Headline photo courtesy of Will Cross

Post by Barry Kresch

Grassroots Momentum for the EV Freedom Bill

The atmosphere was electric as about 100 EV enthusiasts came to Westport from all over the state for a press conference supporting The EV Freedom Bill, legislative bill number SB 127. Lame puns aside, I have been part of this EV Club for 9 years, and this issue feels like it has been around for most of them, but today felt different. The grassroots energy was palpable in a way that it hadn’t been in the past. Perhaps it is due to Tesla registrations having grown to almost 6,000 in the state. Or the excitement of new, really cool, EV companies entering the market also looking to sell direct. Or energized engagement on the political front.

This bill, which in earlier guises had come to be referred to as the “Tesla Bill,” would permit EV-exclusive manufacturers that do not have an existing franchise dealer network to open stores in CT. At today’s event, Tesla was joined by Rivian and Lucid. Others are expected to adopt this business model or, more to the point, this or some other new model not envisaged in the existing dealer franchise laws that were written almost 100 years ago.

The bill also requires that companies opening stores have a sustainable model for servicing vehicles that are sold here.

The Way Forward In A Changing World

Passing this bill would be a tangible step toward supporting innovation. The industry is changing. Fissures are showing in the traditional automobile business, despite their actions to forestall competition by keeping new EV companies out of the state. 17% of Cadillac dealers opted to drop the franchise rather than embrace GM’s making this its centerpiece EV brand. Volvo announced an aggressive timeline of moving to an all-electric lineup by 2030 and moving EV sales online in the short-term. We don’t know the fine print of how this changes the relationship between the dealers and the manufacturer. If sales are online, do the dealers ever take title to the vehicle? And if they don’t, are they still a dealer? We reached out to Volvo for elucidation but have not received a response. We are guardedly optimistic that these changes are signs of a more serious effort to sell EVs.

SB 127 was introduced by Sen. Will Haskell, who organized the press conference, and Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, both of whom represent local districts. There were a number of other state and local officials present. This was the speaker order lineup:

• Senator Will Haskell (SB 127 co-sponsor)
• Barry Kresch, President of the EV Club of CT
• Rep. Jonathan Steinberg (SB 127 co-sponsor)
• Jim Marpe – Westport First Selectman
• Jeff Curry – Lucid Motors
• Kaitlin Monaghan – Rivian
• Lori Brown – League of Conservation Voters
• Daniel McInerney – International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
• Senator Bob Duff – Majority Leader
• Former Senator Art Linares

Paul Braren has posted video of all of the speakers on his blog.

Journalist David Pogue recorded remarks that were played to the group. A schedule conflict prevented him from appearing in person but you can hear what he had to say. (His remarks are just short of 4 minutes.)

The presentations took place at the Westport Train Station in front of a depot building with a solar array that powers the building and 4 adjacent EV charging stations. These were the first solar-powered public chargers in the state. They were installed in 2012, which is when I met the club founder, Leo Cirino, and became a member.

Model Y and Lucid Air – charging stations are to the right of the building by the white Chevy Volt

Long Way To Go

In his remarks, Sen. Haskell noted that the state had a long way to go to reach its goal of 500,000 EVs in the fleet by 2030. I’ve written a lot about that and noted that given where we are today, 13,800 EVs, it will be necessary to maintain a 49% compound annual growth rate to get there. This may sound high, and it is, but it is actually worse than it sounds because this figure is growth in net registrations. Each year, there are new vehicles added to the file, but there is also turnover from vehicles leaving the file. In 2020, the turnover was the equivalent of 52% of the vehicles that were new to the file. So from an acquisition perspective, it means we need to double each year. Without SB 127, we’ll never get there.

There are many that we need to thank for a successful event including members of the EV Club and the Tesla Owners Club, not only for coming, but also for reaching out to our legislators; the public officials who support this bill; the IBEW; and Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid.

