US will relax pollution-limiting rules for vehicle emissions

https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/18/24076585/biden-emission-rules-relaxed-pollution-auto-industry-evs

by gmays • 2 years ago

29 89 2 years ago

superkuh2• 2 years ago

That seems very reasonable. The infrastructure to actually use EVs in the USA doesn't exist except for the coasts and around very large cities. Most of the area of the USA simply doesn't have it at all. Additionally, if everyone did have EV cars the current electrical grid infrastructure would not be able to support the increased load.

These aren't problems with EVs, really, but they are show stoppers. The EV car infrastructure for a large, dispersed country like the USA is much harder than the cars themselves.

7thaccount2• 2 years ago

The timeline is the biggest problem. Grid stuff moves extremely slowly due to the extremely critical aspect of the grid, slowish beauracracy of many organizations involved, high costs for generation and power lines, and permitting challenges. If you want to make everything electric and demand is going to triple in about a decade or so, then we simply have no way to respond to that in short order with the current reality of the system. The industry has seen more change in the past 10 years than the previous 50. There are a lot of moving parts. It's an exciting time to be working in power.

toomuchtodo3• 2 years ago

Where people live, the infrastructure exists. The US grid can handle existing load if almost 80% of current light vehicles moved to electric today (per DOE and NREL). This regulation is a cop out because the US is lazy.

https://supercharge.info/map (all automakers have adopted the NACS Tesla standard)

https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/blog-can-the-g...

https://www.6sqft.com/50-of-americans-live-in-the-countrys-1...

dxhdr• 2 years ago

Where people live, the infrastructure exists.

Have you tried using non-Tesla charging stations? It's a disaster! Those charging terminals are hastily thrown together pieces of junk, frankly. The hardware, software, billing, everything.

gjsman-10005• 2 years ago

I have to laugh - yes, on paper, the US is ready in many areas.

In reality - it's not even close. The charging experience is a disaster. The grid? I'm not confident, to put it mildly. Politically? Nobody wants to drive what feels like a Prius - light-duty vehicles are unpopular, and the last thing EVs need is anything that feels like politicization.

nox101• 2 years ago

According to this, who advocates for EVs, it doesn't exist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNBLhGsjHQI

There is neither the power, nor the electric lines, to carry all of the electricity needed. Making all of that needs to happen and happen fast but AFAIK it's not happening.

superkuh2• 2 years ago

That's a common response I get from people who only have lived experience in the US west. You may not be aware but east of the Mississippi all the land is lived in, all of it. It's not empty like in the west outside of cities. Living in Wisconsin in one of the vast areas you assume people don't live in I've never even seen an EV station. I live in a duplex and would not be able to charge an EV car (no outside outlets, no way to run an extension cord across the shared parking lot, only one NEMA 50 outlet used by my oven). Forced EV policies unintentionally discriminate against the poor. And yes, 50% of people might be in large cities, but 50% are not.

Looking at that supercharge.info map I see the EV stations are 50 miles apart and only on major interstates. There are significant fractions of the population (ie, probably 1/3) more than 75 miles from any charging station. And the vast majority of destinations are just as far from them. There's literally only 30 for the entire state of Wisconsin and half are clustered in the two moderately large cities in the south. Why link the map when you knew it didn't confirm your assertion?

edit: I was wrong about the grid not being high capacity enough and I am happy to be corrected and learn I am wrong about that.

adrianN2• 2 years ago

What parts of the US don’t have a grid that can tolerate about two dozen kWh per car per day extra load?

mr337• 2 years ago

The OP must be talking about eastern Alaska ;)

perfunctory• 2 years ago

rules that would have forced US automakers to turn EVs into their main business by 2032

8 years is plenty of time.

gjsman-10005• 2 years ago

On a big project, 8 years is no time at all.

stephen_g• 2 years ago

That’s not a useful observation regarding the grid - yes, if EVs magically appeared in everyone’s driveways tomorrow then there might be a problem, but over a decade or so it’s basically no issue. All this is factored into planning. Even just a little demand management helps a lot too (like incentivising people charging at certain times by making it cheaper).

bb123• 2 years ago

Electricity consumption in the US has historically been higher than it is now - why do you assume that a) the conversion to electric vehicles will be overnight b) the grid can't be enhanced to cope?

DinoCoder99• 2 years ago

Surely increased pressure would deliver the desired effect, not decreased pressure!

someguydave7• 2 years ago

Are you saying places in the US lack electricity? Aside from long range travel, you only need an extra 120v 15A outlet for most EV use cases.

tzs• 2 years ago

Not quite. You need an extra 120 V 15 A outlet near someplace where you can leave your car overnight.

That would be no problem at my house. My garage has plenty of 120 V 15 A outlets (although when I get an EV I'll have a 240 V 30 A outlet put in).

Every apartment I've lived in did have an extra 120 V 15 A outlet, but none of them had one anywhere near my parking spot.

shmerl• 2 years ago

So let them make the infrastructure instead of pushing the dates. What were they doing until now?

01HNNWZ0MV43FF• 2 years ago

After land taxes catch on, we should get voters to understand that gas should simply cost more

coldpie8• 2 years ago

Pay $100 now, or pay $100,000 in a few years. This decision pushes us towards the latter. Bad move.

plandis• 2 years ago

The Biden campaign is presumably rationally acting in a way they think will help get him reelected.

If the alternative is a second Trump presidency then the choices are really a bad environmental choice or a Republican presidency which typically dont tend to enact policies that improve the environment.

anon2916• 2 years ago

Greenhouse gas emissions dropped under Trump: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-...

