California’s electric vehicle mandates aren’t working admits Mary Nichols who heads up the powerful California Air Resources Board (CARB), according to a recent Reuters report.

“‘The strategies that we’ve used up until now just haven’t been effective,’ Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board.”

The stunning confession comes as Colorado’s regulatory agencies draft rules mirroring California’s mandate on EVs that establishes quotas for auto manufacturers, which now appears to be a failure.

Californians now buy more than half of all EVs sold in the United States, and the state’s auto-pollution policies have provided a model being adopted around the world.

But they’re not working at home, by the state’s own measure. Tailpipe pollution here is going up, not down, despite billions of dollars spent by one of the most environmentally progressive governments on earth.

It’s unlikely to change. With only 284,000 EVs on the roads, California is a long way from its 1.5 million goal by 2025. Even with generous subsidies and rebates, consumers aren’t buying EVs.

The underlying problem, he [Association of Global Automakers President and CEO John Bozzella] argued, is that there is no purchasing mandate for consumers.

Maybe forcing auto purchasers to buy a car that they don’t want will be Governor Polis’s next executive order. It will give a new meaning to the term autocratic.