Clean Air Vehicle Decals in California: The Program Ended September 30, 2025

1. What Ended and When: The Timeline

The decal program did not shrink, change colour, or get a short extension. It ended, on a date the law had fixed years in advance, and the DMV closed applications a month early so the ending would not catch people mid-application. Here is the whole timeline, in order, with what each date means for a driver holding a decal today.

Two details in that timeline catch people out, and both are worth stating plainly. First, the DMV did process applications that arrived before the August 29 cutoff — if a completed application and payment were received and reviewed before August 29, 2025, the decal was mailed. But that decal was valid only until October 1, 2025, a few weeks at most. If the DMV returned an application because it was incomplete before August 29, it was only processed if the completed application and payment reached the DMV before August 29; otherwise the application and payment were returned to the applicant. The DMV closed applications a month early precisely so nobody would pay for a decal that expired within days of receipt — and the people who did get one in that final window got weeks of use, not years.

Second, the printed expiration date on a decal means nothing now. Under the old four-year rule, a decal issued in 2025 would have carried a printed expiry well into the future, and a teal decal issued in August 2025 looked, on its face, like it had years left. The federal sunset overrode every printed date at once. The California Air Resources Board’s own summary puts it without qualification: as of October 1, 2025, all Clean Air Vehicle decals are expired, and enforcement of minimum vehicle occupancy requirements and payment systems is taking place on California carpool lanes. There is no decal whose printed date saves it, and no colour that survived.

One more date matters for anyone who arrived at this page from an old link. The DMV’s old decal page is gone. The address the DMV used for years — under its license-plates-special-interest-and-personalized section — now returns a 404, with no redirect. The content moved to the DMV’s current Clean Air Vehicle Decals page, which now serves the sunset FAQ in full. Any bookmark, search result, or third-party link pointing at the old address lands on a DMV error page. The current page is linked in the sources section below, and it is the official source for everything on this page.

2. Why It Ended — and the January 2027 Trap

The program ended because of federal law, not California law — and that distinction is the single most misunderstood fact about the sunset. California wanted the program to continue. Congress did not act. The program died in the gap between the two.

The mechanism is short. The Clean Air Vehicle decal program existed only because federal law allowed it. Section 166 of Title 23 of the United States Code lets states open carpool lanes to single-occupant clean-air vehicles. Without that federal permission, a state cannot hand out solo carpool access, however much it wants to. The DMV’s own FAQ states the cause in one sentence: “The federal government ended the CAVD program at midnight on September 30, 2025, pursuant to Section 166 of Title 23 of the United States Code. While the federal government gave the DMV the authority to create the CAVD program, the state had to follow federal regulations that expired.” The California Air Resources Board says the same thing from its side: the program ended September 30, 2025 as required under Section 166, and federal legislation is required to authorize an extension.

That is where the January 2027 date comes in — and where most of the internet goes wrong. California did change its law to extend the program to January 2027. Assembly Bill 2678 (Wallis, chaptered in 2024) moved the state repeal date for the decal statutes to January 1, 2027. The DMV’s FAQ answers the obvious question directly: “Why did the CAVD program end when CA law was changed to extend the program to January 2027? California changed the law in hopes that the federal government would extend the CAVD program. However, that federal authority was not extended, so the program ended at midnight on September 30, 2025.” In other words, the state extension was conditional. It only worked if Congress extended the federal authority first. Congress did not. So the state extension never took effect, and the program ended on the federal date, not the state date.

The statute itself was written for exactly this outcome. Vehicle Code sections 5205.5 and 21655.9 — the two sections that authorize the decals and the carpool-lane access — became inoperative on September 30, 2025, the moment the federal authority expired. “Inoperative” is the key word: the sections are still printed in the Vehicle Code, but they do nothing. January 1, 2027 is the date those dead sections are scheduled to leave the code entirely — the repeal date, not the end date. Anyone who tells you the program runs to January 2027 has confused the repeal date with the end date, and the DMV’s FAQ exists largely to correct that confusion.

There is a second, smaller confusion worth clearing up at the same time. The program did not end because California changed its mind about electric cars. The California Air Resources Board’s end-of-program page says the state transportation agency continues to work on state efforts to secure federal approval, and that extending carpool-lane access for zero-emission vehicles is a recommendation in a recent report to the Governor. But it also says, in the same breath, that without federal approval the program cannot be extended. The state’s position is that it wants the program back; the federal position, so far, is silence. Until Congress acts, there is no program for California to run, whatever the state’s preference.

