From the SEMA Washington, D.C., office

SEMA today is rejoicing in the successful, bipartisan effort to end electric-vehicle (EV) mandates, the result of a monumental, years-long effort to educate voters and lawmakers on the importance of preserving vehicle choice in the United States. By halting a California-led effort to ban internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles through EV mandates for 40% of the nation’s population, the Senate, and before it the House of Representatives, have shown courage in the face of radical policymakers, and exhibited confidence in American innovation and ingenuity borne out of the automotive aftermarket industry.

• California’s Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) regulation jeopardized a significant sector of the American economy. A third of the specialty automotive aftermarket is based on ICE technology. Today’s Senate vote to end California’s national EV mandate and ICE vehicle ban protects $100 billion of annual economic impact to the nation’s economy and the more than 330,000 American jobs these policies threatened. With its actions, Congress has safeguarded this important hub of innovation and American engineering prowess, providing stability for millions of American households employed by the aftermarket.

“SEMA thanks the lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who stood up for Americans’ freedom to determine which vehicles are best for them,” said SEMA President and CEO Mike Spagnola. “We thank those in the nation’s community of automotive enthusiasts and the aftermarket businesses who engaged in the advocacy process, many for the first time, to remind lawmakers that this is the United States of America, not the United States of California. Congress’ vote gives the nation’s automotive marketplace much-needed stability, which will deliver renewed investment and sufficient resources to aid our industry in doing what we do best: innovating the future of automotive technology.

“This victory would not be possible without the courage and fortitude shown by Majority Leader Thune and Speaker Johnson to look beyond the opposition’s lies and underhanded effort to undermine the will of the people,” Spagnola said. “We look forward to President Trump putting an end to this nightmarish EV mandates policy with his signature and thus fulfill an important promise he made to the American people.”

SEMA STEERS THE CONVERSATION ON EV MANDATES AND ICE VEHICLE BANS

SEMA was, and never will be, anti-EV; rather, it champions a technology-neutral approach that fosters innovation and ingenuity. The association will continue efforts to preserve Americans’ rights to vehicle choice and the automotive aftermarket industry’s ability to design, manufacture and bring to market products that help solve the emissions challenge.

Beginning in 2023, SEMA led a national effort to educate voters and lawmakers on the damage of EV mandates on families, the working class, and American small businesses. In February, when the effort to overturn the California waiver kicked into high gear, SEMA mobilized an army of advocates to:

• Send more than 56,000 letters to lawmakers in the House and Senate
• Build a coalition of 335 small businesses for an April letter urging House and Senate leadership to hold votes to put an immediate stop to the implementation of the ACC II regulation
• Host aftermarket business leaders and automotive influencers for 56 in-person meetings in Washington, D.C., with lawmakers and their staffs
• Dominate the digital media landscape with countless memes and posts on the harms of EV mandates, reaching more than 2 million voters in key states, and running online ads that put pressure on lawmakers and staff around the Capitol

Along the way, states not named California got wise to the harms of EV mandates. Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Vermont each backed off pledges to follow California’s emissions policies while North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, West Virginia and eight other states passed SEMA-supported “ban the ban” legislation to ensure such mandates never take effect again.

This follows a significant financial investment by SEMA to educate voters throughout the 2024 presidential campaign via its Driving Force Action SuperPAC, with ads running the battleground states of Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.