Parts Suppliers Call for Cleaner Cars, Splitting With Their Main Customers: Automakers

[elleng]

In the debate over how quickly to make American cars pollute less, the nation’s auto-parts makers are now in open disagreement with the automakers that buy the countless transmissions, turbochargers and other components that make up modern automobiles.

Car manufacturers would like to roll back standards dating from the Obama administration that mandate a deep cut in auto emissions. The rules, which require automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and light trucks by 2025, are the single biggest step the United States has taken to combat climate change.

Automaker groups say the Obama-era rules fail to take into account the rising demand for larger vehicles, which pollute more and make progress on overall emissions more challenging. The Trump administration is reviewing the rules for possible revision.

But on Thursday, five groups representing the country’s major auto suppliers urged the country to stay the course. In an unusual joint statement, the suppliers said that it was “in the nation’s best interest” that the United States continue to develop and manufacture “the cleanest and most efficient vehicles in the world.”

While they stopped short of directly criticizing automakers, which the parts suppliers rely upon for business, they came down clearly on the side of stringent emissions rules. Tailpipe standards should “continue to make progress on reducing emissions and oil consumption while saving consumers money at the gas pump,” the groups said.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/climate/auto-parts-emissions-regulations.html?

[msongs]

1. electric cars eliminate almost all of those concerns regarding vehicle pollution nt

[NNadir]

2. That is not even remotely true.

There is a huge amount of literature in the primary scientific literature that shows that electric cars can show minor benefits under relatively rare conditions, the rare conditions being cases where the electricity to power them is clean.

Regrettably, almost all of the electricity on earth comes from burning coal (the majority of it in fact, still), natural gas, and to a lesser extent petroleum.

Of course, the people marketing this consumer junk want to pretend that all of the electricity on earth comes from wind and solar plants, which is not even remotely true, and were it true, would still not be clean, since solar and wind are no where near as clean as advertised either.

On this planet, in 2016, humanity was generating and consuming 576 exajoules of energy. Solar and wind combined didn't produce 10 of them. Moreover, from 2000-2016, the fastest growing source of energy on this planet was coal, (it grew by 60 exajoules in that period) most of it burned to produce electricity.

IEA 2017 World Energy Outlook, Table 2.2 page 79 (MTOE converted to exajoules by this author.)

Under these circumstances, not even counting the awful practices in mining crap for these cars - including the vast tragedy of cobalt mining in the Congo region to satiate that useless billionaire Musk - electric cars are an extremely dubious practice and have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with pollution prevention.

Electric cars in certain cities in China actually lead to more deaths from air pollution than do gasoline cars: Electric Vehicles in China: Emissions and Health Impacts (Cherry et al Environ. Sci. Technol., 2012, 46 (4), pp 2018–2024) They have more than 100 million electric vehicles there, mostly scooters, but lots of electric cars. Every year, 1.4 million people die there from air pollution. The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale (Nature 525, 367–371 (17 September 2015)