E.P.A. Prepares to Roll Back Rules Requiring Cars Be Cleaner and More Efficient
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
"Make America dirty again"?
Classical liberals of course do not believe in positive rights. The American right started calling progressives who believe in positive rights "liberal" because unconditional access to social services seems permissive to an authoritarian.
Ignorance and spite then ran unchecked for a few generations and authoritarians now use liberal as a pejorative for anyone not on their spectrum, raising hope that the term may boomerang into correct usage.
Authoritarians currently refer to authoritarianism as "freedom".
An easier to see example is with dishwashers and toilets. The new generation of toilets created by EPA regulations has made toilets that don't really flush very well and are more expensive than before; people end up flushing multiple times which then wastes water. You pay a premium for the privilege of a less effective toilet. Same thing happens with dishwashers; politicians aren't always very good at engineering constraints.
Just because a law applies to all people in your country's market doesn't mean it is market friendly. You may be handicapping everyone equally, but still handicapping the engineering with regards to reality and physical constraints.
If the US regulates itself into having a difficult time making or using working/economical cars, then other countries can more economically create better cars (which people would argue already happens; American cars have a terrible reputation) or having better transportation networks using better transportation.
You could end up having really clean cars and horrifically expensive logistics. Maybe, maybe not, but just letting the market be more adaptive is usually a good course.
Regulations may impose a cost, but they can often spur innovation and economic growth as well.
I replaced my toilet with a new model 2 years ago. Was it the best of the best, no, but neither was my old one. Use of any amount of toilet paper with the new one = a mandatory double flush, every single time. Every so often a #1 with no TP will require a double flush as well. Yes I'm serious.
Seriously, that is not normal behavior for a new toilet.
He noticed that ever since the new machine was installed, his clothes and bed sheets often came out feeling soapy (yes, he was using detergent designed for HE machines, and the recommended amount). So one day he opened the lid mid-wash, and... the machine was so "efficient", the very stop of the clothes weren't even wet, even after they had been agitating for several minutes! This was with a medium sized load, with the basin less than half way full.
He stuck around for the rinse cycle and noticed it doesn't even fill the basin up with clean rinse water; it just continually spins the basin and sprays water for a little while. No wonder everything came out feeling soapy.
This was with a major name brand commercial/heavy duty machine by the way, introduced within the past 2-3 years.
Our machine has an extra rinse option - it normally does two rinses anyway - and fills more water on certain cycles ("hand wash.")
The GP's building owner maybe didn't read Consumer Reports to find a good one, or it is just not working right.
Sometimes the regulation is needed for thing that are actually in higher (i.e. not only shareholders' but entire society's) interest. Such as clean air or not wasting non-renewable fuels.
That is not to say we should go batshit crazy and e.g. ban all non-electric cars now but look what has happened with e.g. solar and wind after the regulations went into effect. At the start solar was several times more expensive than fossil fuels (e.g. coal), nobody would touch it as it simply wasn't competitive. After the regulations on coal and other "dirty" fuels went into effect making them more expensive to use along with subsidies for the solar panels and such, solar experienced a boom and now solar energy is almost at the same price level as fossil one and the costs are still going down. Even oil companies are investing in it now massively - simply because it became profitable (plus it is a good PR ...) All the while we have got a chance to breath cleaner air and have fewer cancers, for example.
Free market is not a solution for everything and especially in the US you have plenty of good examples where it made the situation beyond fubar - e.g. the healthcare system.
That said, "beyond fubar" is a completely accurate of description of American healthcare.
Here are some (admittedly biased) links: Against CAFE: CAFE standards increase vehicle deaths due to lighter vehicle weights: https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/why-the-governme...
A more neutral article cheerleading CAFE: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/can-cars-m...
The more neutral article does mention a handful of technologies that help reach the fuel efficiency targets. Seemed like a lot of engineering (and therefore cost).
