We’re still parsing what all of this means, and I suspect we will be for a while (maybe even years—how exciting!) but that item leads today’s morning roundup. Also on tap: some news about CarMax and used car prices, and Mercedes-Benz is up and Tesla is down. Let’s dig in.
New EPA Rules Basically Set The Sun On Internal Combustion As An Electric Day Dawns
Clearly the Biden Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency didn’t come to play. The new (proposed) U.S. vehicle emissions regulations are here, and they demand dramatically more efficient internal combustion cars, light-duty trucks and heavy trucks in the coming years. But they also will command a much bigger jump in electric vehicle adoption than even Biden’s previous “50% by 2030” goal.
According to Reuters, we’re talking maybe 67%—that’s two out of three new cars—EV adoption by the early 2030s. This is, by far, the strictest emissions ruleset the U.S. has ever proposed and will eventually end internal combustion on the scale that we know it now.
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Some highlights from that story:
The proposal, if finalized, represents the most aggressive U.S. vehicle emissions reduction plan to date, requiring 13% annual average pollution cuts and a 56% reduction in projected fleet average emissions over 2026 requirements. The EPA is also proposing new stricter emissions standards for medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks through 2032.
The EPA projects the 2027-2032 model year rules would cut more than 9 billion tons of CO2 emissions through 2055 – equivalent to more than twice total U.S. CO2 emissions last year.
[…] Under the EPA proposal, automakers are forecast to produce 60% EVs by 2030 and 67% by 2032 to meet requirements – compared with just 5.8% of U.S. vehicles sold in 2022 that were EVs. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration plans to propose parallel economy standards in the coming weeks.
[…] The EPA estimates 50% of new vocational vehicles like buses and garbage trucks could be EVs by 2032, along with 35% of new short-haul freight tractors and 25% of new long-haul freight tractors. Medium-duty vehicle rules are projected to cut emissions by 44% over 2026.
Yeah, it’s not just cars; it’s everything. This is pretty huge, all of it. I say it cements an electric future because right now, that’s the leading vehicle technology that’s also responsible for zero tailpipe emissions. Hydrogen cars do the same thing, but do you drive a Toyota Mirai? I didn’t think so. Like, two people in California do and you know they’re itching to dump them when the lease ends. So here we are.
The plan also is key to U.S. commitments on reducing emissions by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by mid-decade, reaching 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035 and achieving net-zero emissions economywide by 2050.
To be sure, neither Biden nor his administration has called for a ban on sales of new combustion-engine vehicles by a certain date — actions that are underway in places such as California and the European Union.
For the U.S. auto industry, the EPA’s vehicle emission rules could be a major regulatory push — and challenge — to speed electrification plans.
“Challenge” is the right word. And as generally pro-EV as I am, I get it here. Historically, automakers kick and scream and call their lobbyists when they have to make cars cleaner, and then they get the job done and make things that enhance performance as well as efficiency.
But this is different. EVs are still in their relative adolescence. The battery manufacturing and mining industries are in their infancy. Same with our EV charging infrastructure. Costs remain super high. And your average car owner is still driving something like a 2014 Honda CR-V; they have no idea what’s coming next.
Environmental advocates will say the world can’t wait and that transportation emissions—our largest pollution source in the U.S.—have to be brought down before we cook ourselves into a Hell-on-earth situation. The scientific consensus says they aren’t wrong.
But that’s about to run up against the cold, hard logistics of transforming a century of gasoline vehicle infrastructure—in a country that came up alongside the car—into an electric one. It’s crazy to think that can be done in about a decade; it’s moon landing stuff.
And keep in mind, next year is an election year. If the Republicans take the White House, it’s hard to see these requirements surviving on the level they are, or at all.
The next few years in this business are about to get really, really interesting.
CarMax Posts Another Rough Quarter
Photo: Carmax
But for now, back to your regularly scheduled programming: economic weirdness and how it’s impacting new and used car sales. Poor CarMax, still hampered by the scarcity of used cars, posted some rough Q4 2022 results on Tuesday. Here’s Automotive News:
CarMax reported net income of $69 million in the quarter ended Feb. 28, down 57 percent year-over-year. The company’s net revenue in the quarter was $5.72 billion, down 26 percent from the year-earlier period. Its retail gross profit per used vehicle rose 3.7 percent to $2,277.
It retailed 169,884 used vehicles in the quarter, down 13 percent from the year-earlier period. Comparable store used-vehicle sales fell 14 percent. CarMax said it believed prolonged affordability challenges continued to impact its fourth-quarter vehicle sales, with headwinds remaining due to inflationary pressures, higher interest rates, tight lending standards and a continued drop-off in consumer confidence.
“Our deliberate steps to navigate the pressures facing the used-car industry are driving sequential improvements in our business, and we will continue to prioritize initiatives to increase efficiencies and create better experiences for our associates and customers across our diversified business model,” CarMax CEO Bill Nash said in a statement.
In Q1 of this year, Tesla delivered about 422,00 cars globally (it doesn’t break out that data geographically or by model) which beat investor expectations. So how does that net out in America? Maybe not great, reports Automotive News. For the first two months of this year, there are indications that U.S. Tesla growth is slowing—despite the many price cuts that have happened. From this story:
Tesla had 95,829 new U.S. registrations for the two months, a 35 percent increase over January-February 2022 — but just a 3.7 percent increase from November and December, when it had 92,414, Experian data shows. Tesla’s deepest price cuts occurred in mid-January.
At the start of 2022, Tesla reached a growth rate of 74 percent in the January-February period and had the nation’s top three EV models and four of the top 10. But over the next 12 months, growth cooled, competition increased and the Model S fell out of the top 10, Experian numbers show.
“The market forces surrounding Tesla have undeniably shifted in the past 12 months and most of them for the worse,” said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars.com. “Tesla’s longtime role as the only premium EV has shifted to one of many options, with additional EVs arriving in showrooms every month.”
This isn’t super surprising. We knew that demand for the Model 3 and Model Y was tapering off at the end of last year and the start of this one, leading to the original price cuts. And we know that the competition is heating up from basically every brand these days.
Now, Tesla can still beat every other automaker (except maybe BYD, which doesn’t mean anything to us) in EV manufacturing scale. And its U.S.-built cars qualify for varying degrees of tax incentives. But as I’ve written before, that Tesla lineup is getting old; the automaker needs some true model overhauls soon and not just more OTA updates. And no, I don’t mean the Cybertruck. Like, actual cars.
Mercedes Up, Though
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Speaking of the competition: Mercedes-Benz is seeing a bit of an EV boom right now. I can’t say I love the too-smooth looks of those EQ cars—they lack the brutal, capitalistic presence a big Benz ought to have—but they’re clearly catching on. Here’s Reuters on Mercedes’ Q1 results:
EVs were the main growth driver in the quarter, with sales almost doubling to 51,600 units. The top-end segment – which includes models such as AMG, Maybach and G-class – also demonstrated solid growth of 18%, reaching 91,800 for the period.
Britta Seeger, a Mercedes board member, said both segments posted strong results “despite ongoing supply chain disruptions, economic headwinds and geopolitical uncertainties”.
BMW did even better on EV sales in Q1, moving more than 64,000 of them globally. Again, Tesla still has the edge in a lot of ways—give credit where it’s due there. But it doesn’t own the whole market anymore.
Your Turn
Hoo boy, let’s talk about these new EPA regulations. What do you think of them? Are they even feasible? What would it take to pull them off and get to a projected 67% EV new car market in America by the early 2030s?
Editor-at-Large at The Autopian. Former EIC at Jalopnik, Editorial Director over The Drive. Currently freelancing and looking for a parking space in NYC. Follow my work @bypatrickgeorge on Twitter or at highbeam.substack.com.
Switching 2/3rds of new car sales from the same old dumb Camry/Escape/RAV4/Altima that most people buy to full electric is just fine by me. Automakers have been on the long dumb slow slide towards no manuals and all crossovers, SUVs, and pickups anyway. We might as well stop deluding ourselves that an EV is more boring than whatever Toyota Highlander people currently drive. Nothing here makes the odd old collector car illegal.
Greg
1 year ago
“poors will never drive again, take the bus” thats the future we are heading to at warp speed. And to see people support that as some “green” revolution.
But not buy, insure and you have to get a new charger in the house. Oh and you better have solar to offset those rising electric and delivery costs. Own a house in the first place on and on and on. You can only gloss over that stuff for so long before its a big problem. But theres an entire class of people who ignore how most people live.
Exactly. For example, if I could afford it, I’d actually consider buying an EV, but I rent, so how in the world could I charge it when I’m at home? There’s many more infrastructure concerns that need to be addressed before this whole thing becomes practical than are immediately coming to people’s minds. The whole thing is an inevitability, but it’s not going to be tomorrow, and quite frankly I’d be surprised if it’s fully effective by the time it’s projected to be
Just because it doesn’t work for you, doesn’t mean it won’t work. 67% of Americans live in single-family housing. A 240-volt charger is $400-500. Electricity prices have been increasing, but so has the price of gas. Solar has nothing to do with this argument.
Yes, they are more expensive during the initial purchase, but the total ownership cost is lower than an equivalent gas car even taking into account the costs you mentioned. That’s huge.
not for people who cant pay the upfront cost. And can you go over the costs of an engine repair vs a battery pack replacement? Who is buying old worn out evs? Not even Dave fucking Tracy was willing to do that.
Im not saying down the road it isnt the preferred solution. But there is so much work to be done to make it realistic. More power to the grid, more chargers, more electricians to instal this stuff and have you looked at the percentages of machanics licensed to work on an EV? We have a foundation to build before we mandate so strongly towards the actual cars.
It sounds like we mostly agree here. The question is, what’s the distance between here and ‘there’.
The power grid has been mostly solved, as EVs charge during off-peak hours when we already have access capacity.
Battery degradation and failures have been lower than initially anticipated. See old, high-mileage Teslas.
Comparing engine replacement to battery replacement doesn’t quite work, as you should include transmission replacement in that cost equation. In that situation, the EV comes out ahead.
Your comment on the lack of mechanics is valid and will be a pain point for some time. Luckily EVs are relatively simple compared to ICE vehicles. So here, too, I’m estimating that the gap will be filled rather quickly.
I mean, hopefully. I’m not poor and I’d love it if taking the train or bus was a more realistic option for most of my commuting/travel. Personal cars as the main means of transportation is probably the worst idea this country has ever come up with.
I love cars, but most people don’t. And even I’d rather never have to drive around the city to shop or commute or see friends. Cars are cool because they’re mechaincal and fun to tinker with and because windy rural roads and racetracks are fun to drive on. Other than that, they’re terrible.
Cars are an expensive, “necessary” evil to most people, and the right move is to move city and transit design closer and closer to a world where a car is not needed. It’s not that hard.
I mostly live in Chicago at the moment, and even as one of the “better” US cities for transit, it’s at least as hard to get around without a car than it is to get to and from my partner’s family’s place in a tiny village 2 hours up a fjord from Bergen, Norway. In the US, I feel trapped in without a car in our most transit friendly cities (on manhattan being the only exception I’ve ever found in the US), but I have never rented a car when traveling abroad, because there is almost always a way to get to just about anywhere using transit. If we fix this, then we remove the penalty that is requiring people to have cars to survive, a much better solution in the long run, though the transition away from the car based economy has to be managed very carefully. A lot of jobs and companies will collapse if we start selling >3 million instead of the 17+ million cars we averaged before the pandemic. Cars should be toys for hobbyists not appliances everyone needs to get to and from work.
Good points and I don’t disagree. Im looking through a different lense, my closest grocer is 20 minutes away at 45mph, hardware store is about the same. We don’t have uber, buses or trains, well if I drive 30 minutes there are.
