Today, the EPA acted on a proposed change to expand the amount of ethanol that can be mixed into pump gasoline from June 1 to September 1. In an official announcement, the agency made no comment about how the move might affect summer air quality or pollution issues. The EPA said that it “delivers on President Trump’s promise,”... EPA lifts smog-related ban, allows more ethanol in summer gasoline
Today, the EPA acted on a proposed change to expand the amount of ethanol that can be mixed into pump gasoline from June 1 to September 1. In an official announcement, the agency made no comment about how the move might affect summer air quality or pollution issues. The EPA said that it “delivers on President Trump’s promise,”...
The EPA is following through on plans to reduce the number of deaths it counts as attributable to air pollution, reportedly in an effort to support the Trump Administration's plans to shore up the coal industry. The plans were first discussed at a meeting of a key EPA air-quality standards board in the end of March. Now a report in the New York...
As virtuous as one might be in choosing a vehicle that doesn’t produce tailpipe emissions, there’s a hazy reality to traveling by car: That you’re stuck breathing emissions from other gasoline or diesel vehicles—especially fine particulate emissions, which are some of the most concerning for health and tend to linger within...
As Washington waffles on developing a Green New Deal—or works to torpedo it altogether—LA's environmentalist mayor, Eric Garcetti, signed off on a local Green New Deal for the city on Monday. “Politicians don’t need to look across the aisle to find the answers—they need to look across the country,” he said, in...
Every year, as Earth Day rolls around, we survey the automotive landscape looking for progress in the industry's efforts to reduce emissions and limit global warming. We've identified a lot of progress recently. More than a dozen new electric models are set to go on sale in the coming year, and sales of plug-in models more than doubled in the past...
We had a first chance to drive the new 2020 Kia Soul EV. London's new pollution charge on older vehicles makes it really expensive to drive older cars into the city. And our latest Twitter poll asks what GM should do with the Volt name now that it no longer produces the car. All this and more on Green Car Reports. First announced in 2017, the city...
It isn't just global warming emissions that the EPA plans to deregulate. At a meeting last Thursday, a key air quality standards board at the agency cast doubt on longstanding findings that particulate matter—the microscopic particles spewing from diesel tailpipes—can cause health problems leading to premature deaths. In the absence of...
While Volkswagen has reached a historic settlement and had to buy back hundreds of thousands of its diesel cars in the U.S., it isn’t the only automaker to be investigated for cheating on diesel emissions. Fiat Chrysler recently agreed to recall its Ram and Jeep EcoDiesels and pay owners for misleading advertising claims. A third case...
Not only do polluters have lower standards to meet under the Trump administration, they may not really have to meet those standards at all. That's the conclusion of a new study, published by the Washington Post, that shows enforcement activity has fallen drastically in the past two years since President Trump took office. The study, conducted by a...
A newly formed organization called Allow Independent Road-testing (AIR) wants to make impartial emissions ratings available to vehicle shoppers. Using a simple rating from A (best) to H (worst), they would tell you, at a quick glance, how much you’re endangering the health of your family with tailpipe pollutants. Although the idea may seem...
With automotive emissions regulations again coming under political pressure, we thought we'd re run this Earth Day question from 2014 in an attempt to answer the question: Why all the fuss? Why do we still focus on green cars some 40 years after the EPA imposed the most significant emissions limits on cars? We hope it will provoke thought engender...
The first major emission controls on motor vehicles were introduced in 1975 with the advent of the catalytic converter. Today's cars emit less than 1 percent of the three "criteria" pollutants that came out of their tailpipes half a century ago. They emit relatively so little carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons that the collective...