https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-consumption-epa-vs-edmunds.html https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-cons... I wonde

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-consumption-epa-vs-edmunds.html https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-cons... I wonder if Tesla would be as into the government imposing penalties for exaggerating the range of their vehicles. Tesla seems to under-perform their range estimates pretty consistently across models while every other vehicle exceeds the estimate except for the Polestar. Sometimes Tesla is only under-performing the estimate by a small amount, but they're claiming 15.7% more range for their "Model 3 Long Range" than a "Mustang Mach-E CA Route 1" while only achieving 1 mile more in tested range. Tesla has often also pushed its own estimates over EPA cycle estimates claiming that their estimates (which are more generous to their cars) are better. Should a car company be able to make public claims about range based on their own models? As you noted, this is simply Tesla having a financial incentive. If competing manufacturers need to pay large penalties for prior years, it gives them less money to compete against Tesla. In some ways, this doesn't provide a pro-society incentive. Penalizing past bad acts doesn't alter a car company's incentives for the future beyond proving that you're serious about enforcing rules. A better incentive could be to announce that you will penalize companies for past failures, but allow them to get that penalty rebated back to them if they exceed requirements going forward. In the first case, you're penalizing them and getting a small amount of money while taking from the companies resources that they could use to invest in electric vehicles (or lobby against fuel economy standards). In the second case, you're proving that you're serious by imposing the penalty, but also providing a very strong incentive to exceed targets going forward. I think that many automakers like Hyundai/Kia, Ford, BMW, Mercedes, GM, VW, and Renault/Nissan are looking to make major investments in electric vehicles. I would rather incentivize them about the future (and punish them about the past if they don't reform). Maybe set a standard like getting 50% of the penalty back if X% of their cars sold in 2025 are electric with an MPGe of 100+ and getting back the other half of the penalty if Y% of their cars sold in 2028 are electric (with MPGe over 100). That would give them a concrete incentive to create efficient and popular models. It would also likely be palatable to them. GM has announced ambitious plans for its conversion to electric. If they're able to convert the majority of their car sales to electric in a short period of time, it seems less important to apply a retroactive penalty. If their plans are a green-washing campaign to keep getting sales for their ICE vehicles, they can say so-long to that cash. In the meantime, they can take out a loan to cover what they need for R&D if they're confident they'll meet their targets.