Walkable, quiet cities free of extra pollution sounds great and I think cities should be allowed to focus on those goals if they chose. But this one size fits all policy doesn’t hit the same out here. They have been begging for funding fore more of those things out here but the money never comes. So lets get these foundations built out, then we can enjoy that future. But it needs to be built on something.
For sure, but there are parts of the world where the nearest stores are just as far away, but are still served with regular transit service. Part of the “solution” is to invest in buses that serve areas like yours at least a few times a day, so you can take the morning bus in to do shopping, then the lunchtime or evening bus back home when you’re done. We manage to figure out how to deliver mail to everyone 6 days a week, and pick up kids to bring to schools 5 days a week, so it’s not an impossible task, just one we haven’t put any effort into as a society.
Also, I love rural/small town life, can’t wait to get out of the city again. But one of the great things about the idyllic small town life is the classic old ‘downtown’ or ‘mainstreet’ that has many shops, restaurants and more in walking distance ). Even if I felt the ‘need’ to drive into town from a rural home, it’s only something I’d do once or twice a week to knock out all errands. The parking lots of many modern American strip malls/shopping centers could be transformed into towns with hundreds or even thousands of residents in a small town, walkable community, that would be easy to serve with transit, and require few personal cars. The change isn’t easy, but neither is building 15 million more EVs per year in less than a decade, just for the US.
When I visit family at the cabin in Norway for example, I can get from the airport to their village (which is more than 20 minutes from even a small grocery store) all on transit in barely more time than it takes to drive, and can stop for shopping of all types multiple places along the route. Having a car to get around out there is nice, but not necessary and it doesn’t feel like a burden to take the train and bus, just another reasonable choice. That’s the ideal goal, linking small towns/rural areas to services with transit, not just strips of pavement and an implicit requirement to spend thousands a year on transportation, no matter what your resources are. (transit passes should mostly be paid for through progressive taxation or taxation on cars/fuel, so the burden on the poor is proportional or less than that on the wealthy, also, requiring a $250k/yr earner to pay like 5% of their income in specific transit tax, really would encourage them to consider trying transit as well)
Sadly it would take a lot more than me being elected to any office to effect this change, and I’d also bet my entire policy platform would come with at least one dealbreaker for most voters.
For example, I’m a firm believer that as a essential component of a climate change mitigation strategy we need to phase out animal agriculture ASAP and all but mandate veganism, something that puts me at odds with probably over 90% of the voting population. I’m also anti-children and think we should cultivate the cultural value that having kids is selfish and a drain on the planet, rather than one of the most meaningful parts of life. My goal there would be to reduce the human population back to the 1-2 billion range over the next 100 or so years with the least amount of bloodshed, environmental destruction, and catastrophe.
But yes, being able to relax on a nice train or even very nice bus to date night even from pretty rural areas sounds like a dream! And I’m flexible on the other stuff if we can move towards such a community and public transit focused society!
Jim Stock
1 year ago
Wow I just assumed there would be some huge truck loophole or exception so automakers could just get everyone to buy giant one ton luxo-trucks.
Also I am kind of tired of all the complaints that sound like “if the EV can’t tow a 40K trailer 1000 miles up a 20% grade on a single charge then no EV should ever be manufactured” and complaints like that sound like the anti car workhorse people of 100 years ago.
Dodsworth
1 year ago
Death, taxes, and electric cars. You can scream all you want to but it’s a waste of energy.
M K
1 year ago
Yup. This looks hard, but at some point we’ll collectively realize that we can’t keep p!ssing in our community swimming pool…even if it takes effort and cost $$$. I’m sure no-one will enjoy the alternative regardless of politics.
Chris with bad opinions
1 year ago
This whole EPA thing is a massive waste of time. Whatever scumbag republifuck gets elected in 2024 will tear this apart and shit all over it. Then a Democrat will get elected and try all over again. Then eventually our society will collapse and none of it will matter. Sorry, I haven’t had the best week and this is where my angst is going.
I think your angst is directing you a lot closer to reality than most people would be comfortable with. The technology and time to transition to EVs was 2 decades ago. I think it will end up too little, too late, and not implemented in a beneficial way. As such, less should be focused upon what fuels a vehicle and more should be focused on how much of that fuel the vehicle consumes. Electric SUVs/trucks/CUVs with multi-ton 150+ kWh battery packs, that are designed to be unrepairable when even minor components break and essentially are disposable cars, is one of the worst possible ways to use this technology regarding minimizing impact upon the environment and for the ability of the average person to afford to use these vehicles as resources become more scarce. Tailoring emissions rules to kill certain types of powertrains that have wildly disparate advantages and disadvantage as options altogether is a very bad decision if the goal is to keep people mobile. A political agenda is at foot and it does not have the concerns of the common person in mind, OR the health of the biosphere for that matter. The greed of the modern auto industry as well as the government’s appetite for largesse are both conspiring to end much of the progress we had in the 20th century while simultaneously failing to address the harms that progress has made.
This. The whole grid should have been renewable and nuclear by 2000, and the last ICE car should have been sold around 2020, but that didn’t happen, so it’s all kinda pointless. Millions will die, climate change will cause wars and disasters that haven’t been seen since the 1930s and ’40s if ever. Humans will survive, but in a much worse form and at the expense of millions of other species extinction. This is inevitable at this point, all we can do is try to lessen and slow the disaster while having at least a little fun before the world ends.
About the new EPA regs… I think they’re great news! I want to get a BEV eventually and this guarantees that there will eventually be a plentiful supply of cheaper used ones.
Dogisbadob
1 year ago
Hybrids and PHEV should be allowed to average engine-off time with engine-on time for emissions compliance.
All cars from the late 90s are practically zero-emitting.
Gas stations that sell E85 should be exempt from requiring ethanol in non-E85 gasoline.
The new standards may be unrealistic and could even cause more cheat box scandals in the future, that will make VW’s problem look miniscule in comparison. Even before that, diesel cars were mostly niche over here, and VW sucks anyway.
And can we repeal CAFE and the stupid footprint rule?
Electrification should’ve started with school buses, which have the most to gain and also the easiest to implement, with short, regular routes that provide the ideal environment for electrification. Morning run, charge during the day, afternoon run, then charge overnight.
+1 on repealing the stupid footprint rule. But CAFE should stay.
And if you know anything about school buses, that business is run on the cheap. Meaning they’ll only move to BEVs if they’re forced to or if BEVs become the cheaper option.
Tesla did it the right way… starting off at the high end and then moving down-market as they figured ways to take the cost out of the tech.
I’m hoping that at some point after the Semi is ramped up, they make a derivative of that chassis for box trucks and school buses.
Diesel fuel is even more expensive than gasoline, so the breakeven point can be achieved sooner in school buses. They can use relatively small batteries due to the short runs, auto shut off when the bus is stopped, etc. Amazon and Rivian figured this out with the first EV that’s viable for commercial use. Therefore, school buses with their budget concerns can use BEV with no problem.
The footprint shit is a core part of CAFE. That’s why cars have gotten bigger rather than more efficient. Bigger trucks wipe out almost all gains in that regard.
Yes, Tesla is able to bake the high battery cost into expensive luxury cars. It’s more difficult to make an affordable EV under 20k.
Diesel fuel is even more expensive than gasoline, so the breakeven point can be achieved sooner in school buses.
As my lawyer would say “it depends.” A large gasoline-powered bus costs ~$100,000 compared to ~$200,000 for a diesel of equal size and ~$400,000 for an electric of equal size. Ballpark figures of course since prices vary.
You are correct that an EV bus will undercut the ICE buses on running costs over time. But to a district, that upfront cost may be hard to swallow even if the EV saves the district in the long run. One electric bus costs the same as multiple ICE buses.
The poorer school districts near me hold onto buses for a full 20 years before retiring them. My old school bus was one of those and it was well-used when it was retired in 2017. Basically, the district stretched its dollars as far as it could.
This is why school bus manufacturers are dropping Ford’s 7.3 Godzilla into chassis while also developing EVs; there’s still a market for a bus that’s affordable on the front end.
One thing I’ve noticed when writing about electric school buses is that a lot of them thus far were purchased using subsidies and grants. I think EV buses are the future, but perhaps they’re going to have to get a lot cheaper on the way there.
Certainly if it is Emmisions they are worried about, the Hydrogen option seems like a much easier thing for a bus depot. you don’t need a huge electrical infrastructure upgrade to power a shipping container hydrogen production system. The fill time is pretty quick and you still end up with Electric propulsion without a massive battery to lug around. out put is water.
the issue isn’t really even the cost of the bus, even though that is substantial. it is the DC fast charging required to charge all of the busses in time for the afternoon trip. or the infrastructure for multiple level 2 AC chargers. 6 of Ford 48A wall chargers ended up costing 180K a year ago jut to get enough power to them to have them all be used at the same time. that is a hard cost to overcome.
Simply put battery powered vehicles are way too expensive on every level. Even the Insurance companies have a 75 percent higher charge on electric vehicles because once the batteries get damaged in an accident the insurance companies will total the vehicles because they’re too expensive to fix. Do your own research n call any insurance company n they will clarify this fact.
except they never really figured out how to make an affordable tesla. they did loss lead on paper at least, but good luck actually ever getting a new one for under 40k.
Well thats true because you can’t get blood from a turnip or enough lithium from the earth to make the fear n control happen. Battery powered vehicles are gimmicks n fads n soon they’ll be dust in the wind.
All cars from the late 90s are practically zero-emitting.
If its burning gasoline, diesel or natural gas it’s emitting literally tons of carbon.
SYKO Simmons
1 year ago
If anyone is interested I’m selling theater seating and popcorn to watch this shit show.
My Goat Ate My Homework
1 year ago
I’m OK with this. Let’s reduce our reliance on oil, then we can export it all, bring a ton of money into the US (and move others away from Russia and the middle east). Capitalize on growing economies reliance on oil until EVs are the norm and they begin to switch, then globalize and capitalize on the EV future that we are the leaders in.
They can continue to produce, refine, and sell all the other products that aren’t automotive fuel. The crude balance can be exported, If they don’t aise a stink we’ll help them get contracts with the EU and developing countries. Maybe we’ll even give them some additional drilling rights. Gotta get it out of the ground now before global consumption drops and it becomes worth less.
Major Malfunction
1 year ago
So do we have enough power grid in place to handle this influx of EVs? If not, we have a SOLID plan to upgrade the grid and build more power producing plants/farms in step with the increase of strain on the grid? Right?
Living in a culture of “Save the planet…….just not in my backyard”, I wonder how we get there because everytime we want to increase our power production, the same people bitching about clearn energy don’t want windmills within ear or eye noticing distance of their neighborhoods, nevermind even thinking about nuclear power. We already have brownouts and mandatory rolling blackouts in some states due to their inability to power the grid. Add a couple million cars and I’m wondering how you guarantee that all keeps afloat.
Taking energy usage in 1960 and 2020 and assuming a straight line between the two values is not really realistic. I’d like to see the actual curve. Has the rate of growth been constant over 40 years (as the video assumes) or has it fluctuated or started to slow?
Any idea why he made the video while driving the entire time?
Fix It Again Tony
1 year ago
The question is not what the new requirements are, but what is the cost for not meeting that requirement. They can just keep making mostly ICE and pass that cost onto the consumers.
R Rr
1 year ago
Hmm.. since they don’t really mandate any kind of powertrain, just set emission limits, I wonder if some daring carmaker (*wink* Mazda *wink*) will get to try a small-engined diesel hybrid as a quick stopgap before the age of full-EV.
