The Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules | Hacker News Reader

The Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules

nytimes.com

168 pointspingou86 comments

Disclosure: im a full-time auto mechanic learning python in my ample spare time.

In terms of emissions, you wont come close to what a diesel long haul truck is putting out, and those are the vehicles no one really talks about. Freightliner and peterbilt all showcase their latest trucks with urea scrubbers and nox emissions reduction technology, or even hybrid/electric systems when they go to trade shows, but most fleet operators are on a 30 year curve. No trucking company wants to buy a truck new.

and thanks to loopholes in EPA regulations they dont need to. fleet owners can do whats called a "glider" conversion. You essentially take the guts of a 30 year old tractor trailer, and wrap it in a nice new body. this works well to refurbish trucks that have been in rollover accidents or written off by insurance companies. they are easier to move from salvage to titled.

Assembly of a glider is also prone to problems. Professional mechanics can do it well, but its not cheap, so to drop the cost of a glider most fleet owners sub this work out from their main shops to subcontractors of Salvadorian day laborers. The result is that the truck runs, but critical things like the urea tank wont run, the pyrometer is broken, and the dashboard lights up like a christmas tree. Ive even seen gliders where the speedometer was so incorrect, the driver told me to "use the gps" on my phone instead.

These trucks are miles off spec for EPA, but most states only halfheartedly enforce the EPA regulations for trucks. Fleet owners title them in states like Indiana, florida and Ohio for a reason: these states couldnt care less if the truck smokes out the parking lot of a wal-mart just starting up.

How does that work economically? Isn't a 30 year old truck engine massively less efficient than a modern one?

Capex vs Opex? The cost of new/refurbished equipment is an up-front cost and takes longer to depreciate (but refurbished is lower-cost and so has fewer immediate penalties), whereas diesel fuel and other similar costs can be charged immediately as expenses related to customer fees. Same as why businesses might prefer to pay more real-money over the long term to rent servers via AWS than spend money up front for servers and run their own, longer-term-cheaper, server farm.

(Edit: clarification)

tax, title, and license, inspection and certification for a long haul truck is much more involved than an automobile. For example, a 2019 Volvo VNL might only cost 165,000usd. However the total cost in the first year for owning this truck (assuming the person you hired to drive it doesnt wreck it) is more than a Rolls Royce Phantom...close to half a million. The engine also wont realize the actual MPG advertised until its broken in...roughly 10-25k miles.

You wont realize the gas savings in the first 10 years, or ever really, so most trucking companies rarely care about new trucks with emissions controls that dont save fuel. They get rebates from the federal government for installing those metal spoilers on trailers anyhow.

The operating costs of modern emissions equipment is far greater than the cost of the extra fuel wasted on a less efficient drive-train. It might be close to even for operators that do maintenance in house (I'm not familiar enough with the industry to know). If emissions equipment wasn't expensive and unreliable (relative to the rest of the truck) this market wouldn't exist.

Might be less efficient, but some older diesel engines have a track record of being much more reliable.

Fascinating. Seeing a truck that's over 10 or 15 years old is uncommon here in the UK.

If I saw something 30 years old it would be rare enough to default to believing it was on its way to a vehicle show, or owned by a collector.

I'm sure there's a few out there, still in active commercial use, but few enough that you'd be surprised to see one.

This is a great argument for why a price on carbon is a better solution than a direct regulatory approach. You can't game the price at the pump or find a loophole, or at least its more difficult to do so.

Not true. Many of the problems described by gp wouldn't affect the fuel efficiency of the truck, but still vastly increase the pollutants the truck puts out. Replacing your catalytic converter with a steel pipe is the obvious way to game a carbon tax.

Good point. There's a role for both.

That would be an argument for taxing the pollutants too.

(Yes, it's not a perfect policy, but please don't criticize it with an argument equivalent to saying that a unit of pollution is infinitely bad. It's not.)

NOx is not carbon and typically NOx emissions go up the more efficient the engine is. So while your carbon emissions per mile may go down your NOx emission may go up.

I'm a broken record, but a price on things that emit carbon dioxide and NOX is better. Because when people/companies buy a fossil fueled machines they've made a irrevocable decision to emit a fixed amount of CO2/NOX. That's the decision point where you need to force peoples hand.

Example: I bought a used 2012 Prius in 2015. The moment that car was built an extra 50 tons of CO2 was slated to be emitted over the next 15 years. You can raise the gas tax as much as politically possible and that won't change the amount of CO2 the car will emit.

