GM’s national electric car plan may not be all that, scientist argues

Image from 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV electric-car ad by Ourisman Chevrolet, Rockville, MarylandJust as General Motors prepared to release record profits on Wednesday, the respected Union of Concerned Scientists took issue with the company's plan last week to develop a plan to require electric car sales nationwide. GM is a leader in electric cars and is expected to be the second automaker to reach the 200,000-vehicle limit on tax credits for...

Deal between EPA, California on auto emissions may still be possible

National Plug-In Day 2012: San Francisco, with 60 Nissan Leafs in front of the Golden Gate BridgeOver the many months EPA administrator Scott Pruitt signaled his intention to revisit the Obama administration's emission limits for 2022 through 2025 vehicles, California warned that it would not go along with any reductions. The state has been allowed to set its own emission standards for decades, it noted, and it has every intention of sticking...

EPA does not set fuel-economy limits: get this right, journalists!

Gas pumpJournalism as an industry is under great pressure these days. There are far more people writing "content" than in past decades, and in general they are having to produce more of it for less money than they did 10, 20, or 50 years ago. That's no excuse, however, for getting the basics wrong. DON'T MISS: Hey, media, get it straight: "electrified" is...

Pruitt’s EPA emission rollback reasoning may well fail in court

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt  [photo from 2014]Despite the sturm und drang around the announcement by embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt that he will relax emission limits for 2022 through 2025 vehicles, not much will happen immediately. His determination last week that the Obama administration was "incorrect" and that the limits on those vehicles weren't needed kicks off a lengthy process of...

Pruitt’s EPA decision: 38-page intention vs 1,217 pages of analysis

Flooded CarWhile the name of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is often preceded by "embattled" these days, his agency is now on record as rejecting its own recommendation of just 16 months ago. It concluded in July 2016 that the auto industry had handily met lower carbon-emission limits from 2012 through 2017—at lower cost and with more conventional...

What China learned from California about getting electric cars on its roads

2014 Tesla Model S in ChinaIn the U.S., California has long been viewed culturally as the crazy, free-spirited cousin. As Californians like to point out, their state of 40 million people is also the world's sixth-largest economy all by itself. Resolutely progressive, it has regulated vehicle emissions for five decades and worked to get zero-emission vehicles onto its roads...

EPA staffers told how to downplay climate change in leaked memo

Flooded car in parking lot. Photo via Flickr user waitscm/CC2.0EPA administrator Scott Pruitt would be controversial even if he hadn't flown to Morocco in December (first-class, on the taxpayer dime) to lobby the country on the benefits of liquified natural gas while living in a condo owned by a lobbyist for the country's largest LNG exporter. He is likely the first EPA head to axe scientists from the...

EPA to ease emission limits, reports say, setting up clash with California

Chrome exhaust pipeThe omens have been accumulating for months, as bits of information dribble out of the regulatory rumor mill in Washington, D.C. Now we have the most concrete reports yet that the U.S. EPA plans to modify exhaust emission limits for vehicles in model years 2022 through 2025. The EPA delivered its draft Final Determination document to the Office of...

CA attorney general: we will fight looser fuel-economy, emission rules

National Plug-In Day 2012: San Francisco, with 60 Nissan Leafs in front of the Golden Gate BridgeLast Tuesday, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said the agency does not intend to let California set the agenda for national emission limits on vehicles. He suggested to Bloomberg the EPA plans to cut emission rules aggressively to respond to carmakers' pleas for easing of the corporate average fuel economy rules for 2022 through 2025 that they had...

Why the future of electric cars depends on China’s war on pollution

Woman with smog mask (pic by Nicolò Lazzati on Flickr)Roughly half of everyone alive in the U.S. today has never experienced really bad smog. Those over, say, age 45—big-city residents and Angelenos especially—may recall hazy days in which the sun was barely visible, and air that actually tasted metallic. It's a memorable experience, and it's why the future of electric cars increasingly...

India plan for converting to electric cars by 2030 may get trimmed, a lot

Smog in Dehli, India (by Flickr user Mfield)Two years ago, the government of India proposed a remarkable and ambitious goal: make every new vehicle coming onto its roads electric by 2030. The plan was largely a response to some of the world's highest levels of hazardous air pollution in its cities, higher in many cases than the legendary foul air in Chinese cities. The world's second-most...

NHTSA could cite safety of heavier cars in slashing CAFE rules: reports

Gas pumpIt's been clear that under the Trump administration, the NHTSA and EPA plan to roll back linked fuel-economy rules and emission limits on new vehicles. Now a possible justification that will be used has emerged—and it's not the one many advocates had expected. According to a Bloomberg report on Monday, the fuel-economy proposal due March 30...