With news reports filtering in about an industry-mounted offensives against the Motor Vehicle Safety Act and proposed increases to CAFE standards, we thought we’d take a look at how much the industry spent in the recent midterm election cycle. According to Opensecrets.org, the chart above shows the biggest spenders in “Automotive,” and industry sector that includes OEMs, suppliers, rental companies and just about anything else related to four-wheeled motorized transport. Charged up by the bailout-era dealer cull, it’s not surprising that NADA took the top spot, and with a hotly-contested Korea free trade agreement under negotiation, the AFIT PAC is a logical number two. But Enterprise beating out Ford? Didn’t see that one coming. Still, the contributor breakdown for the “Auto Manufacturer” sector is even more interesting…
Tag: Congress
Automotive News [sub] reports that the new GOP majority in the house of representatives will likely mark a shift in the political dynamic between the industry and the US government, as Republicans shift from noisy protest of government support for the industry towards orchestrating reductions in industry regulation. And, according to the Alliance of Automotive Manufacturers, the first victim of the new Republican House could be the Motor Vehicle Safety Act, a set of sweeping regulations aimed at preventing recall scandals like the Toyota unintended acceleration fiasco that took place earlier this year. House Republicans plan on holding hearings on that bill, which has passed committees in the House and Senate but has not yet faced a full vote by either full body. Says National Auto Dealers Association lobbyist Bailey Wood
There will be much more oversight, and the process will slow down
But House Republicans will also face their own challenges. With Democrat JerryBRown winning California’s gubernatorial race, national lobbyists will have a harder time resisting ever-increasing emissions standards, as California is the sole state with authority to independently regulate auto emissions. Though Republicans are likely to support the industry’s resistance to increased fuel economy standards, they will require help from the White House in order to, as the AAM’s Dave McCurdy puts it
rein in some of the more exuberant tendencies in California
With battles brewing over safety and emissions legislation, 2011 is shaping up to be an interesting year for followers of the politics of automobiles.
This isn’t so much a news item as a “Congress finally figured it out” item. A preliminary report by the National Research Council, recently revealed to congress, shows that of 58 Toyota “black box” event data recorders from crashes which occurred during the recall scandal
35 showed that at the moment of impact, the driver hadn’t depressed the brake pedal at all. Fourteen more showed partial braking, while nine showed the brake depressed at the “last second” before the crash.
There were a handful of other results where the brake was pressed early and let go, or in which both the gas and brake pedals were pressed at the same time. There also was one case of pedal entrapment by a floor mat.
In five cases, the electronic recording device failed to work.
The WSJ [sub] notes that the investigation is ongoing, and that no official conclusions have been drawn, but that the finding vindicates an earlier report for which the WSJ had taken mysterious flack. For a complete look at the NRC-NHTSA study, and why it is highly unlikely to ever find a “ghost in the machine” in Toyota’s electronic throttles, check out TTAC’s review of the pre-study NHTSA-NRC presentation.
It is not at all clear that the greatly accelerated pace of the dealership closings during one of the most severe economic downturns in our nation’s history was either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery
Whoops! Who could have thought that the biggest political fight of the bailout era was picked over something never really needed to happen. At least, not according to the SIGTARP, the Special Inspector General for TARP, Neil Barovsky. In his latest report on the GM and Chrysler dealer cull [full document in PDF here], Barovsky explodes a lot of the myths surrounding the move to accelerate dealer closings, and even goes so far as to assign real blame… and not to GM or Chrysler either.
With President Obama set to sign a new financial oversight bill into law on Wednesday, the New York Times has dug into the bill looking for key oversights. Because auto dealers were exempted from the bill (thanks at least in part to their mobilization by the GM/Chrysler dealer cull), auto dealer finance tactics ended up square in the NYT’s crosshairs, and paper’s Your Money blog has a rundown of three of the most heinous of these tactics: the Yo-Yo, the Markup and the Add-On.
At a congressional hearing Wednesday, members expressed increasingly skeptical views toward the safety claims made by the usual cast of advocates for photo enforcement. The US House Transportation Subcommittee on Highways and Transit invited five representatives of the familiar groups that advocate expanded use of red light cameras and speed cameras. In presentations before the committee and written testimony, however, members seemed to be more swayed by what the two camera opponents that appeared had to say.