Australian toilets are very different - the water level is low, and the flush is accomplished by violently dumping water from the tank into the bowl from a rim - which, having experienced both - effectively washes it clean with the percussive action.
Australian toilet flush example (work safe, nothing in it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RWoJ2VNd3o
You might find this short video entertaining (Zizek on toilets): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzXPyCY7jbs
Have you ever changed spark plugs? set the points gap? rebuilt a carburetor [0]? Had to use starting fluid on a cold day? let the car warm up for minutes before it could be driven? Cars back then were considered worn out at 100,000 miles, now that is the first major service interval.
As for performance, most hot hatches and sports sedans will blow away the muscle cars from the 60s:
1969 Pontiac GTO Convertible Ram Air IV 0-60: 5.8 Quarter Mile: 14.5 mpg: 8-13
2013 Honda Accord Coupe EX-L (Manual) 0-60: 5.5 Quarter Mile: 13.8 mpg: 18-28
Serious fast modern cars are at levels that would have been unimaginable then.
The same sort of foot dragging and complaining about over-regulation happened with safety features in cars. Cars then are deathtraps compared to modern cars. Every day people walk away unharmed from accidents that would have been 100% fatal in 1970.
My point here is that despite the resistance at the time the air pollution and safety standards are the best thing that ever happened to cars and to the public and to the auto industry overall.
[0] "carburetor" French colloquial, "don't fuck with it".
If you want an even comparison pick a random European car and a random American car and see which one you would rather drive.
The European car will likely be some <2 liter, maybe diesel, tiny box that is like a slightly improved Yugo, and the American car will be a luxury tank.
Trying to force Americans to cut down to European standards of living through government mandates is not politically popular. As long as we have democracy it would probably be better to come up with some alternative policy approaches.
The Honda CVCC engine which was the foundation that allowed Honda to eat GM's lunch in the 70's and 80's was developed specifically as a response to the 1970 clean air act. Current 100,000 mile service intervals are required to meet California emissions regulations that require emissions related components work that long.
Spoken by someone who has presumably not lived in both places. “Cut down” indeed!
America is vastly more wealthy than any European country and the standard of living is higher at all levels of society.
Europe is fine if you have lots of money but it would be hell to be lower class there.
Personally I prefer to live in neither but if I had to choose I would take America any day.
Here's a fun list of countries and things they are best at or top of. Try sorting by third column 'Field' then scrolling down to education or health.
You do realize your statement includes Monaco and Switzerland, correct?
True, but the balance of evidence must be to demonstrate that making that change WILL cause an improvement. Otherwise, you're simply in a religious argument. So what evidence is there that reducing regulation on cars improves their environmental impact?
I don't think this idea is more than an ivory-tower sophistry.
Also, I find the comparison of laws to brakes to be overlooking some key parts of laws and just how much abuse and corruption happens because of bad laws. If laws could be tested as much as brakes are, and if the laws had to show that they could achieve the desired results before being deployed to the public, then perhaps we could treat them more equally.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_300_SLR
2. https://web.archive.org/web/20120310182737/http://www.tsc.be...
Of course not, the EPA does not set regulations that require the development of new technology. They benchmark existing technologies, and set the standards at a level that can be met by applying those at a greater rate.
Now was fuel injection applied to production vehicles to meet regulations? It would have eventually become ubiquitous either way, but... well the closest thing we have to a control group is the off-road vehicle market. It is still in the process of making the transition to fuel injection.
It's not that the gas mileage couldn't have been brought up to the regulation standards, but that would have increased the price so much that it would no longer have been competitive against the F150.
"We're investing in F-Series because the small truck segment has steadily shrunk from almost 8 percent of total industry sales in 1994 to 1.9 percent of industry sales in 2012" [1]
I agree that CAFE, as instituted, contains some perverse incentives, but that's an argument for more sensibly crafted regulation. It's not a good argument against regulation in general.
1 - https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/trucks/a8845/reddit-re...
