
The Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules - pingou
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/climate/cafe-emissions-rollback-oil-industry.html
======
nimbius
Disclosure: im a full-time auto mechanic learning python in my ample spare
time.

In terms of emissions, you wont come close to what a diesel long haul truck is
putting out, and those are the vehicles no one really talks about.
Freightliner and peterbilt all showcase their latest trucks with urea
scrubbers and nox emissions reduction technology, or even hybrid/electric
systems when they go to trade shows, but most fleet operators are on a 30 year
curve. No trucking company wants to buy a truck new.

and thanks to loopholes in EPA regulations they dont need to. fleet owners can
do whats called a "glider" conversion. You essentially take the guts of a 30
year old tractor trailer, and wrap it in a nice new body. this works well to
refurbish trucks that have been in rollover accidents or written off by
insurance companies. they are easier to move from salvage to titled.

Assembly of a glider is also prone to problems. Professional mechanics can do
it well, but its not cheap, so to drop the cost of a glider most fleet owners
sub this work out from their main shops to subcontractors of Salvadorian day
laborers. The result is that the truck runs, but critical things like the urea
tank wont run, the pyrometer is broken, and the dashboard lights up like a
christmas tree. Ive even seen gliders where the speedometer was so incorrect,
the driver told me to "use the gps" on my phone instead.

These trucks are miles off spec for EPA, but most states only halfheartedly
enforce the EPA regulations for trucks. Fleet owners title them in states like
Indiana, florida and Ohio for a reason: these states couldnt care less if the
truck smokes out the parking lot of a wal-mart just starting up.

~~~
thinkcontext
This is a great argument for why a price on carbon is a better solution than a
direct regulatory approach. You can't game the price at the pump or find a
loophole, or at least its more difficult to do so.

~~~
Hupriene
Not true. Many of the problems described by gp wouldn't affect the fuel
efficiency of the truck, but still vastly increase the pollutants the truck
puts out. Replacing your catalytic converter with a steel pipe is the obvious
way to game a carbon tax.

~~~
SilasX
That would be an argument for taxing the pollutants too.

(Yes, it's not a perfect policy, but please don't criticize it with an
argument equivalent to saying that a unit of pollution is infinitely bad. It's
not.)

------
gameswithgo
The Koch brothers are amazing. Cars are bigger and heavier than ever, almost
everyone has a huge truck in Austin, TX and usually an SUV if not that. They
all have more power than ever. But they want to craft a narrative that Obama
has been foolishly limiting our choice of cars with efficiency standards.

There are certainly lots of regulations that make cars more expensive than
they need to be but I don't think MPG standards are one of the first order
cases.

~~~
travisporter
Is there a way to remain safe driving in these places besides also buying a
large heavy vehicle? I despise gas guzzlers but my sedan may not survive an
accident.

~~~
rootusrootus
I'm reaching back a ways to my college days, but as I remember, two objects
can have masses 2x apart (e.g. 3500 pound car, 7000 pound truck) and for all
practical purposes it doesn't really change the collision dynamics much.
Something about velocity squared, as I recall.

So ... buy a Subaru Forester, I guess. Or another CUV. Taller bumper so you
don't get run over by a pickup, but still a smallish vehicle.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
KE=0.5MV^2

Vehicle and cargo (you) damage is more strongly related to force than kinetic
energy. You can be going 150mph and stop just fine by using the brakes to
convert that kinetic energy into thermal energy. Using a concrete barrier and
the vehicle to dissipate that force throughout the structure of the vehicle
would work as well as far as getting rid of the kinetic energy but will
probably have a less desirable outcome for the contents of the vehicle. Same
energy in both cases, way different forces involved. It's like how a
sledgehammer hits with more force the more rigid the thing you're hitting is.

Also it's not the acceleration that kills you[1], it's the bouncing off things
in the cabin that kills you.

[1][http://www.ejectionsite.com/stapp.htm](http://www.ejectionsite.com/stapp.htm)
(8th to last paragraph)

------
clouddrover
It may not matter so much. Car makers will still have to comply with European
and Chinese emissions standards anyway (test cheating aside). How much
incentive will there be for them to develop a separate car purely for the US
market?

And there will be many models of EVs available across the next 7 years. In
addition to Tesla, most of the major car brands have EV development programs.
Here are four EVs available now or in the first half of 2019, depending on
where you live:

\- Jaguar I-Pace: [https://www.jaguar.co.uk/jaguar-
range/i-pace/index.html](https://www.jaguar.co.uk/jaguar-
range/i-pace/index.html)

\- Audi e-Tron: [https://www.audi.co.uk/electric-
car/e-tron.html](https://www.audi.co.uk/electric-car/e-tron.html)

\- Hyundai Kona: [https://www.hyundai.co.uk/new-cars/kona-
electric](https://www.hyundai.co.uk/new-cars/kona-electric) Review:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LATZ0g-Sz2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LATZ0g-Sz2s)

\- Kia e-Niro: [https://www.kia.com/uk/new-cars/all-new-e-
niro/](https://www.kia.com/uk/new-cars/all-new-e-niro/) Review:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR5sDwF5aBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR5sDwF5aBM)

The Hyundai Kona and Kia e-Niro are interesting as practical cars with good
range at a more affordable price than the luxury EV options. The Kona and the
e-Niro have the same drivetrain so they're quite similar, but of the two I
like the e-Niro better.

Hyundai and Kia also have some on-car solar options in development:

[https://electrek.co/2018/10/31/hyundai-kia-solar-roof-
electr...](https://electrek.co/2018/10/31/hyundai-kia-solar-roof-electric-
vehicles/)

I think the future is bright for low or zero emissions vehicles, despite the
oil industry's efforts.