Even though the carmakers have managed – alhtough kicking and screaming – to meet every new emission standards so far, I think this new 56% reduction will be impossible to meet with any kind of gasoline engine, but it might be doable with a diesel.
Diesels have always had lower co2 emissions than gassers, and yeah it probably is possible with a diesel……. if the EPA didn’t have nox limits that almost prohibit diesels here in the states in anything smaller than a 3/4 ton.
Some of the increased NOx emissions of a diesel can be dealt with by AdBlue (urea) injection, but most of it would be gone if you just ran the engine at optimal loads/rpm, as a generator, instead of having it directly power the wheels.
problem is the urea system require regen cycles which kill all the benefits of efficiency over time. also EGR systems fail like early catalytic converters did. so the modern diesel is definitely not as long lived as it was say 20 years ago.
KD
1 year ago
Hot take – VAG, Toyota, and other manufacturers focusing on environmentally sustainable transportation (IE NOT ONLY EVS!) are on to something. I understand the push to clean up cars. I don’t understand the religious conviction to that being 6000lb of mining and global logistics on wheels. Sure, mature it so it makes sense, but mature multiple options that maybe incorporate existing tooling and supply chain?
It’s because right now the alternatives to EVs don’t have a viable path to sustainability. Hydrogen and efuels are absurdly energy-intensive to generate and to my knowledge no one even has a theoretical answer to that problem. At least with batteries there is work going on to improve chemistries and make solid state batteries viable. How do you optimize a basic chemical process like hydrolysis?
I’m fine with not mandating EVs as the replacements for ICE vehicles, but I think that’s going to be the only viable answer for the foreseeable future, so as long as they mandate reduced emissions that’s going to be the outcome anyway.
per Energy.gov, there are a few ways to make Hydrogen fuel. the biggest issue usually is transportation and acceptance as the reference to this in a car is driving a Hydrogen Bomb. ELECTROLYTIC PROCESSES
Water can be separated into oxygen and hydrogen through a process called electrolysis. Electrolytic processes take place in an electrolyzer, which functions much like a fuel cell in reverse—instead of using the energy of a hydrogen molecule, like a fuel cell does, an electrolyzer creates hydrogen from water molecules.
Learn more about electrolytic hydrogen production. SOLAR-DRIVEN PROCESSES
Solar-driven processes use light as the agent for hydrogen production. There are a few solar-driven processes, including photobiological, photoelectrochemical, and solar thermochemical. Photobiological processes use the natural photosynthetic activity of bacteria and green algae to produce hydrogen. Photoelectrochemical processes use specialized semiconductors to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Solar thermochemical hydrogen production uses concentrated solar power to drive water splitting reactions often along with other species such as metal oxides.
Learn more about photobiological processes, solar thermochemical processes, and photoelectrochemical processes. BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES
Biological processes use microbes such as bacteria and microalgae and can produce hydrogen through biological reactions. In microbial biomass conversion, the microbes break down organic matter like biomass or wastewater to produce hydrogen, while in photobiological processes the microbes use sunlight as the energy source.
I didn’t say there was no way to do it, I said there was no way to scale it to the degree necessary to replace all ICE cars. It’s so bad that even with as few hydrogen vehicles as there are today, most of our hydrogen doesn’t come from renewable sources, it comes from natural gas because that’s the only easy way to get it.
B3n
1 year ago
Put on your tinfoil hats: I think the new EPA mandates are only feasible if there is a very small number of new cars sold in 2032 compared to today.
Then the 67% new EV ratio could be realistic.
Here’s why.
I’m seeing a trend lately: cars and personal transportation in general are becoming less affordable as the vehicles themselves increase in price, and also the associated costs increase such as insurance, fuel, cost of a kWh of electricity, batteries, raw materials, etc.
This has already started to affect even used car prices, try finding anything usable below $5k.
Now to keep up with these tightening emission limits, ICE cars will keep getting more expensive, but EVs will too, due to higher demand but limited raw material supply.
Those who already have ICE cars will not want to get rid of them because of the replacement costs, pushing used car prices ever higher.
Unless there is a major game changer in battery tech until then, the overarching theme here is a general reduction of personal car ownership.
New cars could be a rarity compared to today, and they will cost a fortune.
Like no new cars under $100k levels. Then the 67% EV ratio could become true.
Der Foo
1 year ago
The CarMax dealers around where I live have absolute packed lots. A year ago they were maybe 3/4 full. If CarMax dealer in other parts of the country are lacking vehicles to sell, they need only move inventory.
The reason my local CarMax dealers are filled to the ‘max’ is that they sell at a premium + market adjustments = ‘I can get a new car for that much’ price.
Cheap Bastard
1 year ago
What would it take to pull them off and get to a projected 67% EV new car market in America by the early 2030s?
By mandating emissions standards rather than flat out mandating a switch to purely EVs, aren’t they essentially enabling manufacturers to produce whatever they choose that reaches the targets?
The California Air Resources Board today approved the trailblazing Advanced Clean Cars II rule that sets California on a path to rapidly growing the zero-emission car, pickup truck and SUV market and deliver cleaner air and massive reductions in climate-warming pollution.
The rule establishes a year-by-year roadmap so that by 2035 100% of new cars and light trucks sold in California will be zero-emission vehicles, including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. The regulation realizes and codifies the light-duty vehicle goals set out in Governor Newsom’s Executive Order N-79-20.
Some people count them that way. I never have, since they still burn gasoline. (Not that PHEVs and hybrids aren’t good, just explaining my take on the semantics here.)
I do. The difference between PHEVs and regular hybrids is not only the ability to plug in but EV mode. I remember reading the anecdotes of some some folks with Volts that drove almost exclusively in EV mode such that they only filled their tanks once or twice a year, just enough to keep the gas fresh.
Drew Velleca
1 year ago
I don’t understand why we’re insisting on jumping straight from ICE vehicles to fully electric vehicles. If range anxiety and charging times are the primary EV complaints, why not mandate that all vehicles must be hybrid? Seems to me that would solve peoples’ main EV complaints while also reducing emissions and battery demands.
I get that EV’s are basically a buzz word for companies at this point, but with a decent (30-50 mile) range and plug-in capability, I think a majority of people would use 90% electric in this scenario. It would also give some time for charging infrastructure to be improved. I’m sure there’s some major drawbacks to this idea, but I think it’s at least reasonable to consider, and more realistic than an immediate EV switchover.
probably because even though hybrid everything has been available for the past 20 years the adoption has been slow and the replacement battery costs have scared people with regards to purchase of them. specifically on the secondary market at around 80k miles.
The Prius was the top-selling vehicle in California for years (the largest market in the US)
Look up used prices on the prius; they hold their value incredibly well.
“I don’t understand why we’re insisting on jumping straight from ICE vehicles to fully electric vehicles”
Is that what is happening here? Seems to me it’s emissions targets allowing many forms of propulsion whether that’s EV, PHEV, cleaner ICE, or whatever.
I tend to agree with you, but the articles I’ve been reading have all been written with the headline grabbing idea that we’re heading to nothing but BEVs. I haven’t read the new regulations, though, so I might just be missing something.
We aren’t, the headline is about EVs because EV’s get attention right now. The rules just lower the limits on total fleet CO2 and other air pollutants they don’t specify that EVs are needed just that automakers need to meet the limits. Realistically we’re likely to see mostly hybrids and plug-in hybrids replacing ICE only vehicles and smaller increases in the number of EVs.
“I don’t understand why we’re insisting on jumping straight from ICE vehicles to fully electric vehicles.”
Yes, you clearly don’t understand. This rule is the exact opposite of your claim: it sets emissions standards instead of mandating any kind of powertrain. As in “if you can meet these standards with a coal-powered steam engined car, then go ahead, we’re not stopping you”.
Now I kind of want to see how much emissions equipment would be required to allow a coal-powered steam car to meet these standards. 😉
JDE
1 year ago
I feel like the EPA numbers are early enough to affect carmaker pricing and thus the blame will be focused on the current administration along with the seemingly political move(versus an actual emergency) to reduce our strategic Petroluem Reserves to stave off the oil price hikes during a midterm election.
If the prices of fuel go up and get blamed upon that action, while also putting our country in a potentially dangerous spot while Russia, North Korea, and China to an extent appear to be working towards WW3, and then again the average Joe also gets hit with ice price hikes, this will likely not go well for Joe or Even Kamala should she decide to try to run in Joe’s place.
I think they should endorse the Orange dude so they have a chance at winning. But that seems like a bad gamble since he is like Elon and seems to have a following no matter what strange stuff he does.
Mr Sarcastic
1 year ago
I expect a whole lot more people taking advantage of the 25 year rule. Just to be able to afford s DD.
ExAutoJourno
1 year ago
One of the worst features of our government — regardless of which party’s in control — is that legislators and their pet agencies feel that they can do anything by simply mandating it. Never mind feasibility, hardship for the citizens and general disruption of life. Cut emissions? Order it, and all will be blue skies and rainbows.
Even leaving aside my own reservations about EVS, which may not apply to the general public, I don’t believe a majority of Americans are currently ready to shoulder the costs and drawbacks of giving up their ICE automobiles. Nor do I think they will approve of the long-term effects of lithium mining, four-ton vehicles and rapidly escalating price tags.
CarMax? Not terribly interested. Seems to me that buying cars online is a fool’s errand, especially considering the large sums involved these days. The one physical CarMax lot I’ve seen appears to be populated by lease returns and vehicles that don’t interest me, at prices well above what I’d pay.
My general prediction about EVs in general — Mercedes-Benz and Tesla included — is that they will soon find that they can go only so far. An electric motor and battery pack on a “skateboard” and a giant touchscreen inside will be Everycar. Once someone works the kinks out of “self-driving” (possibly even in our lifetimes, but not so certain), it’ll be available everywhere.
Carmax is not completely online, they have a decent reputation for being relatively fair for a used car dealer, and they offer a pretty reliable used car warranty.
What I am surprised they do not do is finance the cars themselves to avoid the federal interest rate hikes. Maybe they do and I just need to investigate that more, or possibly they do not have the reserves to do that, but as big as they are, I would be surprised if they could not do that on some level.
Counterpoint people are inherently lazy and without a mandate change doesn’t happen.
Example: Data has existed pointing to a need to reduce carbon emissions since the 80s. (Where that data was and who had it is a different topic)
Result: Emissions increased and nothing changed until mandates were set.
See also water quality through the industrial revolution , burning rivers in the 70s, smog from WWII til now, hole in the ozone in the 80s, bald eagle extinction with DDT…
We are now grappling with decades of partial action and a generation of people calling for action (who largely don’t have the backyards to protest wind energy that they support).
Icouldntfindaclevername
1 year ago
CarMax bought all those cars at a huge premium. Now they’re trying to sell them at a huge premium. I checked some prices the other day, and it looks like a $7-8k premium on even basic cars…It’s going to just get worse for them with interest rates.
The Republicans won’t let any of these regulations stick. Congress will not pass anything, so it’ll be executive orders that get put in place until the next administration resends them and so on and so one.
Arch Duke Maxyenko
1 year ago
If I’m still around in 2032 (will probably be mowed down by a “full self driving” Tesla while crossing the street) then I’ll believe the rules if they haven’t been walked back by 2 administrations
Michael Beranek
1 year ago
The Thwaites Glacier doesn’t care if automakers don’t want to change. It doesn’t care if oil companies want to keep on making billions. It also doesn’t care if you don’t want to drive an EV.
As long as China keeps building coal plants and industry is allowed to pollute at will, it also doesn’t care if every car on the road changed to an EV tomorrow.
No. He’s saying that even a huge reduction in US vehicle emissions would be quite minor compared to emissions from industry, shipping and the third world. Meaning it wouldn’t be a drastic reduction.