BTW, I definitely agree with your point that the regulations need tuning and flexibility. Having them inflexible is just like having zero-tolerance policies that ruin lives without taking into account circumstances.
That's a good question, and the answer is no. The Ranger really was as cheap as it could possibly be. The engines are pretty bog standard, normally aspirated, 4 or 6 cylinders, iron blocks. The fanciest thing in them was variable valve timing. The 2.3l Duratec in particular was very cheap, fuel-efficient engine that got the job done, and in my opinion the best of the Rangers.
MSRP for the base-model regular cab 2011 Ranger was nearly $5000 less than the regular cab F-150. It really couldn't have been any cheaper regardless of CAFE. I think crash safety regs have a much greater effect than fuel economy regs. Just a theory of mine.
There is zero incentive for car companies to innovate from an efficiency/emissions standard without the regulations.
There is no good reason to roll these regulations back at all.
> If the US regulates itself into having a difficult time making or using working/economical cars, then other countries can more economically create better cars ...
The problem is that global companies will build to suit the local regulation or that there will be a race to the bottom. Either leads to atrocities like this:
"A car-to-car test between a 2015 Nissan Tsuru, the least expensive sedan sold by Nissan in Mexico, and a 2016 Nissan Versa, the least expensive sedan sold by Nissan in the United States.
A similar comparison is diesel cars. For the last 15 years or so, all diesel cars have come with a diesel particulate filter (DPF) that removes a lot of the soot and other nasty things that come out of a diesel engine.
First of all, these systems mean the engine uses more fuel, as the components of the DPF need to be kept hot to operate properly (the same as a catalytic converter on petrol engines). However as the car gets older (~150,000km) the filter will end up getting pretty blocked up. This means the engine will produce less power, consume even more fuel, and if it becomes blocked enough, eventually damage the engine.
At this point you will be faced with a bill of a few thousand euro to replace the system - on a car that's probably not worth much more. Or as is common in a lot of Eastern European countries, just remove it, and drive another 150,000km. This is illegal in quite a few European countries, but if the job has been done properly, it's basically impossible to tell. European emissions testing doesn't test for these type of emissions, so you won't have any problems there.
And yet small capacity modern turbo diesel engines power some of the most economical cars on the road.
If I recall correctly there was a Citroen vehicle getting 3.6L / 100km.[1]
1. https://www.carshowroom.com.au/showrooms/citroen/c4%20cactus...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/its-time-to-re...
Also, it's not like automakers from outside the US are ignoring the US because of our emissions laws. They produce cars here and export cars for sale here.
I think people forget how awful the old toilets were before water use restrictions were mandated. As late as early 90's, toilets were uniformly pieces of shit -- 5-6 gallons per flush, low velocity, little attention paid to flushway design, and they could flood your bathroom with a single stoppage. And this was really easy to do. It was easy (especially for a kid) to mistakenly believe a clog was resolved, flush the toilet to check, and end up with five gallons of water on your floor. Fuck that. I'm not going back. I'm not going back to the dark ages, fighting shitty toilets, constantly changing burned out incandescent light bulbs that might collectively suck up kilowatts of electricity and require metal fixtures lest they burn your house down, and constantly fueling up an inefficient car that repays me with noxious fumes.
Toilet manufacturers were lazy. They had no reason to innovate, because there was no consumer demand for it. People simply didn't know what a better toilet would look like, and water was cheap enough that it was never going to happen without a law mandating it.
I occasionally (not often) hear someone wax nostalgic about old toilets, saying that the new ones clog more. It's certainly true that there are bad low-flow toilets, and the technology took a little while to develop, but I also think these folks simply forget how often the old toilets clogged.