It isn't a question of loopholes, this is a deliberate policy decision. These articles [1, 2] discuss the politics more.

> In the final hours of Scott Pruitt’s tenure as administrator, the Environmental Protection Agency moved on Friday to effectively grant a loophole that will allow a major increase in the manufacturing of a diesel freight truck that produces as much as 55 times the air pollution as trucks that have modern emissions controls.

> The move by the E.P.A. came after intense lobbying by a small set of manufacturers that sell glider trucks, which use old engines built before new technologies significantly reduced emissions of particulates and nitrogen oxide that are blamed for asthma, lung cancer and other ailments. …

> But agency officials confirmed to The New York Times that, through the end of 2019, the E.P.A. will not enforce an annual cap of 300 gliders per manufacturer that had been imposed in January. …

> An estimated 10,000 glider trucks were sold nationally in 2015 — about 4 percent of new heavy-duty truck sales — and production could soon return to that level. … The agency, she said, is also considering formally delaying the 300-unit cap until December 2019 — by which point it hopes to have permanently repealed the cap.

[1] "‘Super Polluting’ Trucks Receive Loophole on Pruitt’s Last Day" (July 6, 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/06/us/glider-trucks-loophole...

[2] "How $225,000 Can Help Secure a Pollution Loophole at Trump’s E.P.A." (Feb. 15, 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/us/politics/epa-pollution...

It has been interesting watching the continuing fallout from the VW diesel scandal. When they tested diesel cars for emissions on the road, almost all of them failed. (Amazingly the few that passed were VWs.. I think they bumped up the urea injection) There is a study showing the number of additional deaths due to these emissions. So trust in diesels has plummeted and some German cities have banned diesel cars.

A related story is that in New York City recently banned the use of number 4 and number 6 heating oil. I wish there were government incentives to switch from heating oil to gas in places which still use heating oil, like New England.

https://phys.org/news/2018-09-emissions-diesel-cars-europe-g...

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/925353/Germany-die...

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/nyregion/new-york-city-ba...

Number 6 heating oil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-zGprBV3OI

Anyway, I'm thinking that the truck and marine loopholes need to be fixed. I believe it's just a matter of time.

So I just learned that in 2020 ships will be required to reduce their sulfur emissions:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/woodmackenzie/2018/09/03/will-i...

The will have to use fuel with no more than .5% sulfur, vs. 3.5% previously. This is amazing compared to auto diesel sulfur requirements in the US: 15 ppm.

> The result is that the truck runs, but critical things like the urea tank wont run...

Well, the urea tank may be critical for ecology, but it surely isn't critical for the fleet's owner!

Glad you mentioned "gliders"… they were on the chopping block, but obviously any and every common sense decision from 2008-2016 will be reversed by this awesome administration.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17478176

Huh - would it be possible for a state that cares (say... California?) to check the trucks when entering the state? Or is that not allowed due to the Interstate Commerce act?

Perhaps our CARB exception could allow us to regulate this and change a large fraction of trucks in the country to pollute less...

The Koch brothers are amazing. Cars are bigger and heavier than ever, almost everyone has a huge truck in Austin, TX and usually an SUV if not that. They all have more power than ever. But they want to craft a narrative that Obama has been foolishly limiting our choice of cars with efficiency standards.

There are certainly lots of regulations that make cars more expensive than they need to be but I don't think MPG standards are one of the first order cases.

The Ford F-150 now has an aluminum body, and uses a turbocharged V6 instead of regular V8 to generate torque, and it does a good job of it.

Even so, the actual gas mileage owners get is lower than advertised, but still higher than a decade ago.

The increased fuel efficiency standards have actually lead to higher costs of vehicle development to lighten the car and make the engine do more with less.

Your lamenting the surge in trucks and SUV ownership is ironic since the increase is actually a direct result of the newer mileage standards: if trucks are now rated similar to where cars were rated 15 years ago, then why not go for the more utilitarian vehicle?

There's really no reason why most people in Texas commute with a truck, unless you are in construction/renovation.

If you follow the logic "go for the more utilitarian vehicle", then why not then commute with a semi trailer truck, after all these have a higher point of view, can haul more stuff. Or why not commute with a mining dump truck, it's got a practical bed and loads of space.

Your straw man is not relevant.

You are asking people to purchase two vehicles for themselves: one high efficiency commuter and one utility vehicle.