Finally, a note on enforcement, because two sources appear to disagree and the disagreement is easy to misread. The California Air Resources Board’s FAQ asks, “Will there be a grace period for people driving with a Clean Air Decal in the carpool lane?” and answers, “No, there will be no grace period.” Separately, one provision of the statute (Vehicle Code §5205.5(k)) barred citations for 60 days after the program became inoperative, and some news and toll-authority reports in fall 2025 described a short enforcement transition. Those two statements describe different things — the Board’s position and a statutory citation bar — and this page picks no end date for that transition, because the sources do not agree on one. What is not in dispute is the present: the window, whatever it was, is closed, and full enforcement applies now. The California Highway Patrol and the toll authorities enforce the occupancy rules, and the decal is not a defence.

3. What Applies Now: Occupancy, Tolls, and Your FasTrak Tag

With the program gone, the rules that apply to an electric car are the same rules that apply to every other car. There is no separate lane, no separate toll, and no separate standard for a vehicle that used to carry a decal. This section is the practical core of the page: what to do on your next drive.

The carpool lane now works on occupancy alone. The DMV’s rule, from October 1, 2025, is that drivers must obey the posted vehicle occupancy requirement to travel in the carpool (HOV) lane, or risk receiving a citation and fine. The number is the number on the sign — usually two or more people, sometimes three or more depending on the corridor — and the sign, not the car, decides. A Tesla, a Rivian, a plug-in hybrid, and a gasoline sedan are all treated identically: count the people, not the powertrain. The decal on the car changes nothing, and a peace officer who stops you will not treat it as a defence. If you are the only person in the car, use the general-purpose lanes, or pay the posted toll to use an express lane solo.

Full toll rates apply from October 1, 2025. The DMV’s FAQ is blunt about it: starting October 1, 2025, full toll rates applied, and drivers were advised to contact their local toll authority for fee amounts. FasTrak’s own discounts page states it the same way: effective October 1, 2025, clean air vehicles no longer receive discounts on certain California toll facilities, following the statewide discontinuation of the program. The table below lists where the discount ended, and when, so you can see whether your route was ever affected.

Two practical points about FasTrak, because this is where drivers lose money after the sunset. First, check your tag. Bay Area FasTrak advised that existing Clean Air Vehicle tags would convert automatically to regular FasTrak Flex tags, so you do not need a new transponder — but check your FasTrak account to confirm what tag type you actually hold, and what it is set to. Second, set the Flex switch to your actual occupancy. A FasTrak Flex tag set to two or three people tells the toll system you are a carpool; set to one person, it charges the full toll. A standard FasTrak tag — the non-switchable kind — always charges the full toll, whatever is in the car. The discount you lost was the decal discount; the carpool discount is still there, and it still depends on the people in the car and the switch on the tag.

Two corridor-specific notes, both from the agencies that run the lanes. Silicon Valley Express Lanes (VTA, SR 237 and US 101–SR 85): from October 1, 2025, solo clean air vehicles pay the full toll; vehicles with two riders continue to receive a 50% discount, and vehicles with three or more riders travel toll-free. San Bernardino Express Lanes (SBCTA, I-10): vehicles with three or more passengers can use the lanes toll-free at all times, and a FasTrak Flex tag is required to claim it. Both of those are carpool rules, not decal rules — they reward the passengers, not the car — and they are the reason the Flex switch matters more now than it did when the decal did the work.

Caltrans made the change visible on the road itself. From October 1, 2025, electronic signs over California carpool lanes carried the message “CLEAN AIR DECALS / NOT VALID / STARTING OCT 1.” If you still see a sign, a sticker, or a toll-booth notice that suggests otherwise, it is out of date. The DMV’s advice for toll amounts has not changed since the sunset: contact your local toll authority, and the California Department of Transportation’s express-lanes page lists the toll roads and their contacts.

4. Applications, Refunds, and Removal: The Loose Ends

The program’s ending left four loose ends for drivers, and the DMV’s FAQ answers all four. This section takes them in order: applications, refunds, removal, and the form that still looks alive.

Applications closed on August 29, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. The DMV stopped accepting new Clean Air Vehicle decal applications and applications for replacement decals on the same day and at the same hour. The reason, in the DMV’s own words, was to prevent customers from receiving decals that would expire within days of receipt — a decal mailed in late August would have been valid for a few weeks at most, and the DMV decided not to issue it. There is no application route now: not online, not by mail, not through a DMV partner office, and not through a third-party registration service. Any website that still shows step-by-step application instructions, or offers to process a decal application for a fee, is describing a closed program. Do not pay for it.

