California rolls on with electric trucks, despite Trump’s roadblocks

More than 15 percent of medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold statewide in 2023 were zero-emission. But the road has been bumpy amid growing uncertainty about California’s regulations and the Trump administration’s hostility toward electric vehicles, the clean energy transition, and the state’s climate policies.

Valerie Thorsen leads the San Joaquin Valley office of CalSTART, a nonprofit that has since 1992 pushed for cleaner transportation to address pollution and climate change. She sees the Trump administration’s recalcitrance as nothing more than a hurdle on the road to an inevitable transition. But any effort to ditch diesels must be accompanied by an aggressive push to build charging infrastructure. “You don’t want to have vehicles you can’t charge or fuel,” she said.

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