Editor’s Note: This piece, by John Carr, originally appeared at the National Motorists Association blog.

Wayne Crews recently posted an editorial on cost-benefit analysis and regulations. It’s worth a read.

In the 1970s the Carter administration prohibited speedometers from indicating speeds over 85 miles per hour. The idea was around before Carter, but his people implemented it.

Regulations require some justification. The justification was, people might not drive fast if they didn’t know how fast they were going. After some hand-waving and pulling numbers out of orifices it’s possible to fabricate a number of accidents and deaths per year prevented and call that the benefit of the regulation.

As part of Reagan’s regulatory reform the speedometer rule was scrapped. Rescinding a regulation requires some justification. The justification was that there was no real evidence that limiting indicated speed would reduce or had reduced driving speed.

An ineffective regulation is harmful because it imposes costs with no benefits.

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The US Department of Justice is deploying all of its legal muscle to avoid paying the price after an FBI agent destroyed an exotic car during a joy ride. After nearly two years of trying to recover the money owed by the government, Motors Insurance Company filed a lawsuit against the government seeking the full $750,000 value of the wrecked 1995 Ferrari F50.

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The release of A Road Forward: The Report of the Toyota North American Quality Advisory Panel [PDF], probably raised a few eyebrows around the industry this week, particularly at the headquarters of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers in Washington D.C… but not for any obvious reason. The report’s findings about Toyota’s internal reforms in the wake of last year’s recall scandal aren’t particularly mind-bending, and are well summarized in an introductory passage

First, the Panel believes Toyota needs to continue to adjust its balance between global and local control giving weight to local control in order to improve its communication and speed in responding to quality and safety issues. Second, the Panel believes that Toyota needs to ensure that it listens and responds as positively to negative external feedback as it does to negative internal feedback. Third, the Panel believes that Toyota must persist in more clearly distinguishing safety from quality and continue its efforts to enhance its safety practices and procedures.

In addition to identifying specific areas for improvement, the report places a heavy emphasis on “the leadership of Toyota’s top executives as they navigate the road forward, as well as the company’s leadership in the industry” as a way to avoid the traps it fell into prior to the recall scandal. And this emphasis on leadership could have some interesting effects…

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Justices of the Washington State Supreme Court on Tuesday openly questioned whether it was proper for a city and a photo enforcement contractor to thwart the initiative process on the issue of traffic cameras. The question has become increasingly relevant as activists in the cities of Longview and Monroe on Monday turned in signatures they believe will be sufficient to call for a vote on banning red light cameras and speed cameras. Less than a week ago, a Chelan County Superior Court judge ruled that activists in the city of Wenatchee were forbidden from attempting to bring the question of cameras to the voters (view ruling).

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Over the course of TTAC’s coverage of US ethanol subsidies, I’ve often wondered why nobody made a political issue out of slaying an ever-growing waste of tax dollars ($6b this year on the “blender’s credit” alone). And with the political rhetoric about America’s debt prices rising, I’ve been wondering with more and more regularity when someone will finally take the ethanol fight to the American people, who are already voting against ethanol with their pocketbooks. But just last December, Al Gore explained why not even he, an environmentalist standard-bearer, could oppose the corn juice he knew was bad policy, saying

It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first generation ethanol. First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small… One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.

The Iowa primary is a key early contest in the Presidential election, and because Iowans grow and refine a huge amount of corn ethanol, campaigning against ethanol subsidies in Iowa is a non-starter. At least that’s what the conventional wisdom was before today, when, with nearly nine months to go before the primary, the impossible just happened.
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On the very day that the federal government announced it would buy 101 Chevrolet Volts, President Obama released a new Presidential Memorandum requiring fleet purchases “achieve maximum fuel efficiency.” Regardless of cost, apparently, as the Volt costs over $40,000 and is the size of a $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze. Moreover, the new policy does not appear to reflect the Government Accountability Office’s recent lambasting of government’s use of E85 “flex fuel” vehicles to fulfill previous alt-fuel mandates. Hit the jump for Obama’s full memo

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Chrysler’s bailout “thank you” event today was long on praise for the redemptive power of its government bailout and short on talk of remaining challenges, but at least one important fact was acknowledged: this highly-touted “payback” was only for 85% of the money loaned to Chrysler during the bailout period. Although, to be perfectly accurate, it wasn’t exactly Chrysler who acknowledged the outstanding obligation [the firm avoids any such nuance in its release], as CEO Sergio Marchionne simply stated that

We received confirmation this morning at 10.13 am from Citigroup that Chrysler Group repaid, with interest, by wire transfer to the United States Treasury and by bank transfer to the Canadian government, every penny that had been loaned less than two years ago. [Emphasis added]

That last bit was the important part… as in, the part that was most often repeated in Chrysler’s presentation and in subsequent media reports. But it’s not the whole story…

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The NY Times reports:

Manal al-Sharif, one of the organizers of an online campaign encouraging Saudi women to drive en masse on June 17, was arrested on Sunday, days after she posted video of herself flouting the kingdom’s ban on female drivers on YouTube. Traces of Ms. Sharif’s campaign also started to disappear from the Web.

Following her arrest, the YouTube video of Ms. Sharif driving became inaccessible, as did a second clip, in which she outlined how women could take part in the June 17 protest. A Facebook page she set up called “Teach Me How to Drive So I Can Protect Myself,” which had more than 12,000 fans, was deleted. The Twitter account she used to spread news of the protest movement was copied and altered to make it seem as if she had called off the campaign.