Applications that arrived before the cutoff were handled on a strict line. If a completed application and payment were received and reviewed before August 29, 2025, the application was processed and the decals were mailed — but those decals were valid only until October 1, 2025. If the DMV returned an application because it was incomplete before August 29, it was processed only if the completed application and payment reached the DMV before August 29, 2025; otherwise the application and payment were returned to the applicant. There was no appeal, no extension, and no second window. The cutoff was the cutoff.

No refunds were issued. The DMV’s FAQ asks whether customers were issued a refund for their clean air decals if they paid the application fee and were unable to use it for a full term. The DMV’s answer is one word: “No.” That covers every case: a driver who applied in August 2025 and used the decal for a few weeks, and a driver who applied earlier in 2025 and lost most of the decal’s expected life to the sunset. The application fee was a fee for the decal, not a subscription, and the program’s ending did not create a refund right. This page deliberately prints no dollar figure for that fee, because the official sources disagree about the amount and the figure is moot — no applications are accepted, so there is nothing to pay.

You do not have to remove the decal — but it does nothing now. The DMV’s FAQ asks, “Do I have to remove the decal from my vehicle on October 1, 2025?” and answers, “No, however the decal is not valid for lawful travel in the HOV lane.” The California Air Resources Board says the same: no removal is required, but the decal will not be valid for lawful travel in the carpool lane after September 30, 2025. Leaving it on is a personal choice, not a legal requirement. Two reasons to take it off anyway: it no longer signals anything to an officer, so it cannot help you; and if you sell the car, a buyer may read the sticker as a promise of carpool access that no longer exists. If you do remove it, take care with the paint — the decals were designed to stay on for years — and keep the Clean Air Vehicle certificate that came with them only as a record, not as proof of anything. The certificate was issued with the decal and had to be kept with the vehicle’s current registration card and shown to a peace officer on demand; today it is a souvenir of a closed program.

One warning about the form. The application form, REG 1000 (“Application for Clean Air Vehicle Decals”), is still hosted on the DMV’s website as a file, and a search for it returns a live-looking PDF. The form is obsolete. The DMV is not accepting it, and mailing it will not produce a decal. This is the single most common way drivers still waste time on this topic: they find the form, fill it in, and only discover it is dead when nothing comes back. If a page, a forum post, or a paid service points you at REG 1000 as a live application route, that page is out of date. The DMV’s current Clean Air Vehicle Decals page, linked in the sources below, is the only official word on the subject.

5. The Decals Themselves: Colours, Counts, and What Your Sticker Meant

For 26 years the decal was a small coloured sticker with an outsized effect on how Californians bought cars. This section is the record of what the decals were — the colours, the numbers, and the rules that governed them — written as history, because that is all it is now.

Under the current program, which began January 1, 2019, the decal colour changed every year, and the colour told you the issue year at a glance. The California Air Resources Board’s program page gives the mapping: purple for 2019, orange for 2020, blue for 2021, yellow for 2022, green for 2023, burgundy for 2024, and teal for 2025. Each year’s decals were printed with a four-year validity, so the earliest colours expired on their own schedule long before the sunset — purple expired January 1, 2023, orange January 1, 2024, blue January 1, 2025 — while the last four colours were all set to run to the program’s end. The federal sunset then overrode them all on the same day.

A note on the colour names, because the California Air Resources Board’s own pages use two different sets of them. The Board’s FAQ breakdown calls the same cohorts “light purple,” “intense blue,” “sunflower yellow,” “lime green,” “cardinal red,” and “teal,” and gives first-issued years that do not all match the program page — it says teal was first issued in January 2023, for example, while the program page says teal was the 2025 colour. This page uses the program page’s year-to-colour mapping for the table above, because it is the one that matches the annual rotation, and uses the FAQ breakdown only for the issuance counts, which are internally consistent: the by-colour counts sum to exactly 1,213,479, the lifetime total. If you see a different colour name attached to your decal’s year on another site, it is almost certainly the same decal under the FAQ’s variant name.

