7 ms·
GM Is Pushing Hard to Tank California's EV Mandate
- jmclnx 1y agoSo isn't every other fossil fuel based transportation manf. 20 years ago this would upset me a lot. Now I am resigned to the fact 2 or 3 generations from now people will live through a time that will make the mongol invasions look like a tea party ran by three 7 year old girls :( No stopping Climate Change now
- toomuchtodo 1y agoI am hopeful China’s EV, battery, and renewables manufacturing machine steamrolls the world. Developed world fossil fuel and legacy auto will try to slow down the transition, so only overwhelming force solves for it. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/byd-aims-sell-half-its-cars-outside-china-by-2030-sources-say-2025-05-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/byd-ai... https://www.iea.org/news/more-than-1-in-4-cars-sold-worldwide-this-year-is-set-to-be-electric-as-ev-sales-continue-to-grow https://www.iea.org/news/more-than-1-in-4-cars-sold-worldwid... https://about.bnef.com/blog/china-already-makes-as-many-batteries-as-the-entire-world-wants/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/china-already-makes-as-many-batt... https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-renewable-energy https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-renewable-energy Current US admin only has 3.6 years left, ~2M voters 55+ age out every year, etc. Maintain momentum, be ready to spin up faster after regime change.
- mulderc 1y agoI have zero interest in an any car from an American company and by far the most exciting cars I have seen in recent years come from Chinese companies.
- alabastervlog 1y agoI’m excited about lower prices from Chinese brands. The hikes in car prices in the US over the last decade or so have priced me out of new cars entirely, and I just about get sick even looking at used car prices these days. Need some price pressure on that crap.
- mulderc 1y agoI’m pretty happy about being able to live in a place where we rarely need to drive. We have a car but basically just use it for grocery shopping. I dread the day it dies as my partner will want to get a new car and our options are going to suck.
- gowings97 1y agoMillennial here, 3x Trump voter. "Current US admin only has 3.6 years left, ~2M voters 55+ age out every year, etc. Maintain momentum, be ready to spin up faster after regime change." The majority of Boomers are liberal - the demographic shift you perceive is not going to work out the way you think it will. Gen-Z is increasingly leaning right, especially males. Most people just want a 2018 era car (there's diminishing returns for vehicle technology at this point and average vehicle selling price trajectory, Post-Covid, is unsustainable) at a decent price - something with a six cylinder engine that can be easy serviced / repaired.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pixl97 1y agoSo we shut off cheap EVs from China so American car makers can charge as much as they want without changing their behaviors. America doesn't have competition. You're prices aren't going to get cheaper. Meanwhile in China internal competition in battery chemistry and packs has massively dropped costs. It's sad when the groups we call commies have a more open market than us. Unfortunately we're going to wake up to that too late.
- gowings97 1y agoArbitraging US manufacturing to Asia and pocketing the profit has led to current predicament where we have an economy of healthcare workers, people in software, bartenders/service people barely scraping by, and skeleton crew of blue collar labor holding up domestic manufacturing. That manufacturing labor force makes make vastly lower wages than two generations prior. The vast majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck - again, this was a labor arbitrage facilitated by US Companies and politicians from both sides. This is where there is a bit of horseshoe effect between the left and right when it comes to labor/jobs/the economy. America is a farm - the US consumer is the product. The only thing that has gotten cheaper over the last few decades are consumer goods from Asia. The US auto industry is more or less an oligopoly - none of the OEMS, outside of Tesla, are seriously interested in competing on price.
- morkalork 1y agoWorse than choosing to do nothing, people chose to fight those who tried to fix it. Everything that happens will be deserved.
- sneak 1y agoCollective punishment was banned by reasonable humans for a reason. Most of the people who will suffer have done nothing wrong.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoWe are all guilty in a way.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoPeople don’t like what you’re saying even when it is the statement most likely to be true.
- bluGill 1y agoThey can and the mandate but consume demand is under your control. If people buy EVs that matters. If enough buy EVs (which likely has happened) politicians dare not ban them.
- lmz 1y agoBan EVs? I think most of the work was to ban ICE cars, despite enough people buying them.
