U.S. NHTSA reinstates billions in fines on gas-guzzling automakers

So goes the headline in the only article I could find that covered this story in any depth this morning. Right, an obvious electric car pushing organization. Just who do they think will pay these fines? Trump had suspended the CAFE Standard that auto makers had said were too difficult to make. But in Biden’s move to reverse anything Trump did to make our U.S. economy run, now moves to automakers. Our cars soon will be made of plastic. Unsafe at any speed. As for the working man’s truck? Forget about it.

The comparison argument that EV’s can make the standard thus no reason Detroit can is absurd on the face of it. Where are all these EV’s coming from? Who is going to pay for them? No doubt more checks from Uncle Sam. Worse they have designed a monopoly game of trading “credits”.

Anyone else recall the “cash for clunkers?”  Pouring concrete into engine blocks on perfectly working automobiles. Coming soon. You Betcha. The man said he was going to do it.

Way to go Joe.

“We will take, literally, millions of automobiles off the road. Off the road.”

–Biden on his radical climate agenda pic.twitter.com/Jfm4zSiiUK

— Chad Gilmartin (@ChadGilmartinCA) October 20, 2021

Electrek:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ruled that heightened fines on automakers that fail to meet Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirements on 2019 and later vehicles would be reinstated. The decision is a big hit to high-polluting automakers and the lobby group that supports them, and a win for EV makers. 

The decision comes after years of fighting over a policy adopted in 2016 under President Obama that would apply to 2019 and later model year cars. The policy increased the fines for missing average fuel economy targets from $5.50 to $14 per .1 mpg per vehicle, in response to a 2015 law meant to catch old government penalties up to inflation. This is the first significant increase in this penalty since CAFE rules were first established in 1975 (the penalty was originally $5, then $5.50 since 1997).

Automakers who manage to stay within the limits gain credits that can be sold to other automakers who would otherwise be penalized. Automakers’ compliance or lack thereof can be found in DOT’s CAFE dashboard, where it can be seen that FCA missed the 40.9 mile-per-gallon target by nearly 11 mpg in 2020 (CAFE mpg is not calculated the same way as normal mpg and is more generous, thus the high numbers).

While automakers have long made the argument that compliance with such high CAFE targets is technologically impossible, the dashboard shows that Tesla exceeded the same 40.9 mpg target by 685 mpg. Surely other automakers with a century of experience can do better than 1/20th of Tesla’s efforts?

That risk seems to have turned out poorly for the automakers, as they’ll be writing some big checks for their noncompliance soon. The final rule takes effect 60 days after its publication in the federal register, and automakers who didn’t plan properly to increase their efficiency and incorporate more EVs into their fleet will continue paying these penalties for years to come – much of which is likely to end up in their EV competitors’ pockets via the trading of credits.

Coming to our town soon.

1958 BMW Isetta in USA

Other than that all is well in the swamp.

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