The scale of the program was enormous. Over the life of the program, from January 2, 2000 to August 30, 2025, the DMV issued 1,213,479 decals. The California Air Resources Board says approximately 500,000 clean vehicles had active decals expiring September 30, 2025, and that more than 1.2 million people received a decal over the program’s life. The DMV’s director put it the same way in the September 2025 announcement: the department had issued over one million decals since the program was approved. The last four years tell the growth story on their own:

Two things stand out in that table. First, 2024 was the biggest year in the program’s history — 194,894 decals, nearly a fifth of the lifetime total in a single year, driven almost entirely by battery-electric cars. Second, the mix narrowed over time. Battery-electric vehicles went from about 83% of issuances in 2022 to about 89% in 2025, while plug-in hybrids, fuel-cell cars, and natural-gas vehicles shrank to a small share. The program began as a broad clean-air incentive covering several fuel types and ended as, overwhelmingly, an electric-car program — which is why its ending landed hardest on electric-car owners, and why the most-asked question after the sunset is whether a Tesla can still use the carpool lane (it cannot, solo — see FAQ 9).

For the record, the physical rules that governed the decals: they were issued in sets of four — two larger decals on the rear quarter panels, State Seal up, and two smaller decals on the front bumpers — and a Clean Air Vehicle certificate was issued with each set, to be kept with the vehicle’s current registration card and shown to a peace officer on demand. Eligibility was set by the California Air Resources Board, which maintained the official list of eligible vehicles; the DMV processed applications and issued the decals. A vehicle had to meet both the federal inherently low emission vehicle standard and California’s super ultra low emission vehicle standard, and the qualifying fuels were electric, liquefied petroleum gas, compressed natural gas, and hydrogen. Neighbourhood electric vehicles — small four-wheeled vehicles certified to a special safety standard that only allows their use on roads with posted speed limits of 35 miles per hour or less — were never eligible for a decal, because they cannot legally use a freeway carpool lane at all.

6. Program History: Four Generations of Stickers, 1999–2025

The decal program that ended in 2025 was not one program but four, layered over 26 years. Each generation had its own colours, its own caps, and its own idea of which cars deserved solo carpool access. Understanding the layers explains why the colours changed every year, why some old decals expired years before the sunset, and why the program’s ending felt sudden to drivers who had only ever known the latest version.

The first generation began in 1999. Assembly Bill 71 created the original decal program to let qualifying clean cars use carpool lanes with a single occupant, as a non-monetary incentive to buy cleaner vehicles. The original law was written with an expiration date of January 1, 2008, and the Legislature extended it three times — in 2006 to January 1, 2011, in 2010 to January 1, 2015, and a third time to January 1, 2017 — before a final extension (Assembly Bill 266) carried it to January 1, 2019. The white decals of this generation were available to an unlimited number of qualifying zero-emission vehicles — 100% battery-electric or hydrogen fuel-cell cars, plus certain alternative-fuelled vehicles such as advanced compressed natural gas cars certified to California’s most stringent emission standards at the time. White decals are no longer valid as of January 1, 2019.

The second and third generations ran alongside the first, for different cars. The original green decals were for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles meeting California’s enhanced advanced technology partial zero emission vehicle standard — and not every plug-in hybrid qualified. They were originally available to the first 40,000 applicants; a 2014 budget trailer bill (Senate Bill 853) raised the limit by 15,000 to 55,000 effective July 1, 2014; Assembly Bill 2013 added another 15,000 for a maximum of 70,000 effective January 1, 2015; and Senate Bill 838 removed the statutory limit entirely, effective September 13, 2016. The green decals’ expiration was extended to January 1, 2019 by Assembly Bill 266, and they are no longer valid. The original yellow decals were something else again: they went to early models of qualifying hybrid vehicles — not plug-in hybrids, but ordinary hybrids — and they are different from the yellow decals issued in 2022. The Legislature limited them to the first 85,000 qualified applicants, and the program was deliberately time-limited to push hybrid technology forward. The law was first enacted in 2004 (Assembly Bill 2628) with an expiration of January 1, 2008, extended in 2006 (Assembly Bill 2600) to January 1, 2011, and the decals are no longer valid. Vehicles that held a yellow hybrid decal cannot qualify for any other type of Clean Air Vehicle decal.

The fourth generation — the one most drivers remember — began January 1, 2019. Assembly Bill 544, signed into law in October 2017, put in place a new program that continued single-occupant carpool access for qualifying vehicles, with the colour changing every year: purple for 2019, orange for 2020, blue for 2021, yellow for 2022, green for 2023, burgundy for 2024, and teal for 2025. This is the program whose colours fill the table in section 5, and it is the program that ended on September 30, 2025.

