The Biden EPA Is Now Reportedly Thinking About Slowing Down EV Rollout

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The Biden administration has been under pressure from automakers, oil companies, and even auto unions to slow down its planned emissions rules, thus slowing down the transition to electric cars. According to new reports, the Environmental Protection Agency is considering giving in to that pressure.

Joining the American government in potentially walking back its plans, the Italian government is admitting it isn’t going to be buying Stellantis anytime soon. And on the topic of not buying anything anytime soon, people don’t seem to be buying Fisker’s stock and now the company is being warned by the New York Stock Exchange.

And, finally, let’s chat about used car values, which have been going down.

The EPA: Well…

President Biden Gmc Hummer Ev 001
Source: GM

Remember last week when we showed you those ads that petroleum companies were running to get President Biden to back down on his administration’s plan to force a dramatic shift toward vehicle electrification in the coming months? At the very least, this administration is considering it.

From The Washington Post this weekend:

The Environmental Protection Agency is considering relaxing one of its most significant climate change rules — tailpipe emissions limits for cars and trucks — by giving automakers more time to boost sales of electric vehicles, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Rather than mandating a rapid increase in electric vehicle (EV) sales in the coming years, the agency could delay these requirements until after 2030, the two people said. The individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity because no final decision has been made; the rule will not be finalized until March at the earliest

The reasons for this are many, including:

Pick any of the above. I don’t think the petroleum lobby is what won over the Biden administration, nor do I think it was dealers complaining, or even automakers complaining. But you can only fight a war on so many fronts and for people who care about the environment, it’s been a great 3.5 years, and really what are the options? The Republican Party’s standard bearer has made it clear he isn’t going to enforce any of this.

Plus, this was always how it was going to probably go down. As we wrote when the rules were first announced:

Environmental advocates will say the world can’t wait and that transportation emissions—our largest pollution source in the U.S.—have to be brought down before we cook ourselves into a Hell-on-earth situation. The scientific consensus says they aren’t wrong.

But that’s about to run up against the cold, hard logistics of transforming a century of gasoline vehicle infrastructure—in a country that came up alongside the car—into an electric one. It’s crazy to think that can be done in about a decade; it’s moon landing stuff.

Yup. Politics is the art of the possible, so you shoot for the stars and be happy if you land on, like, the roof or whatever. And this isn’t necessarily what’s going to happen, but just listen to the EPA spokesperson from the same WaPo article:

EPA spokesman Timothy Carroll declined to comment on the specifics of the rule while it is under interagency review. But in general, Carroll said in an email, “EPA is committed to finalizing a technology standard that is readily achievable, secures reductions in dangerous air and climate pollution and ensures economic benefits for families.”

Strong emphasis on “readily achievable” there.

EVs for some and miniature American flags for others.

Italy: Whoa, Whoa, Whoa… We Aren’t Buying Stellantis, What Would Give You That Idea?

Lovitz Tavares
Source: SNL

Wow, Carlos Tavares (pictured) must be having a great President’s Day. He’s gonna buy, like, six mattresses. After a few weeks of back-and-forth with the Italian government, Tavares has seemingly won the day with the Italian government backing off of the idea of investing in Stellantis.

Per Reuters:

The Italian government buying a stake in Fiat-parent Stellantis (STLAM.MI), is not on the cards, but could be if the automaker requested it, industry minister Adolfo Urso said on Friday.

Urso raised the prospect of Rome buying shares in Stellantis on Feb. 1 amid a spat over the company’s commitment to Italy, but since then both parties have made conciliatory remarks to ease tensions.”

Today (…) it is obvious that this is off the agenda,” the minister said in an interview with RAI public radio.

It was always clear that this was a farcical suggestion given that the Italian government can afford shares in Stellantis in the same way I can afford a Ferrari 296 GT3. Italy is just mad that it doesn’t have a stake like the French government does.

Ultimately, Italy wanted to make the point that it didn’t want to be ignored and badly needed to keep Stellantis plants in the country running. Point made. You could perhaps cast this as a victory for the new Italian government, but in the end, this charade showed how much more leverage Tavares has. It’ll be interesting to see what else Stellantis gets out of it.

NYSE: Get Your Act Together Fisker

Fisker Alaska Concept 2023 1600 02Erstwhile American electric company Fisker hasn’t had the best go of it lately, and the markets have noticed. In particular, the NYSE, where Fisker listed via a SPAC in 2020, has noticed.

Here’s what’s going on, via Fisker:

Fisker Inc. (NYSE: FSR) (“Fisker” or the “Company”), driven by a mission to create the world’s most emotional and sustainable electric vehicles, announced that on February 15, 2024, it received notice from the New York Stock Exchange (the “NYSE”) that it is not in compliance with Section 802.01C of the NYSE Listed Company Manual because the average closing price of the Company’s common stock was less than $1.00 per share over a consecutive 30 trading-day period.

The NYSE notice does not result in the immediate delisting of the Company’s common stock from the NYSE.

In accordance with applicable NYSE rules, the Company intends to notify the NYSE within 10 business days of its intent to regain compliance with Rule 802.01C and return to compliance with the applicable NYSE continued listing standards.

The Company can regain compliance at any time within a six-month cure period following its receipt of the NYSE notice if, on the last trading day of any calendar month during such cure period, the Company has both: (i) a closing share price of at least $1.00 and (ii) an average closing share price of at least $1.00 over the 30 trading-day period ending on the last trading day of the applicable calendar month.

Fisker was at about $0.73 this morning, so it’s not a completely insurmountable distance. It’s unclear what Fisker is going to do about it, but options include a reverse stock-split, wherein the company essentially reduces the number of outstanding shares thus boosting the price.

Cox: Used Cars Are Affordable-er

Mirai Ohio CarfaxIt makes sense that, if new cars are more affordable, then used cars will also become more affordable. Unfortunately, like new cars, we’re also grading on a bit of scale as Cox Automotive explains in their used car roundup:

The average used-vehicle listing price was $25,328, down from a revised $26,505 at the start of January, down 4% from a year earlier. Though used-vehicle prices are lower now versus 2022 and 2023, they remain much higher than in 2019.

All of this is about as expected, but there’s an interesting twist that Cox is pointing out here:

“EV talk is everywhere, and now even in the used-vehicle days’ supply discussion,” said Jeremy Robb, senior director of Economic and Industry Insights at Cox Automotive. “Used EV sales increased enough in January to help drive days’ supply lower.”

