Our brains like to compress large portions of history into small, bite-sized descriptions that allow us to understand a time in the past without fully immersing ourselves in it. The Gilded Age. Thje Roaring ’20s. The Great Depression. The Global Financial Crisis. It’s always a vast oversimplification, but it works in a pinch. What will we say about the 2020s? If they’re roaring, they’re roaring like a lion and not like a hot jazz and bathtub gin-fueled speakeasy rager.
While I’ve been happy to call it the Decade of the Hybrid™ in The Morning Dump, that’s also a little glib. Right? This morning, I’m becoming worried that the shorthand for the 2020s will be the collapse of the EV dream, setting us up for a Return of the Jedi-style comeback in the 2030s. Instead of Ewoks we’ll have EREVs. Don’t think too much about it. Just trust me.
Looking at the news today, I think the automotive industry is just caught in a bigger story, which is the larger reconsideration of the efficiencies of global economies. First up, there’s finally a good estimate of what tariffs have cost automakers up to this point, and it’s a lot. If there’s one company that represents the failure and possibility of the ’20s thus far, it’s Honda. If there’s a sport that’s benefited from, and then suffered under the same, it’s F1.
Perhaps this is too Western-centric a view? If you’re looking at it from China’s automotive industry, the world might look like your oyster.
Tariffs Took More Than $34 Billion From Automakers So Far
Most of the tariffs levied against automakers didn’t fall under the same guidelines overturned by the Supreme Court, meaning that they are still being enforced. The one year anniversary of “Liberation Day” is coming up, and Automotive News went through all of the public financial reports to put together a first estimate of what it’s all cost. So far, the total is around $35.4 billion.
Remarkably, and unlike the Pandemic, not all of this is being passed onto the consumer. The Trump Administration’s policy of strong-arming private companies and institutions has some obvious drawbacks, but it does seem to have at least temporarily delayed a huge raising of prices. That being said, automakers have found ways to sneak price increases into the total price.
Perhaps it’s not the hardball that’s behind automakers outwardly trying to avoid announcing price hikes. Maybe it’s just the uncertainty. These tariffs were supposed to lead to a rush of new projects in the United States, although it’s been a little slow-going. From that Automotive News report, there’s an explanation as to why:
The Trump administration has framed tariffs as an incentive for automakers and suppliers to build vehicles and parts in the U.S.
Yet a year after Trump implemented new duties on vehicle and parts imports, automakers are still trying to decipher which tariffs might stick and which might be negotiated down or go away, said Dan Hearsch, global co-leader of the automotive and industrial practice at AlixPartners. Greater clarity will allow them to make more decisions on resourcing parts or changing where and how they build vehicles to avoid tariffs, he said.
“That’s still pretty hard to do because the administration has just not been very clear or consistent in application and what stays and what goes up and what goes down and what gets added,” Hearsch said.
Any increase in production here is also an offset against all the canceled or lowered factory output related to electric cars. It’s impossible to know what would have happened if CAFE limits and the Inflation Reduction Act had stuck around in some form, but my guess is that not everything would have been shut down.
The lack of clarity has a deeper cost than just tariffs. This $34 billion (and counting) is on top of the more than $70 billion automakers took in restructuring write-offs related to electrification. How you view the impact of electrification is, of course, its own sort of litmus test. It’s obviously not just governments pulling back, infrastructure being too slow, automakers starting with expensive cars, or consumers not wanting electric cars. It’s all of the above.
How did automakers find themselves in all these traps? I think nearly every major problem facing automakers was an inability to accept that the conventional corporate wisdom that unrestrained free trade would last forever and that a calmer global environment that formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union would go on forever.
What makes electrification the weird sort of exception is that it seems like a demand problem and not a supply problem. The Pandemic wasn’t a demand problem, it was a supply issue (the lack of semiconductors). Tariffs aren’t a demand problem, but they can be viewed as a supply challenge as automakers looked to squeeze a few extra cents out of cheaper local production around the world and stretched supply chains so far that they were at risk of governments deciding to change the rules. The populist snapback in response to a loss of jobs was, in a way, probably inevitable.