A smaller, parallel program ran from 2020 to 2024. Senate Bill 957, signed in September 2018, authorized an income-based decal program beginning January 1, 2020, making decals available to new owners of qualifying used vehicles if specific requirements were met, including an income test. That program ended on January 1, 2024, and its decals are invalid too.

Five agencies shared the work, and each one’s role is worth naming, because it tells you where to go for what now that the program is closed. The California Air Resources Board determined which vehicles qualified, based on emissions requirements set by the Legislature, and maintained the official list of eligible vehicles. The DMV processed applications and issued the decals. Caltrans authorized the use of carpool lanes. The California Highway Patrol oversaw enforcement. The toll authorities oversaw the reduced rates for qualified clean air vehicles. Today the split is: the DMV for questions about applications, receipt, and expiration of decals; the Air Resources Board for questions about vehicle eligibility; the Highway Patrol and the toll authorities for enforcement; and Caltrans for carpool-lane authorization. The Board’s contact for the program is (800) 242-4450.

The pattern across all four generations is the same, and it is the reason the program’s history matters to a driver reading this in 2026. Every generation was written with an expiration date, and every generation was extended — until the one time the extension needed federal approval and the federal approval did not come. The state extended the program in 2006, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 without difficulty, because those were state decisions. The 2025 ending was different: it was a federal decision, made by inaction, and no state law could override it.

7. Will Decals Come Back? The Revival Watch (H.R. 4948 and S. 2922)

Short answer: only if Congress passes a law, and Congress has not passed one. This section tracks the two bills that would restore the program, so you can check their status yourself instead of taking a headline’s word for it.

H.R. 4948, the HOV Lane Exemption Reauthorization Act, was introduced in the House of Representatives on August 12, 2025, by Representative Mark DeSaulnier of California. It would change the federal deadline in Section 166 of Title 23 from September 30, 2025 to September 30, 2031 — a six-year extension of the authority that expired. On August 13, 2025, the bill was referred to the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. That is where it remains: its status on Congress.gov is “Introduced,” it has not passed the House, it has not passed the Senate, and it has not become law. The bill’s text is public on Congress.gov, and the link is in the sources below.

S. 2922, the Senate companion, was introduced on September 19, 2025, by Senator Alex Padilla of California. It was read twice and referred the same day to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Its status on Congress.gov is also “Introduced,” and it has gone no further. The Senate bill is the companion to the House bill, and like the House bill it is not law.

Even if either bill passed, the decals would not simply switch back on. The federal bill would restore the authority; California would then have to restart its own program — re-establish eligibility, re-issue decals, and set a new colour and expiry scheme. The state’s decal statutes are inoperative, not merely paused, and the DMV’s application machinery has been closed for over a year. A revival would be a rebuild, not a resumption, and the rules of a rebuilt program would not necessarily match the rules of the program that ended. Anyone who tells you a decal will be available on a particular date is guessing: there is no date, because there is no law.

What to watch, in order: first, either bill moving out of committee — a committee vote, not a press release, is the signal that matters; second, a floor vote in either chamber; third, the President’s signature; fourth, California’s own action to restart the program. Until the first of those happens, the correct advice is the blunt one: do not buy an electric car for carpool-lane access, and do not plan a commute around solo carpool access that no longer exists. The California Air Resources Board’s position, published on its program page, is the last word for now: “Federal legislation is required to authorize an extension. To date no such action has been taken by Congress.” This page will need a same-day update if Congress acts — and the decal rules will still not be what they were, because the program would have to be rebuilt.

8. What EV Owners Still Pay — and What They Keep

The decal is gone, but the electric car is still a car, and California still registers it like one. Nothing about the sunset changed what an electric car pays at the DMV, and nothing changed about the exemptions that made electric cars cheaper to own in other ways. This section is deliberately short, because the detail lives on our EV registration fee guide — this page links to it rather than duplicating its tables.

Registration continues as normal. An electric car still pays the same registration, California Highway Patrol, Transportation Improvement Fee, and Vehicle License Fee lines as every other car, based on the car’s value. On top of those, a model year 2020 or newer zero-emission vehicle pays the Road Improvement Fee of $121 at renewal — the fee that replaces the gas tax electric cars do not pay. It is not charged on the very first registration of a new electric car bought from a dealer; it starts at the first renewal. Plug-in hybrids pay no Road Improvement Fee at all, and hydrogen fuel-cell cars pay the full amount. Our EV registration fee guide shows the five lines with worked examples for real cars, and our 2027 fees guide covers the announced increases. The general fee hub is California DMV Fees.