Used EVs you say…

I say everyone in America should have a used Chevy Bolt as a second car, but that’s just me.

What I’m Listening To This Morning

“Lump” by The Presidents of the United States of America. Can you imagine the stones it takes to be a Seattle band in the ’90s and sound this happy?

The Big Question

What’s the best President’s Day sale you’ve seen this weekend? It doesn’t have to be a car.

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196 thoughts on “The Biden EPA Is Now Reportedly Thinking About Slowing Down EV Rollout”

  1. Don’t know if it’s the best President’s Day sale or not, but I did just get a great deal on some new tires for my truck this morning.

    Big enough to look better (it’s amazing how 33″ tires look tiny on a CCLB) but not so big as to be obnoxious.

    Also, anything delaying EV mandates is worth celebrating IMO.

    1. I’m not buying a Pentium until they fix that floating point error.

      (I seriously skipped two CPU generations over this; I went from a 486-SX 25 to a Pentium II-266…back when CPU speeds meant anything.)

      As it relates to EVs, though, for me, it’s not just the advances in tech; it’s the infrastructure. I drive quite a lot for work, and I need a much more robust charging network than we have in 2024.

    3. I’d say it’s closer to Pentium 2/3 at this point. The crappy compliance cars are rare to nonexistent, and some manufacturers are on their second generation. Solid state will be a big jump if/when it arrives, and I assume more manufacturers will move to 800V, but it’s not like range is doubling every year or two.

  4. Best weekend sale? Definitely the 20% off sale from my tea purveyor. I was running very low on supplies and was worried I’d have to replenish at full price.

  6. “EVs for some and miniature American flags for others.”

    the other day you wrote

    “Also, some people make cars explicitly political even if that’s not what we want.”

    

    1. “Feather Pluckn,” “Dune Buggy,” and “Naked and Famous” are my favorites from that album, and “Blank Baby,” “Last Girl on Earth,” and “I’m Mad” are my favorites from “Freaked Out and Small.”

      Those two albums had a lot of good stuff, and I’m not sure why I didn’t really listen to the other four. Guess I’ve just picked some music to explore for the rest of this week!

    2. Not quite a tumor, but illness and allergic reaction: “The song’s strange lyrics came from a dream that Ballew had while fighting pneumonia. The antibiotics he was taking caused an allergic reaction that produced several consecutive nights of wild and crazy dreams”

  8. They’re talking about slowing the EV rollout.

    Why is there no talk about changing the incentives so that manufacturers are encouraged get sub-$25k 200+ mile range EVs out the door? None currently exist on the market in the USA, even though you can get them in China.

    When you subsidize the production of $60k+ MSRP SUVs/trucks/crossovers with massive 80+ kWh battery packs, you’re going to get more of them produced. And surprise-surprise, Americans can’t afford them.

    1. And they aren’t looking at how to better incentivize infrastructure rollout to prioritize maintenance of charging stations. If we give the money for the install without so much as verifying things keep working, we cannot be surprised at significant time out of service.

          1. I took a little vacation at a condo resort in a small tourist town nearby this winter. One of the things I noticed is ALL of the carport sheds had AC EVSE in them, with one charger servicing 2-4 stalls.

            So yeah, this would be quite possible in apartment complexes with similar setups. Charging security would be the next problem (i.e. making sure only residents can plug in), but that would be simple enough with a security badge reader.

            My wife’s workplace also has 4 x level 2 chargers that any employee of the building (typical office building shared by a half dozen companies) can use. Adding things like that to many workplaces would allow commuters to charge at work even if their situation at home doesn’t allow it.

            1. My workplace has ChargePoint charging stations, which has allowed them to solve the security issue (our company has to okay access to those chargers so that only an approved list can charge), but requires an app, which is not my favorite.

              But, yeah, this is a very solvable problem, and workplaces and property owners can get on it pretty easily.

              1. I’ve seen them with both an app and a security badge. I like the latter because 1) everyone and their dog wants you to have an app, clutter be damned and 2) it’s easy enough for a manager to deactivate a badge in the system if it’s stolen or a resident moves out without returning the badge. Point being, of course, solutions exist already.

                1. Yeah, the security badge would be my preference. We use them anyway, and it wouldn’t take a lot of effort, but I’m guessing this was cheaper implementation. Always bean counting.

        1. You’re right, but there is another issue beyond the way they do the calculation: enforcement. If they aren’t enforcing the regulation, there’s effectively no regulation.

          I’m hoping they begin enforcement in earnest, but I won’t hold my breath. Enforcement costs money, and we tend to dislike spending money, even if it will potentially save even more. In order to effectively enforce, you need to not only audit, but also take civil action against the company to recover the money (which they may not have).

    2. Do you include tax incentives in your sub 25k price? A chevy bolt will get you under 25k and has 200+ miles.
      But, that’s it and it’s only while supplies last since they just stopped making them.

      1. I did not, on purpose. I’d set the incentive up to where it ONLY applies to cars with a sub-$25k MSRP, and must get at least 200 miles range EPA highway.

        My idea would be to encourage the manufacture of lower-margined products that are of decent quality, and use aerodynamic drag reduction and mass reduction to get their long range on a small battery pack that would commonly be spec’d for a city vehicle. By necessity, these vehicles would be low-mass streamliners with minimal tech doo-dads, anywhere from subcompact size to midsize, either hatchbacks, sedans, or sports cars.

        The manufacturer who decides to build and sell such car will get the sales. If they ALL do it, new car consumers may well shift to it killing the CUV/SUV/truck paradigm. And if current consumer tastes don’t shift, a new market will be created among the working class who typically buy used ICE cars, because there will now exist new products whose monthly payments are so inexpensive that using the EV would be cheaper than the cost of maintenance and fuel on their current 20 year old clunker ICE. And if NO U.S. manufacturer makes a car that qualifies? I’d make a stipulation that will then allow the Chinese in if that’s the case. If domestic manufacturers want to be greedy, then screw them: they deserve to die in the case that they refuse to adapt.

        I want to kill the gravy train and allow people to save money over what they currently have. This is at odds with the industry’s goal of profit maximization. The current crop of EVs available in the USA are almost always the antithesis of the stated ideal, with perhaps the Model 3 and Bolt being the lone exceptions, and only half-heartedly so.

