Tesla Presses Its Case On Fuel Standards

An anonymous reader writes: Tesla is preparing their case to leave federal mileage and emissions regulations intact, or make them even more strict. In addition, the company is fighting other car makers from loosening more stringent regulations in California. The WSJ reports: "Tougher regulations could benefit Tesla, while challenging other auto makers that make bigger profits on higher-margin trucks and sport-utility vehicles. Tesla's vice president of development, Dairmuid O'Connell, plans to argue to auto executives and other industry experts attending a conference on the northern tip of Michigan that car companies can meet regulations as currently written. 'We are about to hear a lot of rhetoric that Americans don't want to buy electric vehicles,' Mr. O'Connell said in an interview ahead of a Tuesday presentation in Traverse City, Mich. 'From an empirical standpoint, the [regulations] are very weak, eminently achievable and the only thing missing is the will to put compelling products on the road.'"

Comments

Not surprising

[Registered Coward v2]

Every company likes regulations that limits competition or hurts competitors; while fighting any that impacts its profitability.

Re:Not surprising

[mc6809e]

And politicians enjoy the power to write regulation enabling law so as to extort campaign contributions from companies.

Smart

[Gordo_1]

Hey I like Tesla as much as the next guy, but wake me up when a corporation lobbies government in a way that goes against their own self-interest.

The theory here is that if more stringent fuel mileage standards are maintained, it will force traditional automakers to either make more tiny, anemic 4 cylinder gas engines (early 1980s anyone?) or push further into hybrid and electric car territory in order to deliver meaningful power without as much (or any) gasoline. In either situation, Tesla stands to gain as either they compete with comparatively fast, powerful vehicles (Model S, X, 3) or they are competing apples to apples in electrics/plug-in hybrids for which they'll have significant control over lithium ion battery production with the Gigafactory, and a 5-10 year head start at building ground up purpose-built all-electrics.

Re:Smart

[drinkypoo]

Hey I like Tesla as much as the next guy, but wake me up when a corporation lobbies government in a way that goes against their own self-interest.

Wake me up when they prove that they're actually performing battery swaps, which is required at this phase to get all the credits they're getting. There's no evidence that they can do it, let alone that they are doing it. (If anyone feels differently, let's see some photographic evidence of a swap actually taking place; I am not interested in seeing the pictures of the car sitting in the swap station with nothing happening.)

Re:Smart

[Gordo_1]

They *are* doing them, but there are several manual steps currently. Go to Teslamotorsclub.com if you don't believe it.

For what it's worth, battery swaps are a dead end. Few people need them with Supercharging becoming more ubiquitous by the day . Tesla won't be doing widespread swaps for privately owned cars any time soon, if ever. Maybe for commercial vehicles 5-10 years down the road...

Re:Smart

[jandersen]

... theory here is that if more stringent fuel mileage standards are maintained, it will force traditional automakers...

I'm no fan of cars in general, although I would probably go for an electric vehicle next time I need to change. It looks to me like they (Tesla) are pushing for a standard that only or predominantly looks at the emissions from the vehicle, whereas the obviously right thing would be to count in all the emissions required to produce and maintain vehicles.

Re:Smart

[Cyberax]

I have a Tesla Model S. And I've participated in the battery-swap beta.

It works, almost as on the video - except you have to carefully position your car and attendant manually blocks your car's wheels from rolling.

It doesn't make a lot of sense, though. The price ($85) is not worth it, it's just easier to wait 30 minutes for a supercharge.

Re:Smart

[GrumpySteen]

That top 1% owns 40% of the wealth in the country. Only a fool would argue that they shouldn't be paying 40% of the taxes.

Let me guess, you're a card-carrying member of the Republican party and you really believe that Fox News is fair and balanced.

Re:Smart

[Zobeid]

CARB was convinced that Tesla demonstrated the ability to swap batteries, and CARB sets the rules for ZEV credits. Tesla have done exactly what they needed to do in order to meet CARB's bizarre diktats.

Now, can anybody explain to me why battery swapping is worth additional credits in the first place? CARB's mandate is supposed to be cleaner air. Swapping batteries doesn't make the air cleaner. They give three times the ZEV credits for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as they do for battery electric vehicles -- even though both produce the same amount of pollutant emissions: none. Where's the logic?

Oh yeah. . . The logic is that Toyota -- by some measures the largest car company in the world (effectively tied with VW, last I heard) -- unloaded a truckload of cash to lobby CARB board members.

Re:Smart

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody counts the emissions to produce any other vehicles, so why would we hold electric cars to a different standard? The manufacturing processes are not particularly worse for one than for the other.

In fact, I would bet that the reduced metal machining from not having a solid-block engine under the hood probably saves overall manufacturing emissions, once you factor it all the way back to the metal foundry, refinery, and strip mine. Only the strip mine would be comparable for rare earths that go into batteries. The refinery is much smaller due to smaller volumes and the foundry isn't really necessary at all.