Why do people in Texas commute with a pickup? Because they don't want to buy a sedan in addition, and I don't blame them. If you look at liberal California, you'll see tons of Subaru AWD light SUV/crossovers. Why don't Californians just bike everywhere to save on gas? Are you going to spite them because they want a vehicle that does everything they need?

This.

Think of it as a three axis space with people capacity, indoor cargo space and outdoor cargo space on all three axis (I'm approximating here, there's more things than that people consider in a vehicle purchase but those are the big ones that determine which models you're considering).

Crew cab and extended cab trucks have a lot of all three of those things (even more if you toss on a cap) making them capable of checking all the "must have" boxes of many potential buyers. The people that don't need the outdoor space get crossovers. The people that need more indoor space or seating get three row SUVs and minivans. The people that need the same blend of indoor/outdoor/seating but less of it get midsize trucks.

The husband wants a driver's car with a manual and the wife wants a convertible with AWD and two rows of seating so they get a 4dr Jeep Wrangler (facepalm implied).

Of course most vehicles are at least partially a luxury purchase so people higher on the economic spectrum will purchase more capacity than they "need" (three row SUV for two kids, 3/4-ton truck to tow a pop up camper).

And these people really need big ass trucks.. to haul exactly what? I bet the great majority of people really don't need it for work or anything.

People don't "need" it in the sense that they need food or water but they "need" it to conform to social norms. It's a class/status thing.

How hard you work your vehicles is inversely correlated with income (generally speaking, exceptions are in abundance when you speak in generalizations like this).

If you hang out with the HN type crowd then you'll rarely if ever see someone fill every seat in a car or use a pickup to its full capacity. We're generally rich enough to afford more vehicle than we "need" in every regard (pickup trucks to haul light loads, three rows of seating for families with <4 kids, high performance German driving machines for a commute that's mostly sitting in traffic, etc, etc). At the other end of the economic spectrum people shoehorn whatever vehicle is available to them into every role it needs to fill.

Every time I'm strapping material to the roof of one of my beater cars at home depot I'm immediately self aware that I am not acting the way people of my income level are expected to by other people of the same income level. Depending your income level pressing a less than ideal vehicle into service to fit all your needs is just not an option you let yourself seriously consider.

So yeah, the people driving newish vehicles are mostly rich enough to not "need" all the capability they have and it's generally not socially acceptable for these people to go all out using their vehicles.

Edit:

You can see this playing out in the comments.

Someone says they "need" a pickup to do something and gets responses like

"No you don't, people in India haul lumber on motorcycles"

"But people in France can tow their their boat with a subcompact car"

While that might be true the social norms of the US do not permit middle class and upper middle class people to use the piss out of their vehicles.

is this a texas thing?

here in CA, i get the impression it's perfectly okay to load your car up quite fully. We put 5 people in an SUV without 3rd row seating on a regular basis without any kind of shame.

You don't have to buy a utility vehicle if you only use it once a month. Renting is both cheaper and better for the environment. Where I live many people don't own a car at all and rent one when they need it. For example I needed a car twice in the last three years.

My experience has been that even all in, renting a truck once a month is not really that much cheaper, since buying a truck vs a car is not really a huge cost difference. Practically, getting to a place to rent a truck still sucks, and the whole process is still fairly inconvenient. It's nice that you don't need a car, that works with your lifestyle. OTOH, I don't commute, but my only vehicles is a large pickup truck because it is much more convenient for the things I do.

One size does not fit all, especially with expensive and utilitarian items like cars and trucks.

Not owning a car is unfortunately not a realistic reality living in all but a few US cities. Most American cities were built with the car in mind, without massive public infrastructure overall owing a car is basically a requirement.

That's unfortunately true, but not owning a big car certainly is possible.

I work in an office job. Here are some of my reasons for owning a pickup truck, yet not a mining dump truck.

- I volunteer at a community garden and move mulch/plants/soil

- I cycle, kayak, and go camping and it's easier to transport my gear

- I am a homeowner, and do the repairs and maintenance myself. It's hard to haul things like lumber and miter saw in the trunk of a civic.

- Taking tree trimmings and other wood mulch to a dump site

- When buying new furniture, I can move it myself instead of renting/borrowing a truck

I used to own a large pickup truck. Traded in as part of my Tesla Model S purchase. Slapped a hitch on the Model S (2500 lb towing capacity) and I can do everything I did before with my pickup with my electric car (arguably easier with a lower platform for loading and unloading, and my trailer has a higher load limit than my pickup truck bed did).