        1. What’s really telling is that the new car incentives are set up with high caps, but the used car incentive caps the price at $25k. It really speaks to a willingness to protect the high-margin vehicles.

          Personally, I’d prefer to see the incentive tied to efficiency instead of value. You want to build/buy the blocky SUV with a massive battery? Little to no incentive. The streamlined sedan with a small battery? Great, that actually reduces resource use, so have some significant money back.

            1. Oh, absolutely. I don’t delude myself into thinking that the politicians were well-meaning. Big business is the campaign pocketbook and the voters only matter if something is so overwhelmingly supported/opposed that campaign spending can’t convince them (which is almost never).

      1. They can be. A vehicle that gets 150 Wh/mile cruising down the interstate at 70-75 mph is not rocket science. But it won’t be a luxobarge CUV/SUV/truck either. By necessity, it will be a sub-3,000 lb streamliner, anything from a subcompact to a midsized car, with minimal bells and whistles. To meet that cost, the battery will be no more than 35 kWh.

          1. For a car with mass appeal that seats more than two, I agree. And that’s not hard to do. Maybe for infotainment, add a dock and a generic screen to plug your phone in, but don’t integrate the screen into the rest of the car’s electronics, just make it an easily replaced stand-alone system that ties into the stereo.

            For all the car’s features, buttons and switches work well, and are repairable.

              1. AC has minimal impact on range. Running it full blast in such an efficient vehicle, you might negatively impact range 5-10%.

                Heat, OTOH, will have a greatly larger impact in such an efficient vehicle. Possibly upwards of 20%, not even accounting for the range reduction the vehicle will see just from the cold weather. One way to mitigate this is to have a simple battery heating system that activates when the temperature is below a certain level while the car is plugged in. It will use very little energy in contrast.

                1. If A/C has such a minimal impact on range wouldn’t’ the solution then be that same A/C system as a heat pump, at least for non freezing temperatures?

                  1. Maybe. Really depends on the economics of it and whether the tradeoffs would be worth it.

                    For EVs, ceramic elements are the simplest and fastest ways to generate cabin heat, and they’re a bit of a selling point because you don’t have to wait on another system to produce heat to send into the cabin, as you’d often have to do in an ICE(waiting for the engine to warm up). With a ceramtic element in an EV, you can get heat right away, on demand, in less than a second, all at the flip of a switch.

                    But heat, no matter how it’s generated, is going to take lots of energy from your battery pack. I’m proposing a vehicle that gets 200+ mils highway range, lugging around the energy efficiency equivalent of only 1 gallon of gasoline. An ICE car has a lot more waste heat generated to put to use.

                    2. A small 200cc unit tuned to make about 25 horsepower peak would be plenty for such a streamliner as I propose. You’d be able to run the tank dry at 100 mph.

              2. Well impossible in the age of 8 comfort zones. But heat is simple from friction and combustion. AC a bit tougher. Cool water and mist with air flow. A convertible top. Sucking heat from the cabin to create energy for the vehicles.

                1. That’s a swamp cooler. Great for dry as a bone Arizona (assuming you have water and don’t mind carrying it), not so great for more humid environments.

            2. Hey today’s generation isn’t getting married,isn’t moving out of their parents place and using ride share. I do believe a dull efficient public transportation vehicle could work. Their parents can give the lazy bastards a bus pass

        2. You know I don’t think as many of us car owners are as into safety as suggested. And frankly after 20 years and my Vehicross throwing a rod I am over the SUV craze. Every car breakthrough has run its course and been replaced. Is it possible a well designed economical vehicle could replace the expensive SUVs? Forget EVs. Yeah it’s happy hour at Mr Sarcastics house but… stay with me. There is an old movie trilogy called Tremors. Watch it its fun. Michael Glass from Family Ties plays Burt Gummer a gun toting survivalist married to the beautiful Reba MacIntyre. The small town of Perfection is being overrun by worm creatures, who I expect are reruns from Dune. Well Burt has pipe bombs. When asked he says a few household chemicals in the proper proportions. Well aren’t there enough chemical reactions from household chemicals that don’t blow up as much as cause a reaction that could propel a vehicle steadily without exploding or releasing a caustic gas? Think of car motors that have two tanks a proper mixing unit and you can buy both inert items from Walmart. Like a two stroke motor. Of course no government support because like a very effective medical Marijuana you can grow your own. I’m thinking Irene Ryan brought back from the dead as Granny Clampet and her home remedies.

          1. Well Burt has pipe bombs. When asked he says a few household chemicals in the proper proportions. Well aren’t there enough chemical reactions from household chemicals that don’t blow up as much as cause a reaction that could propel a vehicle steadily without exploding or releasing a caustic gas? Think of car motors that have two tanks a proper mixing unit and you can buy both inert items from Walmart. Like a two stroke motor. Of course no government support because like a very effective medical Marijuana you can grow your own.

            You can do exactly what you are proposing, just ferment yard waste into alcohol, methane or go around begging waste oil to run in a diesel engine.

    4. Sorry but incentives are never offered for the good of the environment or general tax payer BY EITHER PARTY. If they aren’t buying votes or paying off favors it doesn’t happen

      1. Nailed it. And we’re paying for it.

        These current incentives are a massive disaster for EVs, and have only served to feed the anti-EV talking points of one side of a mostly partisan divide. And I’m certain it was intentional. Th industry never was fond of the idea of electric cars when they stated showing signs of viability 30 years ago. Now, they want the only ones available to be overpriced monstrosities designed to end up in a landfill in 10 years because mechanics and DIY types are locked out of repairs via proprietary software. And it’s a shame, because this technology really opens the door to a car that someone could buy in college as a young adult, put a million miles on it, and then pass it down to their grandchildren in operable condition when they are old, with a battery pack replacement or two along the way and basic maintenance.

          1. Just being honest. And it doesn’t look like either party is looking out for the common person on this issue. One side is basically “switch to EVs, or ELSE…” with no provisions made to making affordable/usable ones available to the masses who mostly are using 15-year-old ICE clunkers to get back and forth to work and can’t afford an upgrade, and the other side is just rabidly against the technology in general and thinks it is some variant of a Communist plot. And to confound matters, the truth DOES NOT rest between these two extremes, because the entire political paradigm in this country is wrong and totally divorced from reality including and especially the so-called “moderates”, not just one side or the other.

