California’s transition to electric vehicles is still underway, with more chargers for cars and trucks, more models to choose from and more ambitious sales targets. But it is increasingly shaped by what’s happening on the other side of the country, in Washington, where the federal government is working to slow the transition to EVs and promote a fossil fuel future for America.

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The pace of this transition matters for the state’s climate goals, including reaching carbon neutrality by 2045 and getting more gas-powered cars off the road. It’s impossible to address climate change without these since transportation accounts for about half of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, more than any other sector.

In recent months, President Trump has taken dozens of steps to erode California’s ability to get there. They include eliminating the federal tax credit for people who purchase EVs and repealing the the basic finding that greenhouse gases are dangerous, which forms the legal basis for regulating vehicle emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Last year, the Trump administration revoked California’s long-held authority to set stricter vehicle emission standards than the federal government — an authority that has been granted to the state since the 1960s. The White House also overturned California’s electric vehicle sales target, which would have required automakers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles over the next decade.

The president has said the state’s rules will drive up costs and limit consumer choice.

The cumulative result is a slower shift to EVs, by several measures.

Electric vehicle sales

National sales dropped sharply after Trump ended the $7,500 federal rebate in September and have not yet fully recovered.

Some automakers also altered their plans under federal pressure. Ford said it will kill several EV models and pivot toward hybrids, while Honda canceled the rollout of its anticipated 0 Series EVs. Volkswagen ended production of its ID.4 electric SUV in the U.S., citing market challenges, and said it will instead ramp up production of the Atlas, a large gasoline-powered SUV.

“What the Trump administration did is put things on its head,” said Gil Tal, director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at UC Davis. The actions didn’t just adjust the nation’s EV agenda, he said — “they did a U-turn.”

But Californians have held their ground. In the second quarter of this year, about 19% of new car sales in the state were zero-emission vehicles. That’s almost three times higher than the national market, although less than the same quarter in 2025, which was also down from 2024, according data from the California Energy Commission.

Cumulatively, zero-emission vehicles now make up roughly 1 in 12 cars and pickups on California roads, and nearly 1 in 6 new cars sold in the state is fully electric.

The state is also seeing lots more people buying used EVs, and lawmakers have approved millions in state incentives to replace lost federal rebates.

Still, the threat to California’s ambition is real, and the state is now defending its 2035 ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in court. If it fails, California will have to find new ways to eliminate emissions from other sectors, according to Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board. The agency expects 165 tons per day of added nitrogen oxide emissions as a result of the Trump administration’s rollbacks.

Greenhouse gas emissions in California have fallen about 21% since 2000, and Trump’s actions are undoubtedly challenging that progress, Buckley said.

“Federal interference threatens that momentum and the state’s ability to meet federal air quality standards, putting public health at risk for millions of Californians — especially those in the most polluted communities,” Buckley said.

A growing network of chargers

The availability of charging stations also plays a huge role in how fast people buy electric vehicles, and California now boasts more EV chargers than gasoline nozzles, according to the Energy Commission. The state has more than 216,000 publicly available EV chargers, meaning they’re not in an employee garage that requires a badge or in a gated apartment complex.

But last year, the Trump administration abruptly froze new funding for one of the key sources of help for new public chargers — the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program — while it rewrote the rules. California and other states sued to challenge the freeze, and a federal judge ruled the administration had acted unlawfully.

California’s expansion of chargers continued anyway. Of the 806 new public fast-charging stations added nationwide in the second quarter of this year, roughly 1 in 7 were in California — by far the most of any state, according to a report from Paren, an EV charging data and analytics platform.

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California is also a leader in utilization, with fast chargers in use a healthy 23.1% of the time, second only to Washington, D.C., and Hawaii, according to Paren. And “California pairs a top-tier rate with by far the largest footprint” of fast-charging ports, about 17,400, the report says.

A few years ago, people might have seen one or two chargers in front of a grocery store sitting unused. Now, it’s not uncommon for sites with 28 chargers to be busy all day, said Sara Rafalson, executive vice president of policy and external affairs at EVgo, an El Segundo-based company that operates one of the largest public fast-charging networks in the U.S.

The rising demand for fast public charging, in particular, has been propelled by EV drivers who don’t have charging at their apartment or home, and the growing market for used EVs, she said.

There has also been a surge in electric ride-hailing cars, with drivers of Uber, Lyft and others now representing about a quarter of EVgo users nationally, Rafalson said. In July, California’s Public Utilities Commission of up to $20,300 for ride-hailing app drivers to buy or lease new zero-emission vehicles, and often now, ride hailers can choose to be picked up by an EV on the apps.

“What really is interesting about California is just how intentional they’ve been, with every single state agency setting its own goals and swim lanes for how they’re going to work together to enable consumer choice for electric vehicles,” Rafalson said.

Building EVs in California

Tesla famously moved its headquarters from California to Texas. But EV automaker Rivian, which is headquartered in Irvine, remains committed to the state. It recently announced the R2, a midsize electric SUV, to a long waiting list. Its large luxury SUV, the R1S, ranks as the second most popular large luxury SUV in California — EV or gas — after only the Lexus TX, according to the company.

The company recently raised its delivery outlook for the year from as low as 62,000 vehicles to as many as 70,000 due to demand, and said Amazon now has 40,000 Rivian electric delivery vans.

But Trump’s actions are having a ripple effect, said Brian Gase, Rivian’s VP of engineering quality, during a recent tour of the Irvine facility, where a buzzing hive of workers built clay prototypes, experimented with sustainable interior materials and tested battery components in subzero chambers.

On one hand, soaring gasoline prices this year have pushed more consumers to consider EVs, Gase said. (Trump’s ongoing war with Iran and the ensuing months-long shipping disruption in the Strait of Hormuz drove oil prices to their highest levels in several years, with Brent crude briefly surging over $126 a barrel in April.)

But the swinging pendulum of policy changes is also creating instability and uncertainty for automakers who typically plan releases years in advance, and for parts of the supply chain, such as aluminum and battery materials, that are subject to changing tariffs, Gase said.

“Businesses like consistency,” he said. “You see this in Scandinavian countries, you see it in China where they mandated EVs and they put money behind it and the industry surged.”

It makes sense to be headquartered in California, both because of its history of car culture and its “positive vision of the future,” said Abigail Ramsden, Rivian’s senior manager of state policy for Western states.

“California’s air quality challenges are traceable to the transportation industry, so electrifying transportation is one of the most pragmatic, real-time and focused steps that California — or any other state that’s suffering from air quality issues — can take to try to transform quality of life for its citizens,” she said.

But Tal, of UC Davis, said he worries the state is not on track to meet its targets, in large part due to the White House’s unprecedented actions.

For years, he has taught his students that market demand and technology are the two biggest sources of uncertainty for the EV industry, followed by government policy.

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“Now,” he said, “my books are outdated.”