There’s a difference between “not letting perfection get in the way of progress” and “costing Americans many billions and making transportation unaffordable for a small reduction in global emissions.”
Picturing a Pug and a Bakharwal crapping on my family room rug as I was reading your post because that’s exactly what’s happening in the world right now..
We (the US and EU at least) should be helping China (and India, and the multitude of developing African countries) skip the coal/natural gas step. Instead, we all get caught up playing politics and pointing fingers.
You’re not totally wrong IMO, however just because “China gets to do it” doesn’t mean the rest of us should rest on our laurels until they catch up.
True, these EPA regs need to stretch into industry more than just the transportation sector, but that isn’t politically expedient…
Edit: A bit of a more concise way to state this: We have the opportunity and ability to do better, so we should. Yes, we should be holding China and all of our industry (not just consumers) to a higher standard, but why stop improving the rest if we can?
The EPA could just as easily have pointed its heavy hand at the shipping industry, the airline industry, the steel industry, the power industry, the cement industry, the farm industry, etc etc etc and told them to reduce emissions by X in 10 years, but it’s easier to make individual car drivers out to be the bad guys, and make them suffer for the sins of the rest of us.
Regular consumers will pay for both things, EV transition in light automotive, and EV adoption heavy industry. The only question is in which order we will pay for these things? it looks like we’ll be buying cars first, then industry will pass their costs on to us when the heavy hand comes for them eventually.
As long as China keeps building coal plants and industry is allowed to pollute at will, it also doesn’t care if every car on the road changed to an EV tomorrow.
In addition to those coal plants China “is recognized as the undisputable global leader in renewable energy expansion, adding new projects to the grid almost as fast as the rest of the world combined last year”:
Keep in mind that in addition to those coal plants China also for better or worse built the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world, is one of the largest producers of nuclear power in the world and is building more while the US has sat on their collective asses for decades. Meanwhile Germany sticks its head in its own ass by decommissioning what reactors they have in favor of renewables but instead using MOAR coal and up until recently Russian NG to meet the shortfall. Even Japan is finally waking up to the fact they can’t get by without nuclear.
China is also the force which lead the solar revolution. Until China got into the game to make cheap silicon panels solar was a complete joke. Now China is the the worlds leader in solar output (by a lot). Wind? Chinese companies make more wind turbines than anyone else.
So why the coal plants? Because China has 1.4B people. They would have had even more (around 1.8B) had they not had the balls to try to reduce that population surplus rather than whistling by that massive elephant as the rest of the world is doing. China has spent the past 40 years getting most of those folks out of extreme poverty.
That and running the worlds second largest economy takes energy, a LOT of energy. Renewables aren’t going to be enough to satisfy anywhere near what’s needed.
IMO it’s damn hypocritical to complain that China is using fossil fuels to pull those folks out of poverty when that’s EXACTLY what the US and Europe did throughout the 20th century to put the world in this environmental disaster in the first place. More so when for decades they could have offset a lot of those emissions with much more nuclear power and chose not to for *reasons*?
Little known fact: Electric cars still create massive pollution and impact, some EVs more than some gas cars, and many(most?) EVs more than some diesels and highly efficient gassers.
If everybody switched to EVs overnight, emissions would be, at best, halved. 50% of glacier melting is still glacier melting.
So, the Thwaites Glacier doesn’t care if automakers don’t want to change. It also doesn’t care if Tesla and lithium miners want to keep on making billions. It also doesn’t care if you don’t want to walk everywhere.
The EPA’s study, which is a couple years old and so does not include monstrosities like the Hummer EV, says that EVs produce about half the lifetime co2 emissions of a gas car.
That’s true, if we got a lot more nuclear power then electric vehicles become a lot better. And it kind of has to be nuclear, because other renewable options are often dubiously beneficial and ruinously expensive. Nobody’s gonna drive electric cars if they all cost $100k and electricity is $0.50/kwh.
Nuclear for base load and battery + renewables for peaking should work great. The battery part is crucial — if I can’t dispatch power I can’t maintain voltage and timing, and that’s what grid operators care about.
The Smoking Tire had Liebermann on the podcast recently and had to call him out on some of his remarks. Not all of directly on that podcast because Matt and Zack didn’t have the data in front of them, but they followed up in their next podcast with information from experts.
Some of Jonny’s obvious exaggerations are that if you have a phone or laptop, you are as responsible for lithium mining ills as if you have an EV. So a 1,000 lb Tesla battery is the same consumption as a 2lb laptop+phone on a per person basis? Nope.
Just to be clear, I’m an environmentalist, and had a career as an environmental scientist (assessing/cleaning up/monitoring contaminated sites). I’m for multiple solutions, not EVs only, ban everything else. This new rule strikes me as ambitious, but I like that they are focusing on the total emissions and not limiting the different ways to get there.
Do you really believe that a full switch to EV’s in the next 15 years is going to save the planet? It’s going to magically be repaired and the future will make it all better, what happens when we have 10-11B people that you’re saved planet struggles to support. This place is doomed, civilization will self destruct before the planet becomes inhabitable. Over population is the real problem, lets impose reproduction limits, free EVs to any family that stops having kids especially if you are on govt benefits.
Over population is the real problem, lets impose reproduction limits
Sure but how? That would take getting every major Abrahamic religion on board to reverse millennia of dogma pushing their God’s commandment to “be fruitful and multiply”. It would also require completely new economic policies NOT hinged on the exponentially growing population pyramid. On top of that you’ll have to fight the baby hoarders who just. can’t. stop. because babies are SOOO cute! as well as the family oriented industries that make money on those kids.
Much as I’d like to see the world adopt a one child policy its just not going to happen. China famously tried, they made good progress then the ^$% cowards chickened out.
I can think of many ways but no one is going to like it. Lets ban or limit pets too while were at it, you don’t need 2+ dogs & a cat, one pet per lifetime.
We never fix the source of the problem. Top 3 pollution sources; 1-Energy, 2-Agriculture, 3-ICE…. what determines the amount of all that? Population! We will be applying band-aids to a new problem every few decades that will never go away because the root is not solved.
I can think of many ways but no one is going to like it.Lets ban or limit pets too while were at it, you don’t need 2+ dogs & a cat, one pet per lifetime.
I get your comment was snark; however as someone who’s fostered for an animal rescue group I’m painfully aware of the overpopulation problem of cats and dogs and the horrific solutions humans use to address it.
Still as a thought experiment lets compare kids with pets:
Almost all pets are adopted, not so with kids.
Most pets are sterilized, sometimes as a requirement for adoption. Can we sterilize adopted kids too?
Adopting and sterilizing is arguably far more effective at keeping the cat and dog populations down than letting those animals roam free and fertile. It also keeps their corpses off the streets.
Pets in kill-shelters are at high risk (80-90%) of being euthanized if not adopted. In some shelters incoming animals that display ANY kind of problem are euthanized immediately. AFAIK kill-orphanages don’t exist. Shall we start euthanizing unadopted kids too?
Taking THAT to the next level: Australia poisoned MILLIONS of feral cats to protect other wild animals*. Shall we do the same with the homeless?
Cats and dogs live maybe 15 years if taken care of, maybe 3-4 years in the wild. Kids typically live 80+ years up to a hundred years or more and consume a LOT of stuff throughout that time, especially first world kids.
Cats and dogs don’t consume anywhere near as much stuff nor generate nearly as much waste nor need nearly as much space as humans. Their environmental footprint is very low.
Pets happily eat the crap humans refuse to. They allow existing resources – like kitchen scraps, roadkill and food animals deemed unacceptable for human consumption – to be used more effectively.
Pets don’t drive and have their own fur coats for warmth so they generate almost no GHGs. Have enough pets on the bed and you don’t need a heater on a winter’s night.
You can legally have your pet murdered for whatever reason you like including if you are just tired of having it around. You can’t (legally) do that with a kid and you’ll rightly suffer severe consequences if caught. The best you can do is dump your child on society to make it someone else’s problem but that kid will still be out there consuming resources for the rest of its loooong life.
Landlords can ban tenants from having pets for any reason they like or no reason at all. They are not legally permitted to do the same with kids and risk a painful lawsuit if they try.
TL:DR Pets =/= kids
*In the case of the cats it should be noted that a couple of years after the mass cat poisonings Australia had a biblical plague of rodents. I don’t think that was a coincidence.
would be curious to see how the Covid deaths affected this number?
V10omous
1 year ago
No industry of this size and scale has been disrupted this thoroughly by government fiat on a timescale this short since WWII.
I have very little confidence in the US Government (or the automakers) of the 2020s to pull it off with anything approaching success. More likely constraints on lithium mining and battery manufacturing make the shortages of 2021-22 look quaint. And the problems with charging infrastructure to only increase.
I think the likeliest outcome though is that it’s delayed by lawsuits until a Republican administration takes office. If that doesn’t occur, expect a rush of panic buying ICE vehicles around 2030.
Idk. GoVeRnMeNt FiAt is a scary sounding combination of words, until you start thinking about some of the benefits of it (also, setting rules is kind of the whole point of government…)
I would imagine that the creation of the FDA had some pretty tremendous downstream impacts for the food and drug industry. Ditto for the EPA and energy producers. NHTSA dramatically reshaped the auto industry and the American landscape. OSHA, WIC, or any other combination of letters you might get from an alphabet soup – they all affect an industry to some degree.
The United States should be a world leader in the emerging space of EVs. We invented the idea of the “modern” automobile, we know gasoline is a dying technology, why wouldn’t we want to be at the forefront of the next tech stepping stone. Do we want to be lapped by China? Korea? Germany? Maybe your blood doesn’t bleed as red, white, and blue as mine, but complaining that we don’t get to keep using donkeys instead of that newfangled steam engine technology to haul our grain to market seems like really backwards thinking to me, and it places the country at a serious competitive disadvantage.
I hope this doesn’t read as an attack on you, v10. It isn’t intended that way. I think Democratic leadership has a seriously bad messaging problem around this and other green new deal initiatives. This should be framed as an “America-first, America best” type of transition, and the naysayers should be rightly derided as luddites who would rather rest on their laurels than push the envelope of American ingenuity.
You make some good points, but the main issues I have with your post are:
-I used the term government fiat because this is coming from an unelected agency, not a bill passed by Congress and signed by the president. I would not refer to the IRA (or the climate provisions within) as fiat.
-The timeframe and scale of the change. The other agencies you mention had effects on industry, but nothing like “nothing you currently sell will be legal, and you need to redo everything in one product cycle if you want to stay in business”
-The horse (or donkey) vs car or steam engine analogy gets brought up a lot, but lost in the comparison is the fact that horses are still legal. No one had to be coerced into swapping, the car was self-evidently better. The EV transition is either 1) The same thing, in which case most people will change to the superior product of their own free will, or 2) The opposite, in which case the worse product needs to be forced on people by the government. Commenters seem to argue that 1) is true, but the government is proceeding as if 2) is true. So why the disconnect? EV adoption is rising rapidly on its own.
By all means, brand this as a pro-American set of regulations, so long as its acknowledged that the American consumers are the ones being punished.
When candidates are being run based on how good they were at college football (or how good they were at coaching college football, how good they were at ignoring rapes at college football) rather than any sort of legislative expertise, let’s not pretend that being democratically elected confers legitimacy. There’s a guy who was elected to Congress and we aren’t even sure if we know his actual name, for crying out loud. In some cases, the opinion of 1 (non-elected) expert really actually is more important than the opinions of the electorate. Congress relies on the opinions of these experts every day to craft legislation (or they just copy the homework of the non-elected industry lobbyist that most recently greased their palms).