Other than that, you still have to have a metal frame, metal or plastic body panels, a finished interior, glass windows, and rubber for the tires and various other parts. This is identical for any car manufacturing process.

The reason they're pushing to measure emissions is because that's the only meaningful difference between electric and ICE cars.

Re:Smart

[Zobeid]

The top range Tesla now is 270 miles per charge. How often do you drive more than 270 miles in a day? Be honest now. . . Because most of us rarely do that.

Recharging time. . . It takes 20 seconds to plug in your car in the evening. In the morning you have a full charge. That's way more convenient than going to the gas station.

If you're on the highway, taking that epic road trip, then yeah. . . You're screwed. It's gonna kill your soul when you have to stop for a 20 or 30 minute quick charge a couple of times during the long day's driving. And you totally weren't going to stop like that in your gas car, because you are a superhuman who never needs to rest, eat or use the bathroom.

I have no idea what "shitty little cars with no cargo" you are referring to. I thought the topic was Tesla? The Model S is a full-sized car with enormous cargo space, front and back. You can haul your drum kit in it.

Re:Smart

[babybird]

That's perfectly valid-- you're among the 1-5% of the population that the current Tesla isn't an ideal fit for at least several times a year. For everyone else's use case, it's way more than adequate. It may even be adequate for you, depending on how many of those trips you make. If you save enough gas during the rest of your year, the difference may be enough to rent a vehicle for those trips to your mom's house and still leave you break even or profitable relative to driving something else all year long (ignoring whether or not you can afford a Tesla right now in the first place of course).

It's not ideal in every possible situation today, and it likely never will be, but that's not a true negative because neither will any other vehicle be. But it's beneficial when it's ideal or close enough to ideal in enough situations, and for most people, Tesla has already surpassed that point (again, save for the current initial cost of the vehicle). It's already better than all of its most direct competition on most, but not all metrics, and most of its competition on several other metrics, and that was the purpose in making them in the first place-- demonstrating that it can actually be done in the real world.

So there's really very little reason for the auto industry to try to argue an opposing position if that position is already demonstrably false.

Re:Smart

[swillden]

Any system which allows for refuelability/battery swapping has a much better chance of competing with current transportation fuel methods.

Nice assertion. I'll counter with one of my own: Battery swapping has negligible effect on the ability of EVs to compete with ICEVs for consumer travel. The only case where it's of use is in long-distance, non-stop travel, which is a miniscule percentage of road miles and which can in most cases be done with a rental vehicle. As long as the people in the car need to refuel every few hours, all you need is enough range to go as far as the people can, and a sufficiently-fast recharge time that by the time the people eat the car is ready to go again.

What's needed for EVs to compete isn't battery swapping, it's lower prices for vehicles with adequate range. The Model S has the range required, now. The Nissan LEAF and similar cars are in the ballpark on price. When we get a $25K (new) EV sedan with a 250-mile range, they'll sell like hotcakes in suburban middle-class America, and pollution levels in places like LA will decline dramatically in just a few years.

This isn't to say that battery swapping never makes sense, or that better highway and home charging infrastructure (particularly for apartment dwellers) doesn't matter, but solving the price/range problem will put EVs over the hump and the rest will follow naturally.

4-bangers less anemic than they used to be

[swb]

As much as I dislike the NY Times trend towards posting videos, it was interesting to see their review of the new Volvo XC90 with a 4 cylinder engine that's supercharged AND turbocharged. IIRC the review says its rated at nearly 300 HP.

It's a large and fairly heavy car, so I don't think combined mileage was more than 25 MPG but it's definitely an improvement over the 4.4L V8 (my S80 with the same engine gets about 17 combined).

The only thing I'd worry about is if they're extracting Fast and Furious style horsepower from 4 cylinder engines is that they'll get Fast and Furious levels of engine life.

Frankly, I don't think Tesla needs to play the bootlegger-and-baptist game with fuel economy regulations to be competitive with ICE carmakers, they just need to be price and performance competitive within their model segments. At the oligarch country club where I do some work, I've seen a lot more Teslas and a lot fewer new S550s and my guess is that most of the drivers don't give a shit about the fuel cost or environmental impact of what they drive. They want performance and look-at-me status, and if it gives them an environmental cachet with their daughters' bohemian ivy league friends, so much the better,

The bigger challenge will be providing a car the plebes find competitive at the $30k mark. For tofu-eating yoga types, this won't be hard. They would drive a Prius or a Fit anyway. It's the Honda Pilot or Santa Fe buyers they need to appeal to and provide a competitive alternative.

How polite

[sjbe]

"I'm an advantaged rich prick". Sorry. There's no gentle way to say it.

Maybe not, but there is a way to say it like an asshole which you just proved.