Walz administration plans to push ahead with controversial California car mandates after coronavirus situation has settled

On April 3, 2020, the Walz Administration announced that it still plans on pushing the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to adopt California’s controversial car mandates for low emission vehicles (LEV) and zero emission vehicles (ZEV) in Minnesota before the end of 2020, but that the original timeline would be pushed back as a result of the Coronavirus.

While American Experiment has been the leading critic of the Walz Administration’s attempt to adopt California’s car standards because it will violate the private property rights of auto dealers, increase costs for consumers by $2,000 to $2,500 per vehicle, force auto dealers to sell unprofitable electric cars, and have zero meaningful environmental benefits, the Administration did a good thing by delaying the rule so the public can have more opportunities to voice their opinion on the controversial rules.

Speaking of voicing opinions, our readers did an amazing job submitting public comments in the previous comment period. In fact, advocates of these mandates have lamented that you all accounted for 13 percent of the public comments submitted to the MPCA. This is an amazing accomplishment considering that we only posted about this a few times on our website! Our efforts to generate comments in the upcoming comment period will be much more sophisticated, and we appreciate each of you for you support.

You can read more about the California Car mandates by reading the cover story of our most recent issue of Thinking Minnesota, entitled “A Cold California.”