HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) – Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin announced that Virginia will exit California’s Vehicle Emissions Standards.

Matthew Wade, Deputy Director of Virginia Clean Cities based in Harrisonburg said California’s Advanced Clean Cars 2 vehicle emissions standards, requires dealerships in Virginia to offer electric vehicles, low or zero-emission vehicles to their customers.

“It is essentially about making these vehicles available to consumers for them to make independent choices if it suits their driving lifestyle,” said Wade.

Wade said this administrative withdrawal will have negative impacts on consumers, businesses, and the economy.

“This is just another example of the Governor ignoring a technological breakthrough and economic miracle which is the electric vehicle,” said Wade.

Virginia State Delegate Tony Wilt who supports the decision said he felt from the beginning it was not a good policy, and felt the Commonwealth is capable of developing its own standards.

“We were at least bound to the federal standards and so that gave us guidelines to go by and the California standards were more stringent and not necessary for us at all,” said Delegate Wilt.

Delegate Wilt said his biggest concern was the timeline and Virginia was not going to be able to follow that timeline.

“It will give us more flexibility and be creative and how we achieve those standards and that is how it should be,” said Delegate Wilt.

According to Delegate Wilt, the Advanced Clean Cars 2 would by 2035, completely ban new internal combustion engine vehicles form being sold in Virginia.

Wade said despite the change, he believes that electric vehicles are here to stay.

“There are fun to drive, the require little to no maintenance at all, they are very inexpensive to operate,” said Wade.

Virginia will be out of California’s Emission Standards at the end of 2024.

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