Biden makes a last big push to keep Trump from killing the electric car

President Joe Biden granted a waiver to allow California to carry out the country’s most ambitious EV mandate.

The waiver has a durable legal foundation that could make it a near-immovable object for the Trump administration for at least a couple of years.

Trump has already vowed to undo California 's electric vehicle rules, similar to his effort five years ago to stop the state from imposing more stringent pollution standards than the federal government's.

The first Trump administration argued that California was effectively imposing fuel economy rules by regulating vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions.

Making the same kind of legal assault on the new California waiver would probably require Trump 's appointees to issue a new regulatory proposal, take public comment and go through other bureaucratic steps.

Then again, Trump 's demonization of electric cars is far more central to his platform than it was during his first term.

None of this makes California 's new requirements easy or even practical to meet, critics in the auto industry argue. “Achieving the mandates will take a miracle,” the Alliance for Automotive Innovation said..