            It’s a complicated and messy clusterfuck we are in, and your 100 IQ Hank Hill or Joe Sixpack has no hope of navigating this whatsoever, while politicians and entrenched interests are both eager to milk him for everything they can.

              1. I didn’t think you did disagree. The fact that EVs have been turned into a divisive political football may have been intentional among a subset of powerful people. That would have the consequence of slowing the adoption curve and making large swathes of the population even more skeptical that it could work.

                  1. Or perhaps the EVs should have been designed in a way that suits their strengths and minimizes their weaknesses in the first place, instead of being designed like ICE cars.

                    1. Well most EVs designed and built by ICE manufacturers. You build what you know. They also have the knowledge to build the rest and money to do so and the infrastructure. They have the international reach. I mean except for Elon who had the money, desire, and willingness to do this? Say what you want only Tesla was able to lay the groundwork for the electric car. And yeah people don’t like him but I envy his ability to tell anybody he wants to just go f yourself.

                    2. The problem with optimizing EVs for their strengths is that it is possible, but transportation is and always has a been a system, not a single product, regardless of how we obfuscated that fact through narratives of “freedom”. However because of the wave of neoliberalism since the 1970s, our governments have completely lost their ability to effectively build infrastructure and private companies don’t want to be on the hook for the upkeep.

                      As with most things wrong in this country, your can squarely blame Reagan.

            2. With you analysis, which I think is largely on point, though I think it misses the timeline aspect. The right wasn’t inherently against EVs, and teslas especially early on were a point of fascination and interest. Once the overzealous push from the Left side that you describe happened, the anti-EV conspiracy theories (not entirely unfounded at that) began in reaction. But that wasn’t out of nowhere, since most of the “green agenda” policies put forth by those on the more extreme ends of the left (who shockingly receive more air time and attention than the vast majority of reasonable moderates) just so happen to all be progressive policy wishlists. I don’t like how political a football EVs became, but they didn’t need to, and it’s a very easy path to follow how they did. Overall disappointing!

              If EV development was allowed to just continue as it was I think the market would have continued to grow, but they aren’t ready for true mainstream takeover and having a compromised product pushed too early on the market by the government is just a terrible way to go about it.

          1. Sodium Ion batteries open up that as a possibility, considering how inexpensive they are to manufacture. And they aren’t a fire hazard, either.

            The Chinese manufacturers are proponents of this tech, while the US/Europe/Japan ignores it.

            1. I can tell you that it isn’t being ignored, but for now it’s considered uncompetitive for energy density reasons, and some other reasons. The range wars are here.

              1. The 1996 Solectria Sunrise weighing in at 2,700 lbs, could get a real-world 200+ mile range using a 26 kWh pack of NiMH batteries that had about 1/3 the energy density of the current generation of sodium-ion batteries. Its pack was about 900 lbs. The next generation of sodium ion batteries are expected to compete with LiFePO4 on gravimetric energy density.

                For an inexpensive people mover where the goal is minimal purchase price and minimal operating cost, and where the car is designed with aerodynamic streamlining taking precedence over corporate design language and fad styling trends, Sodium ion batteries are definitely good enough.

                Although if the goal is to produce a $60k+ SUV/CUV/truck with the 80+ kWh pack needed to push all that air out of the way, then no, they are not at all a viable choice.

                Oversized vehicles with massive grills, sharp creases everywhere, angular styling, fake vents/scoops everywhere, plastic cladding, big wheels, and all that other crap that unnecessarily adds drag? If this is going to be viable, that shit has all got to go. And good riddance.

                1. Your points are valid, but I don’t think a Solectria Sunrise is getting 200 miles on any drive cycle that will matter for establishing range, and real drivers in real traffic on real roads at real speeds are consistently getting less range than the cycles say they should.

                  The old NYT article I could find about that 217-mile trip from Boston to NY says they made it with 15% to spare… in 6 hours with a break for lunch and a “news conference”. Lets generously say that’s a 2 hour break (a 3 hour break would put the average speed over the quoted “up to 65 MPH” figure), so an average speed pf 54 MPH, average load of 7.3 kW (roughly 10 horsepower), with ~100 W*hr per mile. These numbers are approaching “glorified golf cart” territory, but that car cost $100,000.

                  Maybe something like that could be cheaper today (it would still need a heater, though), and I actually think cars meeting this description DO have a use case, but they can’t meet all of pretty much anyone’s needs, and our system of insurance and registration penalizes people who want to keep a niche vehicle like that around.

                  1. real drivers in real traffic on real roads at real speeds are consistently getting less range than the cycles say they should.

                    Maybe if they drove like they should – steady state at the speed limit (or below depending on lane) with gentle acceleration and braking and kept their damn tires inflated – they might see those numbers.

                    1. They should drive everywhere like the FTP-72?

                      7.5 miles in 23 minutes at an average speed of 19 MPH with a stop averaging every 62 seconds, never exceeding 57 MPH.

                    2. That sounds like a scaled down version of a typical commute in my area but no.

                      It’s quite simple. Follow the posted speed limit or whatever lower speed limit is safe due to conditions, accelerate/brake gently and make sure the tires are in good condition.

                      Better yet buy tires that are designed for fuel economy. Even those provide plenty of grip for daily use, at least in my mild climate.

                      It’s not rocket science nor is it an undue hardship.

                  2. I remember reading an article claiming 200 miles range at a steady 60 mph, with some charge remaining. This same car also did 373 mils on one charge being hyper-miled in a Tour De Sol rally.

                    That car cost $100,000 because it was low volume and hand built. The designer claimed mass production could have allowed it to sell at a profit for $20,000. The major automakers weren’t interested.

          2. I think alot of people don’t really get what many delivery trucks are used for. Forget UPS and their Noone can buy a truck like ours. The Majority our box trucks delivering around 10,000 lbs. Spend a day in the receiving parking lot of you favorite grocery store or Walmart. Tons of big3 box trucks. They put UPS to shame in numbers. Unless a 300 mile range in all weather with a 10,000lb hauling and a 18 foot box more or less we aren’t replacing ICE. I delivered for 10 years 6 days a week can’t recall more than a couple vans and no pickups.