As encouraging as it was to see this level of support, it’s not over. The bill will be called for a committee vote on Wednesday. If it passes, then it goes before the full chamber. It feels like we’re only to the quarter-finals. We will update this space as we move up the brackets.

Tesla Model X in chrome wrap. Model Y on the right.

Lucid Air Interior, Who are those masked men – Barry Kresch and Bruce Becker getting set for the presser, Senator Haskell speaking about the bill (Majority Leader Duff in the background)

One final note: We have been asking people to tell their legislators they support this bill. That doesn’t stop with the press conference or even the committee vote. It is important they hear from you. Tesla has set up an “engage” page for CT that enables a 1-click message or the opportunity to customize it for yourself. You may have to set up an account. You don’t need to be a Tesla owner to do that.

Volvo Is First Manufacturer to Bypass Dealers for EV Sales

When we blogged about the EV Freedom Bill, SB 127, a short while back, one of the facts that we unearthed was that in Germany, Volkswagen had basically given up on its dealerships to sell EVs. It began selling them corporately, using the dealerships as agents. And their strategy worked! The company had a successful introduction of its ID.3 last fall and saw it become a top-selling BEV in Europe. (This car is not being brought to the USA. VW is now taking orders for its larger sibling, the ID.4 in this country.)

It was an interesting development, but it didn’t necessarily mean that we would see the same thing happen here given franchise laws that are generally more restrictive than in Germany, where manufacturers are allowed to own stores. Well, not so fast. The New York Times reported a story about Volvo announcing a transition to an all BEV lineup by 2030, 5 years sooner than what was viewed as an aggressive announcement by General Motors.

If you stay with the article as far as the 13th paragraph, this little tidbit is reported:

“In another break from the practice of traditional carmakers, Volvo’s electric models will be sold exclusively online.”

Volvo is implementing a no-haggle sales policy. Like Tesla. Dealers are being used only for test drives and delivery. In other words, the dealer becomes an agent. Exactly what VW is doing in Germany.

This was punctuated by a club member who lives in Fairfield County and had made an inquiry about the XC40 Recharge a while back. He was invited to an up-close and personal encounter with the car – in New York City. (There is no shortage of Volvo dealers locally.) Here is the invitation:

We presume this is a temporary strategy to prepare for the transition to all-electric. Or perhaps a hybrid strategy like Volvo’s corporate sibling Polestar, which has only 3 dealerships in the country. If it isn’t, then there will be no Volvo dealers and Volvo will have to shake hands with Tesla. Nonetheless, it is a dramatic announcement, and we wonder if this will result in legal wrangling. On the other hand, maybe they’re glad not to have to sell an EV.

Forth EV Offsets Flyer (1)

This link to the CT Green Bank has more information

2 Environmental Wins Conclude the Year

2020 is a year most of us will be happy to see in the rearview mirror. But the last couple of weeks have brought two wins that deserve to be celebrated.

Transportation Climate Initiative

Governor Lamont signed the Transportation Climate Initiative Memorandum of Understanding today, December 21. TCI is a cap and invest program that will place a tax on fossil fuel at the wholesale level that will yield funds for the state to invest in clean transportation. It is anticipated that $89 million could flow to the state in 2023, rising to $117 million in 2032 with a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 26%. The program is similar in overall design to the RGGI cap and invest program that has been in place for power plants. The TCI iteration is more complex in that there are many more point sources of pollution. The reason the funds are not anticipated until 2023 is that there is still a considerable amount of rulemaking that has yet to occur. For a thorough piece of reporting on this, see this article in the CT Mirror.

Monetizable Credits for EV Charging Stations

The second piece of good news is that the CT Green Bank has established a carbon credit monetization program for the owners of EV charging stations. This is not for residential owners. It is for businesses or other entities that control dozens or hundreds of charging stations. Details here.

CHEAPR

We have been closely following the CHEAPR saga, the year-long and still unresolved effort to revise program parameters, and have been publishing monthly program status from the CHEAPR dataset. It is anticipated that the board will vote on this reasonably soon.

