In an earlier post, I ranted about how CARB’s stringent emissions regulations could (should?) be adopted across the entire United States. That was my reaction to the signing of the new CAFE standard. Apparently, there are some happenings between the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and the state of California (home of CARB, California Air Resources Board) that’s causing quite a ruckus.

Automakers have balked at a new CAFE standard for quite some time now, as elevating miles per gallon figures for their cars costa just a tad more (I’m joking, of course) in R&D. Throw in California’s demand for vehicles that meet CARB standards - considering the Golden State is the biggest automotive market in the country, it exercises quite a bit of leverage - and you have the OE’s having to produce variants of the same vehicle - one for 49 states and one for California. That’s just the way it has been.

Needless to say, OE’s jumping on the new CAFE bandwagon came as a surprise to many people. Had the green bug bitten them as well? Perhaps, perhaps not. It has surfaced that the EPA has denied California and 16 other states the right to set their own emissions standards. It has been a trend of late for other states to adopt CARB’s emissions standards (something they should have done a long time ago, IMHO) and this is going to be a great setback for them. The EPA’s decision basically renders CARB an irrelevant entity. Now, there’s probably some sort of legal / constitutional argument that could be made - rights of states vs. rights of the federal government - and it’s already started a fuss in Sacramento, as The Governator has threatened to sue the EPA over its decision. Even Congress has jumped into the fray, requesting all internal and external communication from the EPA regarding this decision.

So is this a case of the EPA in collusion with the automakers? Perhaps not.

Here’s one way to look at it. You have to give a little in order to get a little. To get the automakers to agree to the new CAFE standard, the EPA had to pony up something in return. Manufacturing two different versions of the same car is an engineering pain in the ass, to be truthful. If automakers had to produce an X number of variants of the same vehicle to meet emissions standards state by state, well, you can already imagine the quagmire that would create. If the automakers had to bend to agree to the new CAFE standard, they probably wanted something in return. It’s simple political negotiation. Looks like they got what they wanted.

Although I may not agree or disagree with the EPA decision, which may not set in stone at this point, I understand why and how it happened. I wouldn’t send hate mail to the EPA just yet. More facts need to surface.

With that being said, wouldn’t it be so much easier for the EPA to just adopt CARB’s emissions standards for the entire country? Then the automakers can simply produce cars based on that more stringent standard. What do YOU think? Let me know your thoughts.