The state was already falling behind its electric vehicle goals before Trump took office – but the outlook is even dimmer now.
5:40 AM EDT on September 15, 2025
Where are all the electric cars?
Recent actions from the Trump administration and other Republicans in Washington have considerably slowed the rate at which car buyers are choosing electric vehicles – a trend that puts the Commonwealth's legally-mandated pollution reduction targets even further out of reach.
Roads and highways are the biggest remaining source of greenhouse gas pollution (and air pollution in general) in New England. Unlike other states, which have set targets to reduce traffic and expand public transit, Massachusetts has pinned its climate strategy on hopes that consumers will start buying more electric vehicles (EVs).
The state's official Clean Energy and Climate Plan, published in 2020, says that "Massachusetts will need to deploy 750,000 to one million ZEVs (zero emission vehicles) by 2030."
That plan isn't working. As of July, there were only 152,000 fully electric or plug-in hybrid cars registered in the Commonwealth.
Meeting the low end of the state's 2030 target for EV deployment would require roughly one in three new car sales to be EVs each year over the next 5 years.
But EVs currently make up around 11 percent of new car sales, and those sales have slowed considerably this year, driven by plummeting demand for Teslas over the winter and spring.
Meanwhile, gasoline consumption – and all the air pollution that comes with it – is continuing to increase.
If the outlook for the state's EV market was discouraging before, it's deteriorated even further in the last few months.
In July, the Republican Party's "Big Beautiful Bill" eliminated a $7,500 federal rebate for new electric car purchases. That rebate will no longer be available after September 30th.
Researchers from Princeton University predict that the repeal of those benefits will considerably depress the market share for new electric vehicles in the next few years. With the tax credits, EVs were expected to make up 40 percent of new car sales by 2030; without them, they're expected to represent just 24 percent of new cars by the end of the decade.
Congress has also voted to eliminate the "Advanced Clean Cars" rule, a California clean-air regulation that Massachusetts and several other states have adopted to gradually phase out the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles.
California regulators are fighting that legislation in court, and Attorney General Andrea Campbell joined the lawsuit in June.
But in Massachusetts, it's a bit of a moot point. In deference to lobbying from car dealers and manufacturers, Governor Healey had already announced (in May) that her administration won't enforce the Advanced Clean Car rule for the next two years anyhow.
This spring, the Massachusetts legislature announced that it was launching "Response 2025," which lawmakers described as "a coordinated effort" to counteract new policies from Washington with legislation at the state level.
"We are committed to protecting our residents, defending our values, and leading Massachusetts through the uncertainty of federal action," Senate President Karen E. Spilka said in an April 1 press release. "The Senate will not sit idly by—we have heard the concerns of our residents, and we are prepared to act."
StreetsblogMASS reached out to Sen. Cindy Friedman of Arlington, who's leading the "Response 2025" initiative, to ask whether she and her colleagues were discussing any ideas for putting the transportation sector back on track to meet the state's climate goals.
Stephen Acosta, a spokesperson for the Senator, wrote back to tell StreetsblogMASS that "unfortunately, she's not available to speak on this."
At a ribbon-cutting for a new e-bike charging station in Somerville last month, StreetsblogMASS put a similar question to the Commonwealth's Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt.
"We're keeping with pushing ahead," said Tibbits-Nutt. "We have the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program (NEVI), which is $65 million from the federal government which we have obligated."
That federal program is also under fire from Washington's Republicans, but the funding will install new charging stations every 50 miles along the Commonwealth's major highways.
Still, without a major change in course in the Commonwealth's current laws and regulations, there won't be nearly enough electric vehicles using those stations to make a meaningful impact on air pollution.
When we pressed Tibbits-Nutt to tell us what her agency would do to reduce the root cause of highway pollution – the excessive number of vehicles clogging the state's roadways – the Secretary cited the administration's efforts to fund the MBTA and increase funding for the state's Regional Transit Authorities (RTAs).
"For us it's always been the focus, on reducing VMT (vehicle miles travelled). One of the reasons I think the Legislature is with the record amount of transportation funding, especially to the MBTA, we're able to put more buses on the road and expand transit, so we can encourage people to that mode shift," said Tibbits-Nutt.
But the vast majority of the Legislature's budget increases for transit agencies this year is merely backfilling a decade's worth of cuts and deferred maintenance left over from Gov. Baker's administration. The T still has a multi-billion dollar shortfall for repair projects, and its most transformative plans to expand transit service remain unfunded.
Seth Gadbois, an attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation, says there's a fundamental gap in accountability between what lawmakers have promised in the Global Warming Solutions Act and what they fund in their budgets.
"States like Massachusetts not only have the space to act, they have a legal and moral responsibility to do so," Gadbois told StreetsblogMASS (editor's note: the Conservation Law Foundation is the fiscal sponsor of StreetsblogMASS, which means it administers our payroll and finances; it does not have any role in governance or editorial decisions).
Gadbois has been working with a handful of lawmakers, led by Sen. Cynthia Creem of Newton and Rep. Jack Patrick Lewis of Framingham, to pass what they're calling the "Freedom to Move Act," which would require MassDOT to align its spending priorities with the pollution reduction mandates in the state's Global Warming Solutions Act.
Lawmakers in Colorado, Washington, and Minnesota have already passed similar laws.
"Right now we don’t have a check against whether our transportation dollars are helping or hurting our climate targets," said Gadbois. "Freedom to Move aligns state level transport policy and spending with our climate obligations… It’s a big policy alignment shift that will ultimately expand the menu of options for how people get around."
At the ribbon-cutting in Somerville last month, we asked Tibbit-Nutt whether she supported the Freedom to Move Act, or whether MassDOT had taken a position. She declined to answer the question.
The Freedom to Move bill will have a public hearing with testimony from the public in the Legislature's Joint Committee on Transportation on September 16 at 1 p.m. Learn more here.
Sign up for our free newsletter
In stump speeches, Kraft claimed, without evidence, that the city's limited number of bike lanes "increase congestion," and pledged to "set a pause" on new bikeways.
Mayoral challenger Josh Kraft has made his opposition to bike lanes a major theme in his multi-million dollar campaign against Mayor Michelle Wu.
Connecting people to information about how to improve walking, biking, and transit
Sign up for our free newsletter
© Copyright 2025
Made in partnership with Lede

source