Events

2020 started off with one of the best-attended events in the club’s history when Westport Police Chief, Foti Koskinas, brought the fully customized Tesla Model 3 cruiser to a club meeting in February. After that, the pandemic lockdown threw sand in the gears of our event planning, though we still managed to hold 2 socially distanced outdoor events. The first was a fully-subscribed EV parade, held in partnership with Sustainable Fairfield, during National Drive Electric Week. The second was a test-drive event of the Polestar 2 BEV and the Polestar 1 PHEV.

There are a number of new EV introductions anticipated for 2021 and we hope to preview some of these for members. One thing that we can tease is a tentatively scheduled mid-year test-drive event for the new Aptera EV, a 3-wheeled vehicle with fully integrated solar and the lowest drag coefficient of any vehicle, the top trim level has an electric range of 1,000 miles for about $46,000.

As we were forced to move into Zoom mode to hold events, we lined up several speakers. We had Gabe Shenhar from Consumer Reports give us a detailed, early preview of his Tesla Model Y test-drive. Peter Millman spoke to us about Community Choice Aggregation, and John Erdman of FreeWire spoke about their charging solution with a self-contained battery that allows DCFC high-speed charging while avoiding demand charges.

Data

We continued with our tracking of EV adoption levels in the state, which is published to the website via the Interactive EV Dashboard. This is the only publicly available, free-of-charge, resource for this level of detail that we are aware of. We also submitted an information request to obtain CHEAPR rebates by dealership. We have had numerous requests for dealership recommendations and this was our way of responding to this using quantifiable data that applies statewide.

Opinion Leadership

The club continues to present to interested organizations, participate on panels, respond to media requests, and publish opinion pieces, in the latter case with Op-Eds in The Hartford Courant, The Hartford Business Journal, and CT News Junkie.

As we gradually emerge from this pandemic cocoon, we look forward to a more active year in 2021. We have a speaker on January 14th who will be discussing a federal carbon tax proposal. You may ask how this intersects with TCI and that is one of our questions.

Best wishes for a safe and healthy holiday season!

The Ford Motor Company bets the Mustang brand on the battery-electric Mustang Mach-E!

Post by Larry Thompson

The original Mustang was launched in 1964 at the World’s Fair in New York (pictured).  It had a 6 cylinder gasoline engine producing 101 horsepower and could go from 0-60 mph in 8.2 seconds.  It cost $2,400 and sold 22,000 cars on the first day, more than 400,000 cars in 1965, and more than 10 million to date.

Times change, and the 2021 Mach-E is a battery-electric SUV with a 75 – 98 kWh battery located between the wheels for maximum cornering performance.  The performance (GT) model has 459 horsepower and can go from 0-60 mph in less than 4 seconds.   The Mach-E has a range of 210 – 300 miles and can be charged at home or any EV charging station with Combined Charging Systems (CCS) connectors.

Ford tells us the car can charge from 10% to 80% capacity in 38 to 45 minutes using public Level 3 charging stations.  Compatible charging providers include EVGO, Blink Charging, and Chargepoint.   Every Mach-E also comes with 250 kilowatt-hours of free charging at more than 400 Electrify America fast-charging stations.  Additionally, the FordPass Charging Network consists of more than 13,500 charging stations in North America.

Because the Mach-E is a battery-electric vehicle, it produces no tailpipe emissions or greenhouse gases which helps reduce the effects of climate change.

Mach-E Arriving in Showrooms Later This Month

The Mach-E will be in showrooms in late November and vehicle shipments are expected by the end of the year.  Pricing ranges from $42,895 to $61,600.  As of this writing (November 2020), the Mach-E qualifies for a Federal incentive of $7,500.  However, there is no incentive in Connecticut as the CHEAPR program currently only provides incentives for EVs with a maximum MSRP of $42,000.

Thanks to the folks at Stevens Ford and Lincoln in Milford, Connecticut for providing the opportunity to photograph the Mach-E.

