There are financializing vampires in charge and their only goal is to short term bleed the country dry. "Investors" are allergic to investing.
We’re rolling back CAFE standards too.
CAFE is a great example of a well-meaning regulation failing because the people who developed and approved it didn’t think through the obvious consequences.
Allowing light trucks to turn the SUVs and replace sedans is not an "unintended consequence"--it's either stupidity or graft (not xor).
There are several laws that are "wtf -- is this the best we can do?"
Separately I've heard emissions laws blamed for large sedans losing to small SUVs and trucks due to double standards, but I doubt it would've made a difference, even though I personally prefer large sedans.
You can see this if you go to https://shop.ford.com/showroom/ and select sedan or hatchback in the left filters. No results.
We aren't mindless zombies buying whatever we see on TV. I'm old enough to remember when Japanese small cars practically took over the market in the 70s and 80s due to gas price shocks. It can happen again.
I just bought a (small, hybrid) truck because I need to do some truck stuff. I 100% would have bought an electric if the market produced one with comparable capability and competitive price, but we're not there yet, and I don't have Rivian money (yet! lol maybe someday).
My point being: there is still a huge demand for trucks from both a capability and culture standpoint, and very little supply of a cost-comparable product that doesn't take gas or diesel. Rivian is around double what most people want to pay, and the F150 Lightning was marketed poorly and had bad towing/hauling range compared to gas/diesel equivalents.
I'm not here to defend "truck culture" but I do believe that if you offer people a better product, they will figure it out and buy it. An electric truck with 400+ miles of towing range, an onboard 2kW+ inverter, 500 ft-lbs of torque, and fast charging for the same price as a comparable gas F150 will sell. Unfortunately the battery energy density and EV supply chain economies of scale aren't there yet in North America.
U u uThe problem is those vehicles don’t exist, because the manufacturers only want to build the high margin gas guzzlers.
Look at fuel economy of US made vehicles vs those in Europe. It’s beyond a joke.
You’ve never driven a BYD because your government blocks them. You’ve also never driven a fuel efficient car because they hardly exist in the US
But we are. I don't want to turn this into a political slap fight but it became apparent to me the extent in which people are swayed by advertising when I read an article that talked about how one party in the US was concerned that the other was going to win an important seat becase the other party had done a recent spending surge on ads in last few days before election day and they were concerned that they couldn't match it.
That article right there forever changed my view of the average person on the street. In a highly polarized campaign and political environment with months to years of knowing who the candidates and policies are and they can still be swayed by millions in TV and radio ads? Like it sounds like these people could literally be on their way to vote for a candidate and then switch their mind at the last second because they hear an ad on the radio as they're pulling into the polling station.
That's absurd -- but it's real.
People are completely enthralled by advertisements to the point where they'll buy a stupid truck that they can't fit anywhere, that they need a ladder to climb into, that has terrible sight lines, simply because advertising tells them to.
(I would support a Constitutional amendment to restrict campaign contributions and effectively overturn the Citizens United v. FEC decision.)
They seem like mutually exclusive claims, to me. Am I missing something?
It sounds to me like you're confusing the magnitude of advertising spending with effectiveness of advertising techniques.
Some people have found more effective ways to advertise to people, we know all this, it isn't uncharted conversation territory. We all know about micro-targetting based on personalized data, dominating certain niche mediums like AM radio to target people when they're driving and coordinated pushes with people in industry.
The point is that advertising works. It works disconcertingly well.
This is why people buy stupidly impractical automobiles that they don't need.
Advertised products will sell more, but only to a certain point. Like someone who wants an SUV and knows nothing else might buy the one from Chevy instead of Mitsubishi because of advertising.
Taxes. Social Security.
The list is gigantic. Your claim could not be more false.
Larger vehicles are more comfortable, safe, and practical (for anyone who doesn't need to worry about parking issues). It doesn't take advertising to convince consumers about that, it's just reality.
Ditto with the Sentra and the Versa.
This is my point exactly.
I'm pretty sure it's not, because physics. A tank is safer than a bike for the poilot, when there is a collision. This data is a little muddled, but follows common sense.
Large SUVs and Pickups: These vehicles have the lowest occupant fatality rates, averaging 14 deaths per million registered vehicles for SUVs compared to 48 per million for sedans. Large luxury SUVs often register statistically zero deaths in specific three-year studies.
https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...
