White House threatens to veto anti-EV bill just passed by US House

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/12/white-house-threatens-to-veto-anti-ev-bill-just-passed-by-us-house/

by consumer451 • 3 years ago

44 79 3 years ago

Its passage in the House follows a letter-writing campaign by some US auto dealers to get the White House to abandon its climate targets as the dealers say they find it too difficult to sell electric vehicles.

Have to kill dealerships off faster. They will fight the transition to the death.

consumer4512• 3 years ago

Like hospitals/health systems, dealerships are wealthy profit centers distributed throughout the country.

Both create a significant amount of economic inertia which stymies change in their respective industries, as they each have a Senator or two to bribe.

taylodl• 3 years ago

Hospitals provide a much needed service, auto dealerships do not. Not helping their case is their existence is mandated by law. Crony capitalism at its finest!

jwells89• 3 years ago

They might have an easier time moving EVs if they weren’t so eager to mark them up to the point of rendering tax incentives ineffective.

alephnerd12• 3 years ago

Dealerships also make money off repairs.

EVs have a fraction of the total number of parts compared to ICE Vehicles, and repairs might be owned by the manufacturer, not the dealership.

alephnerd12• 3 years ago

Cuellar and Gonzales represent the Rio Grande Valley (geologically known as the Permian Basin edit: it isn't but RGV is a major oil and gas terminal [https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/13/texas-brownsville-ln... and https://www.bluewingmidstream.com/terminals]), a major oil production region (edit: natural gas, not oil. It is a primary oil transport hub though because of the Port of Brownsville) .

Peltota represents Alaska at large, another major oil hub, and her tribe's Alaskan Native Corporation (Calista Corporation) has the oil drilling rights to the North Slope oil fields. On a separate note I had a buddy who used to lobby for ANCSAs before becoming a Pharma lobbyist. Good guy, and ANSCAs would actually be a better operating model for the lower 48 instead of the current tribal sovereignity one.

Don Davis's constituency in South Carolina hosts Volkswagen, Honda, etc's entire US manufacturing supply chain.

I can't think of a reason for Jared Golden to vote against this. ME-2 doesn't have a significant oil or automotive economy

Edit: Forgot Jared Golden is on the Small Business Committee - Car Dealerships tend to be the largest small businesses in constituencies.

EV manufacturers should (and most likely are) try to expand manufacturing in Ohio, South Carolina, and Indiana to better lobby in their favor.

Tesla clearly did a bit of this by expanding operations in NV and TX.

ElijahLynn• 3 years ago

Thanks for breaking down affiliations and motivations.

Texasian• 3 years ago

When people say the Rio Grande Valley they typically mean the counties at the southern tip of Texas. The Permian Basin is at the westernmost parts of the state. The areas don’t overlap. At all.

alephnerd12• 3 years ago

Doh. My bad. Will edit it. But RGV is a major oil and gas transport hub as well. I think I confused Pan-American and Permian

downWidOutaFite2• 3 years ago

The disappointing thing is that not a single Republican crossed over in the other direction. Strict ideological enforcement seems much stronger on the GOP side.

alephnerd12• 3 years ago

Which house districts are EV manufacturers located? They're mostly blue districts.

Open factories in Red Districts, employ a statistically significant amount of residents, and then the Congressmember will flip.

singhrac• 3 years ago

Ironically the Rio Grande Valley is also a major wind farm region (see https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/#6.94/27.473/-97.63) but I think the profits from oil and gas in the region are still higher (at least somewhat because of LNG exports).

alephnerd12• 3 years ago

Employment most likely.

An ONG terminal will employ more (unionized) people than Renewable repairs, and it's not like Battery companies are rushing there to train employees from scratch for a product who's entire manufacturing chain is largely automated [0]

Unemployed people vote for alternatives, and it's not like the US can shoot a couple protesters or take them to a blacksite for the "greater good"

I'd recommend watching For All Mankind season 3 - it touches on this point.

