This may be the greatest achievement of the second term. It's up there, that's for sure.
A not-so-fond farewell to the green gimmick that wrecks your engine — and your sanity.
The EPA just delivered news that millions of fed-up American drivers have been waiting for: Automatic start-stop technology is no longer being propped up by federal regulation.
On February 12, 2026, President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin
announced what the administration is calling the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history. The move scraps the Obama-era 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding and wipes out federal greenhouse-gas standards for vehicles dating back to model year 2012.
‘Mechanically, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. Constant restarts accelerate wear on starter motors — even reinforced ones.’
For everyday drivers, the practical consequence is simple and satisfying: The regulatory credits that encouraged automakers to jam start-stop systems into vehicles are gone.
‘Universally hated’
Zeldin didn’t mince words, calling start-stop an
“almost universally hated” feature — an
“Obama switch” that makes your engine shut off at every red light. Trump echoed the sentiment, blasting the policy as a regulatory disaster that drove up prices and forced unwanted technology on consumers. Even the EPA’s own announcement acknowledged what drivers have been saying for years: A feature that kills your engine at stops and jolts it awake again was never embraced voluntarily — it was incentivized.