I'm a real estate investor and I still encounter these monstrosities regularly. Old toilets are pretty much the first things I replace in a house. I started off years ago using American Standard Champion toilets, but I've switched over completely to Toto. I've installed dozens of Toto low-flow toilets. I have five Totos in my own two houses, and I've never once, in over a decade, had to flush twice due to toilet paper. And I have a wife who uses a lot of toilet paper. When these toilets do clog, you don't have to worry nearly as much about flooding. Toto's bowls are flushways are computer designed and very well tuned. When I do manage to clog one, it's never taken more than a couple strokes with a Korky Beehive plunger to release it, and I don't have to worry about an errant flush flooding my bathroom.
Don't take my word for it though. Ask a plumber. Spend a little time on plumbing forums, hear what plumbers say about toilets. For example, here's a random quote I picked from a quick google search by Terry Love, who created the hugely active terrylove.com plumbing forums:
> "The old five gallon toilets needed a plunger by them. I grew up with five gallons, and plunging was the order of the day. With the new bowls, most people would use a plunger so rarely, that "finding" the plunger is a problem. In my mothers home, three bathrooms and old toilets replaced with the new low water usage toilets and constantly 30-40 people on weekends, we went several years without needing a plunger. That's how good the new stuff is. The new low flow flush with so much power that they even have instructions about what high flow fittings should be used."
The goal was to capture externalities -- so target the SOURCE of the externality (with a fuel tax). Raise the tax on emissions-producing fuel and provide rebates for validating certain standards regarding how efficient the fuel is burned. This way the tax applies equally to all polluters and doesn't create any unintended consequences in the market due to misaligned incentives.
A higher fuel tax incentivizes not only fuel efficient vehicles but electric vehicles and renewable energy -- whichever is the most economically efficient. Instead, we have a misaligned incentive that will further prolong our dependence on hydrocarbon-burning cars. But of course, raising gas prices wouldn't be very politically expedient...
Note: I am not defending the administration's decision as it was made for the wrong reasons and there is no replacement.
And that is all dependent on how much fuel you burn. NOx emissions as well will differ as well but for the most part, a 20 mpg car will be much dirtier than a 50 mpg car.
Tailpipes provide the greenhouse gases, but the EPA regs were about local pollution, which is driven by tire breakdown, road surface breakdown, brake pads, and overwhelmingly, an interesting process called "resuspension." Resuspension is related to vehicle weight, traffic flow patterns, and city road treatments.
So agree the regs were "dumb," and agree we might want a pigouvian tax on underlying sources, but if we want to solve for local pollution, we also need some different set of regs that work on "total emissions" instead of "tailpipe emissions."
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223101...
1. There is an air filter that immediately takes out large particles (dust, dirt, mites, etc)
2. Emissions systems use hot wires to detect airflow precisely
3. O2 sensors readily adjusting fuel on the fly to ensure a complete burn.
4. A catalytic process using space metals that further ensures a clean burn
Effectively, whether it's dusty, a cow has farted around you, or a chicken farm is producing ammonia; the modern ICE has the ability to detect this scenario and adjust faster that 8k times a second.
And it isn't anyway. Just stand next to a running engine in a badly ventilated area for a while and you'll know that engine doesn't make things better.
CO2 or H2O concentrations are enough to make things worse for an engine or a human, but are not necessarily dirty.
NOX and CHs however are not as "naturally" in the air and producing them definitely makes the air "dirtier"
With regard to parent's assertions: 1. The intake air cleaner is to keep particles out that will damage the engine (and eventually lead to lower performance and emissions control malfunction); 2. Whatever airflow meter, or not, on an engine is for combustion control, but its performance affects emissions output; 3. Exhaust o2 sensors, for 10-25 years depending on make and model, have already been telling the control system the results of combustion on each cylinder, for every combustion; 4. The catalysts are not magic. They are meant to react with specific products of combustion; There is nothing in an automobile, nor should there be, to detect and react with things like methane and ammonia. The only time you see a dust/smog detection is in luxury models that adjust the cabin ventilation in the presence of this for comfort of the occupants. There are no adjustments happening at a rate of 8 kHz: combustion in a cylinder is not even happening at this rate.