Unless you’re hauling thousand of pounds behind that truck every day (above smaller vehicle tow limits, which is a legitimate use case if you're someone who is a shipper/transporter or contractor with a heavy trailer of some sort), it’s a waste, but to each their own.

That seems like a reasonable alternative, but I like to also do maintenance on my own vehicle and have been working on combustion engines my whole life.

I supposed it is as unnecessary as anything in life, no more or less so than a Tesla, Civic, motorcycle, or scooter

Edit: I will concede that a mining dump truck would be unnecessary, in response to the parent comment

If you really enjoy doing maintenance, don't get a Tesla. The main thing you'd really be doing is changing tires every 40k or so, and eventually the battery pack. They are tremendously simple compared to a combustion engine. No spark plugs, no oil or filters to change, no oxygen sensors to go bad, no air filters, no fuel pumps or timing belts, etc. You'd be quite bored.

You're preaching to choir. I think they are beautiful cars, but for other people. I've never paid over 10k for a vehicle, and I've never paid a mechanic. I only see a vehicle as a tool and Tesla is just another impractical status symbol but I absolutely admire the technology

> I only see a vehicle as a tool and Tesla is just another impractical status symbol but I absolutely admire the technology

We see things differently. To me, it is the ultimate tool: efficient, reliable, the safest vehicle I can put my family in, and saves me time in the lack of fueling and maintenance required. I have no problem paying for nice tools. It's a sexy car, no doubt! But to me, that is far down the requirements list.

I don't disagree with your points, but paying >$40k for a vehicle is an impossibility for most people. A working class shmuck like me can't prioritize luxury

That is true its more expensive up front, but they also last a lot longer than an ICE car and the gas/maintenance savings add quite a bit to that: https://electrek.co/2018/07/17/tesla-model-s-holds-up-400000...

> but paying >$40k for a vehicle is an impossibility for most people.

I agree. I paid more than I would for a car so others in the future can pay less.

That works great for small utility trailers, but not many tall cargo trailers or RV trailers can work that way. Some might be under the weight limits, barely, but when you factor in the wind resistance, and the shorter wheelbase of a sports car, it could be very dangerous.

My comment covers that. If you’re hauling large trailers daily, a pickup truck is for you. I would not haul a horse trailer with my S, but a flatbed trailer with various reasonable loads is fine (generators, a golf cart, lawn equipment, etc).

Given the use case you describe, a Citroën Jumpy would probably be the most sensible car:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Jumpy

If you want a car that looks slightly better and costs a bit more, you could go with a VW T6:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Transporter_(T6)

Here in Europe, most people with your usage pattern would actually just buy a station wagon and hitch a trailer to it when needed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Insignia#/media/File:Opel...

There are even rooftop containers for kayaks and specific cycle holders for the rear of the car so that you can go camping with a typical European station wagon without having to use a trailer.

I'm not trying to complain about the choices you made, but rather trying to emphasize the point of the article. Pickup trucks are more of a cultural phenomenon than a practical necessity. If the emission standards are raised, other solutions will appear without much/any loss in convenience.

I'd argue a pickup truck does everything described better than the three vehicles you posted. Most people only have one vehicle and a pickup is simply a great jack of all trades.

I 100% agree that pickups are a American cultural icon (just look at the ads, they drip nationalism) but it is hard to argue that they are not practical.

Pickup trucks indeed have their advantages over the vehicles I listed. However, I would disagree somewhat regarding where the advantages are.

I'd say that the vehicles I listed and pickup trucks manage fairly equally in the above transport categories (tools, furniture, kayak, bike). The way to go about it is just different.

But: Pickup trucks outclass all the vehicles I listed as soon as you leave the tarmac. Here in Germany, many people in rural areas who would own a pickup truck in the US also own a "family tractor" for working in the woods or in other off-road locations.

Then again: The vehicles I listed will always be faster on the Autobahn than a pickup truck. I regularly see people in station wagons go 160km/h and above for prolonged distances on the A3 at night.

In the end, I find it extremely fascinating how a different regulatory environment has bred different 'species' of utility vehicles on both sides of the Atlantic.

