(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Top Moore administration officials told state lawmakers Wednesday that they’re committed to implementing aggressive mandates for the sale of electric vehicles in the years ahead.
But they acknowledged that the push to put more battery-operated vehicles on the road faces multiple challenges — and that the task just became harder now that President Donald Trump is back in office.
As one of his first acts in office Monday, Trump signed an executive order to undo several mandates and incentives for electric vehicles that former President Joe Biden imposed. Briefing Senate and House lawmakers on the status of Maryland’s efforts to meet its EV sales targets Wednesday, Maryland Environment Secretary Serena McIlwain called Trump’s executive order “the big elephant in this room.”
Among other things, Trump’s executive order aims to:
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Unwind a Biden policy that EVs should make up 50% of new car sales by 2030;
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Block distribution of federal grants for EV chargers;
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Cancel federal tax credits of up to $7,500 for EV purchases;
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Revoke a waiver that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provided to California allowing the state to ban sales of new gas-only cars by 2035.
That last provision is especially relevant in Maryland, one of a dozen states that has agreed to follow California’s lead on electric car and truck sales and emissions standards, rather than adhering to weaker federal guidelines.
“This briefing is very timely,” said Sen. Brian J. Feldman (D-Montgomery), chair of the Committee on Education, Energy and the Environment, which convened the meeting along with the House Environment and Transportation Committee.
In a session that lasted almost three hours, lawmakers heard from Moore administration officials, industry stakeholders, a climate scientist, and a former regulator from California, which has led the nation in auto emissions standards for more than two decades.
All the experts said that EV sales are increasing in Maryland and that EV charging infrastructure is more abundant than ever. They also generally agreed that the new Trump order is bound to wind up being challenged in court, leaving its status and immediate impact hard to determine.
McIlwain conceded that if his executive order is fully implemented, Trump could effectively block Maryland’s progress.
But the experts diverged on whether the state, irrespective of Trump’s moves, can hit the California standards for future EV sales and whether charging infrastructure will ever be adequate to meet consumer demands.
“The plain fact is, these regulations are way ahead of the consumer — and you never want to get ahead of the consumer,” said Josh Fisher, senior director for state affairs at the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a Washington, D.C.-based trade association that is urging officials to move cautiously on imposing EV mandates.
Republicans in Annapolis are sure to try to cast aside or stall Maryland’s EV goals. Last year, Senate Minority Leader Stephen S. Hershey Jr. (R-Upper Shore) and Del. Christopher T. Adams (R-Middle Shore) introduced a bill that would have prevented Maryland from following California’s lead. While that bill went nowhere in the Democratic legislature, the two are expected to try again this session.
Members of the newly constituted House Freedom Caucus wrote Gov. Wes Moore (D) this week, urging him to pull out of the California commitments.
“Marylanders deserve the freedom to choose vehicles that meet their needs, and our state’s auto dealers deserve the assurance that unworkable policies will not jeopardize their livelihoods,” the seven GOP members of the Freedom Caucus wrote.
‘Gas cars will be with us for a long, long time’
McIlwain and her lieutenants, along with officials from the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT), sought to put the best face on the state’s efforts to gin up EV sales and expand and improve the charging technology.
There were 126,966 registered electric vehicles in Maryland as of December 2024, up from 92,722 a year earlier. That’s an especially big jump from December 2020, when there were 29,268 registered EVs on the road in the state.
“The growth rate is there and continues to grow,” said Joe McAndrew, an assistant secretary at MDOT.
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If Maryland goes ahead and follows California’s newest clean car standards, 43% of the new cars sold at auto dealerships in the state will have to be EVs beginning in model year 2027. The percentage would go up gradually in subsequent years until all sales of new gas cars would be banned in 2035.
McIlwain was quick to deflect complaints that the state is seeking to ban gas-powered cars, noting that the mandate would not apply to used car sales and that motorists could keep their gas-powered cars for as long as they run.
“The transition will take decades, decades — not 10 years, but 20 years or longer,” she said. “Cars last a long time. Gas cars will be with us for a long, long time.”
What’s more, officials said, the state has a complicated formula that enables auto dealers to skirt the 43% target if they purchase pollution credits, which could drive the compliance number down to as low as 19% in 2027.
But Peter Kitzmiller, president of the Maryland Autodealers Association, said the problem isn’t that dealers aren’t selling EVs — because they are. The challenge is that electric vehicles stay on lots considerably longer than gas-powered cars, that the dealers have spent a fortune on infrastructure to accommodate the EVs, and that they aren’t seeing an adequate return on their investments.
“I think there has been some overstatement of where the market is,” Kitzmiller said.
On top of that, he said, Maryland is surrounded by states that aren’t following California’s EV targets, which means the 300 dealerships here could lose customers to neighboring states that aren’t peddling as many EVs.
The number and reliability of EV chargers also remain a challenge in Maryland.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation estimates that Maryland would need at least 16,000 operating charging stations around the state to meet the demand of the estimated growth in EV use by 2027. That number might be difficult to hit under any circumstance, state officials acknowledged — but especially if federal grants dry up.
“This is tomorrow in the automobile business,” Kitzmiller observed.
State officials said there are almost 1,600 public charging stations in the state now with almost 4,500 charging ports. McIlwain said the industry goal is to have one charging station per 18 EVs on the road; in Maryland, she said, there is currently a ratio of 24 EVs per charging station.
Trump has sought to cast his decision to roll back EV mandates and incentives as a way to save the auto industry and auto worker jobs. A report last year from the America First Policy Institute, a think tank aligned with Trump, found that the Biden administration’s EV policies would wipe out about 200,000 jobs in the auto industry — though other studies have disputed that estimate, and manufacturers seem committed to expanding production of electric cars and trucks.
“The industry is all-in on electrification,” Fisher said.
Cox Automotive, a company that analyzes the auto industry, reported this week that 1.3 million EVs were sold in the U.S. in 2024, an increase of 7.3% from the previous year. The company suggested that sales could continue to increase, even with Trump’s attempts to scale back the industry.
“While policy changes in Washington might slow the growth, those changes likely won’t take effect for some time, and many buyers might jump in before changes are made,” the recent analysis said. “Cox Automotive is expecting 2025 to set another record for EV volume. In fact, in the year ahead, one out of every four vehicles sold will likely be electrified in some way – a hybrid, plug-in hybrid or pure EV. One thing is for certain: Each year, more electric vehicles with advanced battery technology are making their way onto America’s roads.”
Even with the uncertainty Trump has thrown into the state regulatory process, Craig Segall, a former deputy executive director at the California Air Resources Board, which has developed many of the state’s auto emissions policies, told lawmakers that they should proceed cautiously and be prepared to be flexible with their EV plans.
“We’re in the midst of a real transition,” he said. “Real transitions have bumps. But they can be overcome by the creative efforts of people of goodwill.”
In an interview after Wednesday’s briefing, Del. Marc Korman (D-Montgomery), chair of the House Environment and Transportation panel, said he did not think lawmakers’ inclination to find a compromise solution would work in this instance, when essentially the state can either follow California’s lead or go with the less stringent federal standards — at least until the fate of Trump’s executive order is known.
“We are very limited with what we can do,” Korman said. “We can’t just turn a dial on policies. The normal Annapolis way of finding a balance doesn’t work when there are only two options.”
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