The Road To Hell Is Paved With The Golden State’s New Tire Regulations

I was born and raised in Los Angeles and spent the first 60 years of my life in California, where I served in both Houses of the State Legislature and represented the state in Congress.

Ten years ago, I fled California for Arizona.

Many believe I moved mainly to pay lower taxes, which was a factor. Others assume that California’s restrictions on activities beyond theft, abortion, and illegal alien protection pushed me away. That also played a role in my decision.

But a third overlooked factor is that the government in Sacramento creates laws and regulations every year to make the cost of just about everything in California rise well above the costs in nearly every other state. They do this either in the name of “saving the planet” or “keeping us safe.”

Take the quintessentially American and California-specific car culture. What once defined the zeitgeist of a golden era in the Golden State has become nearly prohibitively expensive. It already has the highest gasoline prices in the country and consistently ranks in the top five for the highest car insurance rates. So, in order to make driving your own car more expensive (as opposed to riding on the multibillion-dollar train to nowhere), they have decided to double down and make tires more expensive as well.

The California Energy Commission, acting under a 2003 law, just passed new regulations requiring all tires sold in California to meet certain “low rolling resistance” standards starting in 2029. The standards get tighter every year until 2033. The idea is that low rolling resistance tires will save fuel and, therefore, carbon emissions, which will of course “save the planet.” Governor (and wannabe president) Gavin Newsom says that motorists will save $1 billion a year in fuel costs because of this regulation.

Let’s first give the proponents of this regulation their due. Low rolling resistance tires do exist. They do increase fuel mileage. They can have poor grip in wet conditions, but the regulation includes standards for having adequate grip on slick pavements. The regulation also exempts certain tires, including snow and off-road tires.

Fine. But let’s dig deeper.

The regulation will make 70% of all tires currently sold in the state illegal. Seventy percent.

According to the regulation’s proponents, the most common car to get a replacement tire in California is a 2017 Honda Civic. The commission itself acknowledges that only half of the tires currently in the correct size for this car meet the 2029 standards, and none meet the 2033 standard. The average price for those currently marketed as “low rolling resistance” is $629.48 for a set of 4 tires. The average price for all of the tires in this size category is $325.20 for that same set of 4 tires. So the person getting a new set of tires on their nine-year-old car will pay over $300 more, assuming compliant tires are even available. This analysis also doesn’t include price increases when choice shrinks starting in 2029.

When people on the Left raise the cost of something, like taxes, they assume people will just gladly pay it and move on. But real people don’t do that. They look for a way to not spend an extra $300 on nothing. What will they do? They can buy used tires coming in from other states because the regulation only covers new tires. These tires will be cheaper, but they’ll have less tread, be older, and pose a safety risk. It will be illegal to buy non-compliant tires in California, but not illegal to install them. So, a gray or black market for non-compliant tires will form. Or, drive to Las Vegas for the weekend and get new tires that are $300 cheaper while you are there, costing jobs in California and causing the state to lose sales tax revenue as well. Or, just keep driving your old tires longer until they fail.

As far as the claims about fuel savings, they are about as accurate as Newsom’s estimates of the cost of the bullet train. Low rolling resistance tires only save fuel when traveling at high sustained speeds. Have you even driven in L.A. or San Francisco? In stop-and-go traffic or on surface streets with lots of signals, there is no savings. That is where most driving occurs.

Leftists are always talking about “income inequality.” What they conveniently ignore is that the income inequality in California and New York is much worse than in red states like Texas and Tennessee. Why? Because of laws like this one. The person in their nine-year-old Honda Civic is going to pay $300 more for their tires. But the Beverly Hills leftist will have no restrictions on tires for their Bentley, because low-volume cars like Bentleys are exempt from the regulation. No limousine leftist in Sacramento feels they need to live by the laws they impose on everyone else.

However, as average Californians suffer under the burdensome costs of another new regulation, there is one thing they can know. They will help offset perhaps a second or two of China’s carbon emissions each year.

So clearly, it’s all worthwhile.

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John Campbell was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He is a Certified Public Accountant, businessman, and former member of Congress who served from 2005 to 2015. He also has a 25-year career in the retail automotive industry, progressing from Corporate Controller to owner/operator and dealer principal, and represented 15 franchises during his career.