            1. I was really just commenting on how much longer consumer vehicles could last if they were REALLY designed to last. Aluminum everything makes the primary killer of cars a non-issue. Making everything easy to service/replace means a skilled home mechanic can resurrect a car for the cost of 1-2 monthly payments.

              You’re absolutely right about there being no substitute for ICE and hydrocarbon fuels at that end of the capability scale, but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good! There are great opportunities to use tech at the tasks it’s best for! Garbage trucks for example, generally have fuel consumption in “gallons per mile” and the door-to-door cycle they run destroys diesel engines and aftertreatment systems. They cover very few miles in a day. They are an absolute no-brainer to go full electric. Same with short-haul delivery.

              1. You are right cars could be eternal. But maintaining and not having the eternally ever changing rules and regulations plus American I need to match the Jonses. Rubber always wears, moving metal always wears. A car with interlocking parts that designed for new parts snap in and modernize is great but then no mechanics.

              2. Aluminum everything makes the primary killer of cars a non-issue. Making everything easy to service/replace means a skilled home mechanic can resurrect a car for the cost of 1-2 monthly payments.

                Maybe where you live. Where I live rust is a non-issue. Even so plenty of cars are junked. Even without rust entropy happens. Crashes and other body damage, overall wear and just wanting a shiny new thing puts all our cars into the scrapheap.

                There’s also progress. Some features can be added on later (like a Double DIN touchscreen) but others are intrinsic to the car. Crash safety is a worthy reason to upgrade. Efficiency is another reason. I’d rather scrap an 80s deathtrap economy car and drive a gently used Prius for better safety, gas mileage, features and NVH.

  9. Missing from the list of reasons why EVs aren’t catching on: they’re still all too damn expensive. I make great money, but my last 5 cars have all been used, and the most expensive was $25k. The two cheapest EVs in that range – Bolt and Leaf – are being discontinued and/or only support a dying charging standard. I know we’ve already talked about EV depreciation and unknown battery longevity, but it doesn’t make sense to buy a $60k EV that’s going to be worth half that by the time you pay it off 5 years later.

        1. Given that the Morning Dump is designed to drive engagement with these short pieces and the question at the end, it’s perfectly reasonable to miss/forget things. 4 different car stories, a quick bit about Lump, and an end question…by the end of reading the Dump and a few comments, I don’t always remember which stories were covered, much less the details.

  10. A local dealer is offering 0.9% financing on Outbacks for President’s Day. Seems like a reasonable deal, given current interest rates. But I’m trying not to pay much attention to the sales. I shouldn’t be buying any more crap and don’t need anything right now.

      1. Sneaker Con is the world’s premier sneaker show, providing a huge space for vendors and attendees to buy, sell, and trade some of the most sought-after footwear in the game.

  13. Spending tax dollars we don’t have to encourage the well off to go EV seems of questionable merit. The infrastructure needs it, as well as domestic resource development. Beyond that, why can’t we encourage the economy car that is under $25k and gets better than 40 mpg?

    1. The average American’s car accounts for 15% of that American’s CO2 footprint, and a $60,000 electric car can avert about half of it. The other half will maybe follow over the next 20 years if the owners of all the brand new, deeply leveraged natural gas power plants decide to stiff the bank, turn them off, knock them down, and replace them with renewables (paid for by another bank that I guess didn’t hear about the first one) and someone solves the load following problem.

      How far do you think those 60,000 George Washingtons would go toward displacing the other 85% of that American’s CO2 via technologies that don’t have to move and don’t require batteries with shelf lives to work?

      Hint: It’s more than 7.5%.

        1. For starters, simply paying for the construction of new low/no-carbon electricity generation capacity. Which is all we really need. More electricity on the supply side of the supply/demand equation to drive electricity prices down, which will drive more consumption of electricity and less of other energy forms. The idea of not buying gasoline sounds even better when your electricity costs $0.05/kW*hr.

          More nuclear would be great, but in the real world it will take too long. Solar and wind are the lowest cost energy you can build now, but CA has already backed off on their solar deployments because the power comes at the wrong time of day, causing the “duck curve” problem. Grid-attached battery storage is now the most effective way to get more energy out of solar, and is necessary if we want to deploy more solar. Unlike in EVs, batteries in grid attached systems can be managed to run through a full charge cycle every day, and the depth of discharge can be managed to maximize the cumulative kW*hrs processed before reaching end of life (cycle or calendar), of this expensive and somewhat carbon-intensive resource.

          Heat pumps start out dirt cheap, and even the name brand, high quality ones with proper service and parts support which will last for 15+ years still cost less than the down payment on an electric car. Installed. 30% of US GHG emissions originate with energy used in residential and commercial buildings, and the overwhelming majority of that is used for climate control. Not much more that can be done for air conditioning (besides raising efficiency standards), but heating systems are a low hanging fruit. Despite recent manufactured controversy, the impact of gas stoves is negligible – getting rid of them matters more for solving the next point that anything else, but… bigger fish.

          “Fugitive emissions” pretty much chalk up to “gas leaks no one can be bothered to find and fix”, and globally, they account for about as much GHG emissions (5.8%) as all the light duty vehicles on the planet (about 6%). Sorry, don’t have US numbers for this one.

          Industry accounts for 25/30% of US/global GHG emissions. Getting into all the different ways industry produces GHG is too much of a rabbit hole for here, but the “big offenders” are industrial heat sources for the iron, steel, concrete, and petrochemical industries, which are almost exclusively combustion, entirely exclusively stationary, and in many cases still involve burning coal and/or coke. There are real challenges involved in the decarbonization of some of these processes, but not all, and these industries are mostly indifferent to the current research into how to make it happen – they’re not going to knock down and rebuild their plants until someone makes them.

          1. Exactly. Your first point is the biggest – if electricity is cheap, demand for electrically powered things will naturally follow. It just so happens that renewables are usually the cheapest option for new power generation these days. We should be doing much more to encourage rapid deployment of these new renewables to both reduce electricity cost and phase out fossil fuel plants.

            It’s frustrating when the best option around my area (northeast US) is offshore wind, but constant delays on the various projects I’ve heard about seem destined to kill the potential. I understand it’s more expensive to build than onshore options but it works fine in Europe. No good reason it can’t be done here.