Few CHEAPR Rebates Given in August

Another tepid, desultory, underwhelming (I’m running out of adjectives – feel free to help in the comments) month for the CHEAPR program with only 40 rebates given out and a total dollar amount of $28,000. This is the second-lowest month of the year and continues the dispiriting (another adjective!) trend we have seen since November 2019. One interesting item: there were 9 rebates for the new Toyota RAV4 Prime plug-in hybrid. Between the RAV4 Prime and the Prius Prime, Toyota vehicles dominated the rebate activity. The reporting has been that the plug-in RAV4 Prime is a severely supply-constrained vehicle at present and there was some doubt that any would make it out of California, but apparently, they have.

Note: CHEAPR often restates the prior month when issuing new data. In this case, July has increased from 57 to 62 rebates and it is incorporated into the title graph.

Decision Time

The next CHEAPR meeting is scheduled for October 9 at 11:00 AM.

The Center for Sustainable Energy (CSE) presented a set of proposals for program revisions in July. The agenda includes a vote on the new program. The meeting is scheduled for only one hour, so we don’t expect much discussion. We do not know if this will be an up or down vote on the package or if the items will be considered individually. We know that despite 3 meetings and public comments, there isn’t a consensus on all the items.

This is what we know to the best of our information.

The package that will likely be presented to the board in October will have no differences relative to what was proposed in July.

• No e-bike incentive or even a pilot test. Ix-nay on this from the DEEP attorneys.
• A used-EV income-limited (lower/middle income, or LMI) incentive (non-controversial).
• A supplemental LMI EV incentive (non-controversial).
• No changes to base incentive levels or to the MSRP cap.
• No changes to the much higher fuel-cell vehicle incentive, which stands at $5000 with an MSRP cap of $60,000.

UPDATES as of 10/25/20

Modeling scenarios include:

• Maintaining the current (since 10/19) MSRP cap of $42K or raising it to $50K.
• Base BEV incentives of $2500 or $1500.
• A possible temporary “stimulus” additional sample of $1750 for BEVs and FCEVs, and $500 for PHEVs.
• $500 increase to $2500 for the LMI incentive.
• Possible inclusion of scenarios with base-level incentives less than $1500.

Incentive Levels and MSRP Cap

Much commentary, from board members, public attendees, and public comments, was in favor of raising the base incentives and the MSRP cap to at least where they were before DEEP lowered them in October 2019. These currently stand well below comparable incentive programs in nearby states. The CSE was tasked with modeling scenarios and they forecasted that there was a possibility that demand would exceed available funds, thus risking disruption. This blog doesn’t buy that line of argument for several reasons.

• A pandemic and recession of unknown duration make for a difficult environment in which to model. There is a lot of guesswork here, exacerbated by the fact that there are no empirical data on the take-rates for the new LMI incentives. A disruption would likely only occur if the economy roars back and the participation rates are at the high end of estimates.
• The dealership contingent spoke out for a higher MSRP cap. They argued that leases have grown in popularity to about half of all new car sales, and people can manage a lease payment on a vehicle they can’t afford to buy. Also, we are soon to see a wave of crossover and SUV EV launches, and these popular form factors are more expensive than sedans.
• Based on our analysis, and comments from the dealers, there isn’t much of a used EV market at this time. The incentive will help, but it will take some time for auction bids to be influenced such that inventory can build. Also, used Teslas are probably too expensive for an LMI limited buyer (and we don’t know how the rules will work for them – they may not qualify – something we will seek to find out).
• At the July meeting, when CSE proposed this incentive regime, they advised that the LMI system development would cause it not to be available until Q1 2021. We don’t know if they have been able to work on it during this period when the program isn’t finalized, but there could potentially be a delay.
• There is more money available – DEEP has indicated that the unspent funds from 2020 (they have only given out $398,000 in consumer rebates), as well as unspent bridge financing from 2019, will be rolled over into 2021. This will yield approximately $4.9 million in available funds (compared to the $3 million budget).
• The CHEAPR mission seems to be increasingly skewed towards the equity part of the mission. This blog supports the LMI incentives (and e-bikes, for that matter), but also sees the mission as just getting more EVs on the road. The program has fallen seriously short of that in the past year.