We won the fuck out of WW2. “Ford – you’re building planes now. GM – build me some Jeeps. Stop selling passenger cars, or make them out of wood if you have to. You don’t get to use metal any more. I don’t care that it will be a disruption, life is tough, wear a helmet.” I get your point that it was a radical shift, but it also kind of proves that sometimes direct government intervention is needed to achieve specific results.
Horses are legal, but if they kicked you in the head every time you rode one, maybe they wouldn’t be? We can talk about the environmental problems with mining lithium if you want, or how China is still burning coal at an unsustainable and irresponsible rate, but they are red herrings. I’d rather break my arm than have bone cancer, and it seems to me like continuing to burn fossil fuels is like choosing to have bone cancer. Lithium mining is more like a broken arm. Sure it is bad temporarily, but it is better than the alternative. Redwood Materials and other battery recycling enterprises are emerging to tackle this new market opportunity. American ingenuity!
The EV transition is better. It is just more expensive (like all good things). Also, I’m pretty sure I’d get pulled over if I tried to take my horse or my donkey down I-90.
The government didn’t listen to the top qualified expert when they created the Colorado river water rights, a mistake evident for many many years that it is only now taking action to fix. Since when has the government ever had the best and brightest working for it?
I dispute your claim that the EV transition is better, but I appreciate your reasoned and thoughtful posts, and will therefore focus on where we can agree, namely:
I think we both agree that if we can have EVs with the same usability and cost as gas cars, and if said vehicles are developed in this country, that will be A Good Thing.
If such a thing isn’t possible by the early 2030s, we may part ways on what we think the right path forward is.
Anyways, the point is that you can still buy horses, own them, use them (within reasonable limits) etc. There is no government agency seemingly dedicated to rooting them out.
I’m on record as favoring a carbon tax with the proceeds split 50-50 between a dividend to compensate lower and middle income taxpayers and direct investment into carbon capture.
In exchange, all I would ask is the immediate repeal of all ICE bans and emissions regulations like the ones rolled out today, so that those of us who are willing to pay more for our enjoyment of sports cars and long road trips can continue to do so.
If you only care about the CO2 and would repeal all the other regs, then the diesel will come back with a vengeance, since it has lower CO2 emissions and they’re easier to lower still, compared to gasoline engines.
You can definitely make them into sport cars, the Golf GTD was on par with the GTI, and Audi’s LeMans dominance was all diesel powered.
But the govt has pretty much be a total cluster f*** the past 30 years and very little benefit. They f’d up healthcare, college, banking, pretty much everything. If they weren’t all a bunch of old cranky self serving nit picky arrogant brats, then perhaps they could work together, be honest, listen to the people, and pass laws instead of wasting my money and making our lives confusing and frustrating through useless executive orders.
Almost like there has been a multi-generational, sustained and concerted effort by malicious actors to break government at a fundamental level. I wonder who would do that ????
Now this may sound crazy, but it just might be the sociopathic resource hoarders that make up the 1% who finance and/or run the corporations that finance our politicians on both sides. If I didn’t know any better I might think that the only way to obtain that level of wealth is through less than ethical means and that those individuals probably don’t have the most altruistic intentions, but what do I know…
Doing the right thing will almost always be more expensive than doing the wrong thing. Yes, it is more expensive to pay employees a living wage when compared to owning human chattel. Yes, it is more expensive to stop using CFCs and to dispose of industrial waste safely rather than just dumping it in a nearby river.
The people who want to pay peanuts and dump toxic waste in the river are not your friends. They are dragons, and they will happily burn alive anyone that they consider a threat to their pile of gold.
Government is what stops human slavery and rivers on fire. The job of government should be to slay dragons.
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Switching 2/3rds of new car sales from the same old dumb Camry/Escape/RAV4/Altima that most people buy to full electric is just fine by me. Automakers have been on the long dumb slow slide towards no manuals and all crossovers, SUVs, and pickups anyway. We might as well stop deluding ourselves that an EV is more boring than whatever Toyota Highlander people currently drive. Nothing here makes the odd old collector car illegal.
“poors will never drive again, take the bus” thats the future we are heading to at warp speed. And to see people support that as some “green” revolution.
That’s an interesting take given that an electric car is much cheaper to own and operate.
But not buy, insure and you have to get a new charger in the house. Oh and you better have solar to offset those rising electric and delivery costs. Own a house in the first place on and on and on. You can only gloss over that stuff for so long before its a big problem. But theres an entire class of people who ignore how most people live.
Exactly. For example, if I could afford it, I’d actually consider buying an EV, but I rent, so how in the world could I charge it when I’m at home? There’s many more infrastructure concerns that need to be addressed before this whole thing becomes practical than are immediately coming to people’s minds. The whole thing is an inevitability, but it’s not going to be tomorrow, and quite frankly I’d be surprised if it’s fully effective by the time it’s projected to be
oh its happening and Im not even trying to stop it. but like you said theres a lot of steps to accomplish in 6ish years
Just because it doesn’t work for you, doesn’t mean it won’t work. 67% of Americans live in single-family housing. A 240-volt charger is $400-500. Electricity prices have been increasing, but so has the price of gas. Solar has nothing to do with this argument.
Yes, they are more expensive during the initial purchase, but the total ownership cost is lower than an equivalent gas car even taking into account the costs you mentioned. That’s huge.
not for people who cant pay the upfront cost. And can you go over the costs of an engine repair vs a battery pack replacement? Who is buying old worn out evs? Not even Dave fucking Tracy was willing to do that.
Im not saying down the road it isnt the preferred solution. But there is so much work to be done to make it realistic. More power to the grid, more chargers, more electricians to instal this stuff and have you looked at the percentages of machanics licensed to work on an EV? We have a foundation to build before we mandate so strongly towards the actual cars.
It sounds like we mostly agree here. The question is, what’s the distance between here and ‘there’.
The power grid has been mostly solved, as EVs charge during off-peak hours when we already have access capacity.
Battery degradation and failures have been lower than initially anticipated. See old, high-mileage Teslas.
Comparing engine replacement to battery replacement doesn’t quite work, as you should include transmission replacement in that cost equation. In that situation, the EV comes out ahead.
Your comment on the lack of mechanics is valid and will be a pain point for some time. Luckily EVs are relatively simple compared to ICE vehicles. So here, too, I’m estimating that the gap will be filled rather quickly.
I mean, hopefully. I’m not poor and I’d love it if taking the train or bus was a more realistic option for most of my commuting/travel. Personal cars as the main means of transportation is probably the worst idea this country has ever come up with.
I love cars, but most people don’t. And even I’d rather never have to drive around the city to shop or commute or see friends. Cars are cool because they’re mechaincal and fun to tinker with and because windy rural roads and racetracks are fun to drive on. Other than that, they’re terrible.
Cars are an expensive, “necessary” evil to most people, and the right move is to move city and transit design closer and closer to a world where a car is not needed. It’s not that hard.
I mostly live in Chicago at the moment, and even as one of the “better” US cities for transit, it’s at least as hard to get around without a car than it is to get to and from my partner’s family’s place in a tiny village 2 hours up a fjord from Bergen, Norway. In the US, I feel trapped in without a car in our most transit friendly cities (on manhattan being the only exception I’ve ever found in the US), but I have never rented a car when traveling abroad, because there is almost always a way to get to just about anywhere using transit. If we fix this, then we remove the penalty that is requiring people to have cars to survive, a much better solution in the long run, though the transition away from the car based economy has to be managed very carefully. A lot of jobs and companies will collapse if we start selling >3 million instead of the 17+ million cars we averaged before the pandemic. Cars should be toys for hobbyists not appliances everyone needs to get to and from work.
Good points and I don’t disagree. Im looking through a different lense, my closest grocer is 20 minutes away at 45mph, hardware store is about the same. We don’t have uber, buses or trains, well if I drive 30 minutes there are.
Walkable, quiet cities free of extra pollution sounds great and I think cities should be allowed to focus on those goals if they chose. But this one size fits all policy doesn’t hit the same out here. They have been begging for funding fore more of those things out here but the money never comes. So lets get these foundations built out, then we can enjoy that future. But it needs to be built on something.
For sure, but there are parts of the world where the nearest stores are just as far away, but are still served with regular transit service. Part of the “solution” is to invest in buses that serve areas like yours at least a few times a day, so you can take the morning bus in to do shopping, then the lunchtime or evening bus back home when you’re done. We manage to figure out how to deliver mail to everyone 6 days a week, and pick up kids to bring to schools 5 days a week, so it’s not an impossible task, just one we haven’t put any effort into as a society.
Also, I love rural/small town life, can’t wait to get out of the city again. But one of the great things about the idyllic small town life is the classic old ‘downtown’ or ‘mainstreet’ that has many shops, restaurants and more in walking distance ). Even if I felt the ‘need’ to drive into town from a rural home, it’s only something I’d do once or twice a week to knock out all errands. The parking lots of many modern American strip malls/shopping centers could be transformed into towns with hundreds or even thousands of residents in a small town, walkable community, that would be easy to serve with transit, and require few personal cars. The change isn’t easy, but neither is building 15 million more EVs per year in less than a decade, just for the US.
When I visit family at the cabin in Norway for example, I can get from the airport to their village (which is more than 20 minutes from even a small grocery store) all on transit in barely more time than it takes to drive, and can stop for shopping of all types multiple places along the route. Having a car to get around out there is nice, but not necessary and it doesn’t feel like a burden to take the train and bus, just another reasonable choice. That’s the ideal goal, linking small towns/rural areas to services with transit, not just strips of pavement and an implicit requirement to spend thousands a year on transportation, no matter what your resources are. (transit passes should mostly be paid for through progressive taxation or taxation on cars/fuel, so the burden on the poor is proportional or less than that on the wealthy, also, requiring a $250k/yr earner to pay like 5% of their income in specific transit tax, really would encourage them to consider trying transit as well)
how do I vote for you over in America! I would love to have a smoke and take the train to a nice dinner with my wife!
Sadly it would take a lot more than me being elected to any office to effect this change, and I’d also bet my entire policy platform would come with at least one dealbreaker for most voters.
For example, I’m a firm believer that as a essential component of a climate change mitigation strategy we need to phase out animal agriculture ASAP and all but mandate veganism, something that puts me at odds with probably over 90% of the voting population. I’m also anti-children and think we should cultivate the cultural value that having kids is selfish and a drain on the planet, rather than one of the most meaningful parts of life. My goal there would be to reduce the human population back to the 1-2 billion range over the next 100 or so years with the least amount of bloodshed, environmental destruction, and catastrophe.
But yes, being able to relax on a nice train or even very nice bus to date night even from pretty rural areas sounds like a dream! And I’m flexible on the other stuff if we can move towards such a community and public transit focused society!
Wow I just assumed there would be some huge truck loophole or exception so automakers could just get everyone to buy giant one ton luxo-trucks.
Also I am kind of tired of all the complaints that sound like “if the EV can’t tow a 40K trailer 1000 miles up a 20% grade on a single charge then no EV should ever be manufactured” and complaints like that sound like the anti car workhorse people of 100 years ago.
Death, taxes, and electric cars. You can scream all you want to but it’s a waste of energy.
Yup. This looks hard, but at some point we’ll collectively realize that we can’t keep p!ssing in our community swimming pool…even if it takes effort and cost $$$. I’m sure no-one will enjoy the alternative regardless of politics.
This whole EPA thing is a massive waste of time. Whatever scumbag republifuck gets elected in 2024 will tear this apart and shit all over it. Then a Democrat will get elected and try all over again. Then eventually our society will collapse and none of it will matter. Sorry, I haven’t had the best week and this is where my angst is going.
