Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Transportation United States

US Proposes 56% Vehicle Emissions Cut By 2032, Requiring Big EV Jump (reuters.com) 251

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday proposed sweeping emissions cuts for new cars and trucks through 2032, a move it says could mean two out of every three new vehicles automakers sell will be electric within a decade. From a report: The proposal, if finalized, represents the most aggressive U.S. vehicle emissions reduction plan to date, requiring 13% annual average pollution cuts and a 56% reduction in projected fleet average emissions over 2026 requirements. The EPA is also proposing new stricter emissions standards for medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks through 2032.

The EPA projects the 2027-2032 model year rules would cut more than 9 billion tons of CO2 emissions through 2055 - equivalent to more than twice total U.S. CO2 emissions last year. Automakers and environmentalists say the administration is moving quickly in order to finalize new rules by early 2024 to make it much harder for a future Congress or president to reverse them. Then President Donald Trump rolled back tough emissions limits through 2025 set under Barack Obama but the Biden administration reversed the rollback. The agency estimates net benefits through 2055 from the proposal range from $850 billion to $1.6 trillion. By 2032 the proposal would cost about $1,200 per vehicle per manufacturer, but save an owner more than $9,000 on average on fuel, maintenance, and repair costs over an eight-year period.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

US Proposes 56% Vehicle Emissions Cut By 2032, Requiring Big EV Jump

Comments Filter:
  • Trucks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @01:10PM (#63444520)

    Trucks are still getting preferential treatment though at least they seem to be trying to narrow the gap

    The proposed rules do also acknowledge that OEMs have taken advantage of similar leniency in the past to reclassify light-duty vehicles as light trucks in order to pollute more. One way the EPA hopes to prevent that is by increasing the minimum allowed footprint for a car from 41 square feet to 45 square feet by model year 2032 and by reducing the maximum footprint of trucks to 70 square feet (from 73 square feet) by model year 2030.

    • Re:Trucks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by superdave80 ( 1226592 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @01:26PM (#63444570)
      If they aren't going to apply fuel efficiency standards to every vehicle sold, then the loopholes will continue to be exploited.
    • Yep, that's a problem.

      The big polluting SUVs got relabelled "trucks" and get lenient pollution standards.

      • That isn't true anymore. Half-ton pickups are under CAFE standards. This is why Ford/GM/etc. have gone to aluminum bodies, when initially Ford was mocked at doing, but those ads stopped when other pickup truck makers did the same. This is also why the V8 engines are being phased out for turbocharged V6 engines or hybrids.

        Heavier trucks are a different thing, but you are not going to shoehorn a F-350 in an urban parking spot.

        • Heavier trucks are a different thing, but you are not going to shoehorn a F-350 in an urban parking spot.

          I see giant trucks shoehorned into parking spots all the time. My favorite are the giant extended cab/bed trucks that park on the street and stick out into the road so far that you to have to drive into the other lane to get around them.

    • they're classified as light trucks to get around fuel economy standards and they're 70% of all new "car" sales.
  • by mendax ( 114116 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @01:26PM (#63444578)

    I'm not sure about the rest of the country as I live in California and only know the situation here, but this seems to me to be a very short-sighted decision. It's all well and good to make rules that will eventually lead to more electric cars, and sooner rather than later, but it ignores the big problem: the electrical grid does not have the capacity for all those new electric cars. Given how hot it gets in California in the summer, the very real threat of brownouts and planned rotating blackouts to keep the grid from crashing, the desperate calls from the state regulator last summer to conserve power using the emergency notification system on the mobile phone network, and the simple fact that there is still not enough investment in the development of new sources of power generation, this new regulation will likely create a disaster in California during a hot summer. It's unfortunate but true: car owners need to be able to charge their cars during the day when the battery runs down. It's not realistic to ask them all to defer charging until after 9 pm when the load on the grid decreases.

    • ...but it ignores the big problem: the electrical grid does not have the capacity for all those new electric cars....

      The electric grid desperately needs to implement time-dependent pricing, giving people an incentive to charge their cars during the midnight-to-7am time period when the grid is oversupplied.

      (yes, even in summer).

      Consumer advocacy groups have mostly succeeded in killing such proposals (on the argument "it's just a pretext to allow electric companies to raise prices"), but they are needed.

      • Problem is all the pricing power is still going to be in the power distributor's and probably large consumer's hands, not the retail consumer. Just look at gasoline, where prices change daily based on geopolitics and industry issues, not on retail demand.

