WASHINGTON — California’s government has hit back at automakers that sided with President Trump over the state on fuel efficiency standards, saying Sacramento will halt all purchases of new vehicles from General Motors, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler and other automakers that backed stripping California of its authority to regulate tailpipe emissions.
The ban, which the California governor, Gavin Newsom, plans to implement in January 2020, is the latest shot in the intensifying battle over climate change between Mr. Trump and the state, which he appears to relish antagonizing.
“Carmakers that have chosen to be on the wrong side of history will be on the losing end of California’s buying power,” Governor Newsom said in a statement on Monday.
A spokeswoman for G.M. said the state was depriving itself of the low-cost electric vehicles it needed to meet its environmental objectives.
“Removing vehicles like the Chevy Bolt and prohibiting G.M. and other manufacturers from consideration will reduce California’s choices for affordable, American-made electric vehicles and limit its ability to reach its goal of minimizing the state government’s carbon footprint, a goal that G.M. shares,” the spokeswoman, Jeannine Ginivan, said.
Representatives from the White House, Fiat Chrysler and Toyota did not respond to requests for comment.
The fight over planet-warming auto emissions has split the nation’s auto industry: Four major companies have sided with California on its legal authority to set tough state-level standards on tailpipe pollution, while at least five others have sided with Mr. Trump, who is rolling back Obama-era fuel economy standards and moving to strip California of its authority to set its own.
In a statement published late Friday, the California Department of General Services said that, effective immediately, all sedans purchased by the state would have to be electric or hybrid vehicles.
Beneath that announcement was a little-noticed policy that, starting in 2020, state agencies will only purchase vehicles from manufacturers that recognize the authority of California’s clean air agency to set its own greenhouse gas emission standards.
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He’s Never Going to Put Away That Shirt Although the statement does not mention G.M., Toyota or Fiat Chrysler by name, the new policy amounts to ban on state purchases of vehicles made by those companies and a handful of others, represented by the lobbying group Global Automakers, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom confirmed on Monday.
Going forward, California’s state agencies will chiefly purchase cars from Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW. In July, those companies sided with California when they struck a deal to follow California’s more stringent standards, which are close to the original Obama-era rules.