As much as we tend to value cars as the ultimate tool of personal freedom, TTAC could definitely do more to cover the plight of those banned from the roads for nothing more than their gender. Though a hugely loaded and controversial issue, it is perhaps one of the most truly principled causes at the confluence of cars and culture. We wish Ms al-Sharif the very best in her struggle to attain a right we too often take for granted.

Bonus challenge for TTAC’s Best and Brightest: can you identify the car Ms al-Sharif is driving in this clip? I’ve wasted enough time today trying to figure it out…

Check out this video feed any time now, to witness an event that Chrysler Communications describes on Facebook as a “Loan Appreciation Event.” Chrysler’s communication describes the shindig thus:

Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne, Assistant to President Obama for Manufacturing Policy Ron A. Bloom, and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese will join government officials, UAW representatives and employees at the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant to formally acknowledge and express gratitude for the financial support from the U.S. and Canadian governments.

Novelty-sized check, anyone?

A circuit court judge in St. Louis, Missouri on Friday ruled the city’s use of automated ticketing machines violated state law. Since 2007, St. Louis gave the private company American Traffic Solutions (ATS) the right to issue tickets worth more than $30 million to the registered owners of vehicles that are photographed at local intersections. A class action suit by several motorists challenged the program on various legal and constitutional grounds.

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A judge with a history of overturning the will of Washington voters decided Friday to block the public from a say in the use of red light cameras. Chelan County Superior Court Judge John E. Bridges sided with traffic camera vendor American Traffic Solutions (ATS) which filed the suit to prevent a repeat of what happened in Mukilteo. In November, residents were allowed to vote on an anti-camera initiative, and 71 percent voted to ban the devices.

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Though The Department of Energy has offered only the flimsiest of evidence for the practicability of President Obama’s electric vehicle goals, Energy Secretary Steven Chu is out writing checks about the future of EVs that the industry may not be able to cash. Speaking at the installation of the 500th ChargePointAmerica charging station in Southern California, Chu explained his vision for the future to the LA Times.

“Because of increased demand, we’ve got to think of all the other things we can do in transportation. The best is efficiency,” Chu said.

Batteries are the “heart” of electric vehicles, he said, adding that the Department of Energy is funding research that will drop the cost of electric-vehicle batteries 50% in the next three or four years and double or triple their energy density within six years so “you can go from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on a single charge,” he said. “These are magical distances. To buy a car that will cost $20,000 to $25,000 without a subsidy where you can go 350 miles is our goal.”

So, a 300+ mile car costing less than $25k without a subsidy, within the the 2017 time frame. Which essentially means that within six years, the Nissan Leaf would have to triple its range and lose the equivalent of the government subsidy’s $7,500 in costs. That’s not a wholly unreasonable goal, but what’s not clear is how it will be reached. After all, the Leaf is already behind on the government’s volume predictions, and starting next year the Volt will be too. A tripling of range in one long product cycle (or two short ones) seems as optimistic as the government’s EV volume projections, which imagine 120k Volts being produced next year, as well as 5,000 of the nonexistant Fisker “Nina” PHEV. Chu’s vision is commendable, but at this point the DOE’s credibility is more than a little strained when it comes to the future of EVs.

While the political battle lines over increasing CAFE standards are being drawn in Washington, with the industry taking on both environmentalists and itself, a line of analysis that’s been around since 2009 is exacerbating the industry’s internal divisions over the impact of CAFE increases. A two-year-old University of Michigan study has been exhumed and expanded upon in a new CitiGroup report which makes a bold claim: CAFE will actually improve both sales and profits for the industry. And with Detroit taking the lead in resisting CAFE increases, one might think that the industry’s “turncoats” like Toyota and Hyundai, who have made marketing-led decisions to support CAFE increases, would be the main beneficiaries of these reports. Not so. According to this battle-line-confounding analysis, the biggest beneficiary of CAFE increases will be… Detroit. Madness you say? You may well be right…

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The average price of regular unleaded gasoline was $3.96 this week, an increase of 38 percent over the same time last year. US Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) on Tuesday proposed to temporarily reduce that cost by 18.4 cent cents by suspending the federal gas tax. Under the freshman lawmaker’s plan, the highway trust fund would be replenished by reducing payments made to foreign governments.

“Let’s have a gas tax holiday,” Paul said in a floor speech. “Let’s take the money from foreign aid and let’s give it back to the American people who worked hard to earn it…. That would help people, that would lower the price of gasoline and that would be a stimulus to the economy.”

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Speaking at Nissan’s Smyrna, TN electric car factory, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood noted that his staff is working with Congress to make federal tax credits for plug-in car purchases available as a rebate on the dealer level, saying

We’d like for people to get a $7,500 rebate on the day they buy the Leaf. We’re doing a lot of talking about it. When you give people that incentive to buy a battery-powered car, they’ll do it. We know these incentives help.

Speaking to Automotive News [sub], LaHood even went as far as to argue that the new direction for the tax credits, which were previously only claimable when filing taxes, would be successful for the reason that it would make the credits more like the Cash For Clunkers program. Apparently LaHood has completely forgotten how riddled with waste, inefficiency, fraud, confusion, delays, unintended consequences and all-purpose madness that program was. And that’s just scraping the surface. Foolish as it is to subsidize vehicles during the “fleecing the early adopters” phase of a new technology rollout (perhaps we should be saving stimulus for the inevitable “trough of disappointment”?), making those credits available at the dealer level is even worse, increasing the hype and incurring C4C-like downsides along the way.