With a new administration taking office and a new decade upon us, it’s a perfect opportunity to recommit to holding the automobile industry accountable under theClean Air Act. While 50 years of regulation have brought with itsubstantial benefits, four years of automotive rollbacks has taken its toll, with stagnating fuel economy and numerous pollution scandals plaguing the industry.
While manufacturers continue to be in compliance with fuel economy and emissions regulations, improvements are stalling, and a continued shift away from cars to SUVs and light trucks shows the country progressing far too slowly to avert the worst impacts of climate change. With a new presidential administration set to take over, it’s time to putthe previous administration’s rollback后视和金属踏板,所长ng industry onto a more sustainable path.
The Good
EPA’s latest datadoes lays out some good news—many classes of vehicle are at record high fuel economy levels, and the industry continues to comply with the Obama-era emissions standards. This is not surprising—it has happenedyearafteryearafteryear, even as industry swore repeatedly that the standards were just too hard. And it makes for more efficient offerings in a range of vehicle types.
EPA’s latest report on fuel economy and emissions showed a slight tick down in fleetwide fuel economy, even as many types of new vehicles are more efficient than ever.
Importantly, EPA’s latest also shows that there is a lot more improvement available using technology that is already on the market. Manufacturers arenowhere near exhausting improvements from internal combustion engines, and they’ve barely scratched the surface deploying electric vehicles, since one brand (Tesla) sells more electric vehicles than the entire rest of the industry combined and what few EV models existaren’t even available everywhere.
The Bad
One unfortunate side effect of the regulations, however, is that the same flexibility that encourages improvements in every type of vehicle has led to fuel economy slipping backwards to 2017 levels of just 24.9 mpg. This is the result of escalating sales of SUVs and pick-up trucks that are outpacing efficiency improvements to those vehicles.
This bad news is compounded by an auto industry that spent the past four yearsworking to rollback fuel economy and emissions standards. And while some of those companieseventually decidedcertainty was more important than blowing things up entirely, those companies represent just thirty percent of vehicles sold in the United States, and they still haven’t convinced anyone else to follow.
Manufacturers continue to holding onto a large bank of credits, which they have been gradually using over time to slow efficiency improvements at precisely the time we need to be accelerating emissions reductions and addressing climate change.
Even as automakers’ press shops try to generate buzz about their big grandiose visions, it’s clear that the industry is not doing enough to plan for a cleaner future.Flashy investments in electrificationare matched byequally big investments in trucks and SUVs, and few manufacturers are planning to offer U.S. customers mass-market EVsany time soon.Production plansshow virtually no near-term strategy for transitioning to EVs, as the industry churns outits most truck-heavy line-up yet.
The auto industry hasspent six decades fighting regulations at every turn, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to stop any time soon, even as they’ve proven that they aren’t interested in addressing climate change unless forced.
The Ugly
Sadly, the years of delay have accelerated climate change. In 1988, the yearJames Hansen famously testified to Congressabout the dangers of global warming, the U.S. Congress passed theAlternative Motor Fuels Act, which acknowledged “the release of carbon dioxide … may be producing a long term and substantial increase in the average temperature on Earth, a phenomenon known as global warming through the greenhouse effect,” encouraged the use of alternative fuels, and required a study examining the potential for electric vehicles. More than three decades later, the most notable climate legacy of the bill is sadly the auto industry’s exploitation of its “flex-fuel vehicle loophole,” which has resulted in 600 million metric tons HIGHER emissions thanks to its unwarranted overcrediting of fuel economy.
This has left the United States (and the world writ large)well behind where we need to beto avert the worst impacts of climate change. With ongoing climate impacts likerecord wildfire seasons,increasing hurricane intensity, and worsenedseasonalandcoastal flooding, the need to act is more dire than ever.
Achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 is necessary to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. Analyses like this from theUN Sustainable Development Solutions Networkillustrate both that challenge and the need for rapid electrification of passenger vehicles.
This is especially true when it comes to transportation, which is thelargest source of emissions in the United States. The average passenger vehicle is on the road for more than 15 years, and analysis shows that electric vehicle sales should be approaching 100 percent in 15-20 years in order to achieve our climate goals.
Moreover, the auto industry has not given much reason to suggest itself willing to address pollution or act in good faith. On the heels of an emissions scandal involving faulty controls on 2.2 million of its vehicles 20 years ago, Toyota agreed to more stringent oversight by EPA…and was just found to have promptly ignored the agreement,failing to report numerous environmental issues with its cars. Automakerscontinue to fight against increasing fines对不遵守燃油经济性法规,despite numerous, clear legal arguments that such increases are required. Andthe aftermarket parts industry continues to fight for the right to sell “defeat devices”to consumers despite evidence showing that more than 10 percent of all diesel pick-up trucks have been tampered with, a pollution scandal worse than TEN TIMES that ofVolkswagen’s “dieselgate,”itself yet another environmental disaster at the hands of the auto industry.
The Opportunity
The urgency of the moment gives a new administration the perfect opportunity to act. After four years of moving backwards, strong executive action at the federal level can build upon the groundworklaid by state leadershipover the past decade to put us back on a more sustainable trajectory.
Investment in the transition should be at the forefront of President-elect Biden’s plans, including incharging infrastructureandmanufacturing incentives. The Departments of Transportation and Energy should be doing what they can topromote the deployment of charging infrastructure in public, workplace, and multi-unit dwelling locations, particularly those with bad air quality. Such infrastructure deployment will ensure EVs are more accessible to lower- and middle-income households and encourage a rapid and more equitable transition to a sustainable transportation system.
But without a binding, strong standard, these types of incentives do little to ensure manufacturers keep up with what isneeded. Coming in with a strong vision about what is necessary, and directing executive branch agencies to put regulations in place that respond to the scope of the challenge are the only thing that provide the certainty of action on climate (absent federal climate legislation). That takes substantial leadership—time and time againindustry has undersold what is possible, and we can no longer afford such lax regulation.