Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who said he would stay on the sidelines during this election, will spend $45 million per month to elect Donald Trump, a presidential candidate who has repeatedly targeted EVs during his campaign and who has promised to end EV incentives in exchange for a billion dollars in bribes from the oil industry.
Expand Expanding Close
The US “Supreme” Court has just issued an opinion that would overturn Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council, ensuring more government gridlock and casting activist judges in the place of career scientists to decide specific answers to some of the most crucial questions of the day, such as those related to climate emissions and other environmental issues.
Among many incredibly stupid opinions the court has issued recently, this is among the stupidest, and we’re going to go into why.
Expand Expanding Close
News came out on Friday that President Biden is set to quadruple tariffs on Chinese EVs to protect the US auto industry from the rapid growth of Chinese EV manufacturing.
But instead of just de facto banning the competition from giving Americans access to affordable hot new EVs, the US should instead try making affordable hot new EVs itself.
Expand Expanding Close
Republicans have introduced a bill to eliminate the US EV tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act, with the effect of slowing US progress on EV manufacturing, thus handing the lead in EV manufacturing to China.
Expand Expanding Close
Automakers are fiercely lobbying governments to water down already-compromised emissions rules, but doing so will only lead to their doom as market entrants that are serious about EVs will continue ramping them anyway.
Expand Expanding Close
This week, Kia unveiled a tranche of new EV concept cars, and the common element among them that stood out to me? These cars have some really weird wheels. And I mean that in a good way!
Expand Expanding Close
In the midst of the United Auto Workers’ strike, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked on Face The Nation whether she plans to trade in her Tesla Model 3 for a union-built EV.
However, there really aren’t many EVs she could pick from, and that’s a problem for the Big Three, the UAW, the American auto industry, and US workers in general. And also for AOC.
Expand Expanding Close
Anyone with a VanMoof ebike is likely concerned after the Dutch company confirmed that it is in financial trouble (and subsequently declared bankrupt).
Update: The new owners have announced details of the rescue plan, set to roll out in the first half of 2024. This will begin with replacement parts being made available to retailers, then new sales, and finally a VanMoof e-scooter. However, reports The Verge, the US situation is more complex. The rescue plan will come to the States, but the timeline is as yet unknown.
Expand Expanding Close
Over the years, we’ve seen several car companies tout their decision to create an “EV division” within the company, a group tasked specifically with looking into EV technology and how to implement that within the product line.
But many times, this can still be counterproductive. With the EV shift happening now, companies need to stop thinking about “EV divisions” and go all-in on EV development today.
Expand Expanding Close
A looming crisis is brewing in China, as hundreds of thousands of unsold, polluting gas-powered vehicles may be rendered unsellable due to incoming emissions rules. It’s another sign that the global auto industry isn’t ready for the shift to EVs and will be caught unawares if it doesn’t ramp EV production fast enough.
Expand Expanding Close
After an (American) holiday weekend largely dedicated to setting things on fire, we think it’s relevant to note something that caught on fire this weekend that absolutely shouldn’t have: namely, the sea.
Over the weekend, not only did a fire break out in the Gulf of Mexico but also in the Caspian Sea. Both incidents were, predictably, associated with fossil fuels.
Expand Expanding Close
In Victoria, Australia, the state government is considering implementing a punitive mileage tax specifically on electric cars. A coalition of organizations, including Hyundai, VW, Uber, ABB, WWF, and others, has come out against the proposal, calling it the “worst electric vehicle policy in the world” in a full-page ad in The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
The Victorian government currently collects no such tax on gas cars — and doesn’t even collect a gas tax at all. It also has no specific electric vehicle incentives to balance out this proposed tax.
Expand Expanding Close
It’s happened yet again: Another EV sold out before it launched. This time, it’s the upcoming Opel Mokka-e that is sold out in Europe, even though the car won’t hit the road until next March. Opel says they were “totally surprised” by the demand and were expecting a “high-four-digit” number of sales next year.
Opel is not the first company to experience this. GM, Ford, Porsche, VW, and others have all had a hard time meeting initial demand for their vehicles, or sold them out well in advance of launch. So if this keeps happening, what’s it going to take to convince manufacturers that consumers want electric cars?
Expand Expanding Close
Germany has taken the lead over Norway in annual EV sales for the first time, edging out Norway for total sales since the start of this year, as reported by Bloomberg. Currently, Germany’s 2019 total is 57,533 EVs, while Norway has sold 56,893.
This would be good news for Germany — if it weren’t so embarrassing for them and the rest of Europe. Norway is a tiny country with a population of 5.3 million, where the main industry is oil, and where the whole country is cold. Germany’s population is roughly 16 times larger than Norway’s. And yet, Norway has still had higher EV sales than every country in Europe until now.
Toyota, GM, and FCA have been getting a lot of flack the last couple days, in response to their move to join the EPA in opposing better MPG standards against the interests of consumers and the environment.
Toyota responded to this public outcry by claiming that it wants “continuous, year-over-year improvements in fuel economy,” but there’s one problem with that: Their fleet average MPG is actually getting worse over time, unlike every other automaker.
In the latest move in the EPA’s fight against California over clean air, several automakers including Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, and Toyota have come out on the side of more pollution and more death, as reported late Monday by the New York Times. These automakers have cast their lot in with the fossil fuel interests running the Trump administration and their efforts which will kill Americans and cost them money via an ill-considered fuel efficiency rollback.
We’ve written before about how this move is bad for business, consumers, and the environment and is quite likely a losing battle for the federal government anyway. The only group which seems likely to benefit from this on a high level is the fossil fuel industry – a group that seems to be the animating force behind these actions.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit claiming that California’s carbon emissions agreement with Quebec violates the US Constitution.
The problem is, the legal arguments the DOJ uses to support its case actually invalidate it — and also invalidate another case the administration is currently fighting against California’s attempts to improve air quality.
In the latest step in the Environmental “Protection” Agency’s (EPA) losing battle against clean air and clean cars, the agency plans to announce a revocation of California’s well-established authority to regulate vehicle emissions tomorrow, reports Automotive News.
This move is no surprise, as ever since oil industry pawn Scott Pruitt was nominated as head of the EPA (later replaced by coal stooge Andrew Wheeler), the agency has been signaling its intent to revoke California’s ability to set its own emissions standards.
We’ve been covering the developments in the fuel economy/emissions fight between the Environmental “Protection” Agency (previously run by an oil stooge, now run by a coal lobbyist, and staffed by commissioners who wrongly think air pollution isn’t harmful) and the environment they claim to protect, and today we’ve heard another doozy from the federal government.
After automakers made an agreement with California to voluntarily have higher standards than required by the EPA and thus save consumers money and improve health, the Department of Justice is now investigating those automakers under antitrust laws, seemingly with no legal justification other than anger over the embarrassment this has caused to their boss who considers himself a “dealmaker” and yet has failed to make a deal.
Toyota has been dragging their feet on new vehicle technology for some time now, seemingly happy to continue selling their antiquated gas-powered fleet, with no battery electric vehicles and only one plug-in hybrid and one fuel cell vehicle (powered by 95% fossil-sourced hydrogen) across their entire lineup.
But if you watch their recent ads, the deceptiveness of which we’ve covered before, you wouldn’t know this. Because they continue to misleadingly advertise their “self-charging” “hybrid electric Corolla” as if it’s anything other than a 100% fossil-powered gas guzzler. And in case it wasn’t apparent already: “self-charging” is not a real thing, as the entire concept violates the basic laws of physics.
