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> U.S. automakers separately have warned the fines would cost GM $6.5 billion, Stellantis $3 billion and Ford $1 billion. ... Automakers and the United Auto Wor

> U.S. automakers separately have warned the fines would cost GM $6.5 billion, Stellantis $3 billion and Ford $1 billion. ... Automakers and the United Auto Workers union have previously also complained parallel rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency are not feasible and should be significantly softened. I really find it suspicious that at a cost of $10 billion they can't figure out a way to improve their fleets. I guess they'll just get disrupted by companies that can then.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
> I guess they'll just get disrupted by companies that can then. Or they'll make sure we never have more efficient cars, or cities designed around anything other than being in a car 24-7, like they have done quite successfully for the last 50 years.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Sadly (as one of the few people honest enough to admit humans are bad drivers), I don't see significant investment in anything other than the car city.
- Spivak 3y ago
  You give them too much credit, people build cities designed around cars with no need for pressure from automakers. There's an area by me that went greenfield (well technically brownfield) to huge high-rise apartments, restaurants and shops lining the bottom, a new pedestrian bridge. The city was constrained by no one, they could have built anything and they're as liberal and progressive as they come. An area that's not even 3 square blocks has four brand new 7 story parking garages paid for by city and free-forever. To call it a massive success is an understatement, and largely due to the crazy amount of free parking making it far more attractive than anywhere else to spend a night out. They went from literally an empty field the most expensive real-estate in the region that isn't on a golf-course and competes with our downtown for number of non-resident visitors.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    > To call it a massive success is an understatement, and largely due to the crazy amount of free parking making it far more attractive than anywhere else to spend a night out. Shocking. Motorists flock to areas designed for motorists, with free parking.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      Yes? I'm not downplaying that fact at all. It's that the city wasn't stupid and realized that this was what people actually wanted. The other trendy areas didn't invest in parking at all or privatized it and it created a lot of friction to get people to come out and spend money. No auto manufacturer bribery necessary. There are lots of walkable areas that have the same feel, and this new development are their lunch and tax revenue.
mdgrech23 3y ago
There's a lot of bullshit in this space. There isn't enough lithium in the world to move everyone over to electric. 80% of grid still runs on coal so it's not clean either. I'll also head for heavy duty towing electric is not where's it at, and forget EV 18 wheelers. The simple truth is gas is a precious resource and we are wasting it. We need more public transportation and more sane use. Notice I didn't say EVs. They create another set of problems.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > isn't enough lithium in the world to move everyone over to electric Source? > 80% of grid still runs on coal 30% globally [1], 11% in America [2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_cons... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States
  - adventured 3y ago
    That appears to be total energy, rather than grid specific (per the parent). This is probably a better reference (the gist is the same of course, coal was 19.5%): https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 "In 2022, about 4,243 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or about 4.24 trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale electricity generation facilities in the United States.1 About 60% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases. About 18% was from nuclear energy, and about 22% was from renewable energy sources."
    - jcranmer 3y ago
      EIA has a nice flow graph that shows energy sources and sinks here: https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/total_energy_2022.pdf https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/total_... Coal was about 10% of total US energy production in 2022, 27% of total US electricity production.
- 3y ago
bluGill 3y ago
The laws of physics get in the way. There is only so much energy in a gallon of gasoline (pick a different unit, point is the same). We are already close to the max theoretical efficiency of a gas engine (when run in perfect conditions which are hard to get in the real world). We can eliminate safety features to make cars lighter. We can accept higher pollution levels. Those are both trade offs we are not willing to make. We can make cars more aerodynamic, but style often gets in the way and consumers are not willing for that trade off. (or so it is claimed). We can make cars smaller, but people often find large cars more useful. (even though a small car is good enough for 99% of all trips, that last 1% makes it worth having the larger car. Renting is so expensive that even for the 1% trip it may still be cheaper to have the large car for everything) There are options of course. However car makers have been working on this problem for at least 50 years (energy crisis of the 1970s is obvious, even before that fuel mileage was a concern). All the easy solutions have been done already. What is left is often a lot more expensive than what was done before and also cannot possibly return a whole lot on investment. The reality is gas and diesel engines investment is a dead end. They are not worth any more investment as everyone in the industry already knows electric cars are coming. While they probably will live on in a few niches, those niches are not large enough to support investment in making them better, today's engines are about as good as the future ever will see.
- copperx 3y ago
  > Renting is so expensive that even for the 1% trip it may still be cheaper to have the large car for everything) I find that incredibly hard to believe, unless you're renting a large truck once a month.
  - hightrix 3y ago
    Anecdotally, I fit this description. I own a large SUV as my daily driver. It is fully paid off. I use it to get lunch and other errands for most trips. About once a month or so, I need to use the full capacity of the vehicle. This would run 50-100 bucks to rent an equally capable vehicle. For me, it is absolutely worth saving 600-1200 bucks a year to not have to deal with the inconvenience of renting a vehicle to run an errand once a month. That price doesn’t include any insurance changes, getting to/from the rental place, and any additional costs I’m unaware of.
datavirtue 3y ago
Notice how Ford is only claiming $1BB? Mary Bara needs to go. No idea why they are rewarding her when that company's products have gone straight to shit. Check YouTube. Ford has been aggressively rolling out massive fuel savings tech for years, decades. They are going strong toward what customers want and are willing to purchase...hybrid trucks. GM is always two steps behind trying to make fun of Ford trucks in theirs ads until they can half-heartedly roll out the same tech while somehow butchering it and alienating legacy customers. Stallantis, just can't figure that company out. Their cars and trucks have had horrible quality and resale value and have now killed some of their strongest brands to all-in on electric vehicles. Their customer base is scowling and scrambling to snatch up what are becoming collectors cars.
- brandonagr2 3y ago
  Is Ford really going strong? They just cut F150 Lightning production, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-cutting-f-150-lightning-factory-shift-is-emblematic-of-changing-ev-demand-153949506.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-cutting-f-150-lightning-...
  - datavirtue 3y ago
    Labor issues, and the lightening is dead on arrival, just like cybertruck. The regular F-150 line already includes hybrid.
taylodl 3y ago
Why do you find it suspicious? Not only have the Americans not been able to do it, but neither have the Japanese, the Koreans, the Germans, the Italians, the French, the British, or the Chinese. Since whomever was able to do it would be able to disrupt the market and gain more sales, I'm thinking it can't be done. If we want to play the game of mandating things that can't be done then why don't we demand EVs be 6% to 8% more efficient while we're at it?
- JeremyNT 3y ago
  > Why do you find it suspicious? Not only have the Americans not been able to do it, but neither have the Japanese, the Koreans, the Germans, the Italians, the French, the British, or the Chinese. Since whomever was able to do it would be able to disrupt the market and gain more sales, I'm thinking it can't be done. Any auto maker could quite easily improve the efficiency of their fleets by reducing the size of their passenger vehicles (especially large SUVs and pickup trucks). It's not a tech question. No R&D involved. They just need to market their smaller vehicles as cool and stop marketing their large vehicles so aggressively. The reason they want to avoid this is that they currently make better margins on larger vehicles, so they just push the environmental costs of such inefficiency out to the rest of the public and call it a day. In a sane regulatory framework those large vehicles would be taxed dramatically more due to the damage they cause to the environment, and the auto makers wouldn't be so addicted to them.
  - gotoeleven 3y ago
    But people would have to buy them for this plan to work. And people won't because they will suck.
    - yowzadave 3y ago
      What are they going to do, not drive?
- m463 3y ago
  > demand EVs be 6% to 8% "keep your speed under 25 mph to reach your destination"

