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What a bunch of horseshit disinformation yet again.
Steve wrote earlier today about how the Japanese automaker is opposing California’s electrification plans. To me, this is not just normal lobbying or anti-EV PR.
The California mandate:
Current requirements under the California Air Resources Board’s “Advanced Clean Cars II” regulations call for 35% of 2026 model year vehicles, which will start appearing in showrooms next year, to be zero-emission vehicles, or ZEVs.
What Toyota said:
Jack Hollis, the chief operating officer for Toyota Motor North America, told reporters the electric vehicle mandates that are set to start next year in California and other states are “impossible” to meet. … “I have not seen a forecast by anyone — government or private — anywhere that has told us that that number is achievable. At this point, it looks impossible. Demand isn’t there. It’s going to limit a customer’s choice of the vehicles they want,”
What the numbers say:
J.D. Power said no states are in accordance with the EV mandate as of this year. Only California, Colorado, and Washington have reported that 20 percent of new car sales have been battery electric or plug-in hybrids this year. Other states such as New York (12 percent), New Mexico (5 percent), and Rhode Island (9 percent) are far away from being compliant.
This (and linked article) is followed witb a bunch of biased drivel that sounds like it was written by some redditor from /r/fuckcars
[photo of bZ4X] Yeah, it’s going to be hard to hit more aggressive BEV targets when that’s your knight in shining armor. Adding insult to injury, the models’ got to have one of the worst and least memorable names in history: bZ4X. It’s a stupid name, to go with a stupid looking vehicle.
Toyota thinks nothing substantive should be done about it because people should be free to drive big gas guzzling cars and trucks because it’s in The Bible, or The Constitution, or maybe both of them. Good to know, Jack. You are a true capitalist hero, sir.
The majority of the rest of the article is the author sucking off BYD and the CCP.
So no state is even close to hitting these proposed mandates, these states have little desire to actually meet these mandates by offering any sort of support outside of virtue signaling with token deadlines that they’ll quietly push back, but Toyota is the bad guy here for selling hybrids (and a lot of them to boot) and pointing out the reality of the situation?
I also noticed the article has a much more opinionated view than a typical news article. That said, if Toyota only has one BEV available then of course it’s not going to be able to hit an emissions target.
It’s one thing to try hard and say it’s impossible, but they haven’t been trying hard.
It’s worth pointing out that BYD is a threat to other auto companies, because they’re actually manufacturing a serious amount of electric vehicles.
I’d rather it wasn’t a company tied to an authoritarian government. If democracies think BYD is being funded unfairly how about we promote our manufacturers to do a green transition and make a good product, instead of whining that we need more tariffs?
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the write up, yeesh
