California is preparing to roll out new policy ideas to keep electric vehicle adoption on pace after Congress and the White House scrapped federal purchase subsidies and cut funding for EV infrastructure.
On Monday, regulators plan to give Gov. Gavin Newsom a menu of proposals to expand charging, lower costs and accelerate the transition away from gasoline — a push that could influence clean transportation policy in more than a dozen other states.
After the election last November, state leaders recognized that their plans to phase out fossil fuels from transportation within a few years were imperiled — Donald Trump had pledged to dismantle environmental laws and expressed particular antipathy toward electric cars.
“We’re not turning back on a clean transportation future,” Newsom said at the time. “We’re going to make it more affordable for people to drive vehicles that don’t pollute.” This June, when Congress was finalizing plans to cancel Biden-era EV subsidies of up to $7,500 and other clean-transportation provisions, Newsom ordered state agencies to respond with new policy options.
Planners at the California Air Resources Board have coordinated for the past two months with other state agencies to assemble the list. A spokesperson for the board said the document will be released publicly sometime next week. Meanwhile, academics, environmental advocates and industry representatives have been offering proposals to help decarbonize roadways ahead of the political debate this fall.
At a July 23 hearing in Sacramento, Liane Randolph, the board’s chair, said the state would fight vigorously in court to reverse Trump’s order revoking its authority to regulate air pollution from vehicles. “In the meantime,” she said, “we really need to be thinking about how we can move this market forward. How we can ensure that the technological solutions that are available on the market can continue to scale up.”
Public suggestions include expanding purchase rebates for emissions-free cars and trucks, focusing on making chargers ubiquitous, reducing electricity costs for vehicle charging and subsidizing low-income EV buyers.
The public gatherings presented a rare opportunity to reassess climate strategy in California, which for decades has pushed the auto and oil industries to sell less-polluting cars and fuel. Because 17 states and the District of Columbia follow California’s lead in whole or in part, bold policies could spur automakers to invest in EV production, regardless of climate change skepticism among Republicans in Washington.
While the affordability and performance of EVs improve each model year, they are not yet cost competitive with internal combustion engine cars, so government intervention is still needed to eliminate tailpipe pollution, state officials say.
The series of open meetings across the state last month, and interviews with experts, offer a window on what new ideas could be presented for debate and possible action this fall. Here are four of many solutions highlighted by stakeholders across the state:
1. ‘Feebates’: taxing gas cars, rewarding EVs
Of all the potential policy shifts on the table, few are as untested — or as potentially consequential — as feebates. The basic idea: Tax the sale of new high-emission vehicles and award rebates for cleaner alternatives, especially electric ones. Chris Grundler, deputy executive officer of the Air Resources Board, said he has spoken with feebate proponents about how they might fill the gap left by federal reversals. But he indicated that they would be evaluated in the wider context of EV purchase rebates funded by a variety of possible financial mechanisms.
Leading feebate researcher Daniel Sperling, the founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, said he now favors a stripped-down version: penalize gas cars and trucks and reward EVs, to send the strongest market signal to deprecate the older tech. Other advocates disagree. Gil Tal, director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center, also based at UC Davis, said rewarding energy-inefficient electric SUVs over gas hybrids, for example, would send the wrong message. “I don’t think that an EV Hummer is much better than a nice small Prius,” he said. He recommends a neutral formula based on miles per gallon or miles per kilowatt-hour.
Tal and others acknowledge that feebates would face legal and political barriers. California’s Proposition 26 of 2010 requires two-thirds votes in the state Senate and Assembly for any new charge resembling a tax. “I’m skeptical that will pass,” he said. Colleagues are now shifting their focus to the trucking market, which might be easier to navigate politically.
2. Rerouting clean-gasoline credits
California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard — a legal framework implemented in 2011 requiring oil companies either to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of their fuel or subsidize cleaner alternatives — has become one of the state’s largest climate-conservation finance mechanisms, issuing more than $22 billion in credits. But critics say it is now out of step with California’s plan to transition the economy to net-zero emissions by 2045.
Roughly 80% of the program’s credits have gone to producers of biofuels like renewable diesel — meaning oil refiners and other polluters have mostly fulfilled their obligations by subsidizing combustible fuels, rather than supporting zero-emission alternatives like EVs. That division has drawn criticism from environmental groups and economists, who say the program is out of step with the state’s long-term climate goals and fails to promote a true transition away from fossil fuels.
In a June 2025 lawsuit, environmental groups accused the Air Resources Board of failing to evaluate the cumulative health burdens on low-income residents living near agricultural biofuel production facilities. Canary Media writer Jeff St. John argues that California should eliminate the clean-fuel credits and redirect funding to EV rebates and public charging.
But reform won’t be easy: Credits are often embedded in long-term contracts for fuel production among industry actors that are hard to break. Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council still urge reform, warning that without changes, the state could miss the chance to redirect billions toward a speedy transition to electric vehicles.
3. Tapping industry climate revenues
California’s cap-and-trade program — which requires major polluters to buy allowances for the greenhouse gases they emit — brought in $3.4 billion last fiscal year, a steep decline from the previous year. Most of the money is earmarked for other priorities, including high-speed rail, affordable housing and wildfire prevention, making any reallocation a political challenge.
Some environmentalists say the state should set aside a larger share for the EV transition, with a focus on programs like Clean Cars for All, which pays low-income Californians to replace older gas-powered cars with electric models. Mary Creasman, CEO of the advocacy group California Environmental Voters, said that without consistent funding from major sources like cap-and-trade, the state would struggle to meet its mandate that new passenger cars sold be electric within 10 years. She called for a “continuous appropriation for EVs” to help equity-focused rebate programs succeed.
4. Cutting red tape to develop charging infrastructure
Even when funding is in place, slow permitting and utility connections can delay electric vehicle charging projects across the state. Advocates are pushing for reforms that would require utilities to move faster and for cities to expedite approvals, particularly for curbside and apartment complex chargers.
Industry groups and environmental advocates alike say that without fixing these administrative bottlenecks, the state’s planned buildout of fast chargers — and its broader EV adoption goals — will fall short, regardless of how much money lawmakers set aside this year.
Electrifying truck fleets has proven to be a particularly difficult hurdle to clear in the state’s pollution reduction goals, in part because of insufficient charging infrastructure. But even when suitable chargers come online, some operators struggle to make the current tech as useful as traditional long-haul rigs. “Electric truck technology and charging infrastructure have not caught up with the wishful thinking of unelected Sacramento bureaucrats,” the American Trucking Associations wrote in June. “Compared with the 15 minutes it takes to fuel a diesel truck to go 1,200 miles, it takes six to eight hours to charge an electric truck that at best can travel 200 miles on a single charge.”