The differences are indeed fascinating. The first vehicle you listed would never be owned by a private individual unless they used it for a business. It seems like the inverse is true with non-commercial pickup trucks in Europe

I like in Houston. Yes there are plenty of trucks and many people driving them “unnecessarily” whatever that means. But I have worked in the northeast, mid west and west coast. Despite what you may want to believe, there are not that many more trucks in Texas than elsewhere. The F-150 would not be the best selling vehicle in the US if only Texans bought them. I personally can’t daily drive a truck because I like sportier vehicles. But I can’t be mad at someone who chooses to. They’re roomy, convenient when buying large items and as of late not earth destroying bro dozers that they seem to have a reputation for in some circles. If we truly want to make progress towards less oil dependence and cleaner vehicles then we have to get off this tribal greenies vs MAGAs nonsense that really only serves to entrench two sides. I’m somewhat interested in the auto industry, I like cars. I love old muscle cars that get 10 mpg and have horrible emissions. I also would love to own a Tesla. I would like to see future cars more in line with a model S or model X than the gas swilling muscle car. I think that the left thinks that mandates are the only way to get there. That may be partially true but I also think that mandates are pushing opposing goals. Cars have to be safer so you build heavier larger cars. That requires more horsepower so we need larger engines or forced induction. Setting a deadline for mpg and emissions is only going to make cars very expensive. Electric cars are not going to cover all use cases and there is a real problem of lithium availability and battery capacity. There have been great strides to solving these issues but it isn’t there yet. As other comments have said, passenger cars and trucks are low on the list of polluters compared to planes, semis, trains, cargo ships. Believe it or not, I think the folks in the auto industry do want to make cleaner more efficient cars and trucks, but they also are in a business where a misstep can bankrupt the company so bold moves are not on the road map.

> Believe it or not, I think the folks in the auto industry do want to make cleaner more efficient cars and trucks, but they also are in a business where a misstep can bankrupt the company so bold moves are not on the road map.

Wouldn't legislation that requires cleaner and more efficient vehicles level the playing field? If all companies had to do it then it wouldn't be a competitive liability.

Are common people not allowed to do utilitarian things with their privately-owned vehicles?

How else am I going to build a retaining wall, lawn maintenance, be the volunteer dance dad in the parade, pick up some building supplies for weekend projects, all while fitting three oversized safety-regulated car seats?

Come on, this statement is close-minded.

Pickup trucks are almost unheard of outside the US, except in the countryside. SUVs are much rarer as well. Somehow people get by.

In Ireland, pickups are fairly uncommon (probably because of the weather), but 4x4s like Land Cruisers, Patrols, Defenders, Discoveries, etc are really common.

The only category we don't have is what Americans call light trucks.

Yes, big pickups get better fuel economy than big pickups from a decade ago, but the entire compact pickup market has been eliminated in North America.

I inherited my first pickup (a Nissan Hardbody), a couple decades ago from my father, who'd used it for years for beekeeping work, and the F-150 still doesn't match it for fuel economy.

Now I want to know more about your beekeeping father

To be fair the CAFE standards have severely limited the choice of small trucks the US consumer can buy, but I agree that they have nothing to do with the Obama mandate as they are by now almost 40 years old, just with fuel economy standards in general.

Is there a way to remain safe driving in these places besides also buying a large heavy vehicle? I despise gas guzzlers but my sedan may not survive an accident.

Vehicle size has minimal impact on collision safty. People regularly survive collisions with Semi Trucks for example.

Also those SUV’s often look huge, but a Honda Accord weighs 2/3 as much as a Chevy Suburban before adding passengers. Weight reduces acceleration and fuel economy so they use body styles that look huge while being mostly hollow.

honestly, who cares if your car survives? will you survive? if you have a car made within the last 20 years, most likely yes.

I'm reaching back a ways to my college days, but as I remember, two objects can have masses 2x apart (e.g. 3500 pound car, 7000 pound truck) and for all practical purposes it doesn't really change the collision dynamics much. Something about velocity squared, as I recall.

So ... buy a Subaru Forester, I guess. Or another CUV. Taller bumper so you don't get run over by a pickup, but still a smallish vehicle.

KE=0.5MV^2

Vehicle and cargo (you) damage is more strongly related to force than kinetic energy. You can be going 150mph and stop just fine by using the brakes to convert that kinetic energy into thermal energy. Using a concrete barrier and the vehicle to dissipate that force throughout the structure of the vehicle would work as well as far as getting rid of the kinetic energy but will probably have a less desirable outcome for the contents of the vehicle. Same energy in both cases, way different forces involved. It's like how a sledgehammer hits with more force the more rigid the thing you're hitting is.