Then the combustion and catalytic process will break apart that ammonia and encourage its nitrogen to linger on its own as the hydrogens burn up or find some oxygens.
Thought not.
Are they working on hydrogen based engines?
ICEs are better off converted to LPG or DME. CNG takes too much space and also uses higher pressure containers, while it can be easily converted to DME and stored in containers pressurized at 0.5 MPa.
* raising the costs across the board for transportation may be neutral for competitors in that industry, but not for people who are consumers of transportation or employees in industries that rely on it
* the rural poor spend a far larger percentage of their income on transportation than anyone else, and,
* the rural poor are far more likely to hold jobs that are dominated by transportation costs
So emissions regs could be seen as regressive.
Of course we could counter that environmental harms are pretty regressive too--the health consequences are going to be the most extreme for the poor, especially given disparities in end of life care in the US.
But improved health outcomes over decades are a tough consolation to someone on the edge of losing their home.
Maybe the risk of lost jobs is incredibly small, but if someone's on the bubble, they are going to be more risk averse than you or me, and might push for policymakers to set the bar back a few steps just to be sure.
What's the answer? I don't know. We want both clean air and good jobs, even in distressed areas. Programs that explicitly work towards both at the same time are going to be more hardened, more resilient against politicization.
But keep in mind you'd be transplanting people away from their social support networks into a higher cost of living area with a different economic composition, and there are costs (and risks) to all of that, especially if families are involved.
If we paid for moving, housing, childcare, retraining, job placement, and frequent travel expenses back to keep up connections between children and extended family it'd make it trivial.
Though you could probably just UBI people where they stand and it'd be cheaper.
Also, poor people aren’t buying new cars, they’re buying used cars. So it’ll take a while for new more efficient cars to trickle down, and by that time they’ll have depreciated well past the theoretical delta in price.
It could also be that regulations lead to a superior and different, not necessarily more expensive design.
This comes up pretty frequently in car discussions. Making smaller cars helps you meet American fuel efficiency requirements, but it's terrible if you also want to (have to) meet American crash safety requirements.
If we look at the population, then for everyone that needs/wants a car of size X, age Y, and cost Z, then fuel efficiency regulations that increase the engineered complexity of the vehicle will push up the cost and mean the consumer has to trade off with a smaller car, older car, or some other aspect.
Discretizing the population into poor people that can't afford a truck and rich people that can is meaningless when there is an entire distribution of people's incomes and spending preferences.
Great question! There's actually some pretty good literature on it from energy and policy economists. The auto industry, the EPA, and the NHTSA all pull from very similar general background estimates.
"A 1991 study performed by Greene[1] concluded that, for every one mile-per-gallon increase in vehicle fuel economy, the average, per-vehicle cost would be within the range of $100-200 dollars, in constant 1985 dollar terms, and corresponding to a range of $200-400 in 2010 dollars. A review of CAFE by Klier and Linn[2] found that numerous other studies have confirmed these figures. Using the range found in the literature, the projected 12.7 MPG improvement in fuel economy would cost on average somewhere between $2,500 and $5,000 per vehicle."
So... that's the industry perspective. But that's a simple review of the background literature, so it's not that radical. The EPA and NHTSA dip only slightly below the low end, getting down to $2,000 using additional assumptions on that baseline, such as learning curves from past R&D making newer developments cheaper. But the regulators still estimate a positive cost per vehicle. The debate between regulators and industry is the extent of that cost, not whether that cost exists at all.
It's a fascinating area of research, notwithstanding the minefield of biases one has to sort through.
[1] Greene, David L. (1991). “Short-Run Pricing Strategies to Increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy.” Economic Inquiry 29(1): 101–114.
[2] Klier, Thomas and Joshua Linn. (2011). “Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards and the Market for New Vehicles.” Annual Review of Resource Economics 3(1): 445-462.
Here's my back of the napkin model, caveat emptor.
Say we're calculating total cost per mile. What inputs do we need?
