavily subsidized by the CCP and have the CCP’s full cooperation on looking the other way on R&D/IP theft and labor violations. The cars are full of gimmicks to hide that every possible corner has been cut and last just long enough before catching fire that the established automakers have been driven out because they were undercut by China. It’s a good thing that the US has kept Chinese cars out and we should push for our partners to similarly disallow Chinese cars.
“ It’s a good thing that the US has kept Chinese cars out and we should push for our partners to similarly disallow Chinese cars.”
Buick, and I think Lincoln, are bringing in Chinese cars.
Another point that GM loved was that the current workers “would not have the skills” to build the new EV’s in the new (government subsidized no doubt) factories to be built in new locations…
Short version – they expected to dump a lot of their older well-paid workers.
It’s not about being safe, it’s about being competitive.
Two words.
mary bara.
June 4, 2024
GM CEO says commitment to all-electric fleet remains firm despite industry-wide sales slowdown
The mandate was ridiculous and never going to work, even before they started claiming Teslas were only driven by not-sees.
California has ~30 million cars on the road.
Tesla is by far the largest electric car producer, but the last few years they’ve yet to crack 2 million per year, and everybody else is just a fraction of that production, and only getting smaller.
But let’s be generous and say that they make 2 million per year. If every single one of those 2 million Teslas made were sold exclusively in California, that’s only 18 million by the mandate date. 58% of the amount needed.
And that was before they started screaming that the only people that bought Teslas were not-sees.
WITH Tesla, it was ridiculous and unrealistic. WITHOUT Tesla, its just plain lunatic fantasy.
Your numbers are pretty close. From what I could find Californians buy ~1.78M new cars every year. The mandate is only for new car sales and sales of used cars are not counted.
My state copy-pasted California’s EV mandate and is now working to unhitch themselves from it. Starting next year, 43% of all new car sales were to be electric with increasing percentages per year. I always wondered how that was going to work. 43% of the models offered aren’t electric and certain models outsell others. How were dealers supposed to keep track of that 43% quota and what would happen when they sold their 57% of non-electric cars? Were they supposed to tell potential customers to buy an EV or leave with nothing? Consumer demand can’t be mandated. I don’t want an EV for several reasons and will not buy one because they don’t work for me.
What I find I’m using is that for years people have been pointing out the shortcomings of electric cars. By the way, those shortcomings have not changed. Not only is there very little infrastructure. You have range anxiety problems because the infrastructure is so few and far between and by the way, the range is not exactly predictable because it changes due to weather conditions and other factors. Then of course, the damn things are just too slow to charge. They’re not practical for someone who can’t plug them in overnight
We need to re-install American guts, risk taking and integrity in ALL aspects of marketing (Consumer demands, accounting costs, integrity, attitude). Whatever happened to “We are Americans and we can build/fix/etc.just about anything. (Feds get out of the way)
Same as telling students, “You can do more than you think you can do” versus division by skin tone.
GM took the obama bailout money. They are captive to the government now. I don’t know how they can undo that.
Ford still has some independence.
And then there is that pesky 52 cents per kilowatt hour (and going up) that we pay for electricity in Southern California.
The working poor can’t even afford to air condition their house, let alone charge an electric car to get to their hotel maid’s job.
The electric. car mandate would have created a whole new class of people who couldn’t afford to drive to work thereby putting them on the public dole.
How crazy and nefarious is that??
So Mary Barra has finally learned how to read tea leaves?
Wow. Those morons finally figured out that making cars that people don’t want to buy in the numbers they buy gas powered vehicles is a poor business model?
I hope they go bankrupt again because they so richly deserve it. And without a bailout this time.
Craven bastards won’t get everything they deserve. Luckily for them there’s no real justice in this world.
Hybrids always made more sense to me than EV’s, not that I would ever buy either one.
If a car company had the guts to make a good old fashioned ICE car with NONE of the bells & whistles (sensors and other ‘safety’ features) except a back up camera and power windows and sold it for 60% of what the current crop of vehicles go for they would sell a shit ton of vehicles IMHO. Same thing for appliances. Give consumers a choice. Get rid of the ridiculous regulations than mandate unnecessary BS and drive up the price of products.
People need to push back on the Pre collision system mandate that came from Biden.
Right now there are 17000 complaints of this tech failing and causing accidents.
I had it happen on my Tundra (the system just fails and randomly locks up the brakes).
The 17000 is from 2020-2025 from the NHTSA from people reporting safety defects.