Tesla Lining Up Attack on Auto Industry Lobbying | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Lining Up Attack on Auto Industry Lobbying

cleantechnica.com

49 pointsapsec11237 comments

Wow. His "proof" that auto companies have conspired to stop fuel efficiency improvements is that they didn't continue to grow at an increasing rate for all time. Oh, and he doesn't even start the Y-axis at zero, probably because it'd make his extrapolation look even more absurd. He's extrapolated an increase from 18 MPG to 28 MPG to claim we "should" be at 75 MPG right now if the car industry hadn't conspired to stop it.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure the time period he chose to extrapolate from is right when electronic fuel injection became economically and technically viable.

Are US cars fundamentally less efficient than cars in the rest of the world? You would have to be quite the conspiracy theorist to say that car companies have effectively lobbied for lower fuel efficiency standards in the whole world.

Yes, and yes.

As far as I know, many states in the US have very few or not as stringent emissions regulations.

As for the second part, the EU has just increased its emissions standard by 2x to "accommodate" the car industry's cheating [1], because they basically found out everyone was cheating [2] by at least 2x+ emissions. So instead of - you know - punish them all for cheating, they changed the rules so the car companies are still "following the rules". This is the first time the emissions standard increased since the euro standard was introduced 2 decades ago.

[1] - http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/28/eu-emissi...

[2] - http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/09/mercedes-...

You can thank Merkel for that

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/vw-scandal-expo...

Good example of how price of commodity (gas) drives the market. US has (had?) half the price of gas compared to our overtaxed europe, so for US consumer consumption is/was not that high priority. When I was for a couple of months in US in 2004, there was no advertisement on cars that showed consumption in brief specs that should catch your eye. Not a signle one, neither in newspapers, billboards, etc. US cars were dirt cheap too, comapred to similarly-shaped european counterpart (well here it depends on which brand to compare).

US cars are generally percieved, even nowadays, as cheaper alternatives to some european equivalents. Sure, power is there at low price point, but not used very efficiently. Driving experience/handling is a bit worse (before stoning me, yes there are of course exceptions, but no there is no mass-produced equivalent BMW experience, nor porsche/italians). Heard new Corvette is actually a big step up, but never had the chance to try, it's a rare beast here over the pond.

And consumption is defined mostly by engine (+ weight savings), and same as stated above could be said about engines.

Since my experience is outdated, please let me know if things had moved, ie due to crysis/some manufacturers going almost bankrupt.

> When I was for a couple of months in US in 2004, there was no advertisement on cars that showed consumption in brief specs that should catch your eye

Every single new car sold in the US comes with a huge window sticker with the miles-per-gallon and dollars-per-year cost.

E.g., https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=bt1

This is not new. The window stickers were first introduced 35 years ago. http://www3.epa.gov/carlabel/

There are tons of cars that advertise their consumption creds. Of course, the Prius and Volt are battling it out in TV ads right now (literally, today I saw a :30 spot for the Volt that said "1000 miles between fill ups, unlike Prius"), and fuel economy appears in tons of small and midsize car ads. (E.g., check out the Chevy Cruze's site -- terrible car, but 46 MPG is right there below the hero shot of the car -- http://www.chevrolet.com/cruze-compact-car.html)

The REAL problem with US fuel economy statistics is that it's given as miles-per-gallon instead of gallons-per-mile. People get the (totally wrong) impression that going from 35 to 36 MPG has the same impact as going from 10 to 11 MPG. A standard displayed as fuel/distance would make the difference much more clear.

Try to find a small, diesel pickup-truck in the USA. Before cars like the Fiat 500 hit our shores, I doubt we had any very small-engined (<1.5L), while Europe had many, some of them even being diesel.

I was a car enthusiast for a fews years, and you quickly notice that Europe has a MUCH better selection of very fuel-efficient vehicles. In the US, well... we popularized the muscle-car and the Escalade.

Doesn't the US have stricter emissions requirements that make it harder to offer diesel vehicles there than in Europe?

Yeah. Diesel can be made to burn clean though, and diesel-engined cars are more efficient (~20-40%). We Americans have the need for speed and diesel engines are slow-accelerating, which keeps sales low.

Weren't there even tax cuts provided to those who bought big SUVs?

Yes, if I understand correctly, cars can qualify as a business expense, but the tax credit limit is $25,000 for heavier vehicles like SUVs, compared to ~$11,000 for cars. (I’m not an expert on this subject; those are numbers from a quick web search.)

Personally I find it pretty distasteful that tax deductions intended for business vehicles can so easily be used on people’s personal commuter cars.

Everyone else is pretty much giving a handout to the auto industry at that point, while also encouraging the purchase of more dangerous and more environmentally destructive vehicles.

I find European small cars to be total trash. Would never buy one. How am I supposed to tow my boat to carry my dirt bike in car? Where do I keep the boar I hunt?

America has an amazing auto industry with great selection of cars. Last thing we need is some Musk like moneybag trying to screw the auto industry to promote a bad car like Tesla. I will be very happy to see him succeed by offering a better car than auto industry but not by using government to bring some phony emission regulations.