I think your angst is directing you a lot closer to reality than most people would be comfortable with. The technology and time to transition to EVs was 2 decades ago. I think it will end up too little, too late, and not implemented in a beneficial way. As such, less should be focused upon what fuels a vehicle and more should be focused on how much of that fuel the vehicle consumes. Electric SUVs/trucks/CUVs with multi-ton 150+ kWh battery packs, that are designed to be unrepairable when even minor components break and essentially are disposable cars, is one of the worst possible ways to use this technology regarding minimizing impact upon the environment and for the ability of the average person to afford to use these vehicles as resources become more scarce. Tailoring emissions rules to kill certain types of powertrains that have wildly disparate advantages and disadvantage as options altogether is a very bad decision if the goal is to keep people mobile. A political agenda is at foot and it does not have the concerns of the common person in mind, OR the health of the biosphere for that matter. The greed of the modern auto industry as well as the government’s appetite for largesse are both conspiring to end much of the progress we had in the 20th century while simultaneously failing to address the harms that progress has made.
This. The whole grid should have been renewable and nuclear by 2000, and the last ICE car should have been sold around 2020, but that didn’t happen, so it’s all kinda pointless. Millions will die, climate change will cause wars and disasters that haven’t been seen since the 1930s and ’40s if ever. Humans will survive, but in a much worse form and at the expense of millions of other species extinction. This is inevitable at this point, all we can do is try to lessen and slow the disaster while having at least a little fun before the world ends.
I’m glad you’re as optimistic as I am 🙂
About the new EPA regs… I think they’re great news! I want to get a BEV eventually and this guarantees that there will eventually be a plentiful supply of cheaper used ones.
Hybrids and PHEV should be allowed to average engine-off time with engine-on time for emissions compliance.
All cars from the late 90s are practically zero-emitting.
Gas stations that sell E85 should be exempt from requiring ethanol in non-E85 gasoline.
The new standards may be unrealistic and could even cause more cheat box scandals in the future, that will make VW’s problem look miniscule in comparison. Even before that, diesel cars were mostly niche over here, and VW sucks anyway.
And can we repeal CAFE and the stupid footprint rule?
Electrification should’ve started with school buses, which have the most to gain and also the easiest to implement, with short, regular routes that provide the ideal environment for electrification. Morning run, charge during the day, afternoon run, then charge overnight.
“the stupid footprint rule?”
+1 on repealing the stupid footprint rule. But CAFE should stay.
And if you know anything about school buses, that business is run on the cheap. Meaning they’ll only move to BEVs if they’re forced to or if BEVs become the cheaper option.
Tesla did it the right way… starting off at the high end and then moving down-market as they figured ways to take the cost out of the tech.
I’m hoping that at some point after the Semi is ramped up, they make a derivative of that chassis for box trucks and school buses.
Diesel fuel is even more expensive than gasoline, so the breakeven point can be achieved sooner in school buses. They can use relatively small batteries due to the short runs, auto shut off when the bus is stopped, etc. Amazon and Rivian figured this out with the first EV that’s viable for commercial use. Therefore, school buses with their budget concerns can use BEV with no problem.
The footprint shit is a core part of CAFE. That’s why cars have gotten bigger rather than more efficient. Bigger trucks wipe out almost all gains in that regard.
Yes, Tesla is able to bake the high battery cost into expensive luxury cars. It’s more difficult to make an affordable EV under 20k.
As my lawyer would say “it depends.” A large gasoline-powered bus costs ~$100,000 compared to ~$200,000 for a diesel of equal size and ~$400,000 for an electric of equal size. Ballpark figures of course since prices vary.
You are correct that an EV bus will undercut the ICE buses on running costs over time. But to a district, that upfront cost may be hard to swallow even if the EV saves the district in the long run. One electric bus costs the same as multiple ICE buses.
The poorer school districts near me hold onto buses for a full 20 years before retiring them. My old school bus was one of those and it was well-used when it was retired in 2017. Basically, the district stretched its dollars as far as it could.
This is why school bus manufacturers are dropping Ford’s 7.3 Godzilla into chassis while also developing EVs; there’s still a market for a bus that’s affordable on the front end.
One thing I’ve noticed when writing about electric school buses is that a lot of them thus far were purchased using subsidies and grants. I think EV buses are the future, but perhaps they’re going to have to get a lot cheaper on the way there.
Certainly if it is Emmisions they are worried about, the Hydrogen option seems like a much easier thing for a bus depot. you don’t need a huge electrical infrastructure upgrade to power a shipping container hydrogen production system. The fill time is pretty quick and you still end up with Electric propulsion without a massive battery to lug around. out put is water.
the issue isn’t really even the cost of the bus, even though that is substantial. it is the DC fast charging required to charge all of the busses in time for the afternoon trip. or the infrastructure for multiple level 2 AC chargers. 6 of Ford 48A wall chargers ended up costing 180K a year ago jut to get enough power to them to have them all be used at the same time. that is a hard cost to overcome.
Simply put battery powered vehicles are way too expensive on every level. Even the Insurance companies have a 75 percent higher charge on electric vehicles because once the batteries get damaged in an accident the insurance companies will total the vehicles because they’re too expensive to fix. Do your own research n call any insurance company n they will clarify this fact.
except they never really figured out how to make an affordable tesla. they did loss lead on paper at least, but good luck actually ever getting a new one for under 40k.
Well thats true because you can’t get blood from a turnip or enough lithium from the earth to make the fear n control happen. Battery powered vehicles are gimmicks n fads n soon they’ll be dust in the wind.
All cars from the late 90s are practically zero-emitting.
If its burning gasoline, diesel or natural gas it’s emitting literally tons of carbon.
If anyone is interested I’m selling theater seating and popcorn to watch this shit show.
I’m OK with this. Let’s reduce our reliance on oil, then we can export it all, bring a ton of money into the US (and move others away from Russia and the middle east). Capitalize on growing economies reliance on oil until EVs are the norm and they begin to switch, then globalize and capitalize on the EV future that we are the leaders in.
Exxon called and they’ve got big fat checks for anyone willing to oppose your suggestion.
They can continue to produce, refine, and sell all the other products that aren’t automotive fuel. The crude balance can be exported, If they don’t aise a stink we’ll help them get contracts with the EU and developing countries. Maybe we’ll even give them some additional drilling rights. Gotta get it out of the ground now before global consumption drops and it becomes worth less.
So do we have enough power grid in place to handle this influx of EVs? If not, we have a SOLID plan to upgrade the grid and build more power producing plants/farms in step with the increase of strain on the grid? Right?
Living in a culture of “Save the planet…….just not in my backyard”, I wonder how we get there because everytime we want to increase our power production, the same people bitching about clearn energy don’t want windmills within ear or eye noticing distance of their neighborhoods, nevermind even thinking about nuclear power. We already have brownouts and mandatory rolling blackouts in some states due to their inability to power the grid. Add a couple million cars and I’m wondering how you guarantee that all keeps afloat.
Engineering Explained already answered this in a video. Search YouTube for: Engineering Explained Electric Grid (since I can’t seem to post a link).
The grid will be fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dfyG6FXsUU
Taking energy usage in 1960 and 2020 and assuming a straight line between the two values is not really realistic. I’d like to see the actual curve. Has the rate of growth been constant over 40 years (as the video assumes) or has it fluctuated or started to slow?
Any idea why he made the video while driving the entire time?
The question is not what the new requirements are, but what is the cost for not meeting that requirement. They can just keep making mostly ICE and pass that cost onto the consumers.
Hmm.. since they don’t really mandate any kind of powertrain, just set emission limits, I wonder if some daring carmaker (*wink* Mazda *wink*) will get to try a small-engined diesel hybrid as a quick stopgap before the age of full-EV.
Even though the carmakers have managed – alhtough kicking and screaming – to meet every new emission standards so far, I think this new 56% reduction will be impossible to meet with any kind of gasoline engine, but it might be doable with a diesel.
Diesels have always had lower co2 emissions than gassers, and yeah it probably is possible with a diesel……. if the EPA didn’t have nox limits that almost prohibit diesels here in the states in anything smaller than a 3/4 ton.
Some of the increased NOx emissions of a diesel can be dealt with by AdBlue (urea) injection, but most of it would be gone if you just ran the engine at optimal loads/rpm, as a generator, instead of having it directly power the wheels.
problem is the urea system require regen cycles which kill all the benefits of efficiency over time. also EGR systems fail like early catalytic converters did. so the modern diesel is definitely not as long lived as it was say 20 years ago.
Hot take – VAG, Toyota, and other manufacturers focusing on environmentally sustainable transportation (IE NOT ONLY EVS!) are on to something. I understand the push to clean up cars. I don’t understand the religious conviction to that being 6000lb of mining and global logistics on wheels. Sure, mature it so it makes sense, but mature multiple options that maybe incorporate existing tooling and supply chain?
It’s because right now the alternatives to EVs don’t have a viable path to sustainability. Hydrogen and efuels are absurdly energy-intensive to generate and to my knowledge no one even has a theoretical answer to that problem. At least with batteries there is work going on to improve chemistries and make solid state batteries viable. How do you optimize a basic chemical process like hydrolysis?
I’m fine with not mandating EVs as the replacements for ICE vehicles, but I think that’s going to be the only viable answer for the foreseeable future, so as long as they mandate reduced emissions that’s going to be the outcome anyway.
per Energy.gov, there are a few ways to make Hydrogen fuel. the biggest issue usually is transportation and acceptance as the reference to this in a car is driving a Hydrogen Bomb.
ELECTROLYTIC PROCESSES
Water can be separated into oxygen and hydrogen through a process called electrolysis. Electrolytic processes take place in an electrolyzer, which functions much like a fuel cell in reverse—instead of using the energy of a hydrogen molecule, like a fuel cell does, an electrolyzer creates hydrogen from water molecules.
Learn more about electrolytic hydrogen production.
SOLAR-DRIVEN PROCESSES
Solar-driven processes use light as the agent for hydrogen production. There are a few solar-driven processes, including photobiological, photoelectrochemical, and solar thermochemical. Photobiological processes use the natural photosynthetic activity of bacteria and green algae to produce hydrogen. Photoelectrochemical processes use specialized semiconductors to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Solar thermochemical hydrogen production uses concentrated solar power to drive water splitting reactions often along with other species such as metal oxides.
Learn more about photobiological processes, solar thermochemical processes, and photoelectrochemical processes.
BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES
Biological processes use microbes such as bacteria and microalgae and can produce hydrogen through biological reactions. In microbial biomass conversion, the microbes break down organic matter like biomass or wastewater to produce hydrogen, while in photobiological processes the microbes use sunlight as the energy source.
Learn more about biological hydrogen production from microbial biomass conversion and photobiological processes.
I didn’t say there was no way to do it, I said there was no way to scale it to the degree necessary to replace all ICE cars. It’s so bad that even with as few hydrogen vehicles as there are today, most of our hydrogen doesn’t come from renewable sources, it comes from natural gas because that’s the only easy way to get it.
Put on your tinfoil hats: I think the new EPA mandates are only feasible if there is a very small number of new cars sold in 2032 compared to today.
Then the 67% new EV ratio could be realistic.
Here’s why.
I’m seeing a trend lately: cars and personal transportation in general are becoming less affordable as the vehicles themselves increase in price, and also the associated costs increase such as insurance, fuel, cost of a kWh of electricity, batteries, raw materials, etc.
This has already started to affect even used car prices, try finding anything usable below $5k.
Now to keep up with these tightening emission limits, ICE cars will keep getting more expensive, but EVs will too, due to higher demand but limited raw material supply.
Those who already have ICE cars will not want to get rid of them because of the replacement costs, pushing used car prices ever higher.
