The California Trucking Association has filed a lawsuit in a federal court seeking to halt the California Air Resources Board’s latest regulations aimed at banning diesel trucks in the state.
The lawsuit challenges CARB’s Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) rule that requires all new medium- and heavy-duty vehicles sold or registered in the state to be zero-emission by 2036 and requires all trucks to be zero-emission by 2042. The rule also requires that, beginning in 2024, only zero-emission drayage trucks can newly register in the CARB online system. Legacy internal combustion engine trucks will be allowed to continue operating, as long as they register in CARB’s system by Dec. 31, 2023, through their minimum useful life.
In its lawsuit filed Oct. 16 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, CTA acknowledged that “CARB's efforts are in service to the laudable goal of decreasing tailpipe emissions from commercial vehicles,” but added that the ACF regulations “represent a vast overreach that threatens the security and predictability of the nation's goods movement industry.”
CTA CEO Eric Sauer said in a press release that while his organization and the state’s trucking industry in general have "been supportive of cleaner transportation and adopted new technologies to minimize emissions, regardless of costs,” the ACF rule goes too far.
“Our objection to the Advanced Clean Fleets regulation comes down to the lack of planning and coordination with other state agencies, nonexistent infrastructure, unprecedented demands on the state power grid, the wildly unrealistic timeline mandated by CARB for phasing into medium- and heavy-duty truck technology that is still in development and a clearly unachievable regulation that is in direct violation of multiple federal laws," Sauer added.
CARB said Wednesday afternoon that it does not comment on pending litigation.