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

> I guess they'll just get disrupted by companies that can then. Or they'll make sure we never have more efficient cars, or cities designed around anything other than being in a car 24-7, like they have done quite successfully for the last 50 years.

bluGill 3y ago
Sadly (as one of the few people honest enough to admit humans are bad drivers), I don't see significant investment in anything other than the car city.
Spivak 3y ago
You give them too much credit, people build cities designed around cars with no need for pressure from automakers. There's an area by me that went greenfield (well technically brownfield) to huge high-rise apartments, restaurants and shops lining the bottom, a new pedestrian bridge. The city was constrained by no one, they could have built anything and they're as liberal and progressive as they come. An area that's not even 3 square blocks has four brand new 7 story parking garages paid for by city and free-forever. To call it a massive success is an understatement, and largely due to the crazy amount of free parking making it far more attractive than anywhere else to spend a night out. They went from literally an empty field the most expensive real-estate in the region that isn't on a golf-course and competes with our downtown for number of non-resident visitors.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  > To call it a massive success is an understatement, and largely due to the crazy amount of free parking making it far more attractive than anywhere else to spend a night out. Shocking. Motorists flock to areas designed for motorists, with free parking.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Yes? I'm not downplaying that fact at all. It's that the city wasn't stupid and realized that this was what people actually wanted. The other trendy areas didn't invest in parking at all or privatized it and it created a lot of friction to get people to come out and spend money. No auto manufacturer bribery necessary. There are lots of walkable areas that have the same feel, and this new development are their lunch and tax revenue.