And no... criticisms about the economic situation during covid should not count. Trump is criticized for covid, and people argue he is responsible. Then he should be praised for the good and criticized for the bad equally.

karaterobot• 2 years ago

Not a ton of information in this article, which appears to just summarize this NYT article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/climate/biden-epa-auto-em...

https://archive.is/OJvBr

It seems like the following things are true:

* They are changing the milestones, but not the final goal. That is, according to this new plan, 2032 is still the target date for 2/3rds of new sales being EV, but the requirements will be relaxed until 2030, at which point they'll suddenly jump back up where they were in the old plan. I guess that's the "then a miracle occurs" step in the overall strategy. Sounds like it'll definitely work, can't see any way for that to fail.

* This push comes from both automakers and labor unions, for different reasons. Finally, they can all agree on something, which is that you can use the threat of a second Trump presidency as leverage to make your job a little easier for a while.

game_the0ry2• 2 years ago

You know what else would help reduce carbon emissions? Banning private jets and mega-yachts.

Funny how you never see that in the mainstream discourse.

dj_gitmo2• 2 years ago

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the emissions from 10s of millions of personal vehicles is much more significant than a few thousand yachts. Don't get me wrong, I'm for adding restrictions on those things, but I see this private jet argument pop up as a way to avoid doing anything.

ejb9993• 2 years ago

its not a way of not doing anything, its a way of showing the absurdity of telling little old ladies they can't get a new gas stove - or the struggling landscaper that he has to buy more expensive battery operated mowers, but Bill gates can fly around the planet on one of his many private jets - either it is a climate 'emergency' or it isn't.

When the elites get real about making a personal sacrifice (not greenwashing one) - then maybe, just maybe the everyday Joe will get the message.

...and buying carbo credits doesn't count - that is no different than beating the heck out of your wife, and donating money afterwards to a battered women's shelter to absolve your sins.

game_the0ry2• 2 years ago

If the people who travel by private jet to davos keep telling the people who don't what to do and why, their arguments would have more credibility if they actually made similar sacrifices.

Its hard to take Bill Gates seriously about climate change when he flies around unencumbered on his own private plane.

coldpie8• 2 years ago

Those are not significant sources of emissions. All air travel, including commercial and private and goods transportation, is 1.9% of global emissions. All sea travel, including commercial and private and goods transportation, is 1.7%.

Road travel is 11.9%.[1] Of that, more than half is personal transportation vehicles (i.e. not freight)[2].

This is why personal vehicles are the #1 target for transportation-related improvements.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Emissions-by-sec...

[2] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/transport-sec...

timbit422• 2 years ago

What percent will private jets be once everyone is driving EVs?

ejb9993• 2 years ago

The math doesn't matter - tell the poor and middle class they can no longer buy a gas lawnmower or gas stove, but the rich can own 5 mansions, multiple private jets and 400' yachts (all of which damage the environment way more than the average poor or middle class person does), then people will push back - and rightly so.

Its hard to sell a 'climate emergency' when the people pushing it the hardest (i.e. Gates) are the worst polluters. If there really is a climate emergency, then everything should be on the table - you know, shared sacrifice and all - otherwise it just stinks of the rich faking a climate emergency so they can get richer.

See the '$50 trillion dollar opportunity' that has the Davo's elite salivating on how to make themselves even richer:

https://www.dw.com/en/davos-green-transition-is-50-trillion-...

and btw, these Davo's elites pushing for this '$50 trillion opportunity', by scaring the public about the 'climate emergency', by and large all flew to Davos in their private jets.

axus• 2 years ago

Expanding OPEC to cover all producers, and setting global oil production at an environmentally safe limit would make efforts to control demand unnecessary.

gnarlouse• 2 years ago

Somebody have the “why this is the right choice” take ? Want to share?

dj_gitmo2• 2 years ago

I'm not sure it's the "right" choice, but organized labor, is, and should, be an important constituency for the Democrats. Unfortunately the unions do better when Americans are buying massive trucks and SUVs.

timbit422• 2 years ago

He wants to beat Trump.

Geisterde• 2 years ago

"Right" is a value judgement, meaning its all about whos asking. From an economics standpoint, regulation causes higher prices, less competition/innovation, and are unethical. From the prespective of the people who pushed this policy, its "oh ** ** **, gm is dead in the water and everyone else isnt far behind, my portfolio is in the toilet, we need to loosen these restrictions!".

quirk• 2 years ago

In Indiana our electricity comes primarily from coal, so EVs here run on coal. I'm not sure that is better for the environment than heavily-filtered exhaust from gasoline combustion. I'm just trying to understand why so much focus is on personal vehicles when emission comes mostly from other sources: https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/#:~:tex.... I assume because it's easier to tell people they can't drive a certain kind of car than it is to tell an energy company they can't burn a certain kind of fuel.

ZeroGravitas• 2 years ago

EVs are better in all US states:

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/09/electric-vehicles...

coldpie8• 2 years ago

I'm not sure that is better for the environment than heavily-filtered exhaust from gasoline combustion.

It is: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/10/26/analysis/dirty-e... You can find many more sources with a search for yourself. The numbers only get better as we continue to increase the percentage of renewables on the grid. Gasoline cars will never get better.

I'm just trying to understand why so much focus is on personal vehicles when emission comes mostly from other sources. I assume because it's easier to tell people they can't drive a certain kind of car than it is to tell an energy company they can't burn a certain kind of fuel.

There's plenty of work going into making the grid renewable. Passenger cars are basically #2 on the list, no reason not to start tackling it now, too.

US will relax pollution-limiting rules for vehicle emissions

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