            1. And once we have it, we also need to convince people that cheap electricity is actually cheap. A friend was trying to argue that an EV would be a bad choice because of electricity costs…here in Idaho, where we have incredibly cheap hydro power (along with some solar and wind, too). He was losing some money on Super Bowl bets and this was in response to a Super Bowl commercial, so he just seemed angry in general, but it was shocking to me that he didn’t realize we already have cheap electricity here.

              1. It’s going to be an uphill battle… Most people still think the way to save on their power bill is to stop leaving the lights on. They have electric water heaters.

                1. I live in PG&E land. I ran the numbers on swapping an electric water heater with a new heat pump model. The payback was about a year and the warranty is 10 years.

                  Seems like a no brainer to me.

              2. You hit on the problem with this approach – unless you’ve moved around a lot or done research on it most people probably think their electric rate is too high. They just view it as bill you have to pay each month without any real choice, and who ever thinks their bills are too low?

                Just tell him to move here and find out what high electricity rates really are. My last bill came out to 30.5 cents/kWhr and they put in a request to the state for even higher rates this summer!

              3. I’ve found that the best way to stop the “electricity is too expensive” argument is not to break things down by the kWhr and how far and how expensive it is and get into any intricacies or blah blah blah.

                Yokel: “And you’re paying so much more for electricity than gas.”
                Me: “It costs me $6.50 to charge from zero to full. How many gallons of gas can you buy for that? And how far does that get you?”

                The first answer around here is “less than 2 gallons” and because Yokel almost always drives a Brodozer, the second answer is “30 miles, tops.” Even a Prius would struggle to get 100 miles on that.

                1. Yeah, I pointed out that the reason I know I could easily go full EV is my experience with a PHEV, which has not meaningfully impacted my electric bill while covering my daily commute. But he pretty quickly moved from the cost of charging to the range and the length of time charging. And what I would do in a civilization collapse (because they’ll still be refining gas, I guess). It didn’t really matter what I said because he wanted to be mad.

                2. I like to use PHEVs as a model since they directly use both watts and liters. Just go to the handy calculator at https://www.fueleconomy.gov, load up a few PHEVs and customize the parameters for your local electricity and gas costs.

                  That’s how I found out that in PG&E country electricity IS more expensive than gas 🙁

                  1. Yes, that is an unfortunate thing about PG&E. I live in an area that is covered under the general umbrella of the BPA. A shit ton of hydro, wind, nuclear, and solar (in that order). Our state’s last coal plant went offline last year.

                    10.4 cents/kWhr = good.
                    PG&E = bad, period.

                    But then again, a lot about our power infrastructure as a country is bad. So little spent on maintenance and efficiency, so much ERCOT, and so much that lobbying does to screw over almost everyone that doesn’t have deep pockets.

              1. The other problem is that disincentivizes more efficient uses for electricity. Look at gas prices – when those drop people buy the biggest, least efficient SUV they can swing.

          2. I agree with all of that. I’ll add a call for the abandonment of hydrogen for transport with the exception of niche markets and the creation of nuclear powered container and tanker ships. China is already in the process of making those.

            Also better passive energy saving measures. More insulation. White spray foam roofs. Better tires (and TPMS systems). Better aerodynamics. Those kind of things.

            1. Hydrogen is mostly a boondoggle, at least for now, but it’s likely the sole viable option for long-haul heavy trucking if one insists on ending diesel – but it might be perfectly fine to let those trucks continue using diesel (with proper aftertreatment!) for the same reason it’s probably fine to let consumers continue using gasoline. The cost:benefit just isn’t there.

              The hydrogen camp does have one good point that’s kind of hard to wrap your head around though: And that’s that pretty much all of this “clean energy transition” doesn’t really work unless we end both carbon emissions of energy AND scarcity of energy. If we have effectively unlimited low-cost, clean electricity available, it might just not matter that clean hydrogen is inefficient to produce. No one cares how much energy is wasted in a cell phone charger converting from AC to DC, and if electricity is free, no one will care how much is wasted making hydrogen.

              1. but it might be perfectly fine to let those trucks continue using diesel (with proper aftertreatment!) for the same reason it’s probably fine to let consumers continue using gasoline. The cost:benefit just isn’t there.

                Pilot ignition NG is IMO a better option. Lower fuel costs, lower operating costs better emissions (very little soot also means cleaner oil), and better reliability. Even existing engines can be modified to use pilot ignition.

                1. Not familiar with that one. I just get a bunch of pilot ignition modules when I search what’s that? NG often suffers a similar problem to hydrogen – can’t get enough of it into a small enough space for transport applications – And there are fewer parties pushing for it since the tailpipe carbon emissions are still there.

                  1. Pilot ignition is using a very small charge of diesel – 20% in an existing diesel engine and 5-10% in a specially made one – to ignite a charge of natural gas injected via the intake port.

              2. The hydrogen camp does have one good point that’s kind of hard to wrap your head around though: And that’s that pretty much all of this “clean energy transition” doesn’t really work unless we end both carbon emissions of energy AND scarcity of energy.

                Something to consider. Hydrogen for transport is pointless unless the demand for industrial hydrogen is met first. There is no point bragging about a zero emission semi if the hydrogen used to make its steel came from natural gas.

                To meet the worldwide demand for industrial hydrogen would require the entire renewable capacity of the United States including all its hydro power.

                1. I had the chance to attend an “info session” a while ago in which some suppliers were trying to hock their H2 tech. Only interesting info I heard there that I didn’t already know was that the petrochemical industry already produces enough, or close to enough H2 to power the entire transportation sector. It’s just consumed by industry – mostly petrochemical. I think this was intended to convince us that a H2 fueling industry doesn’t need to be built from scratch, they just need to expand, but yeah, there are a lot of gaps even before you get into the carbon intensity of SMR H2.

                  1. There’s a lot of wishful thinking and hand waving going on when it comes to the fossil fuel industry and hydrogen. Perhaps the biggest boondoggle is the Australia-Japan brown coal to hydrogen deal. My favorite part is the don’t worry about the emissions we make now, we’re going to sequester them later.

                    Yeah, right.

    2. Chevy made one of those. It wasn’t popular because it was either manual transmission or diesel. I have a manual transmission version and it’s brilliant. Very few people could see paying more for aerodynamic enhancements and weight reduction compared to leather and a “premium” sound system.

