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White House Proposal Rolls Back Fuel Economy Standards, No Exception For California (npr.org)
The Trump administration has proposed a rollback of Obama-era fuel efficiency and emissions standards, while simultaneously taking aim at California's unique ability to set more stringent rules. From a report: Under the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency called for the fuel economy standards for new vehicles to ratchet up over time. The increasingly strict standards were designed to combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. On Thursday, the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a new proposed rule that would instead freeze the standards at their 2020 levels for six years. "Cars and trucks are just part of the basic fiber of the American economy and the American experience, so we take what we're doing very, very seriously," Bill Wehrum, EPA assistant administrator, told reporters on Thursday. The agencies say that increasing fuel efficiency requirements contributes to an increase in the cost of new cars and trucks, which may discourage consumers from buying new vehicles. Because newer vehicles have advanced safety features, the administration argues, increasing fuel economy requirements therefore harms highway safety, as well as having economic effects.
Enjoy your world burning to death stupid Earthicans!
oh. wait. crap...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
so "build a wall" to keep 'em out. guess what? if you did that, the lower paying jobs that they were 'taking'.. would still pay shit, still wouldn't offer benefits or health insurance, even if it was gun-totin' white male native-born americans that took those jobs.
just another brain-dead policy of this fucked-up administration.
relaxing the efficiency goals set by previous administration basically the continuation of the assault on anything obama did, and pay-back to big oil, fraccers and automakers/dealers for their 'donations'.
never mind the fact that most cars sold here are made by foreign companies and/or are imported. even cars made here by american companies can barely be legally defined as a 'domestic' product (because they contain a significant, but not quite over the threshold, amount of foreign components and parts).
never mind the fact a substantial amount of oil consumed here is imported. never mind the fact that the fraccing that has kept gas prices relatively stable is fucking-up the environment nearly as much as this administration is fucking-up this country.
So why did oil companies spend so much time and energy spread misinformation about climate change then? https://www.scientificamerican...
The top income bracket (the 1%) pulls in about $2 trillion dollars. 0.001% of that gets you $20 million. On an average year, Americans purchase about 17 million vehicles, so your tax will save approximately $1.18 on the sticker price of each vehicle.
Now, if we expand to, say, the top 25% we get a figure of $6.7 trillion. 0.001% of that gets you $67 million, or about $3.94 per car.
"Screw that," you say, "I was just throwing out a number. Increase the tax by 1%". Now we're talking real numbers! A 1% surtax on the top 1% could (theoretically) pull in $20 billion dollars! Split among cars and you get... $1,180 per car. The average car in January 2018 was $36,270, so you would drop that to $35,090.
Whoo hoo! That makes the car only... $180 more than the same car in January 2017. And that's not including the cost to hit the new emissions and safety targets your tax was supposed to cover.
The EPA millage of an old car can't be compared directly with a new one as the EPA standards have changed.
As an example, I found that 1998 Honda Civic 1.6 L, 4 cyl, Automatic 4-spd Original combined EPA rating 32 mpg.
From this web site: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/comparempg.shtml
The new EPA rating is only 28mpg
New 2018 Civics get better than this.
Modern safety features like stability control, auto-braking, and collision warning add minimum weight and don't affect economy.
All wrong. Adding minimum weight does affect economy. However, once you have ABS (which does add weight... to the tune of maybe twenty pounds of pump/valve unit and longer lines, and five pounds or less of control box) it takes very little additional weight to implement ESC, or AEB. And you can do collision warning with the same hardware that does AEB.
This is a 1980s way of thinking -- build a safety-box that takes a hit well but doesn't prevent crashes.
AEB does prevent crashes, some of them anyway. So does ESC, since it helps drivers maintain control of vehicles in slippery conditions. You really got it completely wrong.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem is that CA is a large enough market that the rules they've been creating essentially apply to all the other states. That means one state is dictating to 49 other states who are not represented by the California legislature.
California isn't dictating any laws to any other states. Companies are deciding that it's easier and cheaper to only make products that comply with California's laws, instead of having multiple different versions.
That means the USA cars have even less chance of being sold in the EU
Automakers do make "global" vehicles which are sold in multiple markets, but they also make regional vehicles which are only sold in specific markets. For example, Ford is discontinuing most of its cars here in the USA, but not elsewhere in the world, where people are still buying cars.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can't comment on Germany but I suspect that things have gotten much better rather than worse. A decade ago in Minnesota nearly 70% of electricity was generated in coal fired power plants. Now it's less than 40%, and in the next decade it will drop substantially more. The rest is made up of renewables, nuclear, and natural gas.
Natural gas is still a fossil fuel of course but produces 50 to 60% less CO2 than an equivalent coal plant.
A lot of the coal plants in this country are old. Many have been taken off-line in recent years or are scheduled to come off line. They aren't being replaced with new coal plants, but with a combination of Gas and renewables. Both Wind and Natural Gas are cheaper sources of electricity than Coal in this state.
>> It was years ago and the data might be obsolete but i suspect that now it is even worse.
Nope .
Average efficiency of a gasoline car is 15% small-tank-to-wheel
Average efficiency of a fossil powered electricity plant feeding EVs through the grid is 35%, big-tank-to-wheel
You burn over two times less fossil fuel by going 100% fossil electricity.
Germany today has 48% of fossil electricity. This figure decreases yearly.
So your typical EV in Germany is responsible today for only 20% of the emissions of the same gasoline powered car.
aaaaaaa
How's life in the hypocrite lane?