mdgrech23 3y ago

There's a lot of bullshit in this space. There isn't enough lithium in the world to move everyone over to electric. 80% of grid still runs on coal so it's not clean either. I'll also head for heavy duty towing electric is not where's it at, and forget EV 18 wheelers. The simple truth is gas is a precious resource and we are wasting it. We need more public transportation and more sane use. Notice I didn't say EVs. They create another set of problems.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> isn't enough lithium in the world to move everyone over to electric Source? > 80% of grid still runs on coal 30% globally [1], 11% in America [2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_cons... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States
- adventured 3y ago
  That appears to be total energy, rather than grid specific (per the parent). This is probably a better reference (the gist is the same of course, coal was 19.5%): https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 "In 2022, about 4,243 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or about 4.24 trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale electricity generation facilities in the United States.1 About 60% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases. About 18% was from nuclear energy, and about 22% was from renewable energy sources."
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    EIA has a nice flow graph that shows energy sources and sinks here: https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/total_energy_2022.pdf https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/total_... Coal was about 10% of total US energy production in 2022, 27% of total US electricity production.
3y ago

bluGill 3y ago

The laws of physics get in the way. There is only so much energy in a gallon of gasoline (pick a different unit, point is the same). We are already close to the max theoretical efficiency of a gas engine (when run in perfect conditions which are hard to get in the real world). We can eliminate safety features to make cars lighter. We can accept higher pollution levels. Those are both trade offs we are not willing to make. We can make cars more aerodynamic, but style often gets in the way and consumers are not willing for that trade off. (or so it is claimed). We can make cars smaller, but people often find large cars more useful. (even though a small car is good enough for 99% of all trips, that last 1% makes it worth having the larger car. Renting is so expensive that even for the 1% trip it may still be cheaper to have the large car for everything) There are options of course. However car makers have been working on this problem for at least 50 years (energy crisis of the 1970s is obvious, even before that fuel mileage was a concern). All the easy solutions have been done already. What is left is often a lot more expensive than what was done before and also cannot possibly return a whole lot on investment. The reality is gas and diesel engines investment is a dead end. They are not worth any more investment as everyone in the industry already knows electric cars are coming. While they probably will live on in a few niches, those niches are not large enough to support investment in making them better, today's engines are about as good as the future ever will see.

copperx 3y ago
> Renting is so expensive that even for the 1% trip it may still be cheaper to have the large car for everything) I find that incredibly hard to believe, unless you're renting a large truck once a month.
- hightrix 3y ago
  Anecdotally, I fit this description. I own a large SUV as my daily driver. It is fully paid off. I use it to get lunch and other errands for most trips. About once a month or so, I need to use the full capacity of the vehicle. This would run 50-100 bucks to rent an equally capable vehicle. For me, it is absolutely worth saving 600-1200 bucks a year to not have to deal with the inconvenience of renting a vehicle to run an errand once a month. That price doesn’t include any insurance changes, getting to/from the rental place, and any additional costs I’m unaware of.

datavirtue 3y ago

Notice how Ford is only claiming $1BB? Mary Bara needs to go. No idea why they are rewarding her when that company's products have gone straight to shit. Check YouTube. Ford has been aggressively rolling out massive fuel savings tech for years, decades. They are going strong toward what customers want and are willing to purchase...hybrid trucks. GM is always two steps behind trying to make fun of Ford trucks in theirs ads until they can half-heartedly roll out the same tech while somehow butchering it and alienating legacy customers. Stallantis, just can't figure that company out. Their cars and trucks have had horrible quality and resale value and have now killed some of their strongest brands to all-in on electric vehicles. Their customer base is scowling and scrambling to snatch up what are becoming collectors cars.

brandonagr2 3y ago
Is Ford really going strong? They just cut F150 Lightning production, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-cutting-f-150-lightning-factory-shift-is-emblematic-of-changing-ev-demand-153949506.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-cutting-f-150-lightning-...
- datavirtue 3y ago
  Labor issues, and the lightening is dead on arrival, just like cybertruck. The regular F-150 line already includes hybrid.

taylodl 3y ago

Why do you find it suspicious? Not only have the Americans not been able to do it, but neither have the Japanese, the Koreans, the Germans, the Italians, the French, the British, or the Chinese. Since whomever was able to do it would be able to disrupt the market and gain more sales, I'm thinking it can't be done. If we want to play the game of mandating things that can't be done then why don't we demand EVs be 6% to 8% more efficient while we're at it?

JeremyNT 3y ago
> Why do you find it suspicious? Not only have the Americans not been able to do it, but neither have the Japanese, the Koreans, the Germans, the Italians, the French, the British, or the Chinese. Since whomever was able to do it would be able to disrupt the market and gain more sales, I'm thinking it can't be done. Any auto maker could quite easily improve the efficiency of their fleets by reducing the size of their passenger vehicles (especially large SUVs and pickup trucks). It's not a tech question. No R&D involved. They just need to market their smaller vehicles as cool and stop marketing their large vehicles so aggressively. The reason they want to avoid this is that they currently make better margins on larger vehicles, so they just push the environmental costs of such inefficiency out to the rest of the public and call it a day. In a sane regulatory framework those large vehicles would be taxed dramatically more due to the damage they cause to the environment, and the auto makers wouldn't be so addicted to them.
- gotoeleven 3y ago
  But people would have to buy them for this plan to work. And people won't because they will suck.
  - yowzadave 3y ago
    What are they going to do, not drive?
m463 3y ago
> demand EVs be 6% to 8% "keep your speed under 25 mph to reach your destination"