Op-ed | The Mandate Might Be Cancelled, but Net Zero Lives On

In May 2025, California’s ambitious zero-emission vehicle mandate—its plan to phase out new gas car sales by 2035—was effectively overturned in Washington. But the cancellation did not end the push towards clean energy powered cars. Instead, it exposed a deeper truth: the idea of net zero has outlived the regulation that once carried its name.

As the political discourse around climate policy has shifted by late 2025, it has become increasingly necessary to restate the scientific basis behind the push for net-zero vehicles. Climate science shows the atmosphere’s composition is changing dramatically because of human activities. According to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association) data, atmospheric carbon dioxide averaged 422.8 parts per million globally in 2024, a record high far above pre-industrial levels and any point in the past 800,000 years. According to NASA and European climate monitoring data, 2024 was the warmest year on record globally, surpassing the previous high set in 2023.

In the United States, the transportation sector is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 29% of national total, with passenger cars and light trucks responsible for the majority of this share. Efforts to shift vehicles from gasoline and diesel to cleaner energy sources are therefore tied directly to reducing pollution and alleviating climate change.

The logic—connecting cars with climate policy —is not new. California tried to force a zero-emission future more than three decades ago.

California’s first Zero-Emission Vehicle mandate, adopted in 1990 by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), marked the world’s earliest large-scale attempt to require automakers to sell cars that produced no tailpipe pollution. The mandate set escalating targets for major manufacturers: 2 percent of new vehicles sold annually in 1998 through 2000, 5 percent of new vehicles in both 2001 and 2002, and 10 percent of new vehicles sold in 2003 and after. At the time, that effectively meant battery-electric vehicles — a technology still in its early stage.

Regulators believed policy could accelerate innovation. The mandate was designed as what is often called a “technology-forcing” measure, based on the expectation that battery performance and costs would improve quickly. Daniel Sperling, founding director emeritus of UC Davis institute of Transportation Studies, who has studied alternative fuels since 1970s, said regulators were convinced the shift would happen. “CARB thought it was gonna happen for sure,” he said. Automakers, however, were far less certain. “Probably not many others, though,” Sperling said, recalling the skepticism within the industry.

The problem was timing. Early electric vehicles relied largely on lead-acid batteries, which limited range and made cars expensive. Public charging infrastructure barely existed, and consumer demand lagged. Yet professor Sperling said the underlying appeal of electric vehicles was already clear to those who drove them. After test drives of a prototype electric car in the early 1990s, he said, “From a consumer perspective, it was a superior technology. It was quiet, smooth.” 

A 1990s GM EV1 — one of the first modern electric cars produced to meet California’s original zero-emission mandate.

By the mid-1990s, California began revising the rule. Early deadlines were dropped, compliance structures became more flexible, and categories were added for vehicles that were cleaner but not fully zero-emission. Still, Sperling argues the mandate’s impact went beyond short-term sales. It forced automakers to build early electric prototypes and pushed governments to invest in battery research. “The ZEV mandate was important,” he said. Though it failed to create an immediate market, the policy helped lay technological and regulatory groundwork for the electric vehicle expansion that followed decades later.

1990 ZEV mandate reflected the mismatch between policy ambition and the realities of the time. Electric vehicle technology was immature, costs were high, and market conditions were not ready to support widespread adoption. But the experience reshaped how regulators and industry approached the transition. Three decades later, both policy tools and the underlying technology have evolved — changes that help explain why today’s push for net-zero vehicles stands on different footing than the effort that began in 1990.

Policy design is one area where that evolution is clear. California’s 1990 rule relied mainly on fixed sales quotas, requiring automakers to deliver zero-emission vehicles on a set timeline. In the years that followed, regulators shifted toward more flexible, financially driven tools under programs such as California’s ZEV credit system and federal fuel-economy and greenhouse-gas credit programs. Sperling said later rules rely more on performance standards and tradable credits that allow companies to adjust how they comply. “They converted it into a tradable credits program,” he said, explaining how manufacturers that exceed targets can sell credits to those that fall short.