        The only thing a retail consumer can do is choose not to use power - you can't easily shift consumption without significant capital investment (like a home battery storage, which you probably can't even do if you are a renter). Given the number one retail

        • by Teun ( 17872 )
          In the future the car battery will probably double up as home battery.
          • A car battery could power my home for less than a day.
            • How big is your house, and what do you have the temperature set to? The average American household consumes ~30kWh/day. Even the little Nissan Leaf has a capacity of 40+ kWh, and Teslas go up to 100 kWh.

      • by Teun ( 17872 )
        Right now I'm in Denmark where the majority of people have a 'flexible' electricity contract, when there is wind and/or sun the hourly price is low to very low, when no wind or sun the price is quite high.
        Most people have adjusted to these price fluctuations and most newer appliances like washing machines can be started via an app or timer.
        I don't need to charge my Ariya every day so I too look at the prices (available for the next 24 hrs) and set the charger accordingly.
    • Yeah, but fuck California.

    • If this electric vehicle thing was truly a great idea and/or way cheaper you wouldn't need to pass legislation to force people to adopt it.

      • The legislation is to force manufacturers to build them. You can't buy something if nobody makes it.

        No private individual will be penalized for not buying an EV. That's a fantasy for people who have knee-jerk reactions to things they don't understand.
        =Smidge=

        • by kick6 ( 1081615 )

          The legislation is to force manufacturers to build them. You can't buy something if nobody makes it.

          Everyone already builds them to the extent the supplychain allows them and/or to the extent that they're able to sell them.

        • So selection of ICE vehicles will remain the same? When far fewer of them are made that won't affect prices at all?
      • Imagine we wanted to pollute less and every ICE had to pay for cleaning up its emissions. If today's vehicles are so much better you got nothing to worry about for old cars and big trucks...

        • Imagine we wanted to pollute less and every ICE had to pay for cleaning up its emissions. If today's vehicles are so much better you got nothing to worry about for old cars and big trucks...

          You're going to spend much more time cleaining up after that EV battery than anyone will spend cleaning up after a Ram 1500.

          • Of course an ICE will win out if you didn't drive it at all. Then you wouldn't have pollution from driving. None of the continuous pollution from processing all that crude oil. None of that pollution from distribution of gasoline.

            That's before we consider the distributed nature of ICE pollution vs a heavily centralized electric. Before we consider the low efficiency of ICE vehicles vs the more efficient central power plants + distribution network + batteries.

            But if you did drive it, let's not leave out the

      • Good thing nobody is proposing to force people to buy EVs. This is just an increase in the CAFE standards, which have been around since the 70's. And besides, people have been voluntarily buying up nearly every EV that Tesla, Ford, etc. have been producing up until now.
      • by Teun ( 17872 )
        As long as polluting the environment with CO2 is almost for free in the US there are hardly any tools to make the EV's competing on price.
        Because most EU countries significantly tax CO2 causing fuels they have less problems to make people move to EV.
    • and the simple fact that there is still not enough investment in the development of new sources of power generation.

      Wind/Solar has grown from 7, TWH in 2009 to 48 TWH in 2021 (out of about 200 TWH total). California is investing TONS in new sources of power.

      the desperate calls from the state regulator last summer to conserve power using the emergency notification system on the mobile phone network

      The biggest reason for the power crunch (which was only a few days), was due primarily to an unusual late-summer heat wave (still hot at the end of the day, but sun going down earlier) coupled with our reservoirs being empty from drought (can't release water to generate electricity).

      California does screw things up in the planning department a lot, but to act like we

  • Where does this number come from: "By 2032 the proposal would cost about $1,200 per vehicle per manufacturer"?

    • They always give estimates as to how much new/more expensive technology will need to be added to vehicles to meet the new standards.
  • need ban dealer only battery swaps / repairs
    or pay Tesla’s $16,000 Quote for a $700 Fix and Have them try to take the old one (not allowed in some states) so you can't try to sell the old one to make up some of the cost.

  • by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @01:30PM (#63444594)
    Until the range improves, I need to be able to go 500 miles on a charge. Why? because of cold weather and summers which cut back on range. Either that or fast charging vehicles, you wouldn't catch me dead waiting 20mins to charge my car, 7-10mins maybe.
    • by ranton ( 36917 )

      Until the range improves, I need to be able to go 500 miles on a charge. Why? because of cold weather and summers which cut back on range. Either that or fast charging vehicles, you wouldn't catch me dead waiting 20mins to charge my car, 7-10mins maybe.

