A law signed by Governor Gray Davis one week before the recall election that turned him out of office is about to limit your options if your car or light truck needs new tires.
Yes, 23 years later.
The California Energy Commission (CEC) just adopted a program that will prohibit the sale in California of replacement tires that don’t meet the state’s new fuel efficiency standards. With a few exceptions, that will be 70% of the tires now sold in California.
Davis signed Assembly Bill 844 into law on October 1, 2003. AB 844 was titled, “Replacement Tire Efficiency Program.”
As we all know, efficiency is California’s middle name.
The law is absurd. Even the Legislature didn’t sound too sure about it. “Substantial evidence indicates,” AB 844 hedges, that replacement tires for cars and light-duty trucks are less fuel efficient “on average” than original equipment tires. Improving the energy efficiency of tires “could” have economic and environmental benefits. There are “strong indications” that the technology exists to do this.
But the Legislature noted that existing state law “declares that it is the policy of the state to minimize the use of petroleum-based fuels by state agencies and to purchase the cleanest and most efficient automobiles and replacement tires,” and also “requires the CEC to develop and adopt recommendations for a California State Fuel-Efficient Tire Program.”
The existing state laws were Assembly Bill 2076, enacted in 2000, and Senate Bill 1170, signed into law in 2001.
AB 2076 required the CEC and the California Air Resources Board to develop a “California Strategy to Reduce Petroleum Dependence.” SB 1170 declared that “overdependence on the production, marketing, and consumption of petroleum based fuels as an energy resource in the transportation sector is a threat to the energy security of the state.”
At one time, “energy security” was the favored justification for government force against the auto industry. The idea was that the U.S. was dependent on other nations for oil, and these nations were mostly located in a part of the world that was dangerously unpredictable. Then, somewhere around 2005, it became clear that the U.S. had deep reserves of oil and gas that could be unlocked in shale. By 2006, California was citing “global warming” as the reason for using force against the auto industry.
But getting back to 2001, SB 1170 directed various agencies to develop and adopt fuel efficiency standards for the purchase of state vehicles, including the development of recommendations for a “state fuel-efficient tire program” by January 31, 2003.
So the CEC produced a report entitled, “The California State Fuel-Efficient Tire Report.” It found that “low-rolling resistance tires can improve the fuel economy of a passenger vehicle by approximately 3 percent,”as quoted in an analysis of AB 844 for the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources.
In 2003, that was enough to persuade the Legislature to require a “Fuel Efficiency Program” for replacement tires for cars and light-duty trucks.
However, AB 844 specified that the program had to be adopted and implemented “on or before July 1, 2008.”
It’s 2026. How is AB 844 enabling the CEC to adopt a regulation that will ban the sale of 70% of the replacement tires now available in California?
Apparently, California treats deadlines in legislation as optional, more like wishful aspirations. We should all try that on April 15 and see how it goes.
On April 24, 2026, the staff of the California Energy Commission released a report with the title, “California’s Proposed Replacement Tire Efficiency Program.” It’s 95 pages long. It has eight primary authors and two project managers, and it begins with a disclaimer that reads in part, “The Energy Commission, the State of California, its employees, contractors and subcontractors make no warrant, express or implied, and assume no legal liability for the information in this report.”
Nonetheless, they’re very confident, bordering on cocky. “The CEC staff analysis shows that the regulations proposed in this staff report are technically feasible, are cost-effective, and will not compromise safety, reduce tire life, or increase tire waste,” the authors declared.
But what’s the point?
The staff report says the increased fuel efficiency will save each driver of a gasoline-powered vehicle $179 over four years. Some of that savings may be eaten up by the higher price of the “fuel-efficient” tires.
The staff also emphasized a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from lower fuel consumption. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it matters, although it doesn’t. All of California accounts for only about 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so your choice of tires isn’t affecting the climate. But forget about that for now. How much will this new tire efficiency regime reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
“In total,” the staff reports, the program will “reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 2.0 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2035.”
How much is that?
It’s “equivalent to about 1.9 percent of California’s 2021 passenger vehicle emissions.”
In other words, it’s fractional. It’s meaningless. It’s another pointless regulatory burden in California for absolutely no good reason.
The California Energy Commission’s action will burden manufacturers, retailers, and most importantly, hard-working Californians who keep their cars long enough to need replacement tires.
These ivory-tower regulators invent complicated requirements for collecting and reporting data, for fashioning standards, for complying and enforcing and then updating so they can start it all over again. They enjoy endless job security with generous benefits and very nice pensions, certainly much nicer than anything available in the private sector to people who wear out their tires before they can buy a new car or truck.
But the real blame belongs to the mindless sheep in the leadership of the Legislature. Over and over again they follow the egotistical governor down the path to be “first” to enact blithering idiocy mandated by outdated, unnecessary and dimwitted laws.
Gray Davis was recalled for less.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley