The Detroit Free Press reports that a little-known loophole in California's greenhouse gas emissions standards will allow some foreign manufacturers to avoid meeting the tough standards. Under the 2004 rules set by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), automakers averaging fewer than 60k annual unit sales in the Golden State would be exempt from the 2016 emissions standards. The Big 2.8 and Toyondissan would have to meet the 35mpg by 2016 standards; Volkswagen, Hyundai and (possibly) BMW would not. The loophole was revealed in discussion of a Senate bill designed to overturn the EPA's decision not to allow California to set its own emissions standards. GM spokesmouth Mark Kammer was unimpressed. "There's a lot of cherry-picking opportunities for a [foreign] manufacturer." The United Auto Workers' Legislative Director Alan Reuther also spoke on behalf of the his members' employers and… the planet. The loophole "undercuts the effort to reduce CO2 emissions and improve fuel economy. And it gives a major competitive advance to newer entrants into the auto market." CARB rules indicate that the exemption sales limit could drop to 4k units per year after 2016, but the proviso is not legally binding. At least not yet.
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This isn’t anti-American. Chrysler may soon qualify.
Gee. Maybe Chrysler already does.
That just figures… Not surprised at all.
What’s anti-American about requiring big fuel mileage?
CA has a pollution problem. This will help fix it.
The price of gas is going up for the foreseeable future. This will help encourage people to buy them and car makers to sell them.
GM and Ford already have 35+ mpg vehicles. They just need to sell them in CA.
It’s anti-American by allowing smaller manufacturers not to have to comply with the larger ones. What, BMW can’t meet them too?! Sounds like a rat to me.
Good thing the big 2.8 have all those unnecessary and redundant brands. Now they can just break the large companies up to have one small company for each brand.
This CAFE and CARB stuff is just silly. The two groups should just be combined into one and renamed “lawyers’ full employment agency” or something.
Oh! I get it. This is so you can drive the Bentley to pick up the Prius after servicing. I know who is getting serviced.
If CARB would stop trying to kill Diesels the MPG averages would become easy to meet. Even some big euro-luxobarges can meet 35 MPG, with a Diesel.
–chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org
chuck:
Unless CARB is colluding with the oil companies (And I really, really wouldn’t put it past ’em.), fuel prices will do a lot more to strangle clean diesel in its cradle than any emissions regs.
It’s not Anti-American; it’s anti-capitalist. There’s a big difference.
As far as I can tell, the only companies this would benefit are (as of last month): Hummer (if it were independent of GM), Jaguar, Land Rover, MINI, Porsche, Saab (if independent), and Volvo if it continues on a -20% per month trend.
As a Californian, my feelings are mixed. These companies’ cars emissions are only a drop in the proverbial bucket. I have a feeling that this also benefits custom hot rod builders in the state, too.
I just wish people would stop going Limbaugh on California. We’re not anti-America (duh). Caring about environmental health and safety is pretty damned important if we are to preserve our quality of life. Without CARB, the state today would look like China’s eastern coast, I guarantee.
Headline amended.
Hey, finally a reason for keeping Mercury around.
The only way to make that kind of strategy “fair” is to allow the big 5.8 manufacturers to sell x number of vehicles under the same standards as the small fry, with the rest governed under the 2016 standards. The standards would then be progressive for all, like income tax brackets. Under such a scheme the more vehicles a manufacturer sells the more “green” its average sale would have to be. Noblesse oblige, n’est-ce pas?
The really surprising thing to me as a European is that apparently, if I understand it correctly, BMW sells more cars in CA than Veedub, despite BMW offering only the higher-end models.
I mean, there’s about 30MM people living there right?
Is everyone living in Laguna beach these days?
HAHAHAHAHAHA,
I love it.
No, none of it is fair. California politicians lost any idea of fairness decades ago. Nice a bunch of you have figured it out.
Now, maybe when someone talks about how unfair the US is to the poor you will apply the same logic? Maybe we could have a head tax? That would be fair, no?
Maybe we could have a head tax? That would be fair, no?
Now there’s a tax I would have a hard time avoiding.