GM, Toyota Motor Corp. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles had initially backed Trump, while rivals including Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG, reached an agreement on higher standards with California.
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Nissan Motor Co. ends federal lawsuit over California’s right to set its own auto emissions standards, in which it sided with the Trump administration in the latest sign of the rapidly changing gasoline rule policy since Joe Biden won the 2020 president . election.
Nissan said in a statement Friday that it “is confident that productive talks between the auto industry, the Biden administration and California can produce a logical set of national standards that will increase efficiency and meet the needs of all American drivers.”
The announcement follows a decision by General Motors Co. to withdraw from President Donald Trump’s legal battle with California, saying that the company’s goal to accelerate adoption of electric vehicles is in line with Biden’s support for cleaner cars.
Nissan echoed those sentiments in its statement, pointing to its regular zero-emission vehicle, the all-electric Nissan LEAF.
“We will continue to support improvements in fuel economy and a framework that drives advanced technologies, while balancing priorities such as environment, safety, affordability and jobs,” Nissan said in its statement.
Automakers were divided a year ago over a plan by the Trump administration to roll back President Barack Obama’s gasoline consumption rules and revoke California’s permission to set its own greenhouse gas emission standards.
GM, Toyota Motor Corp. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV supported Trump. Rivals, including Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG, reached an agreement on higher standards with California that angered Trump so much that his administration opened a brief antitrust investigation which it later dropped.
The companies had joined a 2019 lawsuit on behalf of the Trump administration brought by the Environmental Defense Fund after Trump reversed Obama-era mileage rules and repealed California’s right to set its own emissions Air Act since the 1970s.
Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have passed California’s mileage rules, which means that car manufacturers can have one set of rules for a quarter of the country and another set for the rest of the states, unless the federal government and California can reach an agreement.
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