Fuel price, fuel efficiency, amortized vehicle cost, maintenance/repair costs... both of those last two are dependent on length of ownership in both time and miles, and how old the vehicle was when it was purchased. Purpose of the vehicle is a secondary factor too, affecting efficiency and wear/maintenance.
I'm going to ignore or hold constant some of those but toy with others.
Say fuel is very expensive at $10 a gallon, and also there's a lot of low hanging fruit to increase the efficiency of a vehicle. Say you can get another 5 miles per gallon over your 20 mpg by raising the cost of the vehicle by only $500. And say you don't significantly increase its complexity or repair costs while doing so.
Before you drove 100 miles per week at $50/wk. Now you drive 100 miles per week at $40/wk. You plan to own the vehicle for 10 years. You pay off the difference and get pure profit by the end of the first year.
Sometimes fuel won't be $10 a gallon though. Let's say fuel is cheap, and the low hanging efficiencies have already been exploited. Let's say fuel is $2 a gallon, and you can only get wring 35 mpg up to 36 mpg for another $500.
Now how long does it take for the improved efficiency to pay off the premium?
Just over 60 years.
Increasing the miles driven per week pushes it back the other way. It all depends on your assumptions.
Basically we're looking at a benefit to the driver whenever:
(price_per_gallon * miles_per_week / old_miles_per_gallon) - (price_per_gallon * miles_per_week / new_miles_per_gallon) >= increased_vehicle_cost / lifetime_weeks_ownedThat regulation is required implies that is not the case.
People aren't always rational about price. You might want a more efficient car, but those are newer. You have $1000 and your older car just broke. The repairs cost more than the money you have, and you need to get to work. You would like a nice, efficient car but in your price range, you get gas guzzlers. Oh well, it is better than losing your job.
There are lots of factors like this folks face when purchasing things. Overall cost isn't always a factor even when it should be in a perfect world .
That was honestly my initial assumption too, I thought this would probably get washed out by other factors determining vehicle prices.
Then I read some of the EPA and NHTSA positions. Not even the regulators go so far as to say that continuing existing regs would be costless. They estimated that the average cost per vehicle will rise $2,000.
Now they add that consumers should be able to make that $2,000 back over four years through fuel savings. They do so by assuming gasoline prices will be $3.50, which is 30% higher than they currently are.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/09/23/center-for-a...
You might think (like I did) that the R&D is done, so there's no new cost. But there are mechanical costs of including certain technologies in engines, increases in complexity, production itself in terms of parts and labor would be lower without the standards.
If you want the most comprehensive possible discussion of this issue, it's in the comment process for these standards:
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/phase2-hd-fu...
Warning, it's thousands of pages of PDF to dig through. And a lot of it is super boring! But there are some interesting anecdotes...
The International Foodservice Distributors Association comments that with earlier requirements using readily available off the shelf technology, the EPA estimated a per vehicle cost of $1,200 to $1,900, but the actual costs per commercial vehicle ended up being closer to $20,000 per vehicle. The EPA basically responds that return on investment really isn't their top priority. (Which, of course it isn't, that isn't their job, but that still kind of sidesteps the problem that they might be lowballing the estimated impact-at least on commercial vehicles-by a factor of ten.)
You might not agree with the IFDA, but even if you go with the EPA, they admit throughout that document they expect this to increase vehicle costs by a few thousand dollars.
Aside from that random IFDA comment (and there are hundreds... thousands? of others), here's a full study on the question, costs of keeping the existing standards, from the industry side: http://www.cargroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/The-Poten...
They say the cost per vehicle could be as high as $6,000.
I think the truth is probably somewhere between the EPA answer and the official industry answer.
Helpfully, the CAR study tables all include assumptions of a 2k impact, a 6k impact, and a goldilocks 4k impact. There is a cost chart on page 20 with those assumptions, and different assumptions about gas prices.
But even if you're inclined to dismiss the industry's position entirely, keep in mind that they are spending money to lobby against this.