I think there’s a way to see the electrification as an upstream issue that fits into this larger narrative. For the mass adoption of electric cars to be feasible, automakers have to fundamentally alter the way they source and build cars. Not all the old ways work when it comes to building an EV supply chain. China spent years building up battery technology, charging infrastructure, and access to the rare earth minerals necessary for mass electrification. The West didn’t. It’s possible this all would have been a waste of time given where demand is, but after the success of Tesla it suddenly seemed important and most big OEMs and suppliers spent a lot of money trying to play catch up.
In the absence of a mature supply chain, the Inflation Reduction Act (and other investment programs from the Biden administration) basically had to promise automakers both money (to build plants) and offsets from consumers (to stoke demand). If the United States viewed China the way it viewed the EU, this would have been a fairly solvable problem. We could have just imported a bunch of cheap Chinese EVs and batteries. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen.
What’s happened instead is a nightmare for automakers . Even Toyota, the automaker that’s felt the smartest lately, ended up with the largest tariff hit at over $9 billion so far (there’s an argument that GM might actually be the best-positioned automaker for the second half of the decade, but I’ll leave that for another day).
I’ve tended to focus on German automakers, which have found themselves stuck between China and the United States. The struggle is real in Germany. Honda may end up being the best/worst face of the mass loss of bearings in the 2020s.
Honda’s EV Troubles Are Just The Latest Trauma
There’s been a lot of Honda news lately, including the fourth consecutive quarter of losses from its automotive division and its decision to cancel all its electric cars. Honda has taken a lot of flack for it, and it’s mostly been fair.
Over at InsideEVs, our buddy Mack Hogan takes on his displeasure with the company in post headlined “I’ve Watched Honda Fail At EVs For Five Years. After Today, I’m Out Of Patience,” in which he laments:
From the decade-long saga of teasing a new NSX, to a decade-long saga of saying “this time, we’re really serious about EVs,” the company has a terrible habit of building hype for nonexistent products. Three years ago they heavily implied to me that an electric S2000 and an electric NSX were both in the works. Now we can’t even get a replacement-level electric crossover. I am exhausted. I am out of hope. I feel lied to.
We did get the Honda Prelude, and that’s not nothing, but it’s a little too expensive and maybe a little too weird for the market. Bloomberg has a story about how Honda’s troubles are way beyond letting its EVs die, and have more to do with a lack of focus and consistent vision. Honda beat Toyota to market with hybrids in the United States by a few months, but today we get the Prelude and yet there’s no hybrid minivan, truck, or large crossover.
As often happens with big car companies, a pursuit of volume is probably to blame:
In 2012, then-CEO Takanobu Ito set an audacious goal of doubling annual sales to 6 million vehicles within five years. To do that, it built factories in China, Indonesia and Thailand, and accelerated production development to meet the target, which in turn placed pressure on its engineers and led to a series of recalls and botched vehicle launches.
While Hachigo, who succeeded Ito as CEO, shifted the focus away from chasing sales targets, Honda never recovered its mojo even as rivals such as Hyundai Motor Co. and BYD began taking away market share. The Tokyo-based company’s global sales volume peaked in 2019 at 5.32 million vehicles; it expects to sell 3.3 million in the fiscal year ending this month, down from last year’s 3.7 million.
That has left Honda in a weaker position to absorb other blows, ranging from President Donald Trump’s tariffs on cars imported into the US to a glut of vehicles and price deflation in China. Bernstein notes Honda’s Chinese sales have declined for 24 consecutive months.
Honda is a global brand, and pursuing more sales isn’t prima facie a terrible idea. However, the first step of building more cars needs to be building great cars that fit the needs of specific markets. That’s where Honda got lost, and then found itself stretched too thin to deal with the sudden onslaught of challenges all automakers are facing.