Unless there is a major game changer in battery tech until then, the overarching theme here is a general reduction of personal car ownership.
New cars could be a rarity compared to today, and they will cost a fortune.
Like no new cars under $100k levels. Then the 67% EV ratio could become true.
The CarMax dealers around where I live have absolute packed lots. A year ago they were maybe 3/4 full. If CarMax dealer in other parts of the country are lacking vehicles to sell, they need only move inventory.
The reason my local CarMax dealers are filled to the ‘max’ is that they sell at a premium + market adjustments = ‘I can get a new car for that much’ price.
What would it take to pull them off and get to a projected 67% EV new car market in America by the early 2030s?
PHEVs are EVs.
By mandating emissions standards rather than flat out mandating a switch to purely EVs, aren’t they essentially enabling manufacturers to produce whatever they choose that reaches the targets?
Looks that way:
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/news/california-moves-accelerate-100-new-zero-emission-vehicle-sales-2035
Some people count them that way. I never have, since they still burn gasoline. (Not that PHEVs and hybrids aren’t good, just explaining my take on the semantics here.)
Then you have the now-dead i3 Rex, which was legally considered an EV by California standards
I do. The difference between PHEVs and regular hybrids is not only the ability to plug in but EV mode. I remember reading the anecdotes of some some folks with Volts that drove almost exclusively in EV mode such that they only filled their tanks once or twice a year, just enough to keep the gas fresh.
I don’t understand why we’re insisting on jumping straight from ICE vehicles to fully electric vehicles. If range anxiety and charging times are the primary EV complaints, why not mandate that all vehicles must be hybrid? Seems to me that would solve peoples’ main EV complaints while also reducing emissions and battery demands.
I get that EV’s are basically a buzz word for companies at this point, but with a decent (30-50 mile) range and plug-in capability, I think a majority of people would use 90% electric in this scenario. It would also give some time for charging infrastructure to be improved. I’m sure there’s some major drawbacks to this idea, but I think it’s at least reasonable to consider, and more realistic than an immediate EV switchover.
probably because even though hybrid everything has been available for the past 20 years the adoption has been slow and the replacement battery costs have scared people with regards to purchase of them. specifically on the secondary market at around 80k miles.
Adoption has been slow? Do you not have Priuses where you live?
yes, but they represent a small portion of the vehicles sold and do not have a lot of residual value on the secondary market generally.
yes, but they represent a small portion of the vehicles sold and do not have a lot of residual value on the secondary market generally.
I seriously doubt fear of battery replacement at 80k is an actual issue given the traction battery is warrantied to 100k and the hybrid to 150k:
https://www.toyota.com/electrified-vehicles/warranty/
Hell I’d WANT the battery to crap out at 80k!
Every part of this statement is false.
The Prius was the top-selling vehicle in California for years (the largest market in the US)
Look up used prices on the prius; they hold their value incredibly well.
And replacement battery costs aren’t a concern with full EVs? They’re like an order of magnitude (or more) worse.
“I don’t understand why we’re insisting on jumping straight from ICE vehicles to fully electric vehicles”
Is that what is happening here? Seems to me it’s emissions targets allowing many forms of propulsion whether that’s EV, PHEV, cleaner ICE, or whatever.
I tend to agree with you, but the articles I’ve been reading have all been written with the headline grabbing idea that we’re heading to nothing but BEVs. I haven’t read the new regulations, though, so I might just be missing something.
We aren’t, the headline is about EVs because EV’s get attention right now. The rules just lower the limits on total fleet CO2 and other air pollutants they don’t specify that EVs are needed just that automakers need to meet the limits. Realistically we’re likely to see mostly hybrids and plug-in hybrids replacing ICE only vehicles and smaller increases in the number of EVs.
“I don’t understand why we’re insisting on jumping straight from ICE vehicles to fully electric vehicles.”
Yes, you clearly don’t understand. This rule is the exact opposite of your claim: it sets emissions standards instead of mandating any kind of powertrain. As in “if you can meet these standards with a coal-powered steam engined car, then go ahead, we’re not stopping you”.
Now I kind of want to see how much emissions equipment would be required to allow a coal-powered steam car to meet these standards. 😉
I feel like the EPA numbers are early enough to affect carmaker pricing and thus the blame will be focused on the current administration along with the seemingly political move(versus an actual emergency) to reduce our strategic Petroluem Reserves to stave off the oil price hikes during a midterm election.
If the prices of fuel go up and get blamed upon that action, while also putting our country in a potentially dangerous spot while Russia, North Korea, and China to an extent appear to be working towards WW3, and then again the average Joe also gets hit with ice price hikes, this will likely not go well for Joe or Even Kamala should she decide to try to run in Joe’s place.
I think they should endorse the Orange dude so they have a chance at winning. But that seems like a bad gamble since he is like Elon and seems to have a following no matter what strange stuff he does.
I expect a whole lot more people taking advantage of the 25 year rule. Just to be able to afford s DD.
One of the worst features of our government — regardless of which party’s in control — is that legislators and their pet agencies feel that they can do anything by simply mandating it. Never mind feasibility, hardship for the citizens and general disruption of life. Cut emissions? Order it, and all will be blue skies and rainbows.
Even leaving aside my own reservations about EVS, which may not apply to the general public, I don’t believe a majority of Americans are currently ready to shoulder the costs and drawbacks of giving up their ICE automobiles. Nor do I think they will approve of the long-term effects of lithium mining, four-ton vehicles and rapidly escalating price tags.
CarMax? Not terribly interested. Seems to me that buying cars online is a fool’s errand, especially considering the large sums involved these days. The one physical CarMax lot I’ve seen appears to be populated by lease returns and vehicles that don’t interest me, at prices well above what I’d pay.
My general prediction about EVs in general — Mercedes-Benz and Tesla included — is that they will soon find that they can go only so far. An electric motor and battery pack on a “skateboard” and a giant touchscreen inside will be Everycar. Once someone works the kinks out of “self-driving” (possibly even in our lifetimes, but not so certain), it’ll be available everywhere.
Carmax is not completely online, they have a decent reputation for being relatively fair for a used car dealer, and they offer a pretty reliable used car warranty.
What I am surprised they do not do is finance the cars themselves to avoid the federal interest rate hikes. Maybe they do and I just need to investigate that more, or possibly they do not have the reserves to do that, but as big as they are, I would be surprised if they could not do that on some level.
Counterpoint people are inherently lazy and without a mandate change doesn’t happen.
Example: Data has existed pointing to a need to reduce carbon emissions since the 80s. (Where that data was and who had it is a different topic)
Result: Emissions increased and nothing changed until mandates were set.
See also water quality through the industrial revolution , burning rivers in the 70s, smog from WWII til now, hole in the ozone in the 80s, bald eagle extinction with DDT…
We are now grappling with decades of partial action and a generation of people calling for action (who largely don’t have the backyards to protest wind energy that they support).
CarMax bought all those cars at a huge premium. Now they’re trying to sell them at a huge premium. I checked some prices the other day, and it looks like a $7-8k premium on even basic cars…It’s going to just get worse for them with interest rates.
The Republicans won’t let any of these regulations stick. Congress will not pass anything, so it’ll be executive orders that get put in place until the next administration resends them and so on and so one.
If I’m still around in 2032 (will probably be mowed down by a “full self driving” Tesla while crossing the street) then I’ll believe the rules if they haven’t been walked back by 2 administrations
The Thwaites Glacier doesn’t care if automakers don’t want to change. It doesn’t care if oil companies want to keep on making billions. It also doesn’t care if you don’t want to drive an EV.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/04/10/sea-level-rise-southern-us/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/10/sea-level-rise-climate-crisis-miami-new-orleans
And I don’t care if it is there or not.
As long as China keeps building coal plants and industry is allowed to pollute at will, it also doesn’t care if every car on the road changed to an EV tomorrow.
This would still drastically reduce emissions which is the important thing. Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress.
No. He’s saying that even a huge reduction in US vehicle emissions would be quite minor compared to emissions from industry, shipping and the third world. Meaning it wouldn’t be a drastic reduction.
There’s a difference between “not letting perfection get in the way of progress” and “costing Americans many billions and making transportation unaffordable for a small reduction in global emissions.”
It’s the equivalent of yelling at your kid to clean up a few drops of milk from the floor while the dog is shitting on the carpet in the next room.
Yes it will reduce some CO2, but it’s shifting the blame from large corporations and foreign nations to individual car drivers.
Picturing a Pug and a Bakharwal crapping on my family room rug as I was reading your post because that’s exactly what’s happening in the world right now..
We (the US and EU at least) should be helping China (and India, and the multitude of developing African countries) skip the coal/natural gas step. Instead, we all get caught up playing politics and pointing fingers.
You’re not totally wrong IMO, however just because “China gets to do it” doesn’t mean the rest of us should rest on our laurels until they catch up.
True, these EPA regs need to stretch into industry more than just the transportation sector, but that isn’t politically expedient…
Edit: A bit of a more concise way to state this: We have the opportunity and ability to do better, so we should. Yes, we should be holding China and all of our industry (not just consumers) to a higher standard, but why stop improving the rest if we can?
The EPA could just as easily have pointed its heavy hand at the shipping industry, the airline industry, the steel industry, the power industry, the cement industry, the farm industry, etc etc etc and told them to reduce emissions by X in 10 years, but it’s easier to make individual car drivers out to be the bad guys, and make them suffer for the sins of the rest of us.
Regular consumers will pay for both things, EV transition in light automotive, and EV adoption heavy industry. The only question is in which order we will pay for these things? it looks like we’ll be buying cars first, then industry will pass their costs on to us when the heavy hand comes for them eventually.
As long as China keeps building coal plants and industry is allowed to pollute at will, it also doesn’t care if every car on the road changed to an EV tomorrow.
In addition to those coal plants China “is recognized as the undisputable global leader in renewable energy expansion, adding new projects to the grid almost as fast as the rest of the world combined last year”:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/08/energy-chinas-renewables-progress-comes-alongside-a-coal-power-boom.html
Keep in mind that in addition to those coal plants China also for better or worse built the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world, is one of the largest producers of nuclear power in the world and is building more while the US has sat on their collective asses for decades. Meanwhile Germany sticks its head in its own ass by decommissioning what reactors they have in favor of renewables but instead using MOAR coal and up until recently Russian NG to meet the shortfall. Even Japan is finally waking up to the fact they can’t get by without nuclear.
China is also the force which lead the solar revolution. Until China got into the game to make cheap silicon panels solar was a complete joke. Now China is the the worlds leader in solar output (by a lot). Wind? Chinese companies make more wind turbines than anyone else.
So why the coal plants? Because China has 1.4B people. They would have had even more (around 1.8B) had they not had the balls to try to reduce that population surplus rather than whistling by that massive elephant as the rest of the world is doing. China has spent the past 40 years getting most of those folks out of extreme poverty.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
That and running the worlds second largest economy takes energy, a LOT of energy. Renewables aren’t going to be enough to satisfy anywhere near what’s needed.
IMO it’s damn hypocritical to complain that China is using fossil fuels to pull those folks out of poverty when that’s EXACTLY what the US and Europe did throughout the 20th century to put the world in this environmental disaster in the first place. More so when for decades they could have offset a lot of those emissions with much more nuclear power and chose not to for *reasons*?
Little known fact: Electric cars still create massive pollution and impact, some EVs more than some gas cars, and many(most?) EVs more than some diesels and highly efficient gassers.
If everybody switched to EVs overnight, emissions would be, at best, halved. 50% of glacier melting is still glacier melting.
So, the Thwaites Glacier doesn’t care if automakers don’t want to change. It also doesn’t care if Tesla and lithium miners want to keep on making billions. It also doesn’t care if you don’t want to walk everywhere.