The profit margins on larger trucks are higher precisely because that's what consumers want. No one is forcing them to buy those vehicles.
The Maverick is quite sizable compared to the original Ford Ranger too, which was still bigger than the regular Japanese trucks that were all over the US after oil skyrocketed the first time:
Tall grilles are a purely aesthetic choice. We could create safety standards for pedestrian impacts and end this inane trend. And still drive trucks!
America is already fucked, given how awful its urban sprawl is. Trucks used for commuting and not haulage just makes it double fucked.
It was not an oversight. It was corruption.
I am familiar with the EU situation. The carbon tax you would have needed to achieve the effect of fleet emission standards would have been political suicide.
And that is not just psychological. People who buy used cars and drive their cars until they fall apart are well correlated with people who can't afford high carbon tax. Buyers of new cars are the people who can. Carbon Tax would mean massive redistribution of the money raised. Yet another political mine field.
There's a trend toward advantaging entrenched interests to the detriment of the overall economy and interests of the population.
A 2025 study showing that it did.
The last refinery to be built in the US opened in the 1970s. Since then, refineries have closed. None of the owners of refineries will sell them because of SuperFund legislation. It is the same reason that when a gas station is sold, the fuel tanks are dug up and replaced. This way, there's no way to claim that the previous owner left hazardous material to be cleaned up. SuperFund laws say that every previous owner is liable for the cost of cleanup. It doesn't matter how long ago the property was sold.
The ships passing through the straight now are also paying Iran in RMB and crypto.
The petrodollar is the objective.
This isn't over any time soon
Legislation isn't going to work. Economics isn't going to work. War - which cuts off the flow of petroleum because nobody is willing to risk their life for oil - will work very quickly. Nothing quite like a shortage to spur innovation.
Renewables and EVs are a capital-intensive industry, and the thing about capital-intensive industries is that they're prone to bubbles. If you get a year or so of EVs being cheaper than gas cars, you will see a huge growth in sales as lots of consumers make the rational choice all at once. The spike in sales will spur a bubble in capital investment as investors all rush to capitalize on it. The capital investment spurs R&D, which results in technological improvements which make the cost advantage permanent.
At the end of the 5 years (or perhaps even before) the price of oil will crash back down, probably lower than it is now, as increased EV adoption destroys demand more than supply was choked off. But at that point we'll all own EVs, they will cost less than gas cars, there will be chargers everywhere, there will be solar panels everywhere, and we'll have better batteries and V2H charging.
So yes the US could limit or ban exports. Many countries (including China) have done this in a kind of energy nationalism, but that hangs out allies to dry in a way that would make the US deeply uncomfortable. It would threaten European energy security. It would come at the cost of Latin American exports. So there's a cost to pay.
And more to the point, no US government regardless of party is going to hurt corporate profits by limiting exports. Biden could've done it in 2021-2022 and didn't. And Trump certainly won't. As one example, a big release from the SPR was on an oil-for-oil basis. Rather than cash ii on high prices, it's just a massive gift to oil companies who have to repay the oil (and then some) at some unspecified future point when oil will be cheaper. That's billions the US could've added to government coffers.
I do agree there is a power shift going on but not because of US energy independence. No, it's because the US cannot militarily protect GCC countries and cannot force open the Strait of Hormuz or guarantee global shipping, which has essentially been a US guarantee since 1945.
I do think this administration does want to crack OPEC but that's likely to be of massive benefit to China without China having to do anything.
In short, the US cannot functionally be independent on fossil fuels even if we extracted every drop of oil within our borders--because we literally cannot use all of it, and most of it would be wasted just sitting around.
Yes, we would need to build more refining capacity to use it all effectively, but in a cataclysmic event (i.e. a world war or something) the US would be much much better off than most other countries.
Europe, or China, or India could not though.
India has geography for solar, and the human/industrial capability for nuclear.
Southern Europe can go solar as well.
Northern Europe has it tougher (except Norway, with its abundant hydro). Nuclear could work. Or long range DC cables from South Europe or North Africa (if ever Europe helps them to put their act together - not easy or fast, but definitely in their best interest).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain-Morocco_interconnection
Central and Eastern Europe have it tougher.
The Balkans are quite fossil-heavy, but solar should be quite feasible there.
If foreign oil supply were cut from China or India, they'd be in a much bigger trouble.