For these reasons, we think the best course is to raise the incentives and collect data. There will be plenty of time to course-correct if necessary. CHEAPR has an important role to play in moving people to drive electric. This is attested to by consumers, dealers, and our data. Let’s allow it to fulfill its potential.

Closing Pet Peeve

The $5000 fuel-cell rebate has never been given out in the 5+ years of the program’s existence, and there is no sign it will be anytime soon. You can’t buy one of these vehicles at present, and there is only 1 public hydrogen refueling station in the state. And yet, DEEP continues to use this as its headline incentive. It is misleading. It can be seen in the first sentence of the first paragraph on the CHEAPR home page. It was spoken out loud by Tracy Babbidge during the Sustainable Fairfield Webinar on September 28th. It was said by Victoria Hackett when she spoke at the Tesla leasing kickoff in February. Those are the occasions we are aware of but this is clearly not inadvertent. They are not helping themselves.

Editors Note: The October 9th meeting did not yield a resolution. A letter from the EV Coalition was debated that proposed a different structure. No vote was taken.

Meeting Details

We encourage members of the public to listen in! This is the Zoom info:

Webinar Information:

Join Zoom Meeting

https://ctdeep.zoom.us/j/99938032925

Meeting ID: 999 3803 2925

One tap mobile

+16468769923,,99938032925# US (New York)

Meeting ID: 999 3803 2925

Find your local number: https://ctdeep.zoom.us/u/adlDH6PJuC

Data from the Center for Sustainable Energy Helps Us Identify EV-friendly Dealers

We regularly field inquiries from club members and others asking for dealer recommendations. Usually, it follows a negative interaction with a dealership, when they walked in mistakenly thinking their inquiry about purchasing an EV would be well received. Not so fast!

It has been well documented, in the NY Times, in 2 Sierra Club shopper studies, and other reporting, that many dealers are indifferent or even hostile to EVs. But there are some dealerships that make an effort to sell EVs. To help guide consumers interested in non-Tesla EVs, we obtained from the Center for Sustainable Energy (CSE), the consultant that manages the CHEAPR incentive program for the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), the number of rebates by dealership from the program’s inception in 2015 through August 11, 2020.

I am using rebates as a rough proxy for sales/EV-friendliness. It’s the best we can do. You won’t find retailers of expensive vehicles, for example, a Jag or an Audi, on this list because the cost of the vehicles exceeds the MSRP eligibility cap. Consumers are eligible for one rebate lifetime, so repeat customers are not included. Some dealers may end up on our list in spite of themselves. But we can still use this directionally. Tesla is not included since it doesn’t have dealers.

We are covering a 5+ year period and understand that EV models come and go. Some manufacturers got out of the gate quickly (Tesla, GM, Nissan), while others came later to the party. The Chevy Volt, once the most widely registered EV in the state, has been discontinued. A couple of years ago, Honda introduced a PHEV Clarity that generated a fair number of sales. Since then, it has greatly slowed, reportedly due to distribution having been curtailed. There have also been 5 changes made during this period made by DEEP to rebate size and the MSRP price cap that determines eligibility. Finally, some dealers have multiple stores that were not separated in this dataset.

One-Third of Dealerships have not Awarded a Single Rebate

There are 270 franchised auto dealerships, according to their trade association (Connecticut Automotive Retailers Association) in CT. 185 of them have made a sale or lease associated with one or more rebates. Less than half, specifically 104, have disbursed 10 or more rebates and only 28, or about 10%, have awarded 50 or more rebates. (The denominator is somewhat inflated due to some dealers that don’t retail eligible plug-ins.)

The Top EV Dealers

These are the 5 dealers that have awarded more than 100 rebates.