One of the biggest tells is that Honda separated its advanced R&D from vehicle development a few years ago. That’s giving into the fantasy that automakers could ever stop being automakers and start being technology companies. Now, it was just announced, Honda is reversing that decision.
F1 Cancels Middle East Races
There is no true cultural monoculture because of the Internet, right? I felt that way up until I found my daughter rushing into our living room way past her bedtime to watch the excellent performance of “Golden” by the cast of Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters during last night’s Oscars broadcast. In a way, the rise of Korean pop music is perhaps a reminder that industries that aren’t so reliant on global supply chains are still globalizing.
Formula 1 is probably the biggest beneficiary of a re-flattening of entertainment, with Drive to Survive finding audiences in places that mostly overlooked the series in recent years. It’s been a huge boon for the sport, which has expanded to 24 races.
Well, maybe 22 this year, as ESPN reports:
Formula 1 confirmed on Saturday that April’s races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have been canceled due to the war in Iran.
The conflict had already placed the rounds on April 12 and April 19 in major doubt, and they were both officially canceled ahead of Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix.
It leaves F1 with a five-week void between the third round of the new season in Japan on March 29 and the Miami Grand Prix on May 3, and looks likely to reduce the number of races this season from 24 to 22 — although it was not entirely ruled out that the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia events could be run at another stage this year.
“While this was a difficult decision to take, it is unfortunately the right one at this stage considering the current situation in the Middle East,” Stefano Domenicali, president and CEO of Formula 1, said in a statement.
The races in Abu Dhabi and Qatar are still set for later this year and one would have to assume that things will have cooled down by then. Right? Right…
BYD Shares Jump As Exports Rise
And while we’re talking about globalization, there are many ways to view China’s electrification strategy. If you’re willing to give the government too much credit, this was all a plan to help the environment. If you’re feeling cynical, China predicted a world that would be over reliant on Chinese green energy products it could then sell to other countries.
Some of the above is true, but what’s happening in Iran and shutting down F1 races is probably the bigger reason. If China needs oil, it’s going to have to get most of it from somewhere else. That somewhere else is the Middle East, Russia, South America, or the United States. All of those places, have, historically, been a problem.
Obviously, China cannot be reliant on the United States for anything existential. Venezuela has been a source of oil for China, but now the United States is helping call the shots there. China and Russia have an uneasy alliance. This week was a reminder that the Middle East isn’t always going to be a safe source, even though China has huge oil reserves and only gets a small portion of its oil via the Strait of Hormuz.
Electric cars have turned out to be a great hedge and, though the country is now dealing with overcapacity, BYD has found a global audience for its cars as Bloomberg reports:
The Chinese EV leader’s Hong Kong-listed stock jumped 7.8%, the most in 13 months. It was the top performer on the Hang Seng Tech Index, followed by peers Nio Inc. and Xiaomi Corp., which climbed around 5%.
Sentiment is getting a lift from local Chinese news reports that BYD’s Brazil plant received an export order for about 100,000 units from Argentina and Mexico, said Eugene Hsiao, a strategist at Macquarie Capital Limited.
“This is positive for the broader BYD thesis, which is that overseas sales will become the core growth and profit driver over time,” he said.
This is the potential upside of an energy crisis for China. If you’re in the United States there’s enough domestic oil production to make it through anything, and if you’re in Europe you’ll be able to pay the higher rate for crude. If you’re in South America, Africa, and parts of Asia that might be harder. China’s move towards EVs has both partially inoculated it against higher gas prices and given it a way to reach deeper into other markets.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I’m not sure why The Man From U.N.C.L.E. reboot wasn’t more of a hit? I enjoyed it and would like to have seen a sequel. “Compared To What” by Roberta Flack was an excellent pull for the soundtrack, and the lyrics really hold up.