Calling BS: You’re Being Lied to About Electric Carsmotortrend.com
Calling BS: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths
The EPA’s study, which is a couple years old and so does not include monstrosities like the Hummer EV, says that EVs produce about half the lifetime co2 emissions of a gas car.
I didn’t pull that number out of my ass.
*assuming use of coal/gas for power production. Shift over to nuclear and renewable + batteries and things look a whole lot better.
That’s true, if we got a lot more nuclear power then electric vehicles become a lot better. And it kind of has to be nuclear, because other renewable options are often dubiously beneficial and ruinously expensive. Nobody’s gonna drive electric cars if they all cost $100k and electricity is $0.50/kwh.
Nuclear for base load and battery + renewables for peaking should work great. The battery part is crucial — if I can’t dispatch power I can’t maintain voltage and timing, and that’s what grid operators care about.
The Smoking Tire had Liebermann on the podcast recently and had to call him out on some of his remarks. Not all of directly on that podcast because Matt and Zack didn’t have the data in front of them, but they followed up in their next podcast with information from experts.
Some of Jonny’s obvious exaggerations are that if you have a phone or laptop, you are as responsible for lithium mining ills as if you have an EV. So a 1,000 lb Tesla battery is the same consumption as a 2lb laptop+phone on a per person basis? Nope.
Just to be clear, I’m an environmentalist, and had a career as an environmental scientist (assessing/cleaning up/monitoring contaminated sites). I’m for multiple solutions, not EVs only, ban everything else. This new rule strikes me as ambitious, but I like that they are focusing on the total emissions and not limiting the different ways to get there.
Do you really believe that a full switch to EV’s in the next 15 years is going to save the planet? It’s going to magically be repaired and the future will make it all better, what happens when we have 10-11B people that you’re saved planet struggles to support. This place is doomed, civilization will self destruct before the planet becomes inhabitable. Over population is the real problem, lets impose reproduction limits, free EVs to any family that stops having kids especially if you are on govt benefits.
Over population is the real problem, lets impose reproduction limits
Sure but how? That would take getting every major Abrahamic religion on board to reverse millennia of dogma pushing their God’s commandment to “be fruitful and multiply”. It would also require completely new economic policies NOT hinged on the exponentially growing population pyramid. On top of that you’ll have to fight the baby hoarders who just. can’t. stop. because babies are SOOO cute! as well as the family oriented industries that make money on those kids.
Much as I’d like to see the world adopt a one child policy its just not going to happen. China famously tried, they made good progress then the ^$% cowards chickened out.
I can think of many ways but no one is going to like it. Lets ban or limit pets too while were at it, you don’t need 2+ dogs & a cat, one pet per lifetime.
We never fix the source of the problem. Top 3 pollution sources; 1-Energy, 2-Agriculture, 3-ICE…. what determines the amount of all that? Population! We will be applying band-aids to a new problem every few decades that will never go away because the root is not solved.
I can think of many ways but no one is going to like it.Lets ban or limit pets too while were at it, you don’t need 2+ dogs & a cat, one pet per lifetime.
I get your comment was snark; however as someone who’s fostered for an animal rescue group I’m painfully aware of the overpopulation problem of cats and dogs and the horrific solutions humans use to address it.
Still as a thought experiment lets compare kids with pets:
TL:DR Pets =/= kids
*In the case of the cats it should be noted that a couple of years after the mass cat poisonings Australia had a biblical plague of rodents. I don’t think that was a coincidence.
People not having children should get tax breaks.
As long as they don’t take any “social services”, sure. Their kids are going to pay for your retirement.
Peak population is coming, and from what I understand of it, we can support the population peak as long as we don’t destroy the world getting there. Just did a google search to refresh my memory of the numbers, and found we’re (possibly) closer than projected, and the peak may be lower than expected: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a42759601/humanity-peak-population-this-century-singularity/
would be curious to see how the Covid deaths affected this number?
No industry of this size and scale has been disrupted this thoroughly by government fiat on a timescale this short since WWII.
I have very little confidence in the US Government (or the automakers) of the 2020s to pull it off with anything approaching success. More likely constraints on lithium mining and battery manufacturing make the shortages of 2021-22 look quaint. And the problems with charging infrastructure to only increase.
I think the likeliest outcome though is that it’s delayed by lawsuits until a Republican administration takes office. If that doesn’t occur, expect a rush of panic buying ICE vehicles around 2030.
Idk. GoVeRnMeNt FiAt is a scary sounding combination of words, until you start thinking about some of the benefits of it (also, setting rules is kind of the whole point of government…)
I would imagine that the creation of the FDA had some pretty tremendous downstream impacts for the food and drug industry. Ditto for the EPA and energy producers. NHTSA dramatically reshaped the auto industry and the American landscape. OSHA, WIC, or any other combination of letters you might get from an alphabet soup – they all affect an industry to some degree.
The United States should be a world leader in the emerging space of EVs. We invented the idea of the “modern” automobile, we know gasoline is a dying technology, why wouldn’t we want to be at the forefront of the next tech stepping stone. Do we want to be lapped by China? Korea? Germany? Maybe your blood doesn’t bleed as red, white, and blue as mine, but complaining that we don’t get to keep using donkeys instead of that newfangled steam engine technology to haul our grain to market seems like really backwards thinking to me, and it places the country at a serious competitive disadvantage.
I hope this doesn’t read as an attack on you, v10. It isn’t intended that way. I think Democratic leadership has a seriously bad messaging problem around this and other green new deal initiatives. This should be framed as an “America-first, America best” type of transition, and the naysayers should be rightly derided as luddites who would rather rest on their laurels than push the envelope of American ingenuity.
You make some good points, but the main issues I have with your post are:
-I used the term government fiat because this is coming from an unelected agency, not a bill passed by Congress and signed by the president. I would not refer to the IRA (or the climate provisions within) as fiat.
-The timeframe and scale of the change. The other agencies you mention had effects on industry, but nothing like “nothing you currently sell will be legal, and you need to redo everything in one product cycle if you want to stay in business”
-The horse (or donkey) vs car or steam engine analogy gets brought up a lot, but lost in the comparison is the fact that horses are still legal. No one had to be coerced into swapping, the car was self-evidently better. The EV transition is either 1) The same thing, in which case most people will change to the superior product of their own free will, or 2) The opposite, in which case the worse product needs to be forced on people by the government. Commenters seem to argue that 1) is true, but the government is proceeding as if 2) is true. So why the disconnect? EV adoption is rising rapidly on its own.
By all means, brand this as a pro-American set of regulations, so long as its acknowledged that the American consumers are the ones being punished.
When candidates are being run based on how good they were at college football (or how good they were at coaching college football, how good they were at ignoring rapes at college football) rather than any sort of legislative expertise, let’s not pretend that being democratically elected confers legitimacy. There’s a guy who was elected to Congress and we aren’t even sure if we know his actual name, for crying out loud. In some cases, the opinion of 1 (non-elected) expert really actually is more important than the opinions of the electorate. Congress relies on the opinions of these experts every day to craft legislation (or they just copy the homework of the non-elected industry lobbyist that most recently greased their palms).
We won the fuck out of WW2. “Ford – you’re building planes now. GM – build me some Jeeps. Stop selling passenger cars, or make them out of wood if you have to. You don’t get to use metal any more. I don’t care that it will be a disruption, life is tough, wear a helmet.” I get your point that it was a radical shift, but it also kind of proves that sometimes direct government intervention is needed to achieve specific results.
Horses are legal, but if they kicked you in the head every time you rode one, maybe they wouldn’t be? We can talk about the environmental problems with mining lithium if you want, or how China is still burning coal at an unsustainable and irresponsible rate, but they are red herrings. I’d rather break my arm than have bone cancer, and it seems to me like continuing to burn fossil fuels is like choosing to have bone cancer. Lithium mining is more like a broken arm. Sure it is bad temporarily, but it is better than the alternative. Redwood Materials and other battery recycling enterprises are emerging to tackle this new market opportunity. American ingenuity!
The EV transition is better. It is just more expensive (like all good things). Also, I’m pretty sure I’d get pulled over if I tried to take my horse or my donkey down I-90.
The government didn’t listen to the top qualified expert when they created the Colorado river water rights, a mistake evident for many many years that it is only now taking action to fix. Since when has the government ever had the best and brightest working for it?
Since when has the government ever had the best and brightest working for it?
The Manhatten project comes to mind..
I dispute your claim that the EV transition is better, but I appreciate your reasoned and thoughtful posts, and will therefore focus on where we can agree, namely:
I think we both agree that if we can have EVs with the same usability and cost as gas cars, and if said vehicles are developed in this country, that will be A Good Thing.
If such a thing isn’t possible by the early 2030s, we may part ways on what we think the right path forward is.
Sorry, but I can’t just legally hop on my horse and go to Walmart to pick up tampons.
Around here you can. *shrugs*
The Amish do it all the time.
Anyways, the point is that you can still buy horses, own them, use them (within reasonable limits) etc. There is no government agency seemingly dedicated to rooting them out.
Yes, but you have to collect their poop. If you can find a way to catch ICE emissions and dispose of them then maybe that’s an option?
I’m on record as favoring a carbon tax with the proceeds split 50-50 between a dividend to compensate lower and middle income taxpayers and direct investment into carbon capture.
In exchange, all I would ask is the immediate repeal of all ICE bans and emissions regulations like the ones rolled out today, so that those of us who are willing to pay more for our enjoyment of sports cars and long road trips can continue to do so.
If you only care about the CO2 and would repeal all the other regs, then the diesel will come back with a vengeance, since it has lower CO2 emissions and they’re easier to lower still, compared to gasoline engines.
You can definitely make them into sport cars, the Golf GTD was on par with the GTI, and Audi’s LeMans dominance was all diesel powered.
I can. What’s your problem?
but you have to admit, some days it seems like NHTSA just implements stuff to have something to say they did. Regardless of actual need.
Some days? How about at any point in the entire history of NHTSA? There was never any good reason to prohibit any headlights that weren’t sealed beam.
They’ve been doing this for longer than you or I have been alive.
But the govt has pretty much be a total cluster f*** the past 30 years and very little benefit. They f’d up healthcare, college, banking, pretty much everything. If they weren’t all a bunch of old cranky self serving nit picky arrogant brats, then perhaps they could work together, be honest, listen to the people, and pass laws instead of wasting my money and making our lives confusing and frustrating through useless executive orders.
Almost like there has been a multi-generational, sustained and concerted effort by malicious actors to break government at a fundamental level. I wonder who would do that ????
Now this may sound crazy, but it just might be the sociopathic resource hoarders that make up the 1% who finance and/or run the corporations that finance our politicians on both sides. If I didn’t know any better I might think that the only way to obtain that level of wealth is through less than ethical means and that those individuals probably don’t have the most altruistic intentions, but what do I know…
Doing the right thing will almost always be more expensive than doing the wrong thing. Yes, it is more expensive to pay employees a living wage when compared to owning human chattel. Yes, it is more expensive to stop using CFCs and to dispose of industrial waste safely rather than just dumping it in a nearby river.
The people who want to pay peanuts and dump toxic waste in the river are not your friends. They are dragons, and they will happily burn alive anyone that they consider a threat to their pile of gold.
Government is what stops human slavery and rivers on fire. The job of government should be to slay dragons.
I think we’re on the same page here. I vote we get all the money out of our government.
If I was King for a moment and had one thing I could enact to help, taking money out of politics would be my first choice!
Neoliberals say what?
Don’t let the reality ruin a good buzz from setting policies the people in charge (likely) won’t be around for when they fail!