• A-1 Toyota (New Haven)
• Honda of Westport (Westport)
• Richard Chevrolet (Cheshire)
• Karl Chevrolet (New Canaan)
• Lynch Toyota (Manchester)

Below are other top dealers for different makes that had between 50 and 100 rebates. Some makes haven’t had any dealer exceed 50 rebates.

GM – Ingersoll Auto (Danbury), O’Neill’s Chevrolet/Buick (Avon), H&L Chevrolet (Darien), Maritime Chevrolet (Fairfield), Grossman Chevrolet/Nissan (Old Saybrook), Chevrolet of Milford (Milford), Partyka Chevrolet (Hamden).

Toyota – Hoffman Toyota (West Simsbury), New Country Toyota of Westport (Westport), Middletown Toyota (Middletown), Hartford Toyota Superstore (Hartford), Westbrook Toyota (Westbrook)

Ford – Steven’s Ford (Milford), Stamford Ford/Lincoln (Stamford), Crowley Ford/Lincoln (Plainville)

Nissan – Grossman Chevrolet Nissan (Old Saybrook), Harte Nissan (West Haven), Crowley Nissan (Bristol)

BMW – BMW of Ridgefield (Ridgefield), BMW of Bridgeport (Bridgeport)

Finally, 2 stores that handle numerous brands:

Valenti Auto Sales (multiple locations) – Audi, VW, Porsche, Maserati, Fiat, Volvo, Alpha Romeo, Jaguar. (We presume most of the rebates come from VW.)

MJ Sullivan Automotive Corner (New London) – Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Hyundai, Genesis

It should be acknowledged that this is a changing landscape. We are relying on the past as prologue to predict EV-friendliness and we hope it proves useful. As the EV landscape evolves and new models are introduced, we will update the data to the extent that it is available. We anticipate it will be. Going forward, the CSE has advised they will be making more granular data available with their normal releases of CHEAPR data.

Westport Police Department Receives Donation of Used BMW i3

The local police have been rather busy of late with the protests that have been occurring in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the Minneapolis PD, and, of course, coping with the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not to lose sight of the significance of that, the greening of the municipal police force continues apace. The police department was recently the recipient of a donation of a used BMW i3 from a local resident. It is a 2015 REx model, which translates to an EPA-rated 72 miles of electric range, or up to 150 miles total, including the gasoline range-extender engine.

The vehicle has been customized for its duties and it looks sharp!

The “bimmer” joins a growing family of green vehicles as the police, part of the town’s push to net-zero, are testing a variety of vehicles for different use cases. This “new” addition is being used for security at Staples High School and adjacent Bedford Middle School, where security duty lasts 8-10 hours per day. It replaces a Ford Taurus that was consuming 6 to 8 gallons of gasoline daily, per Chief of Police Foti Koskinas. If we take an average daily usage of 7 gallons and multiply it by 200 service days per year (per the police), it works out to an estimated 1400 gallons of gasoline and 14 tons of carbon emissions annually. (Source for calculation: NASA)

There is a no-idling rule at Staples. Ironically, the most persistent offender has been the police since the patrol vehicle must remain running while on duty. Now they have emission-free idling running off the battery. When it comes to the police, this is why it is important to focus on gallons of gasoline used or saved rather than just MPG. A police vehicle spends thousands of hours idling over the course of its service life.

The low-speed patrolling around the schools means the electric drive will function at high efficiency.

Daily recharging? No sweat. There are two level-2 charging stations at Staples and the vehicle gets plugged in after hours.

Expanding Number of Green Vehicles

Along with the new arrival, the WPD has a Tesla Model 3 that was customized as a police cruiser and went into service during February, 2 plug-in Toyota Priuses that are used for parking and traffic enforcement at the town’s two Metro-North train stations and downtown, and a Ford Explorer hybrid (not a plug-in hybrid) that was also acquired for cruiser duty this year. Before the Tesla and the hybrid Explorer, the standard vehicle for cruisers was a conventional Ford Explorer. The EPA-rated mileage of the hybrid Explorer is 28 MPG, compared to 16 MPG for the standard version. These 5 environmentally friendly vehicles, which comprise a little less than 10% of the total fleet, will enable the collection of data to refine the department’s approach to future acquisitions.