The Big Question
You have $100 billion to spend on cars, but they all have to be the same car. This is potentially enough money to buy every Ford Escort ever built, for example. What do you buy?
Top photo: DepositPhotos.com
“Formula 1 confirmed on Saturday that April’s races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have been canceled due to the war in Iran.”
So much for “Drive to Survive”. And here I thought F1 was finally going to get interesting.
Why did “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” reboot fail?
While it’s not the only factor, there’s a lot to be said for having a good name. Which is part of why the original wasn’t more successful in the first place. This is not a good name.
It reminds me of the TV series “Dirty Sexy Money”. Who in their right HR-loving mind wants to be caught talking about that in the break room at work the day after the episode airs?
Yeah, you can grab attention with a name, but that can’t be the only value attached.
Both my wife and I have noticed that office talk about TV shows or movies has pretty much dried up. With a switch from broadcast / cable to streaming a lot of people haven’t watch the show yet so talking about it the day after doesn’t work as a good portion don’t want to here spoilers. Some people might not even have access to the show as most of us rotate through streaming services instead of keeping them all active at one. Sign up for 2 months, watch what you want, drop the subscription and move on to the next one.
So while streaming has been freeing that you can watch things whenever you want – it has also killed off the social nature of TV.
Media consumption is still a topic where I am, but the switch to streaming delivery has definitely dissected our conversations into much smaller groups, and certainly has added the caution regarding spoilers into the mix.
The common ground we find now is much narrower and much more rare than ever before.
TBQ: I’d buy every Porsche 959 ever built – all 337 of them (according to the Google). With the leftover money I would buy large amounts of forest (or desert) land, build a 10+ mile dirt track, and take them all rallying, 337 days out of the year.
That would keep me busy for a few years, me thinks…
2010 Ford Rangers, other years are acceptable. Assuming a Ranger could be built for about $10k with a bulk discount that’s 10 million rangers.
They will be unstoppable!
TVR, all of them. Hire some clever kids to update the design and chassis of the Cerbera to CF. Update the suspension and braking. Keep the body as is but on CF. Hire more clever types to design a modern 2.5 liter turbo canted inline 6 hybrid with about 500 Hp. Add a 6 spd manual and optionally a 8 spd auto (zf). Basic analog driver and passenger UI, good traction and abs control, hvac that works. Non-Lucas electrics. Add a shooting brake to the lineup. Set up a factory and in the tradition of all great British shed bodgers, build the things until the money runs out.
On all of the other subjects, I agree. Stellantis and Ford need mention for their sins.
The Man from UNCLE was great!
“It’s obviously not just governments pulling back, infrastructure being too slow, automakers starting with expensive cars, or consumers not wanting electric cars. It’s all of the t. It’s obviously not just governments pulling back, infrastructure being too slow, automakers starting with expensive cars, or consumers not wanting electric cars. It’s all of the above.”
We have a supply problem with EVs in the U.S. How many of the cancelled ones are both compelling to the customer and competitive in the market? I’ll wait.
The Chevy Bolt… Oh wait.
There’s a reason automakers started with expensive cars, those were the only ones with enough of a business case to where it might make money eventually, if they sold enough of them. Had COVID not hit in 2020 and threw the world economy for a loop, we’d likely be looking at a very different outcome.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was a great movie and we’ve been robbed by not getting a sequel before Hammer got exposed. I enjoyed Cavell as something other then the strong silent type.
Hey Matt I love your take on the EV situation. Clearly many fans of the EV were clouded by their beliefs that the EV was the one and only future car. However despite billions spent to support them and dictator like laws to push them as the only car the Free market showed they would not be forced into something they didn’t want.
For $100 billion, you could buy Stellantis and have $80 billion left over – which would be vastly more than it would cost to actually fix all their problems, so you’d be in pretty good shape on that deal
redacted
Sorry if this may seem too political in nature.
