and finally a legal battle with the Trump administration could shape the future of the electric car market in the US new Jersey is one of a dozen states that have signed onto a lawsuit trying to block a move by the White House that'll make it harder to get more electric vehicles on the road that's a goal of the Murphy administration and environmental advocates around the country to reduce emissions and help curb climate change but will the effort survive ted Goldberg reports [Music] new Jersey's plans for allect electric new car sales in the next decade have stalled significantly president Donald Trump signed a congressional resolution blocking California's plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 a rule adopted by New Jersey rick Dilva owns three car dealerships statewide and sells plenty of EVs but he says the rule if it survives a court battle would limit his business we want to be able to offer you you know whatever works for you we don't want to be you know kind of pigeon holed into only battery electric which is what the California rules would have done i asked him last summer how feasible it would be to sell all EVs by 2035 how feasible is that so it's not and when I asked today not going to happen dilva noted that the California rules would not have counted hybrid cars as part of the allectric goal ev sales have picked up significantly over the past few years and now make up about one in eight new car sales statewide dilva says his EV sales haven't grown much over the last year there were some significant uh incentives kind of driving that you know that growth in that part of the market that are that are going away in the state of New Jersey so on one hand we've got we've got the you know Trenton saying "Yep EV is the way to go."

Oh you know we're we're fully on board with you know with what California is doing and on then the other hand they've added you know an average of $45,000 to the to the transaction price attorney General Matt Placken joined 11 other states in suing over the resolution saying revoking state vehicle emissions standards is illegal and it is yet another way that the Trump administration is violating the law to target states it disfavors we will see them in court the goal really is to turn over the fleet right so if you keep on driving your your gas powered car you're not going to get the environmental uh the environmental benefit of the the more efficient vehicles so we're you know to to have that choice and that uptake you're going to have a much quicker uh turnover of the fleet there's no question that electric vehicles are here to stay it's more of a matter of um you know making sure that they grow based on demand from the consumers so that it's not uh something that's foisted upon the consumers but actually a choice laura Prada leads the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers or NJ car we would have seen job losses higher costs for consumers and lack of choice she says New Jersey which has about 4,500 public chargers statewide has a ways to go in terms of providing and maintaining the infrastructure needed for EVs you can put the chargers in at malls and in various parking lots but they're not being maintained like at a fueling station so that means you don't have the safety of a human there to call 911 if there's a problem the best way to kind of think about our protections right now is there's a big fat question mark around them environmentalists like Doug Ali say states should have the right to set their own standards for new car sales and that market forces are favoring more EVs on our roads we can't stick our head in the sand and that goes for any state policy maker that's trying to grapple with the impacts of climate change and air pollution and until that certainty is sort of you know sorted out it it's going to be a pretty uh you know disruptive time in not just EVs but really the auto industry more generally nick Nigro is the founder of Atlas Public Policy he says America's uncertainty towards EVs could provide a window for other countries to take the lead in the industry the technology has advanced so much now that in other parts of the world particularly China the EVs are that choice for the everyday driver and unless we continue on the trajectory we're on today uh you know we we might lose out uh to China and that's going to mean you know a loss of potentially lots and lots of jobs according to state data New Jersey has around 218,000 EVs on its roads whether or not we'll stop seeing new gas-powered car sales in a decade could depend on the outcome of this court case in Mawa I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight News [Music]