- bluGill 1y agoThere are people who want to ban EVs. I'm not sure how many, but they exist
- happyopossum 1y agoNobody is talking about banning EVs - what are you on about?
- bluGill 1y agoThat is a next step. Some people are like that even if the media ignors them
- linotype 1y agoThey’re already floating a $200 a year federal fee for EVs.
- happyopossum 1y agoThat’s minuscule compared to federal gas tax, which that fee intends to offset. EV owners pay no gas tax, gas taxes pay for roads, ergo EV owners should probably pay a tax toward road use somehow.
- bluGill 1y agoDepends on fuel milage and how much you drive but $200 is close to what an average driver would pay in gas tax
- mitchbob 1y agohttps://archive.ph/Acbba https://archive.ph/Acbba
- delichon 1y ago> A GM spokeswoman said the company has long argued that the U.S. should have a single emissions mandate and that any regulations should factor in market demand. Yes, let us stipulate that uniform regulations that disregard the federalist design of the constitution are more convenient and profitable for huge corporations with top flight lobbyists to write the one law to be enforced from sea to shining sea.
- CaliforniaKarl 1y agoIf the EV mandate is killed, I could see the California state government making that case before the courts.
- Gibbon1 1y agoCalifornia should just place an excise carbon tax on gas and diesel cars. How about $100/ton of CO2. At 30 mpg that's 60 tons of CO2 so $6k.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoWhy on cars? If carbon emissions are the problem, why not tax fossil fuels themselves (or tax them more if emissions are still too high)?
- Gibbon1 1y agoWhy should we punish someone that bought a car before EV's were commonly available? That's punishing people after the fact. Which is morally wrong. The fundamental idea is the state doesn't actually want the money. It wants manufactures to stop making cars that emit CO2. If someone already has a car like that perhaps the state can buy it back.
- mullingitover 1y agoJust put a vehicle registration fee equivalent to the lifetime carbon tax on new ICE cars sold after a given deadline. After X years, start charging the carbon tax on registration fees for older cars as well if a car’s ownership is transferred. Use revenue from those fees for buybacks.
- gotoeleven 1y agoCalifornia has proven time and again that they are great at economic regulation so I think we should just go with it.
- dyauspitr 1y ago>Warren Buffet doesn’t know how to manage his money
- madhacker 1y ago"GM believes in customer choice" when it suits them. The state of EVs in America is akin to food desert, intentionally by design.
- happyopossum 1y ago> Even in California, America’s EV market leader, sales are below the state’s own targets. Under the rule, in 2026, sales of zero-emissions vehicles should account for 35% of all vehicle sales. Right now, they account for 20% of the state’s automobile market. Yikes. Sounds like if this mandate doesn’t get changed, Californians are staring down the barrel of a huge car buying crunch in ~7yrs, as people realize they only have a few more years to buy a gas vehicle. I’m a fan of EVs - I think every family should have one or two, but I’d also never want to be without a gas vehicle. Not having the option to buy one under any circumstances is pretty onerous.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 1y agoPHEV should be the intermediary solution IMO. It neatly solves 80% of the issues of owning either one or the other.
- MBCook 1y agoShould have been. 15 years ago. We’re long past that point. The automakers in the US mostly want to fight a war two wars ago. They’re careening towards international irrelevance fast with this crap. And we’ll either be dominated by the players that saw the truth, or stuck with overpriced protectionist crap.
- Uvix 1y agoThe US is certainly not "long past that point" in terms of charging infrastructure. So on their home turf, EV-only is a losing proposition. Which may drive them towards international irrelevance, but if they have to sacrifice one market or the other, that seems like the easier one to choose to lose.
