this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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Electric Vehicles
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One problem with this target is that it's mandating a percentage of sales and not a percentage of the fleet. This means that regardless of how many "ZEV" options a manufacturer has, if the customers don't buy them and opt for their gas or non-PHEV alternatives, the company is out of compliance even though that's not really something in their control.
Imagine what it will be like walking into a dealership in CA 13 months from now and being told you're only allowed to buy an EV because the last two guys bought an F150 or that you can buy the F150 but first you must buy one of the limited Premium ICE Reservations™ at a cost of $20k extra. It's crazy and dealerships are going to rake people over the coals with leverage like this.
That's the point though. We want x% of new cars on the road to be zero emissions. No point in doing this shit if the customer can circumvent it.
They could do it a lot better by offering subsidies directly to the consumer to entice them into buying one and making it more affordable. The current method seems destined to fail as companies are being held to standards set by consumer purchases from third party dealers. And consumers are being limited based on other consumer's purchase decisions.
I hear you that achieving a certain percentage of sales is dependent on people actually buying the cars. And if there's a way to fuck over customers, dealers will find it.
What would you suggest as an alternative - the dealer has to have a certain number of electric models? Or when you say percentage of fleet do you mean just percentage of total cars on the road?
If it's just a question of models I could easily see a manufacturer making some "fuck off" models that meet the regulation requirements but which aren't desirable to customers so they don't get sold.
If percentage of total cars on the road that seems more desirable but not sure it's that different from percentage of sales? I guess less incentive to charge very high prices per car.
I gave a suggestion in a comment below but essentially more subsidies from the state directly to consumers since EVs are generally more expensive than their ICE counterparts currently.
By percentage of the fleet I mean 36% of a company's lineup, or ~4 out of 10 models from each brand since they can actually control that. This is how fuel economy standards are set currently AFAIK.
This is exactly how we wound up with cars like the PT Cruiser, Focus EV, Chevy Spark, etc. They're referred to as "compliance cars." This doesn't really solve the issue, but perhaps the rules can be tweaked to eliminate this kind of thing while still working toward our goals.