But almost every aspect of our day to day lives are partially controlled by the actions of government.
Good or bad.
As to the tariffs, Trump has clearly shown signs of loss of mental stability, and cognition, as well as a clear don’t give a fuck attitude as to how his behavior affects billions people world wide.
He may have a basic understanding of how economies work, but does not give a fuck if his behavior hurts others, let alone common working folks in the US.
As noted in the article we are still paying the absurd cost of auto tariffs.
Anyone who believes that this cost is not being passed on to the buyers is maybe a bit deluded. The constant inflation of new car prices is a preferred way to pass the tariff cost onto the consumer by the auto cos. Just because it’s not listed on the MSRP sticker, does not mean it’s not happening.
The quick example would be his shit about how the surge in gas prices will not be a big deal to US consumers. So many here already are stretched tight, and for the most part the prices that soared during his pandemic bullshit have not ever returned to normal. We are still paying out the ass for it too. He basically said “get over it peons” when energy costs are addressed.
Unless your budget is made up of total fuck it funds, or drive an EV, you are paying attention to the cost of gas.
Inflation is still running rampant, and the true cost changes are not accurately reflected in most measures of inflation. Besides according to the Turd, there is no inflation happening under his dictatorship.
In all honesty his little shit show in the middle east shows how limited his actual perception of how things work truly is.
At a cost of 1 to 2 billion per day, ignoring the human cost here.
The fact that the rest of our “former” allies have no interest in joining the US in this absurd war, or escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz speaks to their lack of interest in participating in this idiot’s firestorm.
Despite being under constant pressure and threats from the fool…
As noted, there seems to be little change in how the US builds autos.
They know how this game works.
The auto companies know that his bullshit policies will be largely reversed when we get back to an actual functioning government.
And when some of the fossils on the Supreme Court croak off there will a ton of possible reversal of so much of the bullshit that’s gone on since 2017. Those who keep appealing bullshit court rulings will eventually prevail.
Anyone who thinks the Orange Turd is bringing freedom to Iran, Venezuela, or anywhere else is living in a fantasy.
But we had 75 million fools vote for this bullshit for the third time, which just goes to show how stupid our country is…BTW was not a Biden supporter at all.
In summary, we all pay the costs of incompetent leadership, despite how you may vote. It will be interesting to see how history judges the Turd, and his time in office.
It’s just sad that our congress does not seem to actually care about fixing this mess.
They have many ways to bring a positive outcome to all this, but have no actual backbone to do so.
For 250 years we mostly had a country where the actual separation of powers was a thing that gave us some stability, and reason. It pretty much worked as the founders intended it to.
As of today the grift is alive and well.
But we made America great agin in record time in 2025.
2028 can’t come fast enough to suit me though.
As always YMMV.
BTW, where are our 2K checks we were promised from all this winning?
And all the other bullshit that was promised by the lying despot?
Anybody who still buys into the scam is a god damned fool, and deserves what they get…
$2k checks are a terrible idea. In addition to increasing the deficit even more, it will fuel inflation just as the covid checks did. I am sure plenty of people who were furloughed or laid off relied on those, but I have never seen more cars with drive off tags on the roads, than I did during covid.
Agree 100%.
When I reference them it is sarcasm, but an easy example of the con job.
Can I use the $100 billion to buy the Jeep company? Somebody needs to save them from Stellantis, and I can probably manage them better. I’ll hire DT back as an engineer.
I would use $100 billion to buy every single VW Beetle across the entire world. I would then spend the remaining money to find places to store all of these Beetles, until such time as I am able to export them all to Jasonia. I want to flood the market there with Beetles, and drive Jasonia’s domestic auto (re-)manufacturing industry into the toilet.
Do they all have to be the same model year? If not I would buy all the firebirds and then with the rest of the money buy a giant chunk of land and build a track to have firebird races.