Two Republican congressmen have written to GM CEO Ed Whitacre, asking him to halt the destruction of electronic documents as long as the automaker is owned by the government, reports the Detroit News [Full letter in PDF here]. Reps Darrel Issa (R-CA) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) allege that documents destroyed by GM could have helped their House Oversight Committee investigation of GM’s decision to run its infamous “payback” ad, and shed light on government interference in day-to-day operations including influence over plant locations and a “secret agreement” on revised EPA standards. The congressmen write:
In light of these ongoing investigations, we are deeply disturbed to learn that GM is engaging in a continuous process of destroying documents relevant to the Committee’s oversight efforts
The MVSA has passed its final committee-level hurdle, passing the Senate Commerce Committee by unanimous vote [full Senate version in PDF here, summary here]. The Act now faces votes by the full House and Senate, with only one major issue differentiating the two: the House version includes a “vehicle safety user fee” on new car sales, while the Senate version does without, thanks. Either way, NHTSA gets its budget doubled to $280m by 2013, so the difference is pretty academic. Other minor quibbles include whether or not to cap NHTSA’s fining power at $200m or $300m per defect. Somehow I think they’ll work it out. Look for the bill to move towards President Obama’s desk at distinctly un-legislative speed. After all, a little pork always helps… and the Senate Commerce Committee also just approved a bill (S.1938) ordering the DOT to grant $94m per year to states with hands-free laws for enforcement of those laws, distracted driver awareness education road signs. Who likes the smell of legislation?
The Detroit News reports that two versions of the Electric Drive Vehicle Deployment Act of 2010 will be introduced today in the House and Senate. Both bills would spend about $11b by sending $800 million to $1 billion five to eight “deployment communities.” One of the EDVDA’s bipartisan sponsors, Rep Judy Biggert (R-IL) explains that these funds
will help regional communities establish themselves as models for the development and installation of the next generation of transportation infrastructure, including public charging stations
The bill is being backed by several small EV firms, like A123 Systems and Bright Automotive, under the rubric of the Electrification Coalition. And despite the fact that everyone loves a good subsidy, the mainstream automakers are not amused.
The House Energy And Commerce Committee has passed an amended version of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act that was previously approved by its Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection. True to our prediction, longtime auto industry ally Rep John Dingell (D-MI) was able to maintain caps on NHTSA’s fining power at $200m per automaker per defect recall (up from the current cap of $16.4m) and $5m per auto executive per defect, and require that NHTSA inform automakers and allow for an appeal before invoking the “imminent hazard” powers authorized by the bill. Dingell tells Automotive News [sub] that
The bill is going to be a hard one for the industry to accept, but I believe it’s in the public interest and is good overall.
Yesterday’s Toyota hearing at the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee was a desperate attempt to keep the Toyota issue in the headlines, and to provide flanking support for Waxman’s proposed Motor Vehicle Safety Act. The ghosts in the machine are still at large … (Read More…)
Rep Henry Waxman’s version of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act passed the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection today, and will go before the full Committee On Energy And Congress. The subcommittee markup [in PDF format here] includes a number of provisions that the industry and others had argued against, such as a $9 fee on each new vehicle sale, and mandatory event data recorders (EDRs) which would “continuously record vehicle operational data” and store all data from 60 seconds before, and 15 seconds after a crash. According to Automotive News [sub], Rep John Dingell is in negotiations with committee chairman Waxman to mitigate two key proposals: the removal of a cap on NHTSA fines, and the granting of so-called “imminent hazard” authority.
Congressional lawmakers are mad at Toyota. What has Toyota done now? Their sin this time: They may have harbored a secret “attack plan against congressional testimony.” This, says the Washington Post, has “drawn the ire of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.” (Read More…)
Due to scheduling conflicts with a certain island nation’s democratic rituals, CSPAN didn’t have a channel to spare for today’s auto safety legislation hearing before the the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee. Which means your faithful blogger is at the mercy of the mainstream media’s digestive process in this matter. Regardless, it seems clear by now that the legislation has driven the industry back to the Republican bosom, after a period of post-bailout estrangement. These newly-re-allied forces collectively raised concerns about a number of key proposals presented by Rep Henry Waxman’s Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010, including the un-capping NHTSA fines, privacy issues relating to “black box” event data recorders, new car sale vehicle fees, pedal clearance standards, and increased regulation of an industry with state-owned competitors.
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has introduced a draft version of his Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010. As TTAC has reported, the bill contains a number of provisions, including mandated pedal distances, mandatory brake override, keyless ignition standards, vehicle event data recorder standards, transmission configuration standards, increased penalties for recall delays, and much, much more. Hit the jump for a full description of the measures under consideration.
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