      You are going to be waiting a long time to see ranges of 500 miles, because it isn't a target there is much of a market for. High range vehicles are usually closer to 350 miles. Very few people need to drive more than 350 miles in a day. That would be at least a 3 hour one way commute. And if you are doing long range driving, 300 miles gives you about 4-5 hours of interstate driving in between charges. Most people are looking for a break to driving at least every 4-5 hours.

      As for hot and cold weather, it is

      • by kick6 ( 1081615 )

        Until the range improves, I need to be able to go 500 miles on a charge. Why? because of cold weather and summers which cut back on range. Either that or fast charging vehicles, you wouldn't catch me dead waiting 20mins to charge my car, 7-10mins maybe.

        You are going to be waiting a long time to see ranges of 500 miles, because it isn't a target there is much of a market for. High range vehicles are usually closer to 350 miles. Very few people need to drive more than 350 miles in a day. That would be at least a 3 hour one way commute. And if you are doing long range driving, 300 miles gives you about 4-5 hours of interstate driving in between charges. Most people are looking for a break to driving at least every 4-5 hours.

        As for hot and cold weather, it is only cold weather which has a significant effect on range. You can expect about 70% of the normal range in very cold climates. So in a cold climate, if you have over a 2 hour commute to work then current EVs probably aren't for you. Otherwise complaining about range is really just blowing hot air for the vast majority of people.

        Do you live in the NE of the US where everything is close together or something? I can't think of a single road trip I've ever taken that's under 5 hours, and most are between 8 and 21!

    • Reducing emissions by half would still leave room for lots of hybrids. In fact, it might be possible to hit the target with just hybrids. On average, Americans drive 30 to 40 miles per day [carscoops.com]. A Highlander Hybrid SUV has 40 miles of range on electric. So, an average owner, if they bother to charge at night, could be using gas only on those occasions when they drive hundreds of miles in a day, which is relatively rare. So the net MPG's over the course of a year could easily be in the hundreds.
    • Re:I won't get one (Score:5, Insightful)

      by crow ( 16139 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @02:17PM (#63444782) Homepage Journal

      When EVs are discussed, there's always a group of people who say they're just not ready yet, and they always point out some scenario where they need higher specs than are generally available. The funny part is how the specs keep getting higher and higher and the scenarios keep getting more outlandish.

      For people who can charge at home (a legitimate issue for those who can't), you very rarely need to think about charging times at all. But people will look for excuses as to why it's not for them instead of looking for ways to make it work.

      • This is the most expensive thing I will ever buy besides my house. Why should I have to look for ways to make it work? Spending this much money should make my life easier, not more complicated.
    • > Why? because of cold weather and summers which cut back on range.

      This is a real thing.

      It's about 15-20% reduction in the most nightmarish cases. We're talking soaked in subzero temperatures all night without being plugged in followed by blasting the non-heatpump heat at max the entire trip.

      So basically you're saying you need 400+ miles, which is still eyebrow-raising...
      =Smidge=

      • by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        I've done a trip like that once. Minneapolis to Bismarck in one shot, 430 miles, just over 6 hours. Good lord it was miserable, and I had to pee like a racehorse by the time I got there. Never again.
      • It's about 15-20% reduction in the most nightmarish cases

        That's not even close to correct. It completely depends on how cold you are talking or which vehicle, but even just at freezing (hardly a 'nightmarish case'), some models already see a 30% reduction.

        I hate the anti-EV side spreading misinformation trying to make EVs sound worse than they really are. Don't be like them and spread misinformation trying to minimize the real issues of EVs.

        https://www.kbb.com/car-news/evs-lose-range-in-the-cold/

      • I don't need that every day, but I go on vacation in the summer and drive everywhere, I don't want to spend that time watching the bar move on the batter indicator on my car. I think my next car might be a plug in hybrid.
  • I'm pro-EV (am considering getting one), but they should not be mandated. They will eventually become the majority vehicle type on their own, in time. There are lots of situations, possibly outside of your and my world, where EVs would be a terrific burden to people. I'm sure you're expecting me to list them so you can shoot them down one-by-one, but, again, I can't conceive of all possibilities; do you arrogantly think you can?

    The only two off the top of my head are A) heavily congested urban areas
  • by JustCallMeRich ( 1185429 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @03:13PM (#63444974)

    There is a lot of misinformation being passed around, and a lot of false assumptions about EVs in general from people who just don't have the experience of owning one or who are getting information from political sources that are backed by over $100M a year in oil industry donations (opensecrets.org). Let me see if I can break some of these down.