- MBCook 1y agoIt’s long past the point hybrids were a good solution for the majority of cars. They were a good idea to start phasing in 20 years ago, when the Republicans decided that they were proof you were a tree hugger ivory palace stuck up asshole for even considering them. So we completely missed the entire thing. They were a never very big part of the market. And now people are saying we should transition to the thing that we should have been transitioning off of. California didn’t mandate EV only tomorrow. No sane person has mandated EV only in the US that soon. The chose 10 years from now. People vastly underestimate how much progress we can make in a relatively short time without massive individual improvements. People always think the future is much further out than it actually is, but when we look back it seems like things happened in a snap. Because we always underestimate ourselves. Every time infrastructure gets better, it enables more EVs. Every time battery technology gets better, it enables more EVs. It’s doable. Other countries are showing it can be done. If we get 5 or 7 years from now and find out we need to extend the deadlines some they can do that. Having the federal government come in and force a state to stick their head back in the sand until the political winds change doesn’t help anyone. Remember: states rights if we’re out of power, federalism if we’re not.
- stickfigure 1y agoThis is all so stupid. If we want to move people to EVs, put incrementally severe taxes on gasoline. "Mandates" without economic incentive are pure nonsense.
- bumby 1y agoThat creates a whole different problem. Gasoline taxes are a major contributor to infrastructure. If everyone moves to EVs, we need a an alternative, like a mileage tax.
- stickfigure 1y agoThat is an entirely separate issue and would need to be addressed even if the mandates were to be magically effective.
- bumby 1y agoIt’s directly related to your point about increasing gas taxes as an incentive to build demand for EVs (and eventually reduce gas tax revenue). If it gets to the point where the only people paying gas taxes are ICE hobbyists, the scale won’t support the needs of infrastructure.
- stickfigure 1y agoIf you ban gas cars by mandating EVs you have the same problem. I don't see why this is relevant to the topic at hand. My point is that if you want to shift the whole state from gas to electric vehicles, there's a smart way and a dumb way. California is picking the dumb way.
- bumby 1y ago>If you ban gas cars by mandating EVs you have the same problem Yes. The point is you shouldn’t trivialize the problem and need to account for second order effects. If you want to mandate EVs, fine, but now you have to solve the problem of reduced infrastructure funding when it’s already below sustainment levels. That doesn’t sound very smart, and you can’t just hand wave the problem away. Other people in the thread have pointed out it’s “dumb” to levy an EV tax without understanding they are related.
- WWLink 1y agoGM just making some fucking cars people want to buy. Nobody wants to look like a fat grandma driving a Tahoe or a racist uncle driving a Silverado lol. I mean I wouldn't mind a corvette if they didn't cost 80 fucking thousand dollars.
- nichos 1y agoPlease have a look at the guidelines before posting: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- baggy_trough 1y agoThe law is an absurd overreach. The EV demand isn’t there, although it’s growing. There will be political consequences for trying to ram it through.
- MBCook 1y agoThe people of California voted for it (through their representatives). They’re free to change it at any time. It’s not the federal government’s job to mess with it just because it doesn’t align with head-in-the-sand worldview on electric vehicles. California didn’t mandate anything for any other state. The fact the automakers don’t want to bother to implement “the winning strategy” for every other state of pretending EVs suck either indicates it’s a terrible strategy or they think there is a benefit to their bottom line to follow demand. How horrible!
- baggy_trough 1y agoThe representatives of the people of California make many inane and destructive decisions, of which this is one. Once the consequences start to bite, they may come to regret it, and I hope they do.
- WWLink 1y agoRAM IT THROUGH! Like a drunk ram 2500 driver lol.
- josho 1y agoWell if the demand isn't there then I suppose there's no need to have a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, right? The reality is the legislation was to push industry and it seems industries response was ‘nah dawg we’ll just lobby our way out of this one’
- rayiner 1y agoWe can’t keep kicking this can down the road. We are going to have to transition away from ICE vehicles and we should do it asap. At the very least sales of new ICE vehicles should be banned; people can keep their grandfathered ones as long as they work.
- NN88 1y agoHybrids might be as far as the USA goes given China controls the resources and supply chains.
- Uvix 1y agoHybrids need the same rare earth resources for batteries as EVs do, they just need less.
- meroes 1y agoYes ban them so new cars are even more out of reach for many (the cheapest electric cars are too expensive still and might not come with enough base range for long commuters). And those low earners will keep driving their shit boxes. What got me to give up my ‘98 emission hog wasn’t electric because they were too expensive. It was a rebate for taking old cars off the road and a cheap combustion civic. Ban those civics and I’d still be driving something horrendous for the environment.