Rather than simply mandating production, the system creates economic incentives. Companies that innovate can profit, while others can buy time. “That provides an incentive to those other companies to invest and to innovate,” Sperling said. The scale of those incentives can be substantial: Tesla has generated billions of dollars by selling regulatory credits, earning more than $10 billion since 2017 and roughly $2–3 billion in some recent years from credits tied to ZEV and emissions standards. The shift marks a fundamental change from the 1990 approach — policy is no longer just forcing technology adoption, but structuring the market so electrification becomes financially attractive.

Zero-emission vehicle sales in California, showing dramatic growth over the last decade as electrification accelerates.

Technology is the other reason today’s EV push looks so different from the 1990s. Sperling remembers early electric prototypes as “quiet and smooth”, but batteries were too expensive and limited for mass adoption. Over the past three decades, that constraint has steadily weakened. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates lithium-ion battery pack costs for light-duty vehicles fell about 90% from 2008 to 2023 (in constant dollars), a drop that helped turn EVs from limited pilots into mass-market products. Sperling argues that turning point was decisive: “It wasn’t until battery costs really came down that it became obvious what it was gonna be.”

The gains show up in everyday usability. DOE data show the median EPA range for model-year 2024 EVs reached 283 miles, more than four times the median range in 2011—an improvement that reshaped what “normal” EV ownership looks like. Charging has evolved in parallel as well: modern DC fast charging commonly spans roughly 50 to 350 kW (or more), enabling far quicker refueling than earlier generations could support. And behind the scenes, the industry has moved from technology demonstrators to global scale—IEA estimates EV battery demand exceeded 750 GWh in 2023, reflecting the manufacturing potential and supply-chain maturity that simply did not exist in the 1990s.

These advances also highlight a structural difference between electric and internal combustion engine vehicles. At a mechanical level, an EV is far simpler: an internal combustion powertrain relies on hundreds of moving parts — pistons, valves, fuel and exhaust systems, lubrication circuits, and multi-gear transmissions — all managing heat and friction. An electric drivetrain, by contrast, centers on a battery, power electronics, and electric motors, with far fewer moving components and failure points. That structural simplicity can lower manufacturing complexity, reduce maintenance needs, and make large-scale production more efficient.

As technological and manufacturing advantages accumulate, they begin to influence the industry’s cost structure, not just vehicle performance. Sperling pointed to China as an example of what happens when electrification is pursued at scale. He described the country’s strategy as a form of “leapfrogging,” where manufacturers moved quickly into electric drivetrains rather than defending legacy engine technologies. In 2025, new-energy vehicles made up 47.9% of China’s vehicle sales in 2025, a level of volume that allows suppliers and manufacturers to drive down costs across batteries, motors, and assembly. The International Energy Agency adds that about 65% of electric cars sold in China in 2023 were already cheaper than comparable ICE cars, suggesting electrification can become structurally competitive on the producer side once scale is reached.

The United States has moved more gradually, and most EVs still cost more to build than comparable gasoline vehicles today, largely because of battery and power-electronics expenses. But the trend is shifting. Industry forecasts from Gartner predicted electric vehicles could become cheaper to produce than internal-combustion cars by around 2027, as battery prices fall and manufacturing efficiencies improve. Federal policy is accelerating that trajectory: the Inflation Reduction Act’s Section 45X manufacturing credit lowers the cost of domestic battery production, reinforcing the economic case for scaling EV output. Together, narrowing cost gaps and policy-backed manufacturing investment suggest U.S. producer economics are moving steadily toward electrification rather than away from it.

The path toward electric vehicles is unlikely to be linear, but the forces driving it now extend well beyond any single regulation. Battery costs have fallen, manufacturing has scaled, and electric drivetrains offer structural advantages that align with both industrial efficiency and global competition. Political shifts, infrastructure gaps, and market cycles may influence how quickly the transition unfolds and where it advances the fastest. Yet the underlying trajectory reflects deeper technological and economic currents that are harder to reverse. Electrification, in that sense, appears increasingly inevitable in direction, even if uncertain in pace.

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