CARB Sues Truck Manufacturers for Potential Contract Violation
Contracts are an important part of society that keeps things going even when the unpredictable happens. This is why the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is unhappy with a set of four truck manufacturers who agreed to the “Clean Truck Partnership” in 2023 and have now, with a new presidential administration, given hints that they are planning on reneging on the deal.
Details
The new lawsuit comes from the office of state Attorney General Rob Bonta, saying that “Defendants have already or will soon breach the terms of the contract requiring them to sell clean vehicles in California,” Bonta argued in the state’s lawsuit. “CARB will suffer injury by defendants’ breach of the contract. The particular benefits for which CARB bargained — especially emissions reductions from the sale of cleaner vehicles — are such that a money damages remedy would not make CARB whole.”
The four truck manufacturers in question are:
- Daimler Truck North America
- International Motors
- PACCAR Inc.
- Volvo Group North America
This lawsuit is actually a countersuit from a filing of the four manufacturers in August, saying that they need relief from the contract so that they can meet federal obligations.
“The OEMs are in an impossible position,” according to the initial August lawsuit. “On the one hand, California insists that plaintiff OEMs must follow CARB’s standards, including CARB’s truck and engine certification requirements, or be excluded from the California market, subjected to significant civil penalties, shut out of special considerations and flexibilities in future regulatory considerations, and excluded from state purchasing and incentive programs. California demands that OEMs follow pre-empted laws; the United States maintains such laws are illegal and orders OEMs to disregard them. This situation is not tenable.”
The fact that California has plans to go forward with a countersuit rather than capitulate to federal regulations signifies that things are about to get very dicey for the four trucking manufacturers.
Conclusion
The most likely outcome is that the federal government will have to get involved and decide once and for all if the four truck manufacturers must comply or disregard the California regulations, but with how slow lawsuits generally tend to go, it is possible we might have an entirely different political agenda in the federal government by the time it finally reaches that point. CARB’s best bet, if it wants to succeed in strongarming the trucking manufacturers into complying with the Clean Truck Partnership, is to delay the decision until 2029 and hope that federal interests better align with California interests at that point in time.
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