Electric cars still never need a smog check, and never pay a smog fee. The DMV’s Smog Inspections page lists an electric vehicle among the vehicles that do not need an inspection, and that exemption survived the decal sunset untouched — it has nothing to do with the decal program. Plug-in hybrids are different: they have a gasoline engine, so they follow gas-car smog rules. If you own a plug-in hybrid, the decal’s ending changed your carpool access but not your smog obligations, and the two should not be confused.

The decal was never part of registration. It was a separate application, on a separate form, with a separate certificate, and it was never printed on the registration card. Losing the decal program did not change your registration, your title, or your renewal — it changed only the carpool lane and the tolls. If your renewal notice looks the same as last year, that is correct: the decal lines were never on it. Our registration renewal guide covers the renewal process in full.

9. How to Use the Carpool Lane Now: The Three Legal Options

There are exactly three ways to drive in a California carpool lane today, and the decal is none of them. Each one is simple; the only work is choosing which fits your trip.

Option one: carpool. Put the required number of people in the car and drive in. The number is the posted occupancy on the sign — usually two or more people, sometimes three or more depending on the corridor — and it counts every person in the vehicle, including children, who meets the lane’s rules. If you regularly drive the same route at the same time, a carpool partner is the only free way back into the lane: employer ride-matching programs and carpool apps exist for exactly this, and this page does not recommend a specific one. A passenger is the only thing that has ever reliably replaced a decal, and it is the only replacement that still works.

Option two: pay the toll. On express lanes — the tolled carpool lanes on freeways such as I-10, I-110, I-15, I-580, I-680, and SR 237 — a solo driver may use the lane by paying the posted toll. No decal is needed, no passenger is needed, and no application is needed: the lane is pay-to-drive. The toll is set by the posted rate for your entry and exit, and a FasTrak tag pays it automatically. This is the option most former decal holders have actually taken, because it needs no planning and no passenger — it costs money, and the price is the price on the sign.

Option three: use the general-purpose lanes. It is not a trick answer. The carpool lane is a convenience, not a right, and the general-purpose lanes are where every driver without a passenger belongs. If the toll is more than the time saved, or the carpool lane is barely moving faster than the regular lanes, the honest choice is to stay out of it. The drivers who get cited after the sunset are, overwhelmingly, drivers who kept using the lane out of habit — the same commute, the same entrance, the same sticker on the bumper — after the rule changed underneath them. Break the habit deliberately: for the first month, plan your route as if the carpool lane does not exist for you, and add it back only when you have a passenger or you have decided the toll is worth it.

Three housekeeping items, for the first week after you read this page. Check your FasTrak account — confirm the tag type, confirm the Flex switch position, and confirm the payment method, because a tag set to the wrong occupancy will charge you the wrong toll in either direction. Decide about the sticker — you do not have to remove it, but if you sell the car, say plainly to the buyer that it gives no carpool access. Budget the tolls — if your commute used a tolled express lane solo under the decal, your monthly toll bill is now the full posted rate, and it is worth checking the number before the statement arrives rather than after.

10. The Federal Tax Credit Ended Too — One Paragraph of Context

The decal sunset was not the only clean-car benefit to end on September 30, 2025, and buyers confuse the two, so here is the distinction in one paragraph. The federal clean vehicle tax credits — the new-vehicle credit, the used-vehicle credit, and the commercial clean-vehicle credit — are not available for vehicles acquired after September 30, 2025, under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025. A binding written contract and payment on or before September 30, 2025 preserves eligibility even if the car was placed in service later. The credits were originally scheduled to run through 2032; the 2025 law accelerated the cutoff by seven years. The coincidence of dates is real — September 30, 2025 ended both the decal program and the tax credits — but the two are different laws, run by different agencies, and the ending of one did not cause the ending of the other. The Internal Revenue Service’s clean-vehicle credits page is linked in the sources below; this page does not give tax advice, and a buyer deciding on a contract date should check the IRS page and, if needed, a tax professional.

11. Wrong Figures You May Still See Online

The decal program ended a year ago, and the internet has not caught up. Ranking pages still describe a live program, still give application instructions, and still print dates and figures that were wrong on the day they were published. This table names the errors we found while researching this page, so you can recognise them when you meet them. We do not link to the pages that print them — there is no reason to send you to a wrong answer — but we name the claim, so you can spot it.

