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Trump Administration Plans To Freeze Obama-Era Fuel Standards (theverge.com)
The Trump administration plans to freeze Obama-era fuel-efficiency standards starting in 2021, according to a report from The Washington Post. The report says the Trump administration "would go even further by restricting a state's ability to set its own fuel standards, which would be a strike against California and its strict state-specific emissions rules," reports The Verge. From the report: The proposal has been reportedly drafted by the Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, and the plan right now is to freeze standards for cars and light trucks at levels set for the year 2021 and keep them their for five years. The Obama administration's rules, which involved a partnership with California and car makers, set standards at 50 miles per gallon for cars and light trucks by 2025. Obama also, through the Clean Air Act, granted California a waiver to set its own, higher standards. That way, if automobile manufacturers wanted to maintain a presence in the lucrative California market, they'd have to abide by the new rules. The Trump administration now says a separate law overrules that arrangement, The Washington Post reports.
Ford just mostly pulled out of the North American car market, leaving the US/Canada with a bunch of tippy little trucklets and bigger trucks. I hope gas does a 2008 and shoots up to $5/gal soon -- if it won't push people to buy more reasonable cars, maybe it will at least help sales of electric cars out of their current niche.
Also, thank God for the Japanese makers who still sell reasonably-sized, nice-to-drive actual cars in the US market.
When you govern by issuing waivers to the law instead of actually using compromise and diplomacy to pass laws, then at some point you have to expect a new Presidential Administration might be elected and revoke those waivers and reverse previous executive actions.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
More like a strike against Chevron(*), which controls he reformulation of gasoline in California to prevent importation of gasoline refined in other states, and artificially raise the price.
State specific environmental regulations should be held to he same bar as state specific laws... subject to the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution: Federal regulations override state.
(*) From those wonderful folks who brought you MTBE
Good thing is that the lithium, once mined, is recyclable. And most people drive under 50 miles a day. Which means that, with more charging stations coming online, newer electric "commuter" cars could have smaller batteries. Enough for a range of ~100 miles, not 300-400.
Also, dead is dead. How many kids have died in horrible ways in US-funded and often US-lead wars over oil? US still uses napalm. Which really does stick to kids and burn like hell.
This is classic whataboutism.
> Ford just mostly pulled out of the North American car market, leaving the US/Canada with a bunch of tippy little trucklets and bigger trucks.
You know why? Cars have stricter fuel-efficiency standards than light trucks. That makes sense. However it creates the perverse incentive that in order to meet fuel efficiency standards, manufacturers need to make bigger, heavier, less-efficient vehicles - trucks.
And there I was thinking that the Republican party were all about giving states more freedom and independence.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
1. Lithium is not a "rare earth".
2. Lithium is not a conflict mineral.
3. Lithium is extracted from salt flats or brine. Neither process uses either children or slaves.
Only where such freedom and rights benefit DOW 30 corporations or certain churches where the lunatics run the asylum.
Neither process uses either children or slaves.
So you're saying there are 'untapped inefficiencies' that could be addressed?
Not with that attitude!
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
So charge at home overnight. You can charge at about 12kWh per hour off a 240V/50A circuit. 2.5 hr gives you enough charge (30kWh) to go 100 miles, whole day's driving and more for most people. If there are chargers at work, you can also charge there. Viola! Another 100 miles' range, 200mi per day.
Cyanide and carbon monoxide are also made of carbon. Try sniffing some and telling me it's not a pollutant ... oh wait.
50mpg is not a realistic number for fuel consumption on anything you'd be willing to buy.
The Chevy Volt and the Toyota Prius both do better than 50mpg, and plenty of people are willing to buy them. They are both based on years-old technology, so there's no reason (outside of laziness and a race-to-the-bottom mentality) that carmakers can't do even better going forward.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The majority of Americans don't live in the rural US. Infernal combustion cars aren't going anywhere for the 10% of truly rural population.
"Lithium is extracted from salt flats or brine. Neither process uses either children or slaves"
Lithium is also extracted from lepidolite, which is in fact extracted in many countries with slave labor (which is incidentally children looking for lithium-borate gems within those lepidolite bodies.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Those are also mostly carbon.
