Tag Archive for: cars

Ford Puts Dent In Biden’s Plans To Expand EVs

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Ford Motor Corporation announced Thursday that it would be delaying the production of new electric vehicle (EV) models as domestic demand for electric cars falters, despite heavy federal investment.

Ford joined General Motors and Mercedes-Benz in reeling in its EV production strategy, pivoting instead to producing more hybrid vehicles, according to a Thursday press release. The high-profile retreats from the EV market follow billions in federal spending by the Biden administration aimed at supporting the industry.

“As the No. 2 EV brand in the U.S. for the past two years, we are committed to scaling a profitable EV business, using capital wisely and bringing to market the right gas, hybrid and fully electric vehicles at the right time,” Ford President and CEO Jim Farley said.

Ford’s EV division posted a $4.7 billion loss in 2023, before accounting for interest and taxes. The corporation’s gas and hybrid division, by contrast, posted a $7.5 billion profit, according to The New York Times.

“We have said our EV business needs to be profitable in its own right,” a Ford spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation, adding the delay of new models “support the development of a differentiated and profitable EV business over time.”

Auto manufacturers are responding to slowing growth in the EV sector.

EV sales only grew by 2.7% in the first quarter of 2024, a far cry from the 47% growth the vehicles saw in 2023, according to CBS News. Auto sales on the whole, meanwhile, grew by 5%.

“EV demand is growing, just at a slower rate than the industry forecast,” the Ford spokesperson said. “We expect continued growth in global Ford EV sales in 2024, though less than anticipated.”

General Motors and Mercedes-Benz have both delayed plans to transition to EV-only manufacturers.

As automakers retreat from EVs, and consumers react to them lukewarmly, taxpayers are left on the hook for the billions the Biden administration has spent subsidizing the vehicles.

The administration allocated $7.5 billion to build EV charging stations across the country, in accordance with the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill. Despite billions allotted, only seven stations have been built using those funds.

The Biden administration also made $12 billion available to automakers to repurpose existing factories to manufacture electric vehicles.

The White House wants 50% of all new cars sold by 2030 to be EVs. EVs only accounted for 7.1% of U.S. sales in the first quarter of 2024, down from the previous quarter, CBS News reported.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SCHMAD

Contributor.

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‘Climate Virtue Signaling’: Another Blue State Commits To Banning New Gas-Powered Car Sales By 2035

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New Jersey will prohibit the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 in order to fight climate change, state officials announced Tuesday.

Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Shawn LaTourette, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection announced Tuesday that Murphy would file the “Advanced Clean Cars Rule II” for adoption on Dec. 18, with the policy coming into effect on Jan.1, 2024. The policy will bind the state to completely phasing out the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035, with incremental benchmarks for increasing the minimum share of manufacturers’ new fleets that are zero emission vehicle requirements along the way.

“Here we see yet another Democrat elected official pandering for votes by interceding in the markets in a way that will create perverse incentives for automakers and inevitably higher costs for consumers,” David Blackmon, a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who now writes and consults on the energy sector, told the Daily Caller News Foundation about the policy. “This is just one more example of why politicians are literally the very worst class of people in our society to be making energy-related decisions for the rest of us. Everything they do in this space only serves to make our situation worse.”

New Jersey joins a growing list of states that have adopted 2035 bans on the sale of new gas-powered cars. Other states with similar or identical policies include  California, Vermont, New York, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Virginia, Rhode Island, Maryland and Connecticut, according to Coultra.

The state will start restricting the number of gas-powered vehicles that can be sold in the state in 2027, before arriving at zero in 2035, according to Murphy’s office. The 2027 benchmark will require manufacturers to ensure that zero emissions vehicles compose 43% of their new car fleets.

The policy does not ban ownership or use of internal combustion engine vehicles, and it will not bar the sale of used gas-powered cars, according to Murphy’s office.

“There is no justification, environmental or otherwise, to ban gas powered vehicles,” Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, told the DCNF. “All it does is force automakers to charge more for the types of vehicles that consumers actually want to buy. This power grab by unelected bureaucrats will make it harder for tens of thousands of New Jersey residents to buy their first car.”

Environmentalists and other green energy advocates often tout electric vehicles (EVs) as the future of American transportation and car culture, but they have several significant problems that their gas-powered counterparts do not. Public charging station performance remains inconsistent, drivers often have range anxiety, EVs tend to perform poorly in cold weather and they cost significantly more than gas-powered cars.

“By filing the landmark Advanced Clean Cars II rule, New Jersey builds upon its standing as a national leader in climate action and its participation in the global Accelerating to Zero commitment,” Murphy said of the policy.

Notably, some of Murphy’s other decarbonization efforts have not gone as smoothly as hoped. In October, Orsted, a major offshore wind developer, terminated two massive wind farms off the state’s coast that were expected to provide low-emissions power to the state for years to come. Now, the company is attempting to get out of up to $300 million it owes the state, which could ultimately leave New Jersey taxpayers on the hook.

“Governor Murphy needed another means of climate virtue signaling since Orsted messed up his offshore wind plans by cancelling two major projects last month,” Blackmon told the DCNF. “This is what he chose.”

Murphy’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Gov. Newsom Claims State That Bans Cars and Speech Offers ‘Freedom For All’

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You can do anything in California except open a business, walk down the street, or buy a home.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, the democratic choice of the enlightened ballot harvesters of California, desperately wants to be president. Despite pledging not to run against Biden, he’s continuing to posture by announcing an “anti-Jan 6” march (whatever the hell that is) for his inauguration. The one-party governor of one of the most corrupt states in America then spent his speech ranting about Republicans in other states.

California’s unelected governor wants to reframe freedom to mean mandatory masks and car bans. Not to mention state censorship of online speech.

Freedom is slavery, slavery is freedom.

Gavin Newsom triumphantly marched toward California’s statehouse to deliver an inaugural speech that celebrated California’s freedoms and the state’s resistance to forces that “want to take the nation backward.”

“More than any people, in any place, California has bridged the historical expanse between freedom for some, and freedom for all,” he said under cloudy but dry skies for the first time in days.

“Freedom is our essence, our brand name – the abiding idea that right here anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything.”

Except work freelance, drive a truck, buy a car, get disposable utensils, buy a fur coat, install a gas stove or any of the tens of thousands of things that the Democrat one-party system has banned in some or all of the state.

You can do anything in California except open a business, walk down the street, gas up your car or buy a home. It’s the land of dreams, the hotel you check into and then escape through the back window.

California is so incredibly free that, like North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, everyone is running away.

Gov. Newsom has the unique honor of presiding over a population loss every year in office.

“California’s population continues to dwindle. The state’s population declined by 114,000 people from about 39,143,000 in 2021 to 39,029,000 in 2020, new estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau show. It marks the third straight year that California has reported a loss.”

While Texas and Florida, the states he’s attacking, are gaining people, the only folks California is gaining are coming illegally over the border.

That and sex predators.

Unlike other states, Newsom said, California safeguards freedoms like “the freedom for teachers to teach, freedom from litmus tests about their political party or the person they love.”

California safeguards the right of teachers to “love” the kids of their choice. Republican teachers however get fired.

“They make it harder to vote and easier to buy illegal guns. They silence speech, fire teachers, kidnap migrants, subjugate women, attack the Special Olympics, and even demonize Mickey Mouse,” he said about conservative leaders like DeSantis. “All camouflaged under a hijacking of the word ‘freedom.’”

Whereas in California, Mickey Mouse can expose himself to children. Freedom!

In California, public school teachers, whose insane salaries are subsidized by property taxes no new residents can afford to pay unless they’re millionaires, can groom 9-year-olds. Freedom!

In California, vagrants and junkies have a right to camp in front of your home, but you have to wait 3 years to get a permit to have any work done. Freedom!

In California, a race riot is a civil right while trying to defend yourself against them is a crime. Freedom!

In California, shoplifting is legal, but opening a business isn’t. Freedom!

Wait, why is everyone fleeing the land of the fee and the home of the slave? Wait for the reparations. Stay for the car ban. Or the mandatory ethnic studies. And the race riots. And the tax hikes.

Big population drops in L.A., San Francisco transform state – Los Angeles Times

Why are you leaving the home of freedom? Why?

Do you have something against systemic racism, child abuse, mentally ill vagrants smoking crack, high taxes, and no legal rights whatsoever, you reactionary bigot. You’re taking the nation “backward”.

