Oregon is in the process of learning that lesson right now.
“Effective immediately, Daimler Trucks North America is pausing all orders for new internal combustion vehicles intended for registration in Oregon,” wrote Daimler’s general manager of product strategy and market development, Mary C. Aufdemberg, in a message to Oregon truck dealers.
. . .
Daimler, through its Freightliner and Western Star brands, is the leading producer of large trucks in the U.S., accounting for 40% of all new Class 8 trucks (tractor-trailers) sold in 2023, according to the American Truck Dealers association. (PACCAR Inc., the second-largest heavy truck maker, declined to comment on its sales plans.)
More pointedly, Daimler Trucks’ North American headquarters is in North Portland. The company is one of the state’s largest manufacturers and employs 3,000 people here.
But for now, the company that builds diesel trucks in Oregon has stopped selling them in the state.
The reason for that halt, the Oregon Journalism Project has learned: a new rule issued by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality that took effect Jan. 1.
Here’s how DEQ’s “Advanced Clean Trucks rule” works: Out of every 100 new Class 8 heavy trucks a manufacturer sells in Oregon in 2025, seven must be electric. That percentage of electric trucks will increase every year, reaching 40% of all heavy trucks sold in 2032. (In 2023, according to DEQ, Oregon dealers sold 1,708 new heavy trucks. Nine were electric.)
. . .
The company says that’s because there is “ambiguity” in how Oregon accounts for electric truck sales. Daimler fears it might fail to meet Oregon’s quota, triggering penalties. The company says that’s an unacceptable risk.
There's more at the link.
So, the leading US truck manufacturer can no longer sell its products in its home state. That means reduced production, which means lower wages paid to local staff, who have less to spend on products they need for their homes, which means the state loses all the taxes and duties it would have charged on those monies.
I hope the Oregon state politicians and bureaucrats are feeling particularly self-righteous and pure over its "woke" policies, as they fracture its economy and drive the state ever downward.
Oh - and Daimler, if you're interested: Texas' economy is booming, we have lots of room to expand, and we don't have daft "Advanced Clean Trucks" rules! Come on down!
Peter
5 comments:
I love stuff like this, voters blindly support a party that gives them their single issue - in Oregon it's drugs or abortion - and are oblivious to the economic morons they send to the state house for the larger issues the state may face. You get the government you deserve. Morons.
These people are criminally incompetent. Assuming a constant demand for heavy trucks, increasing the percentage of electric trucks sold to forty percent of the total would require nearly a nineteenfold increase in sales within the space of seven years, and chances are that the reason the company isn't selling lots of heavy electric trucks have to do with current technological limitations electric engines' baseline performance rather than technical incompetence on the part of the company.
This is the sort of rule that could only be promulgated by big-city bureaucrats who have never given a second's thought to the physics of hauling heavy things.
Silly eco-nuts.
If they were serious about reducing CO2 emissions they would have a full press campaign to return the movement of freight to the railways where it takes only 25% of the fuel to move a ton a mile. Or even better, pure electric railways.
One vehicle, one driver, and a highway are 1st century Roman transportation paradigms.
Took me a few minutes to find this clip, but it highlights some of the problems with the plan to switch from diesel semis to electric. Thousands of pounds of extra weight for one, and lack of electrical capacity to charge them is another. Worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCoAsPtgRKg
The next step by the Oregonian Fascists rather than to require them to sell a certain percentage of EVs in Oregon will to be to force Daimler to produce the required percentage of EVs for sale everywhere or be penalized. However that gets into interstate commerce and would have interesting effects.
As you said, Peter, Texas has some nice places they could move their manufacturing to.
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