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- A federal appeals court blocked a Biden administration rule for calculating electric vehicle fuel efficiency.
- Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird led a coalition of states arguing the rule unfairly favored electric vehicles.
- The states claimed the rule would increase road wear and greenhouse gas emissions.
A federal appeals court has blocked a Biden administration rule for calculating electric vehicle efficiency at the urging of Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, heading a coalition that included other Republican-led states.
The petition to the Eighth Circuit appeals court involved a 2023 Department of Energy rule tweaking the government’s longtime formulas for calculating vehicle fuel efficiency, which set standards automakers are required to meet. The specific changes are highly technical — Friday’s ruling includes several pages of math formulas — but in general, the rule was meant to end the use of a calculation factor that the energy department believed favored electric vehicles.
Bird, joined by a dozen other states, argued in court that the changes, in fact, would favor electric vehicles even more, claiming the new standard exaggerated the equivalent fuel efficiency of electric vehicles in excess of sixfold. In an April 2024 statement announcing the lawsuit, Bird accused Biden of giving a handout to electric vehicles that “hurts car-owners, roads, and carbon emissions across the country.”
“Biden has made it clear that he will take every avenue possible to wage war on gas-powered vehicles. And Iowa ethanol is getting caught in the crossfire,” Bird said. Iowa is the nation’s leading producer of the renewable fuel, which by law is blended with the nation’s gasoline supply.
In court filings, Iowa and the other states claimed the rule stood to harm them in several respects. Because the rule would increase total energy consumption, it also would increase greenhouse gas emissions, they claimed, threatening coastal states such as Florida. They also argue that, because electric vehicles tend to be heavier than their gas-powered counterparts, a rule bolstering them would increase wear and maintenance costs for state roads.
In its decision Friday, the three-judge panel sided with the states. Even a minute difference in road wear from vehicle weights is enough to establish legal standing, the court found, and they rejected the Department of Energy’s new formula for failing to adhere to statutory language requiring the agency to balance the value and scarcity of existing fuel types.
“If Congress aimed to empower DOE to incentivize the production of electric vehicles so long as the use of electric vehicles conserved energy overall and scarce fuels in particular, ‘Congress easily could have drafted’ the statute ‘in that broad manner,” the panel wrote, quoting Supreme Court precedent.
Bird, in a statement, said the case was an example of her office standing up for farmers, whose corn is the main ingredient in ethanol, and motorists.
“This is a victory for all Americans, but especially for Iowa ethanol,” she said. “The Biden Administration’s war on gas vehicles is coming to an end.”
The decision follows the Trump administration’s August cancelation of a Biden initiative to build a massive network of EV chargers on interstates and other major highways.
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com or 715-573-8166.
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