- genocidicbunny 1y agoUnless we also significantly improve charging infrastructure, and more importantly, disallow grandfathering of the lack of charging infrastructure, that's going to be a very difficult sell. If you live in an apartment, you probably do not have reliable charging access at home. Newer buildings might have some charging spots, but you would need _all_ parking spots to have it available. Older apartments would need to somehow retrofit charging infrastructure as well, and it can't just be giving every parking spot access to a 120v socket. In a similar vein, not everyone has the ability to charge at work either, whether due to a lack of infrastructure, or their employer not being willing to pay for the electricity or the cost to install metered chargers. Chargers also need to get much, much faster; 15 minutes for 80% might be fine if you're at a charging station that doesn't get that much traffic, but think of somewhere like the Costco gas stations. Imagine accommodating that many people charging for 15 minutes at a time instead of 3-5 minutes at a time. Not everyone can afford to spend that much time on charging their car. There's also the fun bit about how charging an EV in some places is more expensive per mile than an ICE car, though that does often depends on the time of day you charge and what the exact price of gas is.
- tzs 1y agoI wonder if history is going to repeat itself? In the '70s the US changed emission standards to be quite a bit more strict, as part of the Clean Air Act of 1970. The problem of smog in major cities was getting out of hand. Also in the '70s there were periods of gas shortages and high prices due to world events that messed up oil markets, such as the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973 and the Iranian Revolution in 1979. This led to demand for more efficient cars. US automakers were slow to respond. The often just retrofitted existing engines with emission control equipment that significantly lowered performance and reliability. Japanese automakers, who at that time had only a small share of the US market and were not really taken seriously by most consumers, were also dealing with new strict emission standards in Japan. But they responded by quickly designing new engines designed with low emissions and better mileage. And they exported those cars to the US. By the time US automakers finally started making new design decent low emission cars with better gas mileage instead of badly retrofitting existing designs those Japanese makers had established with the public a reputation for making reliable, efficient, low emissions, and affordable cars. Some people said the Japanese cars were only affordable because of cheap labor in Japan. (Japan in the '70s was like China is today when it comes to manufacturing). But then the Japanese car companies started manufacturing many models in the US, showing that affordable, high quality, reliable cars that met emission standards and were efficient could be made with US labor. I wonder if we are going to see the same thing with EVs?
- shawnb576 1y ago100% this I noted below that I have recently moved from US to Australia The Chinese cars are taking over here: it’s a product people want at a price they like GM wants to monetize yesterday’s market, and are just going to fall farther behind. When these cars eventually come in, EV mandate or not, the US car companies will get crushed
- csa 1y ago> The Chinese cars are taking over here: it’s a product people want at a price they like If you can hazard a guess, which make and model is the “Tesla killer” for EVs, if such a car exists. I frequently suggest to folks in the US (where I’m from) that BYDs in the US would change the competitive landscape, but I can’t reliably point to a make/model or two that they can check out online.
- shawnb576 1y agoI have recently moved from US to Australia and it is 100% clear to me the US automakers will get absolutely crushed by the Chinese companies if/when they are able to access US market. Especially EVs and PHEVs. This place is awash with them, they are cars people want at the right price.
- alephnerd 1y agoThere will be bipartisan support for this (only 164 Ds voted against repeal in the house) - as long as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Illinois matter, California's EV mandate will be undermined. Neither party dares alienate the UAW or Teamsters, and thousands of automotive employees. HN needs to reconcile whether they support unions or whether they support EVs. It's a one or the other decision at this point in the US. Amongst the younger (Gen Z/Gen Alpha) generations, the choice is unions due to idealism (despite havint positive sentiment for EVs). Amongst high earning members of Gen X (which I think seems to represent HN), the choice appears to be EVs.
- chambers 1y agoI was in Beijing last year. Many, many EVs on the road, far more than the Bay Area. About half of China's Market is EV's now[1] The Chinese Government backed up their mandate with money. Lots of money, allocated well, over a long period of time. In the absence of that sustained political will, I think this initiative would have succumbed the infighting and finger-pointing that the article above describes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_industry_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_industry_in_C...