WASHINGTON — Political and economic realities are already setting roadblocks in front of the Biden administration’s Phase 3 truck rule that might make it difficult to hit the regulation’s lofty targets.
Citing California’s Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) rule as support, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is imposing strict recent standards on the trucking industry, with various estimates on costs for each truck manufacturers and truck buyers (see charts below).
Specifically, EPA is proposing stronger carbon dioxide standards for model yr 2027 trucks that transcend the present standards that apply under EPA’s Phase 2 rule. It is usually proposing an extra set of CO2 standards that may begin to use in model yr 2028, with progressively lower standards each model yr through 2032.
By 2045, recent trucks available on the market have to be zero-emission vehicles — a goal that will be reached only by electric vehicles (EVs) powered by battery or hydrogen fuel cell.
First-mover cost
The trucking industry — each big carriers and owner-operators — wasted no time in opposing the rule shortly after it was published on April 27.
Cost has been emphasized as a giant impediment. A brand new all-electric costs over $400,000 today, versus a brand new diesel truck within the $150,000 range.
As well as, charging times are too long, which eats into federal hours of service rules. The batteries weigh quite a bit — which puts early adopters at a drawback with other carriers in the quantity of cargo they will haul and still be in compliance with highway weight limits.
“We operate in a market economy, so if we were to purchase 200 recent electric trucks it could not only cost us plenty of money, chances are high we also wouldn’t give you the option to pass that on to our customers because a lot of the remainder of the industry continues to be running older equipment,” Laurence Cox, vice chairman of sustainability for Aliquippa, Pennsylvania-based PGT Trucking, told FreightWaves.
“Somewhere down the road, yes, the rates we charge customers will creep up, but not initially.”
Owner-operators are much more wary of the regulation. “The Phase 3 rule is … a blatant try to force consumers into purchasing electric vehicles while a national charging infrastructure network stays absent for heavy-duty business trucks,” Lewie Pugh, Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association executive vice chairman, told lawmakers at a supply chain hearing on Capitol Hill on May 10.
“Skilled drivers are skeptical of EV costs, mileage range, battery weight and safety, charging time, and availability. It’s baffling that the EPA is pushing forward with more impractical emissions timelines without first addressing these overwhelming concerns.”
Joe Rajkovacz, director of governmental affairs for the Western States Trucking Association, underscored the dearth of coordination in crafting the rule between EPA and agencies that oversee the electricity grid that shall be needed to supply the ability for the brand new trucks.
“I’m intrigued by plenty of technology, and I’m not against the move toward electric vehicles,” Rajkovacz told FreightWaves. “But to make a mandate on a truck buyer that may potentially leave him stranded on the road because there’s not enough juice within the grid to power his vehicle doesn’t make sense.”
Difficult EPA’s authority
Conservative lawmakers and others that influence policy are also just as quickly mobilizing for a possible challenge to the EPA’s rule whether it is approved.
Speaking out against the Phase 3 truck rule and its follow-on companion rule regulating light-duty vehicles, Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas and chair of the House Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on energy policy and regulatory affairs, stated during a May 17 hearing that “Republicans aren’t anti-EV. They’re nonetheless deeply concerned by the Biden administration’s apparent try to hijack the auto industry, strangle consumer alternative, and determine what products are best for the American people in setting timelines.”
At the identical hearing, Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., identified that last yr the U.S. Supreme Court “slapped EPA down” in West Virginia v. EPA for overstepping its authority in regulating power plants. “Isn’t EPA doing the very same thing with these proposed EV rules?” he asked Steve Bradbury, testifying on behalf of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“It truly is remarkably similar,” Bradbury responded. “It’s a shift into a complete recent technology, which is what they were attempting to do with EPA’s Clean Power Plan.
“At issue are matters of life, liberty, and prosperity, they usually are fundamentally political in nature. That is strictly why, under our constitutional republic, it’s for Congress, and Congress alone, to make the monumental decisions that EPA is purporting to take upon itself in these proposed rules.”
Aligning the market
However the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which oversees the state’s ACT rule after which EPA’s Phase 3 rule was patterned, not only sees zero-emissions feasible for all heavy-duty trucks by 2045, it believes there’s room to be much more stringent.
“EPA should finalize this with daring targets for heavy duty zero-emission trucks extending to 2040,” in response to CARB Executive Officer Steven Cliff, in commenting on EPA’s rule. “EPA should finalize a Phase 3 standard to push significantly more heavy-duty trucks than proposed. Heavy-duty zero-emission penetration in the ultimate rule must be on par with the vehicle manufacturer targets that many major heavy-duty truck manufacturers have themselves been publicly stating.”
Speaking on the May 17 House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., also pushed back on the notion that the trucking industry won’t give you the option to fulfill EPA’s deadlines. “The industry is headed into the electrical market because that’s the market of the longer term,” she said.
“This transition is crucial to our economy, crucial to our planet, and the numerous laws we passed within the last Congress goes to assist make it possible for the transition to occur,” Stansbury said, referring to grants and tax incentives included within the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Despite the challenges that he sees within the regulation, PGT’s Cox said his company won’t be afraid to check the waters with a hydrogen electric vehicle, possibly before the yr is over.
“Our view is someone has to begin, and we’d fairly be on the top end than the tail end,” Cox said. “But at the identical time, we’re a trucking company, which is a 5-7% margin business, so it’s not like we are able to do things with cost impunity. In some unspecified time in the future the economics are going to need to match.”
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