The entire US auto industry is back at it again, lobbying Congress to stifle competition and ensure that Americans remain stuck with overpriced, second-rate, highly-polluting vehicles.
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Perhaps you’ve heard the news – automakers across the industry are canceling EV investments, taking tens of billions in losses in response to a claimed lack in customer demand for EVs (even as EV sales in fact continue to rise globally and gas car sales have peaked).
A new analysis by InfluenceMap shows how automakers actually made their own bed, by flip-flopping on their own lobbying efforts and contributing to the regulatory instability that currently plagues an industry with long planning timelines and global competitors that have not hamstrung themselves with such uncertainty.
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Toyota has the worst climate lobbying score of any automaker, and the third-worst 2030 EV production plans, according to InfluenceMap’s annual report on climate lobbying.
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Major automakers are currently on track to fail to meet necessary climate goals to keep the world under 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, according to a new report by InfluenceMap.
The report showed that while companies are largely making climate-forward public statements, these statements do not match up with their actions in terms of future production plans or their lobbying efforts.
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For the second year in a row, Tesla tried to pass a bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk in Connecticut, to allow the sale of electric vehicles directly to consumers without having to go through the franchise dealerships model. Last week, the bill SB3 was in consideration and awaiting a vote in the state Senate, but it is now officially dead following an impressive lobbying campaign led by GM and the local dealership association.
The electric automaker is currently entrenched in several battles over its business model of selling directly to consumers without a third-party dealership. While it is not an issue in most of its markets, Tesla is not allowed or under restrictions to sell its cars in several states including Arizona, Michigan, Texas, Connecticut, Utah and West Virginia.
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Brace yourself for some misinformation in the coming months.
Gandhi said: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
It looks like electric vehicles are still in the “fighting phase” as we learn today that billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are planning to back a new group of lobbyists with a focus on “boosting petroleum-based transportation fuels and attacking government subsidies for electric vehicles”, according to refining industry sources talking to the Huffington Post.
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