The Maine Board of Environmental Protection (Maine BEP) has delayed voting on the set of controversial California-style vehicle emissions regulations until sometime next year.
These rules — known as the Advanced Clean Cars II Program — were set to mandate that 43 percent of new cars sold in Maine be electric vehicles (EVs) by model year 2027 and 82 percent by model year 2032.
Wednesday night, the BEP announced that it would be postponing their meeting Thursday — during which they were scheduled to vote on the proposed EV mandate — due to Gov. Janet Mills’ Civil State of Emergency that was issued in response to the deadly and destructive storm that took place Monday.
The storm left nearly half of the state without electricity, leading social media users across the country to question the wisdom of the Mills Administration’s push to force Mainers to purchase the comparatively more expensive EVs.
[RELATED: Mills Admin Delays Electric Vehicle Mandate Vote Due to Storm Emergency]
As a result of this delay, the Maine BEP has now updated these rules so that they would take effect beginning with model year 2028, at which point 51 percent of new car sales would need to be comprised of ZEVs.
This update does not necessarily represent a major deviation from the initial proposal, however, as this new starting point aligns with the requirement that was already set to take effect for model year 2028 in the original rules.
[RELATED: Maine Considering California-style Rules to Limit Sales of Gas-Powered Cars and Trucks]
In other words, the BEP’s update does not make any substantive changes to the nature of the proposed ZEV mandate, but rather it bypasses the first year of implementation, thereby shortening the total length of the program by one year.
Click Here to Read the Updated Text of the Proposed Rule Change
Due to this alteration, however, the Maine BEP will not be considering the proposal again for at least another six weeks.
“The Department is now requesting comments from the public concerning this substantial change of the proposed rule,” the notice from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (Maine DEP) said.
The deadline for additional public comment is set for February 5, 2024.
Click Here to Read the Maine DEP’s Full Update on the Rule Change
The EV mandate will “not come back to the Board for further deliberation or a vote until after that comment period ends,” Maine BEP Executive Analyst William F. Hinkel told the Maine Wire.
Hinkel also stated that “a second public hearing on the proposed rule has not been scheduled at this time.”
“The Board provides notice of all meetings and agendas, and people may subscribe to an email notification for Board meetings and other Department activities,” Hinkel said. “The links to subscribe are on the BEP website and DEP Rulemaking website.”
“No other Board dates regarding this matter have been set at this time,” Hinkel said.
I bet there won’t be many new cars of model year 2028 sold in Maine. Mainers don’t want to buy that leftist electric vehicle trash. New car dealers are hurting right now as EV’s are NOT selling. Is Mills more stupid than I thought? The left wants us peons NOT to be able to have cars and travel so we will be easier for them to control.
More control by our Marxist leaders. Do NOT use the money you stole from the taxpaying citizens to fund your damn communist wishes.. This is a HUGE waste of time and $$$$.
This woman [Mills] is a bungling and blithering idiot incapable of finding her way out of a paper bag without a guidebook. She is nothing more than mouthpiece for the libertard leftwing virtue signaling incompetent idiots of the democratic party. Thank goodness her time in office is about to expire.
This is the single most stupid legislation facing the people of Maine. Just take a stroll around any car lot in Maine and check out the amount of unsold and unwanted E V cars and trucks. These vehicles do not like cold weather, no one can repair them except the dealer, there are few public charging stations and if you happen to look at a public charging station they contain chargers for no less than three different types of connections. The stations say have ten chargers and you own a E V you might be limited to two out of the ten, brilliant! So say you own an Audi E V and its 25 degrees out your effective range is cut in half due to the temperature and you go to Hanford to charge it you might have to initially wait for one of the two to become available and then sit for two hours to charge it up. Conversely if you had a gas car you would already be home unpacked your groceries and cooked dinner, while your neighbor with the E V is still in the parking lot.
Cloudy day and she is wearing sunglasses. Cowards cover their eyes. Fact.
This idiocy will be great, for used cars in New Hampshire! No one with a double digit IQ can possibly support this if they use their intellect rather than their dogma! This continues to push hardworking citizens against a wall with no way out but to either submit or fight and when it finally becomes obvious the majority of Mainers will fight back. All over the country people are being herded and more and more are awakening to the end result and are waiting for their opportunity to retaliate! This is not good for the country or the citizens, but the American criminal oligarchs don’t care they believe they are well isolated from any payback from mere citizens, just look at Gates, Soros, and Bidum as examples!
My local gas station has 12 pumps out front. An average car can be refueled in about 5 mins so each pump could fuel 12 cars an hour, times 12 pumps, so nearly 150 gas cars could be refueled in an hour on less than an acre of land. How many EV’s could be recharged in an hour on that same acre of land? Try not to laugh! This is not rocket science folks all it needs is just to use some basic ways of thinking about things from Physics. Simple math can figure out some seeming complex ideas….fairly easily. I know, I know, math is considered racist today, especially by those who do not know how do do even basic arithmetic.
A professor at Stanford Univ in CA, did a study using basic physics. He calculated how many gas stations there were in LA county and used simple math to figure how many gas cars they could refuel in a day. And he calculated also how many acres of land these stations were sited upon. Then he figured out how long it takes to “refuel” (recharge) an EV and again, using simple math discovered there was NOT enough land area in LA county to build chargers enough to charge that many electric cars in a day…..not even close….not even within miles of it in fact. The impossibilities of this stupid idea of EV’s and green power can be shown easily be the most basic math. But you need a brain to understand even the most simple math.
But again this is NOT about saving the planet from climate change at all. This whole green ideology is a political movement, a very angry wolf in a sheep’s clothing. This is all about the communist left in America going after us “Trumpsters, MAGA fans, America firsters and other similar people that the Marxist party sees as barely worthy of living let alone enjoying life. Their intent is to destroy our ability to move around from one place to another. They wish to basically put us into a prison of their own making, using the most vile political methodology ever devised in America.
If we wish to save America, as our founders designed it, we need to stand up and throw all of this right back into their faces…..good and hard.