    "I need 500+ miles of range" - No you don't. You don't have a 400+ mile commute. You are thinking in terms of a gas car where you fill up once a week and drive until you are empty. Or you are suddenly becoming a long haul trucker. Either way - keep reading.

    "The infrastructure can't handle the load" - Yes it can. As we build up more EVs, they are not being built in isolation. Many states are also encouraging things like alternative energy, rooftop solar, deep well geothermal, and more - which both adds to our raw production and reduces grid demand by using local production like rooftop solar. Not to mention things like PowerWalls and bidirectional charging of EVs which will let you generate energy by day, store it, and release it as needed and have the ability to tap into it when usage spikes. California tested this out last Summer with PowerWalls pumping energy back into the grid as needed. Bidirectional EVs can do the same - even power your home if there is a power outage.

    "EV's are too expensive" - Only if you don't do the math and include the lack of maintenance and gas purchase over the life of the car. My daily commute in my V8 is $15 a day, $10 a day in my v6 car, and $3 by EV. I saved so much by switching that I was able to pay my car off early. Plus the manufacture of an EV is far less costly than a gas car, so more room to reduce margins once more hit the street and the competition ramps up.

    "The battery wears out and costs $20K" - yes, batteries wear out. The only place I saw a battery PACK that expensive was at full dealer cost. But you will likely get well over 200 - 300K miles out of your EV before getting that close. I had a battery issue at 250K miles and was able to find a shop that found the 3 underperforming cells (out of 11) and just replaced those cells with refurbs/used cells and gave me a year warranty on the whole pack for about $750. Far less than the price of oil changes during that same milage. And battery tech is getting better all the time,

    "They catch fire too often" - No - they catch fire far less often than ICE vehicles. Somewhere around 60+ gas car fires to 1 EV fire the last time I checked. Gas car fires are so common they don't make the news. EV fires are so rare they are national news.

    "The cold/heat/hills/towing affect range" - yes they do - just like a gas car. Plan for it. Mostly the are in the singe digits due to temperatures because most EV batteries include a temperature monitoring and regulation system (BTMS) that warms and cools the battery as needed to minimize this effect. Trailers are starting to be built with battery packs and drive wheels included to extend range. And at least in an EV, you will recover some of that energy through regenerative braking - unlike a gas car/truck.

    "I can gas up in 5 minutes" - I can plug in my EV in 11 seconds, then walk away and be productive (multitask) rater than sit at the pump for 5 minutes (single task). I usually charge overnight at home when rates are low and start every day with a 'full tank'. Get out of the gas car mentality that you have to drive someplace special to charge. You really don't unless you are doing a 200 mile commute each day - in that case, charge up at work. Next - look at recharge lanes and push to get them set up on highways so you can charge as you drive.

    There are more, but these hit the highlights of comments from non-EV owners who "WILL NEVER BUY AN EV" and are super proud of that fact that they are going to keep spending more money in gas and maintenance because the gas company paid their politician to scare them back to the gas pump as long as possible.

    • I agree with your points about range, expense, battery packs (IF serviceable), and fire hazard.

      On infrastructure: I work in the utility industry, in a progressive region, and there are some huge question marks on the Powerpoint slides around how to deal with increased demand from EVs. There are all sorts of contingency plans involving getting people to change behavior to reduce demand peaks to hopefully fill in for missing capacity, and there is much concern about the political feasibility of those plans.

      O

    • No one says they need 500+ miles every day, yet you EV proponents keep using that as a case.

      The point is that a $30K+ vehicle, the most expensive thing most people will buy besides their house, should not make that trip more difficult if you ever need to do it.
  • "Let them eat cake" is the most famous quote attributed to Marie-Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution. As the story goes, it was the queen's response upon being told that her starving peasant subjects had no bread. Because cake is more expensive than bread, the anecdote has been cited as an example of Marie-Antoinette's obliviousness to the conditions and daily lives of ordinary people. [Britannica]

    Perhaps you are all rich nerds who own suburban ranch style homes with solar roof pane

    • by swell ( 195815 )

      Forgot to mention: parking is not free. In my building, people pay $50/month to park out of the weather in the basement. That's typical. A secure garage will cost far more than $100/month.

      If the owner installs a charging unit, do you think it will be free?

Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

Working...