The decision, to take effect by 2035, will very likely speed a wider transition to electric vehicles because many other states follow California’s standards.

Rancor in the White House over the move by four automakers to strike a side deal with California over emissions and fuel-economy rules looks likely to further delay President Trump's plans to roll back the Obama-era standards. That's the conclusion of a report Tuesday in The New York Times, which cited four people familiar with the talks. After...

California launched another lawsuit against the Trump administration over fuel economy regulations on Friday, this time over a federal decision to suspend planned increases in penalties for automakers who miss required targets. In announcing the lawsuit, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra accused the Trump administration of trying to make...

The EPA and California Air Resources Board have moved slowly in the past year, failing to reach a consensus on key issues between the federal department's proposals to roll back emissions-based fuel economy standards and the state's decades-old ability to set their own. Tensions boiled over this week when EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler sent a...

At its meeting on Friday, the California Air Resources Board officially confirmed that it will stick with planned increases in emissions and fuel economy standards for cars sold in the state. The move was expected after CARB said in August that it would not follow the Trump Administration's move to freeze federal emissions and fuel economy...

Within the next two years, three different hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles will be offered to California buyers in small numbers. The 2017 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell vehicle went on sale in California at the end of 2016, and 2018 models just went on sale. The Toyota Mirai has also been available in California since 2016, giving California buyers a choice...

Over the many months EPA administrator Scott Pruitt signaled his intention to revisit the Obama administration's emission limits for 2022 through 2025 vehicles, California warned that it would not go along with any reductions. The state has been allowed to set its own emission standards for decades, it noted, and it has every intention of sticking...
![EPA administrator Scott Pruitt [photo from 2014]](https://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/oklahoma-attorney-general-scott-pruitt-2014_100584650_t.gif)
Despite the sturm und drang around the announcement by embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt that he will relax emission limits for 2022 through 2025 vehicles, not much will happen immediately. His determination last week that the Obama administration was "incorrect" and that the limits on those vehicles weren't needed kicks off a lengthy process of...

In the U.S., California has long been viewed culturally as the crazy, free-spirited cousin. As Californians like to point out, their state of 40 million people is also the world's sixth-largest economy all by itself. Resolutely progressive, it has regulated vehicle emissions for five decades and worked to get zero-emission vehicles onto its roads...

The Volkswagen diesel emission scandal has now largely vanished from U.S. media coverage, much to VW's relief. Tens of thousands of bought-back TDI diesel vehicles still sit in fields awaiting modification and resale, or some other disposition. But among the thousands of pages of legal documents to settle dozens of civil and criminal charges in...