And California is going backward. Instead of, Go West, Young Man, it’s now Go East.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Admin Handed California The Power To Mandate EVs Nationwide

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  • California instituted a new regulation on Thursday that will ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035; the rule, which was permitted by the Biden administration, could accelerate the nationwide transition to electric cars.
  • “I don’t think Congress gave that authority to California, specifically to set their own standards for greenhouse gases,” former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
  • “Blue states will follow California’s lead and hand manufacturers a mandate to make only EVs, regardless of what is economically or physically possible,” Steve Milloy, a member of former President Donald Trump’s EPA transition team, told the DCNF.

California has passed a new regulation that will ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles; the new emissions rule, which was permitted by the Biden administration, will have wide-ranging effects beyond California and could accelerate the nationwide transition to electric cars.

California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) finalized a rule Thursday that will outlaw the sale of gas-fueled cars by 2035. The law may push an increasing number of states to adopt similar rules and force Americans to exclusively buy electric vehicles (EVs) as numerous Democrat-run states such as New York, Massachusetts and Maryland routinely adopt California’s “clean car” standards, according to data from the Maryland Department of the Environment.

President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) restored California’s Clean Air Act waiver in March, which gave the state legal authority to set its strict vehicle emissions standards, according to a press release. The Trump administration formally revoked the waiver in September 2019, stating that California did not need specific emissions standards as the environmental problems caused by emissions were not unique to the state.

“During the Trump administration, we tried to codify and articulate that California did not have the authority to set greenhouse gas standards,” former EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “I don’t think Congress gave that authority to California, specifically to set their own standards for greenhouse gases.”

Furthermore, 17 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit in May against the EPA after it reinstated California’s waiver, according to legal filings.

“This leaves California with a slice of its sovereign authority that Congress withdraws from every other state,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey told the DCNF about the EPA’s ruling. “The EPA cannot selectively waive the Act’s preemption for California alone because that favoritism violates the states’ equal sovereignty.”

Moreover, the attorneys general argue that California’s waiver puts a “burden of compliance on auto-manufacturers” as automakers will have to cater to both California’s new rules and the mainline federal regulations, according to legal documents.

The state’s ban will require 100% of new cars sold in California, the country’s largest auto market, to be free of fossil fuel emissions by 2035. Interim targets also require 35% of vehicles sold in the state by 2026 to produce zero emissions, rising to 68% by 2030.

“It’s 100% by 2035, but it’s 35% by 2026, California has between 11% and 13% EVs as its total share of cars,” Wheeler said. “It’s unrealistic … they can’t get to 35% EVs by 2026 let alone 68% by 2030.”

California hopes to enforce this rule through a mandate which could penalize automakers up to $20,000 per vehicle if they fail to meet the state’s sales quotas, a CARB spokesman told the DCNF.

“The California ban represents an irresponsible and likely illegal approach to rulemaking, given the highly integrated interstate nature of the auto industry, one national standard is extremely important,” Mandy Gunasekara, former chief of staff of the EPA, told the DCNF. “California is attempting to create a legally dubious workaround where vehicle standards are set by liberal politics instead of technical realities.”

The 14 Democrat-led states, including California, make up roughly a third of the U.S. auto market, according to NPR.

“Blue states will follow California’s lead and hand manufacturers a mandate to make only EVs, regardless of what is economically or physically possible,” Steve Milloy, a member of former President Donald Trump’s EPA transition team, told the DCNF. “You’re going to force people to buy a more expensive car that will last half the time.”

The average price of a new electric car is approximately $66,000, according to Kelley Blue Book.

“If automakers are only making electric cars because of the rule and government subsidies, then there won’t be any gas cars on the market,” Milloy stated.

The EPA also reinstated and enhanced an Obama-era federal fuel regulation in December 2021 that is less strict than California’s proposed standards, stating that passenger cars must have a fuel economy of 55 mpg by 2026, up from the current 40 mpg, according to an EPA regulatory update. Both the California and government regulations will support the Biden administration’s aggressive climate agenda, which seeks to phase out fossil fuels and promote “clean energy” technologies.

“It’s being done for PR purposes … the electricity infrastructure isn’t there and it’s not anticipated to be there,” Wheeler stated. “Nobody in the electricity industry will tell you that they will be able to power a state fleet consisting of only EVs by 2035.”

The average number of EVs sold in the U.S. was roughly 607,000 in 2021 while the total number of cars purchased was about 3.34 million, according to Statista.

Newsom’s office and the EPA did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

JACK MCEVOY

Energy and environmental reporter.

