Industry News: Head of the EPA Went A Bit Too Far On Rollback According to Automakers

[William Maley]

We all know someone who takes things a bit a too far. In the case of automakers, that someone is EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Back in April April, Pruitt announced a serious rollback of fuel economy regulations that were set in stone during the Obama administration. In a summary of the proposed draft, the EPA would rollback the fleetwide average from 46.8 mpg for the 2026 model year to around 37 mpg - the fleetwide average for the 2020 model year. The draft also mentions pre-empting "California's authority" on setting their own emission standards under the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act. This move has caused California and a collation of other states to file suit over the proposed changes.

According to Automotive News, the changes proposed by Pruitt go a bit too far for automakers. All they wanted was the emission targets for the 2022-2025 model years to "ratchet up more gradually and offer more compliance flexibility." Now, they have to worry about litigation and uncertainty.

"I don't think anybody in industry, when asked for reopening of standards, asked to level out to zero," said an unnamed lobbyist for a major automaker.

However, certain groups argue that automakers should have expected something far-reaching under this current administration.

"You've got to know your audience. If you go to [EPA Administrator] Scott Pruitt and Donald Trump and say you want relief from the rules and they are going to cost jobs, this is what you end up with," said Andrew Linhardt, deputy director of the Sierra Club's clean energy campaign.

Later this week, executives from the major automakers will be meeting with officials at the White House to see if they can get the federal government and California to agree to some sort of comprise.

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

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[riviera74]

Poor auto industry.  Scott Pruitt refuses to take a simpler approach to this: get Congress to repeal CAFE standards in the first place.  That would be ideal. So Pruitt pursues a rollback to 37 MPG eight years from now instead of the 46.8 MPG as proposed by the last administration.  He might have gotten away with it if he left CA authority alone and focused on the rollback instead.  His plan will probably fail because he got too greedy and wants to abolish higher state standards. 

Choose your battles wisely and you might actually win.

[Drew Dowdell]

20 hours ago, riviera74 said:

Poor auto industry.  Scott Pruitt refuses to take a simpler approach to this: get Congress to repeal CAFE standards in the first place.  That would be ideal. So Pruitt pursues a rollback to 37 MPG eight years from now instead of the 46.8 MPG as proposed by the last administration.  He might have gotten away with it if he left CA authority alone and focused on the rollback instead.  His plan will probably fail because he got too greedy and wants to abolish higher state standards. 

Choose your battles wisely and you might actually win.

That's what happens when you're motivated by revenge and want to punish someone (in this case the prior administration and California respectively)

[Zane Wylder]

Repeal CAFE, period

Free market decides what it wants, not whatever administration's in charge

[Drew Dowdell]

On 5/18/2018 at 8:51 PM, Zane Wylder said:

Repeal CAFE, period

Free market decides what it wants, not whatever administration's in charge

the last time we repealed major regulations and allowed the free market to choose... the free market chose greed, hubris, and fraud... eventually plunging the country and world into the worst recession since the 1930s.  The free market isn't the end all be all.... there does need to be some regulation of it to try to prevent bad things happening. 

[ocnblu]

CAFE is a terrible situation.

[Zane Wylder]

7 hours ago, Drew Dowdell said:

the last time we repealed major regulations and allowed the free market to choose... the free market chose greed, hubris, and fraud... eventually plunging the country and world into the worst recession since the 1930s.  The free market isn't the end all be all.... there does need to be some regulation of it to try to prevent bad things happening. 

Not gonna pretend to know when that was, mind filling me in, chief?

[Drew Dowdell]

10 minutes ago, Zane Wylder said:

Not gonna pretend to know when that was, mind filling me in, chief?

Banks were deregulated with the repeal of Glass-Stegel Act. A big thing that came from that was that banks could now gamble with your money in dodgey investments. Simultaneously, mortgage regulations went out the window so that anyone who could fog a mirror qualified for a mortgage. You couldn't let your dog off its leash or it would come back with a home equity line of credit. 

At the same time, wages stagnated. Off shoring became the big thing for companies to do. The internet made it even more possible. 

People trying to make up for the loss of wage increases started turning to the home equity line of credit just to keep up with increases in the cost of living. That was what the professionals call; A Bad Idea.

All of these newly qualified mortgage holders became house shoppers. This started driving up the price of homes. Speculators came in and flipped homes forming a housing price bubble.

Swirl all that together and you have the perfect storm that caused the recession starting in 2007.  

It all formed because banks wanted less regulation.

Not all regulations are bad, some regulations keep bad things from happening. CAFE is regulation with good intentions being implemented badly. I agree with it's generally stated goal. I disagree with how they go about getting there. Repealing it without replacing it would lead to bad things, including possibly a significant loss of the auto industry in the US.

[ocnblu]

Ford is so desperate they're reclassifying their cars as trucks to comply.  How is this good for the consumer?

[Drew Dowdell]

3 hours ago, ocnblu said:

Ford is so desperate they're reclassifying their cars as trucks to comply.  How is this good for the consumer?

I've already said I think it is being implemented incorrectly while the overall goal is good.

There is major risk in repealing it entirely.  We live in a global economy.  GM doesn't want to build one engine for the US and one engine for China and one engine for the EU.... they want to build one engine that will work in all of those places.  If suddenly the US is the one with the loosest standards, we will start falling behind in technology as all of the older stuff is sent here and the other countries get the newest things.   This is already happening in renewable energy.  China is pushing hard for renewables while we're trying to get our coal industry restarted. The center of gravity for solar and turbine development and manufacturing has shifted to China and the EU. 

So, that's why the premise of this article talks about the auto industry not wanting standards rolled back too much.  Their ideal would be the same standard in emissions for all countries. 

[ocnblu]

I'd love to have solar panels on my roof, but acres and acres of them in fields are an eyesore.  Not so sure about wind.  Why kill birds?  I do wholeheartedly disagree with California's expensive decree to mandate solar panels on new construction.  Wacko to mandate something like that, unless you WANT people NOT to build new houses... or move out of state.

 

I think coal can be made cleaner while remaining cheap... and of course it's plentiful.

 

CAFE has brought us troublesome multi-cylinder shutoff smallblock V8's... when an unmolested smallblock will run 400k miles with proper care... it has brought us really stupid things like stop-start... and 2.7L FOUR CYLINDER fullsize pickups!  Not to mention Ford's twin turbo sixes that ace the test in the lab, but fail it on the road.

There has to be a tipping point, and I think we might be past it, where physics steps in and intervenes... Americans demand larger, more capable vehicles... the engineering compromises are becoming too great...

Edited May 21, 2018 by ocnblu

[Drew Dowdell]

I think you inadvertently pointed out part of the problem. The manufacturers are building to Ace the test, but the test in an effort to be fair and uniform is terribly unrealistic. That's why NA V6es often to better in the real world on the highway than smaller displacement but similar power turbo 4s. 

If the test was more representative of real world driving, we'd see different results.

[ocnblu]

2 minutes ago, Drew Dowdell said:

I think you inadvertently pointed out part of the problem. The manufacturers are building to Ace the test, but the test in an effort to be fair and uniform is terribly unrealistic. That's why NA V6es often to better in the real world on the highway than smaller displacement but similar power turbo 4s. 

If the test was more representative of real world driving, we'd see different results.

And this would expose CAFE as an even BIGGER bugaboo.  Its time has passed.  Technology won't stop... but the law of physics is unrelenting.