If it doesn't affect production costs at all, why bother fighting? Why waste the money on the lobbyists?
In due time possibly the entire world since air knows no borders.
In the language of the classic sheep-grazing commons, each player has incentive to put an extra sheep in the commons -- that is, to defect. Everyone loses, but that player benefits in the short term.
With cars, by defecting -- that is, allowing its car makers to sell less-regulated cars -- the U.S. gets to sell more profitable cars, despite polluting the atmosphere for everyone else (and, shortsightedly, us too).
I don't understand why the head of the EPA has any business in making trucks, vans, and SUVs more affordable for buyers.
(Quote from EPA's regulatory agency description)
It's hilarious if you compare this with the hysteria around the VW diesel scandal. This will have much more effect.
So, pass a pointless regulation that does nothing but point out how limited your power is?
My dislike of the guy in Washington has been very high the last ~1.2 years.
Truck gets 15mpg. Expected life 200,000 miles. That's 13,333 gallons of gasoline, or 20 lbs Co2/gal * 13,333 /2000 lbs/ton = 133 tons of CO2.
Say $50 per ton X 130 tones -> $6600 carbon tax.
Do the same thing with NOX emissions. Bump it high enough that a non hybrid will cost an extra $5000.
Any roll back is a set back.
who actually sees a long term trend towards greater inefficiencies?
Two paths...
It is highly likely the next administration will be more forward thinking and science minded then the dark ages thinking of the current one. When that happens and they clamp down on this again with much less of a time window it will leave the industry that cheered Trump on dead. Oh well.
It is likely that California can keep this in court forever so no matter what the “rules” are nationally with 12 of the most populous states siding withCA it will not matter.
Btw, I'm not affiliated with them in any way. Just think it's a great service.
Another source (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/company-insights/08231...) also lists Saudi Arabia as #1 and Russia as #2
1. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-iea/u-s-to-overtak...
Increasing demand for oil and increasing oil prices will increase demand for EVs because it makes them more competitive.
It seems like it would be really expensive to roll all of these policies back just to reinstate them later, but isn't that inevitable when the pendulum swings back to the left?
(i.e. Won't the next left-leaning administration move to redo everything that's been undone under your current administration?)
Is there some structural feature of your electoral system that would prevent this kind of flip-flopping?
(This isn't a put down by the way - I say this being from Northern Ireland, where our entire political system is based on a single divisive issue, at the cost of getting literally anything else achieved.)
I wouldn't necessarily assume that manufacturers will waste that time.
I did a day's worth of policy work with the UK Department for Transport and the regional heads of some manufacturers so know a little bit about how they're thinking about the problem. In the past there's been a progressive reduction in emissions, pushing manufacturers to work fairly hard in the short term to meet the targets they've been set. There've been some noteworthy examples of cheating because it's not easy to balance emissions targets against cost and all the other constraints on manufacturing.
One of the policies they're already discussing is to give manufacturers short-term breathing room in emissions standards so that they stop chasing local maxima and dedicate some proper R&D time to making super-low emissions possible in the medium term.
So yeah, I think manufacturers will try and get away with what they can, but they're not stupid. They know this problem isn't going away (both from an environmental and a regulatory perspective) and solving it will be a competitive advantage.
The context of the policy day was around encouraging adoption of EVs and HEVs rather than better ICE vehicles. Perhaps that's a signal.
I personally see it as mostly a marketing challenge so spent most of my time chasing things like charging point standardisation & visibility, and pushing approaches that might change perceptions of EVs, such as changing the standard yellow for blue (or green, jury's out) to make them stand out whilst driving to address the perception that it's unusual.
I would expect them to be green-tinted (although there may be a counterargument to that based on something I'm not seeing), although I acknowledge that it's nitpicking.
That said, I have no idea whether (a) apparent social norms are actually the main problem to adoption or (b) whether the DVLA could be convinced to adopt new policies for rear-plate colours.