Big motorhome sales banned in California and five other states, effective Jan 1, 2025!







This is a special edition of the RV Podcast involving a breaking story that we need to get out there. California and five other states have a controversial regulation in place that will effectively ban the sale of most large motorhomes starting January 1, 2025. How could this happen? We dig into this in this Special Episode of the RV Podcast.







You can watch the video version on our RV Lifestyle YouTube channel by clicking the player below.















If you prefer an audio-only podcast, you can hear us through your favorite podcast app or listen now through the player below. Click the CC logo on the right side of the player, and you can follow along in a word-for-word transcript of the podcast as it plays.















The RV Industry is reeling this week as California and five other clean air states are about to ban the sale of motorhomes with a gross vehicle weight (GVWR) of over 8,500 pounds.







This includes most motorhomes.









* The average weight range for a Class C RV is 10,000–12,000 lbs. 







* The range for a Super C Motorhome is 19,500 lbs and up







* The average GVWR of a Class A motorhome typically ranges from 13,000 to 30,000 lbs









Class B motorhomes - campervans - typically weigh 6,000- 8,000 pounds GVWR and thus won't be affected.







This ban affecting the larger motorhomes will be effective Jan 1, 2025, and it’s a story that has caught everyone by surprise. It came to widespread attention just a few days ago when a letter sent by Newmar RV to its dealers in the affected states came to light, telling them of the coming sales ban. 







Now the reason this has shocked the industry is because, frankly, the industry really expected an exemption from a program that seems aimed at big diesel trucks that are driven around the clock, not low mileage recreation vehicles that typically drive 3,000-5,000 miles a year.







Their reasoning is sound. It seems pretty cut and dry. But several industry leaders I talked to in preparing this special report felt much more should have been done and that perhaps there was a complacency and lack of urgency in dealing with this.







The Advanced Clean Truck Regulation







California and the five other states that have signed on to the same clean air regulations haven’t made a secret of this at all. The Advanced Clean Truck Regulation has been out there for over a year now. The other states that have adopted it are Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey.







You may wonder why California is the driving force here.







Because under Section 177 the federal Clean Air Act that regulates air emissions, California is the only state authorized to set vehicle emission standards and other states wanting to adopt their own such regulations can do so only if they are identical to California's.







Really. I'm not making this up.







But no one in the industry really thought RVs would be affected by the Advanced Clean Truck Regulation. They thought RVs would be treated differently than big commercial trucks once regulators understood the problem making big motorhomes all EV.