~~~
dao-
> How much incentive will there be for them to develop a separate car purely
> for the US market?

Aren't they doing that already? The whole pickup truck class mostly doesn't
exist outside of the US.

~~~
clouddrover
Well, they're selling them in Australia:

[https://www.ford.com.au/commercial/ranger/](https://www.ford.com.au/commercial/ranger/)

And in China soon if not already:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ford-motor-china-
idUSKBN1...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ford-motor-china-
idUSKBN17916D)

[https://www.ford.com.cn/performance/raptor/](https://www.ford.com.cn/performance/raptor/)

~~~
mtw
Do they sell the full-size trucks in Australia or China (like F-150 instead of
Ford Ranger, Toyota Tundra instead of Tacoma/Hilux)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I know there's a Chinese company that makes a near direct F150 knockoff. I'm
not sure how many get sold but clearly the market exists.

------
njarboe
It is really too bad we can't implement a revenue neutral carbon dioxide tax.
Start at a low level and gradually ramp it up until we are carbon dioxide
neutral or a bit negative. Pay for taking CO2 out of the air at the same rate
as the tax and let American ingenuity do the rest. Even the oil companies are
not against a CO2 tax if you bring it on slowly. Seems like if Congress could
just ignore the crazies on either side for a bit, most people would agree this
the best way forward to reduce CO2 emissions working with the strengths of
American culture instead of going against it.

~~~
hackeraccount
I'm in favor of this idea though the tricky part is how you figure out which
taxes to lower to make it revenue neutral. I tend to think of politics as
"Help my friends/Hurt my enemies" and the important thing to realize is that
no one really thinks that a carbon tax helps them.

Not even the lefty leftiest greenies believe that. They think a carbon tax
might hurt their enemies so they're accepting of it to some limited degree but
they don't really believe it will help them. If they did they wouldn't care
what taxes would get cut or how the revenue would be spent. Instead they're
super interested in how the money would be spent or who's taxes would be cut.
They're also interested in the least broad version of carbon tax for the same
reasons.

I think theirs a political agenda on the Left and they view climate change as
magic that will let them have their way. The same way the Right sees religious
imperatives. Or national defense.

It's a view that assumes the other side are all idiots. It won't work.

~~~
njarboe
Yea. My thinking on it is that you would just mark it for paying to sequester
CO2 at the tax rate and any leftover goes as a straight per adult tax credit
(i.e. you can lower the tax you pay with it).

------
PeterStuer
The insanity is that we built a system that cultivates and breeds extreme
greed at any price, and then hope that the reigns to keep it under control
will be forever flawless.

It means the protectors need to be eternally on top, while a single victory of
the beast can destroy the world.

------
shmerl
These crooks are worrying, that with demand for oil dropping in the near
future, they'll be left with tons of cheap oil that no one will need. So in
their greed they are ramping up efforts to profit from their oil now, before
prices will plummet. It's also the same reason they rushed to reverse oil
conservation limitations, and drill now more than ever. As usual, their
mentality is "rip off everything now, and don't care about any future outcome
it will cause".

There should be stronger push back to stop them in their tracks before they do
more damage than they already have done.

------
dao-
Oh, the irony:

[https://www.nytimes.com/shell](https://www.nytimes.com/shell)

~~~
ajmurmann
Even if we had a "net-zero emissions world by 2070" it would be way too late.
I suspect we needed that 10 years ago.

If we want to prevent disastrous climate change we should ban all combustion
engines by Jan. 2021 and pay insane amounts of money for captured carbon. Of
course that would be incredibly painful. Many people would starve to death,
all our quality of life would go down dramatically for a while. But the
alternative is that even more people die.

