President Donald Trump has once again taken the role of commander in chief. On his first day back in office, Trump signed a slew of executive orders meant to jump start his second term.

One of Trump's often-repeated promises is to end what he calls the "EV mandate." While no such mandate actually exists, lots of incentives to boost the industry do.

Sam Abuelsamid, Telemetry Insights vice president of market research, said laws surrounding EVs aren’t that simple.

“California and a few other states do have an EV mandate, but nationally there has never been an EV mandate. What we do have are fuel economy and emission standards that get progressively tighter as we go forward in time,” said Abuelsamid.

While there are not specifics on what the so-called EV mandate refers to, David Welch, Detroit Bureau Chief at Bloomberg, said it usually refers to policies put in place to promote the production and sales of electric vehicles.

“When they talk about an EV mandate, what they’re generally talking about is president Biden’s fuel economy standards which basically by 2030, 2032, in order to meet them, car companies would have to  sell a lot of electric vehicles to basically water down the fuel economy,” said Welch..

So how will changes to the auto industry impact the “Voltage Valley”? Abuelsamid and Welch agree that any change to the auto industry could have lasting effects.

Some of the expected changes are an increase in domestic oil and gas production, a change in greenhouse gas emissions standards and removing electric vehicle tax incentives.

For places like Ultium Cells in Lordstown, these changes could have devastating effects.

“If those tax credits go away, those EV's become more expensive. GM is probably going to sell fewer of those because people can't afford to buy them, and as a result you're probably going to have job losses in Ohio,” said Abuelsamid. 

With General Motors being one of the bigger players in the EV industry, Welch feels there is a chance Ultium Cells could maintain its sales.

“You really have three companies who are serious about selling EVs, so even if the market is smaller, GM is already, even before Trump got in office, and I think will continue to do so, will get a larger piece of it,” said Welch.

Welch is expecting vehicle prices to go up because of the promised tariffs on Canada and Mexico, but reiterated that nothing is certain.

Because the auto industry takes years of planning and investing, one of the biggest concerns is the uncertainty on what laws will be changing.

“It takes years to develop new products, to build factories, and the thing that they hate is uncertainty, not knowing what the rules are going to be 5, 10 years from now.”

Regardless of what changes come to the auto industry, Abuelsamid feels the EV sector will continue growing.