Also it's not the acceleration that kills you[1], it's the bouncing off things in the cabin that kills you.

[1]http://www.ejectionsite.com/stapp.htm (8th to last paragraph)

The infatuation of Americans with bigger and bigger vehicles is one of the things that is just bizarre from an outside point of view.

Cheap gas.

In the United States bigger is better.

A big car fits more people and cargo. They're safer in a crash (if you ignore single vehicle accidents and especially rollovers). Finally it's a status symbol: bigger generally means more impressive and expensive. Americans don't share their salaries and directly bragging is faux pas, but we tend to signal social-economic status through property.

> They all have more power than ever.

Modern engines have a lot of power, when you are at full regime. Getting to full regime is what emission control directives have made more and more painful during last decades.

Why not convert tractor trailers into pickups?

I bet they would sell really well.

You know the bigger the better, right?

It may not matter so much. Car makers will still have to comply with European and Chinese emissions standards anyway (test cheating aside). How much incentive will there be for them to develop a separate car purely for the US market?

And there will be many models of EVs available across the next 7 years. In addition to Tesla, most of the major car brands have EV development programs. Here are four EVs available now or in the first half of 2019, depending on where you live:

- Jaguar I-Pace: https://www.jaguar.co.uk/jaguar-range/i-pace/index.html

- Audi e-Tron: https://www.audi.co.uk/electric-car/e-tron.html

- Hyundai Kona: https://www.hyundai.co.uk/new-cars/kona-electric Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LATZ0g-Sz2s

- Kia e-Niro: https://www.kia.com/uk/new-cars/all-new-e-niro/ Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR5sDwF5aBM

The Hyundai Kona and Kia e-Niro are interesting as practical cars with good range at a more affordable price than the luxury EV options. The Kona and the e-Niro have the same drivetrain so they're quite similar, but of the two I like the e-Niro better.

Hyundai and Kia also have some on-car solar options in development:

https://electrek.co/2018/10/31/hyundai-kia-solar-roof-electr...

I think the future is bright for low or zero emissions vehicles, despite the oil industry's efforts.

> How much incentive will there be for them to develop a separate car purely for the US market?

Aren't they doing that already? The whole pickup truck class mostly doesn't exist outside of the US.

Well, they're selling them in Australia:

https://www.ford.com.au/commercial/ranger/

And in China soon if not already:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ford-motor-china-idUSKBN1...

https://www.ford.com.cn/performance/raptor/

Do they sell the full-size trucks in Australia or China (like F-150 instead of Ford Ranger, Toyota Tundra instead of Tacoma/Hilux)

I know there's a Chinese company that makes a near direct F150 knockoff. I'm not sure how many get sold but clearly the market exists.

Australia is essentially upsidedown America, so that doesn't surprise me. I wonder why the demand in China though; maybe they just have enough population that everything is viable to sell?

> The whole pickup truck class mostly doesn't exist outside of the US.

Exactly. Just owning a 4-liter or a 5-liter engine (never mind the 7-liter engine present in some of the higher-end trucks) is price-prohibitive for tax reasons in almost half of European countries (if not more), that's before we get to the price of gasoline at the pump. I think China is the same. Yeah, there are some crazy people who still buy them over here in Europe, but imho they have more money than sense, the same way that there are crazy people who buy a second-hand 10-year old VW Phaeton with the W12 engine, a great car in itself but which will leave a even greater hole in one's pockets.

There is also the issue that some of those trucks dont fit on inner city streets as they are just too big.

Pickups absolutely exist outside of the US. It's just that the pickups that are sold elsewhere are generally smaller than what we're used to in the US (think old Ford Ranger/Chevy S10 size instead of a new F-150).

Mostly in the countryside. Living in a ~200k population city I usually see a pickup maybe a few times a month.

> How much incentive will there be for them to develop a separate car purely for the US market?

No need to develop a separate car! Just take the car ready for ecology-driven markets, strip it of all those nasty limitators and voilà: you've got a car that offers more to its owner while costing less!

Talk about incentives!

It is really too bad we can't implement a revenue neutral carbon dioxide tax. Start at a low level and gradually ramp it up until we are carbon dioxide neutral or a bit negative. Pay for taking CO2 out of the air at the same rate as the tax and let American ingenuity do the rest. Even the oil companies are not against a CO2 tax if you bring it on slowly. Seems like if Congress could just ignore the crazies on either side for a bit, most people would agree this the best way forward to reduce CO2 emissions working with the strengths of American culture instead of going against it.