The pattern in that table is the reason this page prints its sources next to every date and shows its reasoning in full. A page that hides its sources can print any date it likes, and several of them do. Check the date against the DMV’s Clean Air Vehicle Decals page — the link is in the sources section below — and if a page’s dates disagree with the DMV’s, the DMV’s are right. That test takes thirty seconds, and it settles every row of the table above.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• California DMV, “Clean Air Vehicle Decals” — dmv.ca.gov — Clean Air Vehicle Decals (read live November 7, 2026: program ended at midnight September 30, 2025 under 23 U.S.C. §166; California law changed in hopes of a federal extension to January 2027 that never came; applications stopped August 29, 2025 at 5:00 p.m.; all decals invalid from October 1, 2025; posted occupancy or citation and fine; full toll rates from October 1, 2025; no refunds; decal need not be removed but is not valid for HOV travel; the Air Resources Board set eligibility, the DMV issued decals, Caltrans authorized carpool-lane use, the Highway Patrol enforced it, and the toll authorities ran the discounts)
• California DMV, news release, “Federal government ends Clean Air Vehicle (CAV) Decal Program” (September 9, 2025) — dmv.ca.gov — CAV Decal Program ends (“We have issued over one million decals since this program was approved” — DMV Director Steve Gordon)
• California DMV, Vehicle Industry Registration Procedures Manual §25.005, “Sunset of the Clean Air Vehicles Decal (CAVD) Program (VC §§5205.5 and 21655.9)” — dmv.ca.gov — Manual §25.005 (program ends at midnight September 30, 2025; all decals expire beginning October 1, 2025)
• California Air Resources Board, “The End of California’s Clean Air Vehicle Decal Program” — ww2.arb.ca.gov — End of the decal program (read live November 7, 2026: August 29, 2025 last day to order; all decals invalid October 1, 2025; no grace period; no removal required; approximately 500,000 active decals expiring September 30, 2025; 1,213,479 decals issued January 2, 2000 to August 30, 2025; annual and by-vehicle-type breakdowns 2022–2025; program established 1999; the Board determines eligibility and the DMV issues decals)
• California Air Resources Board, “Carpool Stickers — Expired Program” — ww2.arb.ca.gov — Carpool stickers, expired program (read live November 7, 2026: program ended September 30, 2025 under 23 U.S.C. §166; “Federal legislation is required to authorize an extension. To date no such action has been taken by Congress”; AB 544 signed October 2017, program from January 1, 2019, colours purple 2019, orange 2020, blue 2021, yellow 2022, green 2023, burgundy 2024, teal 2025; SB 957 income-based program January 1, 2020 to January 1, 2024; white decals and AB 71 (1999) history; original green decals 40,000 to 55,000 to 70,000 to no cap; original yellow hybrid decals limited to 85,000; neighbourhood electric vehicles never eligible)
• California Air Resources Board, “2024 Assembly Bill 2678 (Wallis) — Vehicles: high-occupancy vehicle lanes (chaptered)” — ww2.arb.ca.gov — AB 2678 (state extension to January 1, 2027, contingent on federal authority)
• California Vehicle Code §5205.5 and §21655.9 — leginfo — VC §5205.5 and leginfo — VC §21655.9 (decal authority and carpool-lane access; sections became inoperative September 30, 2025)
• Assembly Bill 2678 (2023–2024) — leginfo — AB 2678
• H.R. 4948, HOV Lane Exemption Reauthorization Act (119th Congress) — congress.gov — H.R. 4948 (introduced August 12, 2025; referred to the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit August 13, 2025; status Introduced, checked November 7, 2026) and S. 2922 — congress.gov — S. 2922 (introduced September 19, 2025; read twice and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works; status Introduced, checked November 7, 2026)
• FasTrak, “Discounts” — fastrak.org — Discounts (read live November 7, 2026: effective October 1, 2025, clean air vehicles no longer receive discounts on certain California toll facilities; facility-by-facility expiry table — most facilities September 30, 2025, 91 Express Lanes December 31, 2025)
• Metropolitan Transportation Commission, “Clean Air Vehicle Decals Take Last Breath” (September 22, 2025) — mtc.ca.gov — Decals take last breath (FasTrak tag conversion and Caltrans signage)
• Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, “Express Lanes Discount for Clean Air Vehicles Ends September 30” (September 4, 2025) — vta.org — Express lanes discount ends (solo clean air vehicles pay the full toll from October 1, 2025; two riders 50% discount; three or more riders toll-free)
• San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, “Changes Coming to Clean Air Vehicle Program” (September 22, 2025) — gosbcta.com — Changes coming to the CAV program (three or more passengers toll-free on the SB Express Lanes on I-10 at all times; FasTrak Flex required)
• California Department of Transportation, “Express Lanes” — dot.ca.gov — Express lanes (toll-road list and local toll-authority contacts, per the DMV’s referral)
• Internal Revenue Service, “Credits for new clean vehicles purchased in 2023 or after” — irs.gov — Clean vehicle credits (credits not available for vehicles acquired after September 30, 2025, under Public Law 119-21; binding contract and payment by that date preserves eligibility)
• Our own guides used for boundaries and corroboration: EV Registration Fee in California (the five-line bill, the Road Improvement Fee, and the decal-end summary this page expands into a full guide); California DMV Fees (the general fee hub); California Vehicle Registration Renewal (the renewal process); California DMV Fees 2027 (announced fee increases); Tesla EV DMV Driving Test (electric-car owners’ most-asked driving-test questions); California License Plates (plates and decals as physical vehicle items)
• Competitor and secondary pages used for the search-result and error-spotting work only, never as the source of a load-bearing figure: legalclarity.org (the strongest sunset-correct cluster, including its H.R. 4948 coverage); xtreet.com and thebulldog.law (sunset-correct); bestpooladviser.com (published November 6, 2026 and still telling 2020 buyers to apply); jaystags.com (live application instructions with no sunset mention); carinterior.alibaba.com (wrong end date, old fee figure, false FasTrak claim); diffsense.com (programme “into early 2026” claim). Their claims are named on this page only as errors, with the DMV and CARB sources printed as the facts.