Tesla Model 3 Update

This blog covered the vehicle entering service in February of this year here and here. There was a planned public press event for when the weather turned warmer, which did not happen due to the pandemic. We have a few updates.

According to Chief Foti, the vehicle has been performing as hoped and he describes the ongoing relationship with Tesla as excellent, crediting them with being very responsive and having a continued willingness to work with the PD in terms of making upgrades.

As previously reported, the Model 3 is already making use of the Tesla cameras. The Tesla lights are incorporated into the police emergency lighting, and all of the accessories requiring electricity are wired into the large battery.

Since we wrote about the vehicle in February, there have been two additional upgrades. The default setting for the headlights is that they turn off one minute after the car turns off. This was not enough for the police. Tesla did some software recoding and the lights now persist longer.

The biggest open question at the time the vehicle was put into service was whether the police would be able to use the computer that is native to the vehicle rather than install their own. This is a complex challenge due to the need to have an airtight firewall between the police databases that would be accessed and Tesla’s proprietary information. It is still a work in progress but there has been one significant development. Working with Tesla, the police have installed stationary radar, which logs directly into the computer. If they get to the point where the Tesla computer can be fully utilized, it would save between $5-$6,000 in customization costs.

The i3 donation was not a planned event, but it wouldn’t have happened had not Chief Foti, the department, and the town administration not demonstrated a vision for how to move the town forward in an environmentally-friendly way (which also happens to save money). The EV Club applauds and supports that vision.

CT Joins Multistate Lawsuit Against Attempt to Dismantle Obama CAFE Standards

As was widely reported in the press yesterday, Connecticut is one of 22 states and the District of Columbia that filed a lawsuit to block the Trump Administration’s attempt to dismantle the Obama CAFE fuel efficiency standards. This links to the press release from Attorney General Tong’s office.

There are three parts to this legal action as listed in material from AG’s office:

1.            A petition for reconsideration pending with the EPA;

2.            California v. Chao, Docket No. 1:19-cv-02826-KBJ in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; and

3.            California v. Wheeler, Docket No. 19-1239 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which petitioned for review of SAFE Rule Part 1.

The administration’s rulemaking seeks not only to pull back to a lower MPG standard (and the dirtier air and higher fuel costs for consumers that go with it), it also seeks to block California and other states from following a separate, more stringent standard, which is what the landscape looked like prior to President Obama negotiating the Clean Car Standards with the industry. That was the crux of the compromise: the industry agreed to boost MPG and in return they got standardization. Point number 3, which refers to a “review of SAFE Rule Part 1” addresses the California Clean Act Waiver and the ability of the CARB states to preserve it if the Obama EPA regulations are rolled back.

The 2016 federal mid-term review found that the carmakers had exceeded the minimum requirements to that point and recommended continuing with the second phase through 2025 when the standard tops out at 54.5 MPG for passenger cars and light-duty trucks.

This blog is supportive of the action being taken by AG Tong and the other states. The Obama CAFE rules were not EV-specific, but more aggressively transitioning to zero-emission electric vehicles is the way to most effectively meet (and exceed) the standards.

The photo above of the Hartford area air quality, with readings of zero, means that in order to have cleaner air, you’d have to live on the moon. Air quality was already hugely improved as a result of the COVID related lockdown which has shuttered industry and greatly lessened traffic volume. Add to that a storm system that moved through the area yesterday, followed by high winds today, and we now have a “breathe deeply” moment.

As we have said in previous posts, we have an opportunity as a society, to implement measures going forward to maintain this level of air quality.

Below is Fairfield County. Not quite perfect, but close.

For comparisons to what air quality typically is in recent years in this area, which ain’t great, see our earlier post. It contains historical images from PurpleAir and NASA.