Infernal combustion cars
I assume that was an autocorrect mistake, but I absolutely love it. Some kind of mix between a crotchety old-timer who doesn't want to give up his horse buggy and a mindless hipster twitter jokey who thinks all fossil fuels are pure evil.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
when Clinton (Bill) shifted the Democratic party right to win the presidency. The Republicans then moved right to protect their own identity (after all, why vote Republican when the Dems are damn near the same) and then the Dems decided to move to the new "center" and here we are with both parties far, far to the right of Eisenhower. Bernie's trying to get things moving back in the direction of FDR and the like.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Here is the full rule (1500 pages) for 2012-2016 if you'd like to read it, but I'll summarize a bit for you.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfi...
> fleet-wide averages, without as much exception for "trucks."
There are two (or more) completely separate fleets. Cars, light trucks, medium trucks (and busses), heavy trucks, motorcycles. There is no "exception", the two groups are computed entirely separately, based on entirely different MPG standards and different average lifetime miles.
For CAFE purposes, each company is essentially split into two companies - a truck company and a car company. (Also motorcycles and large trucks are computed entirely separate, as if they were different companies). You can read the full details in the EPA rules above.
So first the company does its cars. The first step on calculating the car standard is to find the average size (footprint) of the company's cars. I'll directly quote the EPA rule on this rather than trying to explain it in my own words:
--
EPAâ(TM)s final standards, like the standards NHTSA
promulgated in March 2009 for MY 2011, are expressed as mathematical functions depending on vehicle footprint. Footprint is one measure of vehicle size, and is
determined by multiplying the vehicleâ(TM)s wheelbase by the vehicleâ(TM)s average track width.
--
After finding the footprint, you look at the table (section 3, I think) that gives the formula for your range. Inputting the average footprint, the formula tells what the average fuel economy needs to be, in GALLONS PER MILE.
It's gallons per mile because a vehicle that gets 1MPG burns twice as much gas as one that gets 2MPG, but a vehicle that gets 99MPG is almost the same as one that gets 100MPG.
Subtract your company's ACTUAL average GPM for cars from the standard to get the amount of credit or debit. If the company is more efficient than required, it can either save those credits for next year, or sell the credits to another car company. Similarly, if this year's sales aren't efficient enough, the company can either use credits it earned in an earlier year, or buy credits from a more efficient company. (Credit brokers are allowed, but cannot actually own the credits, only bank them).
Once your done with the cars, you go through the same procedure, separately, for your motorcycles, then again completely separately for light trucks, etc.
I mentioned that a company that doesn't meet its target can buy credits from a company that the target. What Mack beats their heavy truck target, while BMW needs to buy credits for their cars? Mack has truck credits to sell, BMW wants to buy car credits. The public doesn't care whether a gallon of gas is burned in a motorcycle or a bus, they only care how much as is burned, so before trading companies can apply a formula to convert light truck credits to car credits, or car credits to medium truck credits or whatever. (It's not one-for-one, different kinds of credits are "worth" different amounts). Note that it may be Volvo's truck credits offsetting Ferrari's car debit. The Corporate in CAFE doesn't matter once you start trading different kinds of credits.
Just as GMC can convert truck credits to (fewer) car credits in order to sell them to Ferrari, GMC can also convert truck credits to car credits for Buick. GMC and Buick happen to be the same company, but GMC could just as easily trade those credits to a different company, maybe Ford or Volkswagen.
Again, the full details are in the actual rule linked above, but the summary is that car, light truck, medium truck, and heavy truck are computed completely separate, like separate companies. There is no averaging between cars and trucks.
Lithium can be extracted from lepidolite, but not much actually is.
Over 40% of the world's lithium supply comes from Australia, primarily spodumene mines like these. Chile and Argentina produce another 45% from brine evaporation, as is most of China's output which supplies around 7%. The rest comes from the USA, Canada, Brazil, Portugal, and 2% from petalite and spodumene mines in Zimbabwe.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?