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Is the Car a Menace or a Miracle? Vindication for the Vilified Vehicle by Steven Horwitz

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The “automobile” moves itself, but it also moves us. Our cars carry us along the road of human progress not just by making us freer but by making us cleaner, healthier, and better fed.

Does such a claim strike you as strange?

In our own time, cars are seen as causing pollution, as well as making us lazy and fat. Consider how many of us drive our cars to the gym, where we exercise by walking or running, two activities often replaced by driving. But if you think about what the car replaced, it’s easy to see how the car is another example of what Don Boudreaux calls being “cleaned by capitalism.”

Cleaner

How has the car, which is so vilified as a producer of pollution today, made our lives cleaner?

Before the car, transportation required animals, mostly horses. Horses, of course, produce pollutants. What we in the modern, car-centric world easily lose track of is how dirty and smelly a world of horse-driven transportation is. Cities, in particular, were full of horse urine and manure, the stench of which could be overwhelming. Those by-products of transportation were no less polluting than what comes out of the exhaust pipe of a car or truck.

To understand the scale of the problem of horse-related pollution, consider historian David Kyvig’s observation:

The idea of self-propelled carriages had long fascinated American inventors, not to mention the carriage-using wealthy classes. Given the problems of highly-polluting horse-drawn vehicles, especially in congested urban areas, a cleaner-running automobile had great appeal. In 1900 in New York City alone, 15,000 horses dropped dead on the streets, while those that lived deposited 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine on the streets every day.

Note that those numbers are for daily waste.

The omnipresence of horses meant that 19th-century houses were built with “boot scrapers” outside so that people could get the manure off their boots before entering a home. The waste was also a source of disease, as were the dead horses in the streets. Disposing of the horses and their by-products was costly, and as historian Stephen Davies observed in an earlier Freeman column, there were many debates about how society would deal with the even larger amount of manure the future held if the then-current growth rate in the use of horses continued.

Healthier

The car eliminated that worry by dramatically reducing the use of horses and replacing them and their waste products with the much cleaner automobile. The car produced by-products of its own, but none of them posed the direct and severe health risks that came from rotting horse carcasses and millions of pounds of manure in the streets. And whatever the smell that came from car exhaust, it was much less offensive than the odor produced by the horses. Plus, traveling in the relative discomfort of early cars was still more pleasant than sitting immediately behind the rear end of a horse.

The car also made us healthier in another, more subtle, way. One of the first people in many small towns to acquire a car was the local doctor. Having a car made it easier to make house calls, increasing the probability that he could save a life or reduce the danger from injury or illness. The car also extend the geographic range of his service, making isolated rural locations accessible in ways they might not have been before. And somewhat later, when car ownership spread to more of the population, people were able to get themselves to a doctor or hospital more quickly and easily. Cars save lives.

Better Fed

In addition to making us cleaner and healthier, the car has made us better nourished. The most obvious way it has done so is that the internal combustion engine also made possible the truck and the tractor, which revolutionized agriculture. Having tractor power rather than just animal or human power made humans much more productive. Any given farmer could produce more output per person by using tractors and trucks. Rather than hiring an army of temporary workers and putting the whole family to work at harvest time, farmers could employ machines, freeing that labor to satisfy other, more valuable human wants elsewhere.

As farmers got more productive, they could produce food more cheaply, making more and better food more accessible to more people. The car made us better fed by increasing agricultural productivity.

Wealthier

The car, the tractor, and the truck had another related effect. In a world of horse-powered transportation, the demand for horses was high, which meant land had to be devoted to producing crops to feed them. Farmers who relied on horsepower could not earn income from the portion of their harvest that fed the horses. With tractors and trucks replacing those horses, crops that previously went to horses could be sold on the market, which also helped reduce the prices of those crops.

Check Your History

The way the car is vilified in our modern world is the result of two human biases. The first is simply forgetting our history — or imagining it through a very rosy rearview mirror. Looking at historical photos, or reading historical books, or watching historical movies often only gives us a sanitized (figuratively and, in a sense, literally) version of the past. None of those depictions can allow us to smell the stench of the preautomobile world. If we don’t know what the past was really like, we can’t appreciate the present.

The second kind of bias is that we tend to get increasingly upset about a problem when only a little bit of it remains. Cigarette smoking has largely died out, but we have little toleration for the small bit of it that remains. As we solve more of the big issues of death and disease, we get increasingly frustrated with the smaller ones that remain.

