Farm Bureau Federation Tailpipe Litigation

The American Farm Bureau Federation has been actively opposing the Environmental Protection Agency's new tailpipe emission standards and is involved in two separate lawsuits regarding this contentious issue. These standards essentially mandate vehicle manufacturers to electrify their fleets. Deputy General Counsel of Litigation with AFBF and Public Policy Director, Travis Cushman, has more.

“One of them involves a role relating to light duty and medium duty vehicles. That's the one lawsuit. That is the smaller vehicles. The second lawsuit relates their role regulating large duty vehicles. Our lawsuit seeks to have these rules overturned, because what they do is they require manufacturers to rehaul their fleets and electrify all of them, specifically within the next eight years, by the year 2032 so some completely rehauling of how we think of transportation today.”

This mandate requires 68% of passenger vehicles, 43% of large pickups and vans and about half of vocational work trucks and semis to be electrified. Cushman says, considering rural America, this timeline is nearly impossible.

“In many parts of rural America, it's over 100 miles to can find your next charger. So if we're forcing electrification of fleets, what are folks in rural America going to do? We've spent a lot of money already trying to develop this infrastructure network, and it's, it's just still not really there.”