Method note. The DMV’s Clean Air Vehicle Decals page was read live on dmv.ca.gov on November 7, 2026, and every sunset date on this page was checked against it at build time; the California Air Resources Board’s end-of-program page and its expired-program About page were read live the same day, and the colour table, the issuance counts, and the program history on this page come from them; H.R. 4948 and S. 2922 were checked on congress.gov the same day and both stand at “Introduced”; the FasTrak discounts page was read live the same day and its facility table is the source for the tolls section; the DMV’s old decal page was checked by curl the same day and returns a live 404 with no redirect, while the current DMV decal page returns 200. The decal application fee’s dollar amount is deliberately not printed anywhere on this page, because the official sources disagree about it and no applications are accepted; no carpool-lane fine figure is printed either, because no DMV, CARB, Highway Patrol, or court source in this research states one — this page says only “citation and fine,” the DMV’s own words. The grace-period question is stated as a conflict, with no end date picked, because the sources do not agree on one. Targeted searches in this research returned no retrievable Reddit or Quora threads on the decal sunset, so no forum question is quoted and the FAQ questions are drawn from the DMV’s and the Air Resources Board’s own published FAQs and from competitor FAQ headings, as labelled in the research brief; no Google People Also Ask box was available through the search tool used. No search volume is claimed anywhere on this page. This site is an independent guide and is not affiliated with the California DMV or dmv.ca.gov.

Last verified against dmv.ca.gov: November 7, 2026. Rules, forms, and fees change — confirm current rules on dmv.ca.gov before you apply. The DMV’s Clean Air Vehicle Decals page was read live at build time on November 7, 2026, and the program-end date (September 30, 2025), the application cutoff (August 29, 2025, 5:00 p.m.), the October 1, 2025 invalidity of all decals, the posted-occupancy rule, the full-toll rule, the no-refund answer, and the no-removal-required answer were checked against it; the California Air Resources Board’s end-of-program page and expired-program About page were read live the same day and confirm the colour table, the 1,213,479 lifetime decals, the approximately 500,000 active decals, and the program history; H.R. 4948 and S. 2922 were checked on congress.gov the same day and both stand at “Introduced”; the FasTrak discounts page was read live the same day and its facility table is the source for the tolls section. The DMV’s old decal page was checked by curl the same day and returns a live 404 with no redirect. The decal application fee’s dollar amount is deliberately not printed anywhere on this page, per this site’s standing gate, and no carpool-lane fine figure is printed. No search volume is claimed anywhere on it. This site is an independent guide and is not affiliated with the California DMV or dmv.ca.gov.