US automakers plan to ask Mr Trump to keep President Biden’s EPA Depletion Rulesamid signs that Mr. Trump may try to reverse them. If the rules were reversed, it would cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of deaths per year.

Interestingly, this is the opposite of what the big auto companies did the last time a reality TV show came to the White House – indicating that they may have been holding back lesson this time.

First, a little history.

By the mid-20th century, the effects of human activity on the atmosphere became evident. Some cities – Los Angeles at the forefront – were choked by smog, and it was soon discovered that automobile pollution was the main cause of this smog.

With Los Angeles being one of the most smog-choked cities, California led the way in regulating air quality, creating the California Air Resources Board in 1967 (under the leadership of the Governor of Los Angeles). ‘era, Ronald Reagan).

The federal government gave California a special dispensation to establish stricter regulations than the rest of the country, recognizing that it had a unique smog problem in its major metropolis. California has since retained this exemption, in the form of a “waiver”. And other states can follow California’s rules, but only if they copy all the rules exactly.

So, there have been two separate sets of air quality regulations in this country since then: the federal rules, and then the “state CARBs” that follow California’s rules.

In 2012, that finally changed, when President Obama’s EPA negotiated with California to finally harmonize these standards and also implement higher energy efficiency nationally. This would have been a huge boon to both the industry and consumers, saving money and providing regulatory certainty to the auto industry.

But then, in 2016, the second-place candidate in the presidential election was headed to the White House. And the automakers responded by immediately put pressure to torpedo these standardseven before the inauguration.

Now you might think that asking a profoundly ignorant individual, who ended up endowing the EPA with science deniers bought and sold (eh, that would be This won’t happen again, will it??), changing rules already set after years of negotiation and lobbying was not a good idea. And you would be right.

Shortly after the car companies came up with the stupid idea of ​​asking an idiot to fix something that wasn’t broken, that idiot broke things again, breaking the agreement between California and the federal government and providing less regulatory certainty for automakers.

After realizing their mistake (which they could have avoided by thinking a little in advance), the big automakers gave in and asked the government to please do not implement rollbacks the car manufacturers had asked for it. Some companies even reached their own agreement with California.

But it was too late, and we’re now back in the age of patchwork regulatory regimes — something John Bozzella, head of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (formerly called Global Automakers), keeps complaining about these days -this, although he lobbied for precisely that. in the first place.

The U.S. EPA and California are not yet fully harmonized, but both have recently issued new standards with somewhat similar goals. If a manufacturer relies on one set of rules, it likely won’t fall far short of meeting the other.

In the end, we got better emissions regulations and California continued to advance clean air regulations, signaling Mr. Trump’s failure to cause long-term harm to Americans that he and his team suffered. oil industry lawyers seems so desperately to want.

The most recent EPA standards, finalized in March (after being relaxed at the request of the auto industry), do not mandate any particular powertrain, but rather require deep emissions reductions – and electric vehicles are the easiest way to reduce emissions.

Tesla notably lobbied for the development of this latest set of standards. strongerand they also put pressure against ruining the Obama/CA standards in 2016 – being one of the few automakers on the right side of this discussion.

Although President Biden’s EPA rules do not mandate any particular powertrain, Mr. Trump, in his usual ignorance, said he would. end non-existent EV mandate. And now that he’s received more votes than his opponent for the first time (after three attempts, and despite a 2021 betrayal for which there is clear legal recourse), it appears the next EPA could be tasked with ending to these emission reductions. and fuel and health savings for Americans.

But in this case, it looks like the automakers might do the right thing for once and ask the government not back off, and instead let them continue their plans undisturbed by a convicted criminal who seems determined to cede a Electric vehicle manufacturing boom in the United States back in China.

Detroit’s Big Three automakers – GM, Ford and Stellantis – are all would have trying to figure out how to ensure these rules stay in place. The mentality is that ever-changing regulations are not beneficial for businesses – especially in the automotive space, where models take around 7 years to plan and execute. Long-term planning is important for hundreds of billions of manufacturing investments that electric vehicles attracted in the United States during Biden’s electric vehicle campaign.

These attitudes are remarkable, given that it is not what car manufacturers did in 2016/2017. That time, they compulsively lobbied to reduce regulations, and now they are demanding that the regulations remain in place.

It’s further worth noting that Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose company has lobbied hard for emissions reductions and uses the federal electric vehicle tax credit more than any other company, is now allied to the very entity that is seeks to harm electric vehicles. It seems that we have entered an opposite world.

So it remains to be seen where we go from here – on the one hand, doctors, nurses, scientists, environmental groups, many companies, people who recognize that they have lungs that they would like to continue usingetc., generally support the strictest possible regulation. Now, automakers are adding to the list of demands for strict regulations.

On the other hand, a former reality TV host – pinned by the CEO of the company that has sold more electric cars than any other – seems determined to kill electric cars, despite the pain it would cause to the wallet and to Americans’ finances. health insurance premiums. And this notoriously vindictive character may have even more incentive to take this nefarious course of action after failing in his efforts the first time.

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