The Rock vs. the Hard Place, by Eric Peters

Breaking from the compliance matrix is a matter of survival for the car companies. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Car companies – which mostly sell crossovers now, so the term “car company” is a bit dated – are in a tough spot. They have malinvested heavily in compliance cars because they bet that compliance was the way forward.

When the Biden Thing’s regulatory apparat issued its decree – which is what a “regulation” amounts to – that every car company’s fleet (i.e., all of the models its sells) most collectively average just shy of 50 miles-per-gallon by about two years from now, the car industry made plans accordingly. An example being Toyota’s decision to not only stop offering a V6 engine in the very popular Camry sedan – one of the relative handful of cars still available – but also hybridized the four cylinder engine it now comes standard with.

The only reason Toyota dropped the six and hybridized the four was for compliance reasons. And this is not to single out Toyota. It is merely to cite one example of the compliance effect.

There are many other examples. The entire car industry has become an example. It bases all of its decisions – and mainvestments – on compliance rather than customer. That is because the regulatory apparat has become the main “customer.”

This process has been in process for decades; it did not start under the auspices of the senile old grifter and his latte-colored Communist understudy. But it did accelerate markedly under the auspices of these two. The 50 MPG decree being a stunning case in point. The previous mandatory minimum was around 34 MPG – still obnoxious in principle as it is none of the legitimate business of a free country’s government to decree any mandatory MPG minimums. If you live in a free country, you ought to have the right to buy a vehicle that gets whatever miles-per-gallon suits you.

Continue reading