I find European small cars to be total trash. Would never buy one. How am I supposed to tow my boat to carry my dirt bike in car? Where do I keep the boar I hunt?

You've failed to understand what a "use case" is.

Do you honestly think people are suggesting small cars should be marketed to hunting and dirt bike enthusiasts?

European Hunters have as much choice as we have.

The correct answer to all your questions is "Lada Niva" ;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Niva

Very popular among hunters.

Your entire diatribe would be justified if the existing auto industry didn't also rely heavily on subsidies and government loans (look into the meme: GM=Government Motors - there's some basis of truth there).

Yes. New light vehicles average fuel consumption 2008:

US: 11 l/100km, UK: 7 l/100km

UK is pretty representative of Europe. (Also the UK improved by 20% since the 2008 figures). US and Canada are unusual in having such widespread domestic "truck" ownership.

http://www.autonews.com/article/20140403/OEM05/140409928?tem...

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/env01-fu...

Likely the difference can be explained away somewhat by the difference in testing. The EPA testing is much more stringent, the same exact configuration showing much better mileage in European testing than US testing. The difference between US and Japan are even worse. The rest of the difference is simply vehicle preference, the US having more sales in the truck category.

It's a fine balance between efficiency, emissions, and safety. Cars in the US tend to be heavier by a few hundred pounds compared to the euro versions due to various safety requirements and the california emissions standards tend to set the pace for the rest of the country. If you want your car to meet 50-state approval you aim for Cali's standards and take the efficiency hit.

I'm probably not the best person to judge this, but after having spent a couple of months in the US and renting a lot of cars, most of them were basically new cars, I can say that all of the cars had worse fuel economy than the (old) cars I have or used to have back home in Slovakia. I currently drive a 2009 Ford Galaxy and before that it was a Skoda Fabia from 2001. I could get more MPG on either of them than on an average new US car.

I think you are right! You cannot compare a Galaxy to a Fabia though. It's like, twice the weight?

The "conspiracy theorist" fallacy: claiming that an argument is invalid because it implies a conspiracy.

No not all countries. Australia for example has no fuel emission standards. It's really only the EU that has been so far out front in this area.

Tesla is just clutching at straws here.

Actually Australia conforms to the Euro 5 standard for cars and light commercial vehicles

https://infrastructure.gov.au/roads/environment/emission/

I have been so confused in this area but assumed we didn't because of the recent press outrage during the VW scandal. Apparently we comply with Euro 4 but not yet Euro 5.

http://theconversation.com/australias-weaker-emissions-stand...

Weaker, as opposed to non-existent.

I agree, we can not trust Tesla or Musk any more than Toyota. I find Tesla Model S pretty third rate and over-hyped car and I find it despicable that rich people get $10K subsidy on each Tesla they buy while a lot of us drive 20 year old cars.

Keeping the motives aside I am unable to see how auto industry benefits by keeping fuel efficiency standards low. Fuel efficiency standards are more affected by competition than government regulation. However if government somehow sets unreasonable and achievable standards while keeping the cost of car low, losers such as Telsa might benefit.

The more important question to ask is whether American air is more cleaner than other parts of the world. Having traveled a bit I can say it is. Also comparison to any European country is completely meaningless, USA is a large country where people drive all sort of crazy vehicles for crazy purposes. I don't see to many RVs, boat tows etc. in UK as in USA.

" … while a lot of us drive 20 year old cars." in which you " … tow my boat to carry my dirt bike … "?

I'm not going to say either of the arguments in your two posts are wrong (or right), but they're not terribly internally self consistent.

(Full disclosure, I ride a motorcycle that uses more fuel than a friend's late model Honda Jazz, so I'm not much of a tree-hugging greenie - but I certainly don't find it "despicable" that people who choose to buy "zero-emission" cars get a big subsidy because the government wants to encourage both the consumers and the industry who build them. If the governemnt decided there was a public health reason to subsidize "outdoor activity", would your boat and dirtbike ownership suddenly make _you_ "despicable"?)

What I drive is completely irrelevant.

Agreed, but you're using it to support your argument. Which makes it appropriate to use in rebutting your argument...

Those projected trend lines don't seem to be based on much data and are really rose. I support his cause, but half-assing it just makes things worse.

So what Tesla is doing is not lobbying to sell more Teslas at the end, because they fulfill the requirements while those others aren't?

It's pretty much the definition of lobbying. They're trying to convince a regulatory body to give them an advantage over their competitors.

40% of US electricity is made out of coal. Tesla are not zero emission vehicles.

They're not zero emission vehicles because the American electricity industry is medieval in its insistence on coal mining, though I think it's somewhat unfair to pin that on Tesla.

But you have a choice of who your electric provider is and many offer different plans one or more of which is differentiated by the power source.

A coal powered electric vehicle is still cleaner than one burning petroleum. Central emissions controls, electrical efficiency, all that jazz.

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