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.

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President Obama has weighed in on a crucial matter facing legislators attempting to overhaul America’s financial system: whether or not auto dealer finance should be subject to regulation by the new Consumer Protection Agency. Unsurprisingly, he has come down on the side of regulation, specifically echoing concerns voiced earlier by the Pentagon. The National Automobile Dealers Association has vowed to fight attempts to regulate dealer finance.

Statement by President Obama on Financial Reform
Throughout the debate on Wall Street reform, I have urged members of the Senate to fight the efforts of special interests and their lobbyists to weaken consumer protections.  An amendment that the Senate will soon consider would do exactly that, undermining strong consumer protections with a special loophole for auto dealer-lenders.  This amendment would carve out a special exemption for these lenders that would allow them to inflate rates, insert hidden fees into the fine print of paperwork, and include expensive add-ons that catch purchasers by surprise.  This amendment guts provisions that empower consumers with clear information that allows them to make the financial decisions that work best for them and simply encourages misleading sales tactics that hurt American consumers. Unfortunately, countless families – particularly military families – have been the target of these deceptive practices.

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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.

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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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The Detroit Free Press got its hands on draft auto safety legislation drawn up by Senators Waxman and Rockefeller, and aimed at preventing another Toyota recall-style scandal. In addition to mandating brake override systems on all cars sold in the US, The Freep says the bill would require that

[NHTSA] come up with rules for space between the brake and accelerator pedals, gear shift designs and stop-start systems – all problems highlighted by the Toyota probe. Automakers would be required to build vehicles with event data recorders that could be easily read, a step Detroit automakers made several years ago but that Toyota and other foreign brands have resisted.

Despite the Freep’s attempt at making the bill sound like it’s only going to affect Toyota and other non-Detroit automakers, there is plenty in the proposed legislation that could hurt any automaker.

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You might think that, when confronted with its first major quality crisis, Toyota would have responded by upping its spending on DC lobbying. After all, when Washington has painted a target on your back, it’s usually a good time to hire a few well-connected friends. But then, a good deal of the congressional scrutiny aimed at Toyota has focused on the company’s lobbying efforts in the first place, especially after the House Oversight Committee leaked Toyota briefing documents that showed the company had successfully negotiated away penalties for defects. Perhaps then, Toyota’s decision to reduce lobbying spending in the first quarter of this year was a reaction to accusations that the automaker manipulated the NHTSA. Or maybe the Japanese firm simply decided that its huge lobbying budget simply wasn’t winning it any friends. In any case, Automotive News [sub] reports that Toyota spent a mere $880k on lobbyists last quarter, down nearly a third from its $1.3m Q1 spend in 2009. And, according to the Toyota report cited by AN [sub], defect recalls don’t even enter into the equation, as Toyota merely

lobbied the House and Senate on such issues as making it easier for workers to unionize, patents, financial regulation and energy matters

Meanwhile, as the image above proves, Toyota wasn’t going to be able to match the lobbying power of a GM anyway.

When friends of the automobile think about environmental regulation, our minds tend to tend to leap towards emissions. Between energy independence, air quality and the specter of global warming, a number of political agendas focus auto regulations on the tailpipe and drivetrain, driving a number of changes in the industry. But, as the AP reports, engines aren’t the only automotive components that impact the environment. The state of Washington has voted to ban brake pads with more than five percent copper content by 2021, making it the first state in the union to address the accumulation of heavy metals in groundwater through automotive regulation.

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Remember how the California Air Resources Board was contemplating banning black cars because air conditioning uses so much C02 (or not)? Well, the madness is over, as The Detroit News reports that California’s proposed “Cool Car” rules are dead. What killed them (besides common sense and the laws of diminishing returns)? Law enforcement, for one, which warned that (Read More…)