It’s a long game of chess the Chinese seem to be winning because the west have let greedy toddlers run companies and get into decisions making positions in government for decades or longer. The death of the company man didn’t help the situation. Just make stock go up or say you fix this or that and move on with a Golden parachute.
The Germans won’t survive this. They will be just like the other western tech brands just a brands designed engineered and built by Chinese. Maybe with an engineering center somewhere in their former home country.
The Chinese pick their time for market entry extremely well and do it very slowly to experiment. The Germans are too exposed everywhere and their supply chains spread.
Also China tips the scale when it comes to their domestic market(s) . But that’s just part of the long game for them
Spending $100B to buy all the same car might actually be dumber than Trump’s tariffs, but what the hell I’ll play – I’d buy every Ferrari made before 1970. If it literally has to be a single model, then every Ferrari 250GTO. All 36 of them would probably only take a couple billion though. Might be fun blowing the other $98B setting up a car company to make RWD, stickshift stationwagons with no more screen than necessary to fit the required backup camera. With a lovely N/A inline six. I have just the car to use as a basic blueprint for such perfection. Maybe BMW would sell me the tooling for a couple billion to jumpstart things.
As for electrification and the deifying of the Chinese – it was asinine to think that in *Democracies* 100% electrification was going to happen in 10 years or so. Just completely and utterly idiotic from both the side of the politicians and the producers dumping billions into trying to make it happen in the face of some limited amount of consumer true believer fanaticism, but a hell of a lot of skepticism, right when the whole Western World is having an affordability crisis such that many can’t even DREAM of buying new cars, never mind quite expensive ones. We’d have been smarter to spend the money on better public transportation, but heaven forbid that happen. Tesla was unique and cool until it wasn’t anymore. The big winner here is obviously Toyota, who went all-in on the tech that actually makes sense today, and only dabbled in pure EVs.
China is not, and I will repeat that again, IS NOT, a democracy. It is a dictatorial command economy where both suppliers and consumers do EXACTLY what they are told or else. Which obviously has major pluses and minuses. And the very last thing the West needs is an even WORSE balance of trade with the Chinese by allowing them to run rampant over car markets. That is one area where I am absolutely in favor of tariffs and duties to level the playing field.
Absolutely right the more you look you see the greedy toddlers have made terrible decisions then they listen to allegedly not greedy toddlers that have zero understanding of a free market. They pushed too hard and learned what happened then whine about it. It’s a never ending cycle.
Chinese were told they had to at all levels and followed because they had to.
Wouldn’t want to end up the client of one of those Chinese mobile execution vans. And that they are a thing says all one needs to know about China. And I am not even particularly against capital punishment for the right reasons.
We should remember that the Turd in Chief has lamented the fact that he is not allowed to deal with those who oppose him in the same way.
JFC…
Indeed – thankfully we do actually have SOME constraints on the idiot, thanks to the court system, slow though it may be.
The plan was electrification happening over 50 years or so – not 10.
The EU and several states had deadlines for the death of ICE sales by 2030-2035. Was NEVER going to happen, but they sure tried.
China will probably do it – but well, they are China. Do what the Party says or else.
The EU did not and does not have a deadline for the death of ICE sales. They have a fleet fuel economy standard measured in g/km CO2. Those limits started in 1999 with targets dropping every 5 years through 2035.
The EU fleet average dropped to 94 g/km in 2025 and goes to 49 g/km in 2030 and then 10 g/km in 2035 (2035 was 0 g/km). However, like the USA’s CAFE, the penalty for missing the average is just a fine and you can keep selling what you want.
Even if no ICE vehicles were sold starting in 2035 it would take another 20 years to turn over the fleet. That is a 55 year transition.
They absolutely made noises, if not actually passed laws about banning the sale of ICE cars by 2035 – which is what I was talking about. It doesn’t matter whether that ban was explicit, or implicit by making unmeetable emissions regs for ICE. They have backed off of all of it. CA and a couple other following states DID pass laws to that effect, since rescinded. Where did I mention anything other than the sale of new cars? No shit it will take a long time for the WHOLE fleet to turn over.