Well, this is what a number of jurisdictions are doing, or have already done. Canada is doing pretty much exactly this - implement $12/ton in 2019, ramp it up gradually through the 2020s. 90% of tax revenues are refunded directly back to taxpayers.

The problem of course is... it's a tax. It doesn't matter if it makes sense, if it is revenue neutral etc etc. Someone will just start yelling about elites robbing the people.

I guess you can see how it plays out in Canada. Not only is the tax slated to be imposed this year, but there is a federal election in the fall.

We did that in Ontario. The problem is that the people that care about environmentalism cluster in cities and our votes get wasted because it's a fight between centre-left and left. Out in the suburbs it's people with giant houses, giant trucks, and wasteful thermal choices (gotta cheap out and save that $$$ to buy a bigger house!) so they get nailed by the costs. The difference is fucking comical. My utility bill was $40 (including heat!) the same month it was $420 for someone I know out in the sticks. So now we have an idiot in charge. Deceased crack mayor Rob Ford's brother. It's a nightmare. People want the very lifestyle that needs to end.

> It is really too bad we can't implement a revenue neutral carbon dioxide tax. Start at a low level and gradually ramp it up until we are carbon dioxide neutral or a bit negative.

As long as it's revenue neutral it doesn't even need to be ramped up, it can start at 100%. If you're suddenly paying an extra $500/month in carbon tax but at the same time you're getting the same $500/month back in lower taxes or higher EITC etc., nothing immediately changes unless you make different choices -- and then you pay less.

Then the "ramp up" is automatic, not because the amount of the tax increases over time, but because the amount of carbon being burned (and therefore taxed) goes down which makes "revenue neutral" result in a smaller "refund" payment. You buy an electric car and receive $500/month, but as more people buy electric cars, the amount you receive drops to $400/month, then $300 etc.

The amount relative to a traditional vehicle never changes -- by the time you're receiving $300 with an electric car while paying nothing, the person with a gasoline car is also receiving $300 but is still paying $500, so "stop burning oil" is always $500/month ahead of continuing the status quo, whether it's $0 vs. $500 or -$200 vs. $300.

I'm in favor of this idea though the tricky part is how you figure out which taxes to lower to make it revenue neutral. I tend to think of politics as "Help my friends/Hurt my enemies" and the important thing to realize is that no one really thinks that a carbon tax helps them.

Not even the lefty leftiest greenies believe that. They think a carbon tax might hurt their enemies so they're accepting of it to some limited degree but they don't really believe it will help them. If they did they wouldn't care what taxes would get cut or how the revenue would be spent. Instead they're super interested in how the money would be spent or who's taxes would be cut. They're also interested in the least broad version of carbon tax for the same reasons.

I think theirs a political agenda on the Left and they view climate change as magic that will let them have their way. The same way the Right sees religious imperatives. Or national defense.

It's a view that assumes the other side are all idiots. It won't work.

Yea. My thinking on it is that you would just mark it for paying to sequester CO2 at the tax rate and any leftover goes as a straight per adult tax credit (i.e. you can lower the tax you pay with it).

The insanity is that we built a system that cultivates and breeds extreme greed at any price, and then hope that the reigns to keep it under control will be forever flawless.

It means the protectors need to be eternally on top, while a single victory of the beast can destroy the world.

These crooks are worrying, that with demand for oil dropping in the near future, they'll be left with tons of cheap oil that no one will need. So in their greed they are ramping up efforts to profit from their oil now, before prices will plummet. It's also the same reason they rushed to reverse oil conservation limitations, and drill now more than ever. As usual, their mentality is "rip off everything now, and don't care about any future outcome it will cause".

There should be stronger push back to stop them in their tracks before they do more damage than they already have done.

Oh, the irony:

https://www.nytimes.com/shell

Even if we had a "net-zero emissions world by 2070" it would be way too late. I suspect we needed that 10 years ago.

If we want to prevent disastrous climate change we should ban all combustion engines by Jan. 2021 and pay insane amounts of money for captured carbon. Of course that would be incredibly painful. Many people would starve to death, all our quality of life would go down dramatically for a while. But the alternative is that even more people die.

A breakdown of the Shell Sky scenario, who funded the research, how much Shell was involved, and the background of reviewers: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/11/30/the-shell-sky-scenario-...

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