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Comment by zx10rse | Hacker News Reader

Automotive industry is one of the biggest scams on planet earth. One of my favorite cases recently is how Suzuki Jimny is banned in Europe and US because of emission standards allegedly, so the little Jimny is emitting 146g/km but somehow there is no problem to buy a G-Class that is emitting 358g/km oh and surprise surprise Mercedes are going to release a smaller more affordable G-Class [1].

[1] - https://www.motortrend.com/news/2026-mercedes-benz-baby-g-wa...

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Manufacturers must hit a level of CO2 emissions on average across their whole fleet. As such, Suzuki is choosing to discontinue the Jimny because of the tougher fleet average targets starting in 2025. Overall you’re right that it’s a bit of a fix; Mercedes ‘pools’ its emissions with other manufacturers/brands. It currently pools with Smart, but may also pool with Volvo/Polestar? [0] It’s such an obvious approach to ‘game’ the targets, it’s a wonder the EU didn’t see it coming when they introduced the scheme. [0] https://www.schmidtmatthias.de/post/mercedes-benz-intends-to...

This is why its so important to be super careful with how you write regulation - because even if the intent was good, it's so hard to both anticipate unintended second- and third-order effects, and it's so difficult to update after you've pushed to production.

Just like code, regulation isn't intrinsically valuable - it's a means to an end, and piling lots of poorly-written stuff on top of each other has disasterous consequences for society. We have to make sure that the code and law that we write is carefully thought out and crafted to achieve its desired effect with minimal complexity, and formally verify and test it when possible.

(an example of testing law may be to get a few clever people into a room and red-team possible exploits in the proposed bill or regulation)

> This is why its so important to be super careful with how you write regulation - because even if the intent was good, it's so hard to both anticipate unintended second- and third-order effects, and it's so difficult to update after you've pushed to production.

It seems that the goal is to pressure automakers to improve the efficiency across their entire line instead of simply banning low-efficiency models altogether.

If an automaker discontinues a low-efficient model in order to have access to a market, isn't this an example of regulation working well?

Did you read the parent comment?

> so the little Jimny is emitting 146g/km but somehow there is no problem to buy a G-Class that is emitting 358g/km

This is an example of a manufacturer discontinuing a more efficient vehicle while continuing to sell a larger vehicle that is significantly less efficient.

That's the opposite of what you want. So, no, this is not an example of regulation working well.

This refers to two different manufacturers, with two different approaches.

To meet the overall tougher targets (95g/km average) Suzuki is discontinuing certain models which release higher levels of CO2 to reduce their average. This is presumably the intention of the regulation - to drive manufacturer behaviour.

Mercedes is, OOTH, pooling with other manufacturers who presumably have emissions to spare, and likely paying them royally for it[0]. They're not alone in this approach, but some would argue it's against the spirit of the regulation, even if it ultimately complies with the letter.

[0] https://www.motor1.com/news/747225/tesla-earns-1billion-sell... - note that Tesla doesn't pool with Mercedes; this is just an example of the value

If we Zoom out and look at the net-net efficiency, is there a Steelman argument? I’m wondering if this is a locally based optimization that provides manufacturers with more flexibility to optimize across their fleet.

I don't quite understand. Even if the intent was to to provide manufacturers more flexibility, the fact that a much more efficient line was discontinued as a result of the regulations implies that the result was less efficiency.

Maybe I misunderstood. Could you explain your idea in more detail?

Is there an interpretation where people credibly thought it was better to aggregate at the fleet grain rather than individual levels? Ie is there a good faith argument?

Not saying it was a great argument. But for the Meta-signal.

Ie on tariffs there is a reasonable explanation possible. It requires one to completely disregard almost all economic theory and history… but it does seem possible that a sufficiently economically naive person might reach this conclusion.

> Is there an interpretation where people credibly thought it was better to aggregate at the fleet grain rather than individual levels? Ie is there a good faith argument?

"Good faith argument" implies that I think that the regulators were acting in bad faith. I don't! I believe they had the best intentions - sorry if I made it seem otherwise.

I'm just using the fact that the outcomes were negative to make the point that, even with the best intentions, if you're not careful with how you act, your actions can have negative results.

I totally get the logic of "it was better to aggregate at the fleet grain rather than individual levels" - I think a naive person would have done something similar - but it didn't work out, and it shows that you need to apply way more thought, effort, and analysis than you might naively assume.

I don’t see the issue in that though. If the target was to keep the average emission down across the entire country and if inefficient brand A decided to merge with efficient brand B to keep the average down that seems like it still adheres to the spirit of the law

Seems more like it meets the letter of the law.