[0] https://www.emobility-engineering.com/automated-battery-manu...

seanmcdirmid9• 3 years ago

Volvo makes EVs in South Carolina. But...well, they are Chinese owned even if the design is coming from Sweden.

alephnerd12• 3 years ago

They R&D and design in Shanghai [0] and recently laid off the Sweden R&D team [1] while opening a new design studio in Shanghai [2].

A lot of the supply chain in EV manufacturing is also largely automated compared to ICE manufacturing - a major reason for the UAW strike.

Kinda interesting how Scandinavian unions are up in arms against Tesla but said nothing against Geely/Volvo moving R&D jobs to China.

Not a Musk fanboy btw. He clearly needs to step away from the public spotlight to help his companies perform without scandal.

[0] https://www.just-auto.com/news/china-volvo-and-geely-open-ne...

[1] https://www.motor1.com/news/665644/volvo-cuts-1300-white-col...

[2] https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressrele...

outside1234• 3 years ago

It’s not going to stop EVs anyway - they have already crossed the total cost of ownership equality point and it is just physics from here.

This is the equivalent of lobbying for coal against natural gas

alephnerd12• 3 years ago

It makes cost of ownership expensive, and decreases subsidizes for manufacturing. By making manufacturing expensive, it slows down adoption of EV cars, as the price point is too high.

downWidOutaFite2• 3 years ago

Isn't that only when you include the federal tax credit?

toomuchtodo6• 3 years ago

Model Y and 3 are priced below new combustion vehicle price pre tax incentive. As thinkcontext mentions, that price will be lower next year when the federal credit is taken off right at point of sale.

https://jalopnik.com/tesla-model-3-and-model-y-cost-less-tha...

At $38,990, the base Model 3 sedan now costs $8,700 less than the average amount paid for a car or truck in the US. The starting price for a Model Y SUV is $3,700 below the average auto price of roughly $48,000, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Green. Tesla started cutting prices at the start of the year, twisting the screws on legacy automakers that were already struggling to make electric vehicles profitably.
“Now the fun part of cost declines ... life after price parity,” said Sam Korus, an analyst at Ark Investment Management, which manages funds with approximately $1.27 billion in Tesla stock. “There is no reason why battery costs or EVs should halt their price declines at price parity. The product can continue to cost less, or it continues to sit in the same price segment and performance improves.”

thinkcontext• 3 years ago

No. The average EV sale price in Sep '23 was $50K, down from $65K a year ago, vs $48K for the industry overall.

https://money.com/ev-vs-gas-cars-price-difference-decreasing...

Next year the tax credit will be incorporated into the sale price which should help sales.

rs999gti2• 3 years ago

they have already crossed the total cost of ownership equality point

The cheapest car in the USA is the Nissan Versa at 18K USD? What EV costs 18K?

There is still a 10K USD gap to cover.

https://www.cars.com/articles/here-are-the-11-cheapest-elect...

aw16211072• 3 years ago

Purchase price != total cost of ownership

seanmcdirmid9• 3 years ago

A chevy volt goes for $27.8k, with federal incentive that is $20.3k. Whether you can actually find that or a Nissan Versa for $18k is another story.

The Wuling Mini is around $5k. It might not be road legal for the USA, but you can imagine it will do really well in developing economies.

goodSteveramos12• 3 years ago

It will be several decades before a combination of renewable overcapacity and energy storage can meet any increase in demand for electricity. In the mean time, anything that causes an increase in demand, such as electric cars, will be met with an equal amount of additional coal or natural gas supply. This means electric cars in the US are 100% fossil fuel powered, and the Model 3 only has a ~20% smaller carbon footprints than average gas powered cars and a slightly larger carbon footprint than the gas powered Toyota Prius Hybrid.

EV subsidies have mostly lined the pockets of wealthy luxury car buyers who would have bought an EV anyway. Those subsidies would have reduced emissions far more if the subsidies had gone to making economy hybrids the same price as non-hybrids.

virtue3• 3 years ago

Another point to consider here.