But that should not allow us to overlook our real accomplishments. The car is a major reason that human life is cleaner and that we are healthier and better fed than were our horse-powered ancestors.

Steven Horwitz
Steven Horwitz

Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University and the author of Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective, now in paperback.

How About Those Dream Machines?

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The North American International Auto Show, also known as The Detroit Auto Show is quite an impressive display of automotive dream machines.  Upon entering this year’s motorcar display for the recent press week, it was immediately obvious that America’s Ford motor company is not only gearing up to compete with, but even to surpass some automotive competitors.  As one ventures into the sizeable Ford exhibit, a collection of mustangs both new and vintage will both please the eye and bring about thoughts of summer drives in one of those iconic beauties. Almost all car enthusiasts will truly want to hit the road in the Shelby Mustang GT 350R.

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For a larger view click on the image. Photo by Ron Edwards.

You will also not want to leave the presence of the 2017 Ford GT Coupe.  I stood there gawking at that future classic for over ten minutes before acquiring information about it from the experts waiting to answer our litany of questions.  For starters, the 2017 Ford GT is a superb combination of old and new.  As one spokesman stated, “Its wide gauge cluster with center mounted tachometer, red starter button, metal shift nob, large toggle switches and carbon fiber seats reflect upon its earlier heritage.  Also, the Ford GT is adorned with a console made of magnesium and a unique pattern of interior lighting. Which is coupled with almost every element of high style and superior quality gadgets that combine to make this American standout very competitive on the global stage.  With a lightening fast 0 to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds, it is doubtful that the Ford GT Coupe will ever get left behind at any road race venue.”

Upon venturing over to the Buick display, I was immediately focused upon the very beautiful Avenir flagship concept vehicle. It is a very long and almost sensuous motorcar with what one expert dubbed to be “a look that combines the styling of everything, ranging from the 1954 Wildcat to the third generation Buick Riviera.”  Although I am usually not very partial to very large coupes or sedans, I must say that the Buick Avenir is a visually stunning motorcar.  Last year Buick sold 1.17 million units worldwide with over 920,000 in China alone.  Some have asked if the Avenir will be produced exclusively for the Chinese market? Buick officials said no. But such large production vehicles are hot sellers in China, not the United States of America.  By the way, the Buick Avenir will not appear in American showrooms anytime soon.

The 2015 debut of the Buick Casada convertible was met with tepid enthusiasm. The pleasant looking car is powered by a 1.6 liter 200 horse power engine that will definitely get you where you want to go with ease.

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Ron Edwards at the Detroit Auto Show. Photo by Ron Edwards.

Because of lower petrol prices and a drifting away from thus status quo in auto body style offerings, fun cars like the Corvette Z06 which propel from point A to point B via a 650 horse power engine that goes from 0 to 60 MPH in 3.3 seconds. It is truly a thing of beauty.  Product specialist Ann Marie informed me that “the Corvette is more than competitive with comparable motor cars from around the world.”  It now comes with a removable roof and if you like you can start ordering a convertible version that will became available in early spring.

Not only have the lowest fuel prices since President George W. Bush was president sparked a greater interest in high performance vehicles, but the already popular big trucks could benefit from an even greater groundswell of consumer interest.  Speaking of big trucks, the massive aluminum body Ford F-150 captured the North American truck of the year, beating out the Chevrolet Colorado and the Lincoln MKC cross over.  However, my favorite truck is the Hyundai Santa Cruz concept.  Auto expert Andrew Story described it best by stating “that the Hyundai Santa Cruz is an attractive, forward thinking compact crossover pickup truck.”

Another Detroit Auto Show eye candy vehicle is the 2015 Infinity Q 60 concept coupe that closely resembles an upcoming production vehicle. One auto week writer said it best, by describing the Q 60 concept is a strong statement from Infinity designers and that exhilaration is real.”  The Q 60 will begin rolling off the assembly line next year. It will replace the rather tired Infinity G Series Coupe.  To sum it up. The 2015 Detroit Auto Show is a fun experience and a sign of many good things to come from American and international auto producers.

On a related topic, a small number of Automotive company representatives who wished to remain unidentified, expressed concern over the government’s desire to increase gasoline taxes.  It is a shame that during the slowest economic economic recovery in United States History, that those elected to represent us are chomping at the bit to eliminate a small break from high fuel prices with higher gas taxes. It seems as if “We the People” will have to enforce the concept of “governing according to Constitutional guidelines and our benefit.”