      Speaking of household emissions, I had our old 80% furnace and 10 SEER AC replaced with a 97% modulating furnace and 20 SEER/10 HSPF variable speed heat pump a few years ago. The electricity saved from the old air conditioner pays for most of the heating. It’s way more comfortable to boot. When a basic furnace and air conditioner was low 5 figures and the top of the line was 20% more and also got a more experienced installation team, crying once at signing the check for the spendier system was totally worth it.

      1. A couple years back I replaced my old 80% boiler and gas water heater with a new 95% modulating “combination boiler”, which provides hot water for both the radiators and the showers & taps. Cut gas consumption 30% (just in time for the Ukrainian war to raise prices 30%), and the modulation feature makes it MUCH more comfortable in winter, as the system runs nearly constantly with no temperature swings.

  14. Dang, turns out our plan of more consumerism till carbon neutrality is achieved is not going well! If only instead of consumers being required to buy new cars, we had a large organization, possibly a government, build things so we didn’t have to use cars as often. Maybe even designing places people live to be more effective at intermodal transportation. Instead, we get this whole “Climate change is bad. And you should a.) personally do something about it and/or B.) ignore it, actually it doesn’t exist”. Which seems to conveniently ignore governments responsibility to plan/fund and execute real change. It’s just so damn easy to trickle down responsible to the always rational Free Market!

    1. And we’ve seen this before, with the impetus on the consumer to produce less litter and waste while doing virtually nothing to force companies to produce less wasteful packaging. And we’re learning that plastic is less recyclable than companies claimed, so it’s been worse than we thought.

      We like individual solutions to systemic problems because corporate profits must climb forever.

      1. Can someone do a study on whether replacing plastic blister packs with old school cardboard boxes will do anything to help? Because if it turns out it does, I can get behind that. The guy who designed blister packs can go to hell

        1. I’m with you on that. Cardboard is a lot more recyclable (most plastic packaging can only be recycled one or two times, at best), a lot more reusable, and a lot easier to deal with. And it breaks down a lot quicker. I have to assume it would be a net benefit for the environment and consumers.

          1. I took a design for manufacturing course, and during the course we were looking at packaging. We were asked why we thought blister packaging was used, and most of us thought it was marketing/product visibility related. Wrong – blister packaging is primarily used because it makes theft more difficult because it is much harder to take the product out of the packaging. While there is a lot of push-back in manufacturing against using plastic in packaging, blister packs are probably not going away soon, especially for small items with low profit margins.

                1. Well, given the increasing evidence they’ve been knowingly lying about how recyclable the plastic packaging is, it seems fair that a penalty is that they don’t get to make that choice.

                  I’m not saying they’ll willingly make the switch. I’m saying they should be forced to.

      1. That comes individually wrapped in plastic (not always), whereas the plastic straws seem to come in paper packaging – although that is tough to get off once it gets wet.

  15. PHEV ARE NOT THE ANSWER. The numerous ppl in comments touting them are clueless. A smaller battery requires many more charge and discharge cycles to cover the same amount of miles as a full EV. If you have a PHEV and drive it mostly in EV mode you will kill the battery, hopefully within the warranty period but watch out for the USED market. A PHEV with 60,000 miles on the odometer can easily have a cooked battery because the batter pack can have way over 1000 charging/discharge cycles already on it. For comparison an EV with a range of 300 miles will have 300,000 when the battery reaches 1000 cycles. A PHEV with a range of 30 miles can have nearly 2000 cycles on it when the car can only 60,000 miles if the driver is always driving in EV mode. Add to that the fact that the cooling systems for PHEVS are not liquid cooled and typically just a fan and that will accelerate battery wear.

    2. Saying that a PHEV “with 60,000 miles on the odometer can easily have a cooked battery” is like saying that an ICE car can easily have a cooked engine and transmission at 60k miles. It’s not normal, and almost everyone has better experiences than that. Otherwise, Toyota would absolutely be hosed with their 100,000 miles 70% capacity guarantee on their Prime batteries

      2. Saying that a PHEV “with 60,000 miles on the odometer can easily have a cooked battery” is like saying that an ICE car can easily have a cooked engine and transmission at 60k miles. It’s not normal….

        “Wait, it isn’t?!”-Volkswagen Automative Group

    4. PHEV batteries have significantly higher provisioning than EV batteries. For example, a Ford Escape PHEV has a 14.4kWh battery with 10.7kWh usable capacity, meaning it has 35% provisioning. A typical EV, such as the 77.4kWh Ioniq 5, only has 3-4kWh of buffer (74kWh), resulting in only 5% provisioning. This difference easily mitigates extra wear, excluding the fact that you can fall back on the ICE with hybrid fuel economy. Full hybrids run tiny ~1kWh batteries which easily last 15 years, and they undergo hundreds of charge/discharge cycles a month!

      You can also buy several PHEV batteries for the price of 1 EV battery.

    5. PHEV’s seem like the worst of both worlds, not enough EV range, too many charge cycles although this isn’t really an issue with LFP cells.
      Then you still have the downsides of an ICE engine, with hundreds if not thousands of moving parts, complex transmissions, oil changes, trips to the gas station, noise and vibration etc. Plus the weight to move around of both systems. instead of just one.

  16. I wonder how many readers did as I did and thought, ‘Wow, that Tavares guy looks just like Jon Lovitz,’ before reading the picture credit. I immediately thought, ‘We’re gonna buy Stellantis. Yeah, that’s the ticket.’ Your fake out (pictured) almost fooled me, you clever, clever boy.

  17. Whoa, Whoa, Whoa! WT actual F?!? Morning Dump before Shitbox Showdown?!?

    Is Mark taking Presidents’ Day off or is he just having a hard time finding a Nissan President to put up against a rusty Lincoln?

  18. Since this is TMD and Biden is a topic, his ATS-V is up for auction. Yep, it was a long one this morning, long and uneventful enough for me to read Jello and steal this from them. Either way, it’s obv gonna sell for way too much but it’s still pretty sweet…

    https://carsandbids.com/auctions/rMb04Rok/2018-cadillac-ats-v-sedan

    Also, Matt, nothing about the clusterfuck that is Daytona this weekend/today? Those folks that only bought the Xfinity tix and have the day off scored a massive, massive win for today’s races.They get a 2fer and can watch both races. Nice.