Even if EVs are powered by fossil fuels. A powerplan producing electricity and transmitting it to your house is orders of magnitude more efficient than generating energy from gasoline in a motorvehicle using an internal combustion engine.

Also we can curb emissions at the power plant and track them dramatically easier.

And more EVs does not mean more power plants turning on per se. Most EVs are charged at night when power usage drops dramatically (and when you get cheaper rates on your electricity).

The real answer here is using more green house gas free power options like nuclear and solar and wind. I doubt we'll see much nuclear in the near future because it is so cheap to create solar and wind farms at this point and there's dramatically less risk despite it being dramatically less productive.

kyrra• 3 years ago

EVs generate a bunch more carbon during their manufacturing process.

As of 2022, Woodley's research showed that aggregate use of EVs below 55,749 miles may — in the U.S., at least — fail to generate any emissions benefit over gas-powered vehicles.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/08/when-buying-a...

Also, If we end up using coal to charge an electric vehicle, its carbon emissions are actually higher than that of can you an ICE vehicle.

Then if you have to replace the battery on your EV, that will reset some of that carbon offset.

goodSteveramos12• 3 years ago

And more EVs does not mean more power plants turning on per se. Most EVs are charged at night when power usage drops dramatically

Consider:

Scenario A: 1,000,000 EVs are put on the road. Scenario B: 1,000,000 gas cars are put on the road.

Scenario A: 100% of zero carbon energy is consumed by existing demand. Remaining demand is met by fossil fuels including the energy needed to power the 1,000,000 EVs. Scenario B: 100% of zero carbon energy is consumed by existing demand. Remaining demand is met by fossil fuels, not including the energy to power additional EVs.

In Scenario A, more energy is generated by fossil fuels by exactly the amount of energy used to charge the EVs. In the US, at no point in time, day or night, summer or winter does any zero carbon energy go to waste. So increasing demand means more fossil fuels being burned.

nwiswell• 3 years ago

orders of magnitude more efficient

This is simply not true. It's more efficient, but a typical gasoline car gets around 20% efficiency (large diesel trucks can be significantly greater).

A modern, state of the art combined cycle natural gas fired power plant is only up to around 60% efficient. There's some additional loss for distribution, charging the EV battery, and in the electric motor, but it's not large and you're probably about 50% efficient overall.

Another win is that natural gas emits around 25% less CO2 than gasoline per unit of energy. And of course if you're powering your car with solar, then that's much better.

Anyway, thermal efficiency is on the order of 2.5x better, not "orders of magnitude".

ori_b• 3 years ago

A modern combined cycle power plant is significantly more efficient than a typical internal combustion engine, even when taking into account transmission losses. So, an EV is going to use less fossil fuel per mile, even if the power plant is fully fossil fuel based.

On top of that, per megawatt, building out new solar is cheaper than keeping existing coal plants running. The solar transition is largely constrained by the duck curve, which can be mitigated using v2g technology, so as time passes, the power sources get greener out of purely economic considerations.

As long as you're not throwing out brand new ICE vehicles and just replacing worn out ones, both the TCO and the total carbon footprint goes down when switching to EVs.

jayd163• 3 years ago

No way they are "100% fossil fuel powered" when, for example, 20% of US power is nuclear. If you're just going to throw out something like that so casually, why should I believe any of it?

User23• 3 years ago

Nuclear power is used to provide baseline grid capacity. You can't just burn more or less uranium/plutonium as demand changes with the reactors that are in service. On the margins the surge demand largely comes from hydrocarbons, because you can just burn more or less coal, oil, or gas. Thus electric vehicles that tax the grid are going to result in new power being added as needed, and it will be nearly all from hydrocarbons.

goodSteveramos12• 3 years ago

You should beleive it because its true. Please read my comment again carefully. Marginal demand is not an intuitive concept, but it is quite real I assure you. Please don't be upset. My figures are from the paper "Conventional, hybrid, plug-in hybrid or electric vehicles? State-based comparative carbon and energy footprint analysis in the United States". Also see my reply to virtue3 for what I hope is a clearer explanation of the marginal demand concept.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03062...

p1necone3• 3 years ago

It will be several decades before a combination of renewable overcapacity and energy storage can meet any increase in demand for electricity. In the mean time, anything that causes an increase in demand, such as electric cars, will be met with an equal amount of additional coal or natural gas supply.

