As automakers await the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's new fuel-economy rules for 2022 through 2025, due March 30, regulators from California and Washington are still hammering out the specifics. A meeting between state and federal regulators on fuel-economy and emissions targets took place on Monday as both sides attempt to... California talks to DC regulators on emission, fuel-economy rules Trump wants to cut
As automakers await the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's new fuel-economy rules for 2022 through 2025, due March 30, regulators from California and Washington are still hammering out the specifics. A meeting between state and federal regulators on fuel-economy and emissions targets took place on Monday as both sides attempt to...
It's been hanging out there in limbo for more than six months: the answer to the question of what happens to gas-mileage rules under Trump. Given the daily political turmoil emanating from Washington, D.C., the fate of corporate average fuel economy rules may have gotten lost in the noise. But for automakers and consumers, the fate of current CAFE...
For much of last year, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry pursued a plan that, in essence, would prop up the financially challenged U.S. coal and nuclear industries. His proposal, submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last fall, provided financial subsidies to electric-generation plants that kept 90 days of fuel onsite. Natural-gas...
As automakers yet again lobby Washington to roll back planned fuel-economy targets for 2025, they've employed some familiar tactics to drive the point home to lawmakers. It cannot be done. It will cost too much. It will destroy the industry and kill jobs. Consumers do not want this. The science is not clear. The market will solve it. If you were...
With the exception of California's longstanding ability to set its own tougher emission standards, any car legal to sell in one state of the U.S. is legal to sell in all of them. And aside from a handful of differences—daytime running lights, speedometers marked in km/h—Canadian-market vehicles are largely the same as well. Within the...
EPA head Scott Pruitt will likely go down as one of the most controversial agency chiefs in that agency's history of almost 50 years. The former Oklahoma attorney general, who sued the EPA 14 times on behalf of fossil-fuel interests during the Obama administration, has a radically different view of how the agency should operate compared to most of...
The first automobile was invented in Germany in 1885 by Karl Benz, but it was the U.S. that led the building of the global 20th-century automobile industry. Through the turn of the current century, the U.S. new-vehicle market was the world's largest, and General Motors was for decades the world's largest car company. Neither of those is still the...
For 45 years, the Environmental Protection Agency has been charged with protecting the U.S. from pollution in its air, water, and land. Under the Trump Administration, its administrator Scott Pruitt is aggressively muzzling and removing scientists, eradicating climate-science from its activities, and eliminating dozens of regulations. That makes...
Europe already has tough standards for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions in current and future vehicles. Now they're going to get significantly tougher between 2021 and 2030. At its weekly cabinet meeting, held Wednesday, the European Union formally adopted far more stringent requirements for reductions in vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide...
The EPA recently announced it will roll back the Clean Power Plan, one of former President Obama's milestone efforts to fight climate change, and now the agency plans to axe another rule limiting emissions. Next on the chopping block is a regulation that limits emissions from large trucks and their components. Remarkably, the regulation that EPA...
Pity Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the man now running the cabinet department he couldn't remember that he wanted to eliminate altogether during a notorious 2011 presidential debate. He has pulled off an unusual feat, by uniting lobbyists for fossil-fuel interests with their counterparts advocating for renewable energy. Given the ascendance of...
You may not have heard it happen, but the global automotive industry changed forever on Thursday. China released its plan to require substantial sales of plug-in electric cars by all makers who want to sell in the world's largest car market, and they start in little more than a year. The levels far exceed those required by California, whose...
With the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president last November, it became clear that the regulatory environment for businesses would change once he took office. Indeed, dozens of regulations limiting corporate activities involving emissions, fossil-fuel exploration, hiring and firing, and a host of other issues have been eliminated or are under...
China's announcement 10 days ago that it was assessing a timetable for ending sales of new cars with gasoline or diesel engines continues to reverberate. The country intends to dominate global production of lithium-ion battery cells and electric vehicles, for a host of reasons from industrial power through air pollution to energy security. A new...
It was quaint and adorable when Norway did it, saying it would end sales of cars with internal-combustion engines by 2025. The Netherlands followed suit, with little fanfare. More recently, France and the U.K. have enacted various forms of bans on non-electrified vehicles, on varying schedules. Now that China has said it's considering timetables...
It was quaint and adorable when Norway did it, saying it would end sales of cars with internal-combustion engines by 2025. The Netherlands followed suit, with little fanfare. More recently, France and the U.K. have enacted various forms of bans on non-electrified vehicles, on varying schedules. Now that China has said it's considering timetables...
Continuing political turmoil and news coverage of the Trump Administration haven't stopped the president's agency heads from drastically reshaping policies on energy, the environment, and emissions. Comments are now being taken on the reopened EPA limits on vehicular carbon emissions for 2022 through 2025, although reporters had to dig to find out...