  19. Make everything Hybrid or PHEV by 2030 (Enough time to allocate resources), full electrification its a long term solution. Offer the possibility to power your house during a power outage, kind of like the Ford F150, make things interesting for future users.

    If they were serious about the environment, they should have harder emissions controls for big trucks and SUVs, no one needs to commute on one of those unless you are a contractor or need to haul things constantly.

    1. We could have made everything hybrid 10 years ago and didn’t for some reason, and manufacturers are still being stupidly selective about which models they choose to offer the drivetrain in and which they won’t (eg, Ford had considered a hybrid Mustang, but cancelled it after deciding they were selling enough EVs to make up the difference in their CAFE average to where they didn’t need to make the ICE version more fuel efficient anymore)

      1. Another area where manufacturers are being stupidly selective: where they’re distributing hybrids, especially PHEVs.

        A buddy wanted to get his wife a PHEV when they replaced her car last year. In Ohio, it was effectively impossible to do because all the allocations were going to the coasts. While I understand the CARB issue forcing more sales to go to CA and states that follow, trying to even find a hybrid in Ohio (when it’s not the base powertrain) can be tough to do.

  20. PHEVs and hybrid vehicles were always the correct answer for the transition away from ICE drivetrains. We may wish that weren’t the case, we may wish we could’ve moved on to EVs yesterday, but reality will always be undefeated. I know I’m not the only one who said so, and a vocal minority labeled the fervor for the “EVs now!” movement as premature and currently out of reach.

    Now, with Farley talking about his dislike of “bullshit road maps,” news like this, and likely other snippets I’m missing, a disembarking from the hype train has begun. All the bandwagon CEOs and politicians see the writing on the wall and are adjusting trajectory accordingly. I personally have no problem with EVs, but until infrastructure, which takes time and money, and something resembling cost parity with PHEV and hybrid vehicles is achieved, EVs will be more a non-starter for mass adoption.

      1. Well, sure. America is the nation whose motto should be, “land of the permanent temporary fix, “that baby ain’t going nowhere,” or “what’s a prophylactic?”

      2. Say what you want about Musk (I’m not a fan of many of his notions, OK with others) but he did build infrastructure before demand. It can be done if someone has the foresight and the financing to do it.

  22. Nnnnnnyeah, you know what took about a decade? The fuckin moon landings. It’s absolutely doable, but it would make some entrenched special interests very sad, and slightly less rich. Aye, better PHEVs with more range in the E department wouldn’t hurt, like. But the longer we fuck about, the harder it’s gonna be.

    1. I’ve been thinking along these lines for a while. Yes, there is a lot of work to be done to get BEVs ready to take over much of the consumer vehicle market, and it in no way can happen overnight. However, if there was concerted effort put into it, we could be ready for nearly 100% of the consumer market to be BEV by 2035… if we started this year.

      However, there’s a lot else that we should be doing at the same time, because transportation isn’t only consumer vehicles. Also transportation isn’t the only issue with Climate Change that needs attention.

      As it was noted below, human beings are quite poor at putting in the work for something that seems abstract, and is not directly affecting their every day lives.

      1. and is not directly affecting their every day lives.

        Especially when people would have to make changes in their day-to-day. A lot of people want the solution to be as easy as continuing in the same problematic way, if not easier. If you aren’t feeling the pain of the problem, it’s hard to take on the difficulty of the solution.

    3. The moon landing and rockets weren’t sold to consumers, who wouldn’t buy it and wouldn’t be able to afford it. I get your point but it doesn’t necessarily translate here

  23. There is only one reason that politicians do anything – votes. The demonization of EVs is working, helped out by the realization that there are many downsides to owning and operating an EV. People have come to the conclusion that the government is forcing something that is not ready for primetime.

    And Americans are either not convinced about the immediacy of climate change, have decided we can’t change it, or are not willing to make any compromises that would cost money or inconvenience their lifestyle.

  24. There are a couple things that confuse me. The first is the lack of specifically encouraging PHEV. The market research consistently shows that a typical PHEV can cover something like 70%+ of driving miles. That’s why they came about in the first place. Why not encourage these types of vehicles which greatly reduce the battery pack costs? If everyone had a PHEV, we would absolutely slash our emissions

    The second is the lack of efficiency regulations for EVs themselves. They all do 60 in 3 seconds, cost $65k+, and use giant battery packs not solely because of BEV limitations, but also because there is little regulation encouraging automakers to actually create an efficient EV

    1. Our Bolt cost $35k (premium trim) and does 0-60 in like 7 seconds. So, really more of a normal car then some of the rest. It does have a decent size battery that we use maybe 1/5 of on a daily basis. I think it would be great as a PHEV. Half the battery, ICE extender, no range limitations.

      1. It’s a shame that Subaru ignored battery tech for this long, because a PHEV Subaru would probably meet a lot of peoples’ ideal car specification. I’ll note that I’m not a Subaru fan in the slightest, but the lack of affordable, AWD PHEVs is kind of nuts

        1. The lack of real hybrid Subaru products is baffling.

          My parents just bought an Outback. It’s what they wanted, but they were damn close to looking elsewhere, because they really preferred to get a hybrid.

          An Outback that gets 40mpg is the perfect vehicle for an awful lot of people.

          1. My wife and I will be replacing her car in the next few years. Subarus resonate with her because she’s a white woman who loves dogs and hiking…but no hybrid=no dice for us. We’re both firm on that. Subaru has none.

            1. They’ve got to be coming though… right? Hell, if they offered a hybrid, they might as well eliminate all non-hybrids for that model, because nobody would pick the non-hybrid. The one thing that sort of sucks about Outback (for what it is) is the efficiency. Throw a hybrid in there and baby, you got a stew going.

              2. if they offered a hybrid, they might as well eliminate all non-hybrids for that model, because nobody would pick the non-hybrid. 

                I think that’s part of why they don’t want to offer hybrids. They sell plenty of regular Outbacks without improving the efficiency. Why sell something that would cut into that cash cow?

                If they start losing the loyal Subaru crowd, they’ll start offering hybrids again, and they’ll offer them on exactly the models they’re losing market share on. It’s possible that the short-lived Crosstrek PHEV was because of stiff competition in the subcompact crossover space.

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