The spirit was surely be too accelerate efficiency by ensuring all manufacturers improve. That has been negated; reducing the necessary efficiency for some manufacturers just because others are doing well.

It's like if you allowed multiple people to mix blood samples for a DUI check. Sure, there'd have to be less drinking over all, but some would still be drunk af and the effectiveness of the law would be greatly reduced.

Not a great analogy. CO2 emissions are a global phenomenon, so the average emission level is exactly what matters. Drunkenness is not.

Reasonable criticism of the analogy, but the point was/is that this chicanery weakened the effect of the legislation allowing more CO² than would otherwise have been the case. Thus, the spirit of the law was not respected.

Yeah it's not really "gaming" anything.

A last effort to extend the many favors granted to the dying german auto industry

They likely saw it coming… and deliberately did it this way.

All local industry distorts their relevant politics. There’s lobbyists in the EU too.

The EU economy has a lot of car manufacturing, so cars are probably a big deal in Brussels.

Especially in Germany, which has several major manufacturers (Daimler-Benz, VW, BMW) that are important to the economy. Additionally, VW is part owned by the government of one of the states, which is why they are frequently favored by the government. Despite various scandals at VW, there are rarely any serious consequences for the company, because the government always finds a way to make trouble go away.

And Germany is fairly influential in the EU so they probably extend the protection of these companies to the EU level.

EU politics are basically French, German politics vs smaller countries now, I think. The triangle balance of France, Germany, UK has been replaced by a more centralised but also more diffuse model, although Poland seems to be becoming more important.

> The EU economy has a lot of car manufacturing, so cars are probably a big deal in Brussels.

Car manufacturing is a strategic component of a nation's defense infrastructure. It goes way beyond trade protectionism.

Is that weighted for individual car popularity? Because couldn’t you put three push cars in your lineup that you don’t realistically expect to sell and be fine?

AFAIK the average emissions are based on cars that were actually sold. So yeah, it's weighted for popularity in a way.

Link not working

Weird; it was truncated somehow.

https://www.schmidtmatthias.de/post/mercedes-benz-intends-to...

I wonder if that's why Ford, Ram, and Nissan all at the same time decide to discontinue their mini cargo vans a year ago.

If you're talking about the ford transit (I'm just guessing) but maybe the tariff rules changed? IIUC The transit was shipped to the US from europe as a "bus" because it was configured with car seats on board and then they would strip the seats and ship them back to europe. Buses are exempt from tariffs otherwise municipal public transit would be even more in the drink.

This is the Ford Transit Connect. They're known as mini cargo vans and popular with trades and for city driving because they're slightly smaller than a mini van. The equivalent to the Transit Connect was the Ram ProMaster City and Nissan NV200. They all were discontinued within two years of each other.

>This is the Ford Transit Connect.

isnt that a VW made in Poland?

The Jimny is my favorite example of a cool little vehicle that would address a glaring hole in the U.S. market.

The situation here is pathetic. We can't have truly small trucks or sport-utes because of obviously incompetent or corrupt regulations.

Is it really banned in Europe? I've seen quite a few of them in Germany

The Jimny or similar Suzuki models would not be offered for sale in the U.S. because it’s basically the latest iteration of the Samuri, which died there after Consumer Reports falsely claimed that it was dangerously prone to rollover.

The Samuri, sold in India as the Gypsy and used extensively by Indian police, did rollover alarmingly often until the 1993 model when the track width was increased by 90mm.

Yeah but look at it. It's a tall vehicle. Of course it's more likely to roll over. It's tall so that it can go over things. It has a purpose. Don't drive it like a sports car and dont haul your family in it on the daily. People bought utility vehicles and used them as family haulers and then bitched when they rolled over. It's stupid. Drive a car.

It's like complaining that you bought a boat, but the water surrounding them is dangerous and you could drown in it. So we need to make it work on land so that you can take the kids to school in it without drowning.

After the mid 1980s, SUVs were consistently and explicitly marketed and sold to families as passengers vehicles.

I think the idea may have been that these would help with bad Indian roads — even our potholes have potholes — but the police neglected to account for having to participate in the odd car chase now and then.

I had rented a barebones Jimny last month when I was in Auckland for the week. Not saying it was prone to roll. But holy hell was it feeling like I could roll that bad boy on some curvy gravel roads. I also loved it.

I don't recognize it as being a Samurai descendent.

Related note: I just saw a Suzuki Sidekick on the road in L.A., in Geo Tracker trim... a rare sight nowadays. It sounded like shit, but with a robust platform a vehicle like that would be just what the U.S. market lacks: a burly SMALL sport-ute.

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