There's a lot wrong with this comment, but this bit especially is just made up nonsense.

According to [1] 39.7% of USA energy generation on average is already either renewables or nuclear, and as other commenters have pointed out even if it was 100% coal including transmission losses it would still be more efficient than petrol in an ICE.

And saying that all additional power production built in the US grid will be 100% coal or natural gas for the next two decades is a bizarre claim.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...

goodSteveramos12• 3 years ago

And saying that all additional power production built in the US grid will be 100% coal or natural gas for the next two decades is a bizarre claim.

The electricity grid has something called a Capacity Factor. Capacity is the ability to produce power measured in Watts. The Capactiy Factor is the fraction of capacity which is actually producing that power at any instant in time. Power demand and supply must be almost exactly in sync at all times to maintain grid stability. This is achieved by turning on and off coal and natural gas power stations, which can be done relatively quickly, to ramp up and ramp down production as demand fluctuates. Capacity must always greatly exceed typical demand so that unusually high demand can be met. Nuclear, wind, solar and hydroelectric power plants always produce whatever power they can independent of demand. This is for a diverse set of safety and environmental reasons. Only fossil fuel plants can "load follow" to meet changes in demand. Like I stated in my original comment, all load following in the US is done with fossil fuels, and that will be the case for many years or several decades to come. Increases in capacity will mostly come from carbon free sources, but until those sources can load follow, either by dumping unused energy in off-peak hours or by storing that energy until it is needed, all load following will be done with fossil fuels. This means additional demand is going to be met entirely with fossil fuels for a long time to come. I hope that helps you understand the concept of marginal demand better.

higgins• 3 years ago

noob question, why does the title say [flagged]?

toomuchtodo6• 3 years ago

If a user has 31 Karma, they can flag submissions. Although submissions cannot be downvoted, flags act as a "super" downvote and enough flags will strongly reduce the rank of the submission, or kill it entirely (flagging is supposed to be used for submissions which break the site guidelines, but that isn't always the case in practice). A submission that's flagged to death will have a [flagged] tag. Comments behave similarly.
A [dead] submission (that does not also show [flagged]) is killed by a moderator or by the software. They will only be shown to users who have showdead enabled in their profile. A submission can simultaneously be [flagged] and [dead].
If a user has 31 Karma, they can also vouch for a [dead] submission/comment. A vouched submission/comment has its rank restored (and potentially improved as the vouch can counteract the effects of flags).
Currently, when an account is banned, a software filter trips, or enough users flag a post, the post goes [dead], meaning only users with ‘showdead’ turned on in their profile can see it. The trouble is that some posts end up [dead] when they shouldn’t be. Banned accounts sometimes post good comments, software filters sometimes have false positives, and users sometimes flag things unfairly.
Today’s new feature lets users rescue [dead] posts on a case by case basis. Beside the ‘flag’ link, you’ll see a ‘vouch’ link to click when a post should not be [dead]. When enough users vouch for a post, the software will unkill it. Think of vouches as the inverse of flags: a flag says that a post shouldn’t be on HN; a vouch says it should.
We’ll review all vouched posts to make sure that they don’t violate the HN guidelines. If we notice abusive vouches, we’ll take away vouching rights (again, by analogy with flagging), so please vouch responsibly! Only rescue civil, substantive contributions to the site.

Sources:

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flaggi...

https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/two-hn-announcements/

(Also, welcome!)

White House threatens to veto anti-EV bill just passed by US House

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