See this article from 2022:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20221019STO44572/eu-ban-on-sale-of-new-petrol-and-diesel-cars-from-2035-explained
Yet the above was not written into the regulation. Politicians like to talk but what matters is what the law actually says.
California and other states did not pass a ban on ICE cars in 2035. Hybrids counted as ZEVs.
That they still allowed PHEVs is really neither here nor there. The rule was adopted to ban ICE-only cars. And was walked back. Same as in the EU. You seem to like revisionist history in this for some reason.
This was serious enough that the auto industry flushed 10s of billions down the toilet to be ready for bans that are no longer happening. Whether the ban was explicit or implicit matters not in the slightest.
I think we will have to agree to disagree on whether or not a PHEV is an ICE car.
Also on whether or not something is banned if it can still be sold but with a fine or sin tax. By your definition of ICE “bans” cigarettes are banned in most of the world even though they are still on store shelves.
CARB’s regulations were the closest to a ban. EPA and the EU basically just put a sin tax on CO2.
If you make the regs such that you can’t sell a pure ICE car that meets them, then that is ban in practice if not in name. But you do you.
Again – manufacturers can sell what they want – they just have to pay a CO2 tax.
A current Mercedes AMG E53 with 600 hp engine would pay a 2,280 euro fine in 2035. A Toyota C-HR would pay 1,805.
Pure ICE cars would still exist but they would have higher CO2 fines.
Are cigarettes banned in the USA today? You might not like the idea of a sin tax on gasoline cars but the tax logic is the same as cigarettes.
That was very much not the plan as recently as 2022. It may be the plan *today*. Again, they have rescinded what was supposed to happen.
Go do some Googling.
I don’t need to google – I have actually read the regulation. I also work for an automaker. I deal with our regulatory people and we talk about our credit strategy on a regular basis. I also know our company plan to meet those regulations into the next decade.
The “plan” didn’t change in the EU. The framework is the same as it has been from the beginning. Meet the fleet CO2 limit or pay fines. Same way CAFE works in the USA. My employer has leaned towards the pay the fine, pass it on, and go on with your day approach. (Followed by lobby for reduced requirements to lower those fines)
The recent change in the EU is a movement of the 2035 target from 0 g/km CO2 to 10 g/km. That is what gets reported in the news. What didn’t get reported is that the change also ADDED an actual EV percentage requirement that applies to fleet registrations (which make up 60% of new car sales in Europe). It percentage varies per country.
So in 2035 a German individual can still buy a ICE Porsche 911 if they can pay the CO2 tax but Sixt Rental Cars will be required to only buy and register EVs in Germany.
Then you should go back and rewrite all those articles that interpret it rather differently. <shrug>
Maybe you should realize that clickbait is the name of the game and “ICE BAN” gets clicks.
Also that politicians and lobbyist will give overdramatic interpretations – sometimes completely opposite interpretations on the same regulation.
I’ll also add that company’s public statements are sometimes at odds with what they are actually doing and planning. I’ve witnessed a former CEO lie to Congress without blinking.
Why not? Politicians lie to the CEOs even more, and they never blink.
Ah yes, the company that spent billions on hydrogen fuel technology and managed to have a recall for lug nuts.
I doubt they blew as much as Honda has on EVs, and Toyota has a lot more capacity to blow it. The lugnuts, whatever, poop happens. The explodey truck engines are a WAAAAY bigger problem than those could ever be, but I expect Toyota will stand behind them reasonably well.
A company I respect and admire while not caring about their actual products much at all. Just not my idea of a good time.
Ford Focus. I get a basic compact car, multiple iterations of a hot hatch, an EV, a 3-cylinder commuter, homologated variants from overseas and if I really want to push the boundaries of “same car”, a WRC car and a BTCC car.