Gas War: Europe Reaches Agreement On 2035 Combustion Ban

The Czech Republic, which currently holds the European Union presidency, has announced that negotiators from member states, the European Parliament, and the European Commission have finally come together to agree upon the often-mentioned combustion ban. By 2035, every automaker operating within the continent will be required to cut emissions by 100 percent – effectively mandating what type of vehicles can be sold there.

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Will New Laws Prevent Catalytic Converter Thefts?

With catalytic converter theft having risen by 300 percent across the United States through the summer of 2021, regions of the country that have seen crime rates dwarfing the already brutal national average have started to introduce laws designed to prevent the issue from getting any worse.

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Government Inches Closer to Mandatory Breathalyzers, Driver Monitoring

In the past, someone who had an ignition interlock device equipped to their vehicle typically needed to be found guilty of some criminal offense. But they may become commonplace if the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) gets its wish to have breathalyzers installed into all new vehicles. 

With crash rates spiking dramatically and substance abuse on the rise, there’s good reason to fret over impaired drivers. Last week, the NTSB cited a fatal incident where alcohol led to the death of nine people on the road – the majority of which were children – as the main reason for it to call for alcohol impairment detection systems to be included in all new vehicles. Though it’s hardly the only one, as the concept of mandatory breathalyzers has been around for decades. 

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NHTSA Updating Guidance for Connected Cars, Cybersecurity


Despite having a formal mission objective to “save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce vehicle-related crashes,” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been shifting some of its focus toward automotive connectivity over the last few years. In fact, the agency has recently updated its guidance for vehicle cybersecurity – which was originally penned in 2016. 


While this raises questions about the true role of the NHTSA, most government regulators have been flexing their muscles as new automotive technologies lacking clearly defined directives become increasingly commonplace. Besides, the safety agency has at least managed to tie its cybersecurity guidance (which is currently voluntary) to hacking concerns that could affect how the affected car behaves and how that might translate into physical harm for those on the road. 

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New York Senator Pushes Bill Mandating Speed Limiters for All Cars

Per capita roadway fatalities have seen dramatic increases over the last two years and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) has suggested that 2022 might actually end up being the deadliest year it has ever recorded in regard to the total body count. So there are a lot of people in politics that have concerned themselves with getting those numbers down. Unfortunately, the solutions are often to leverage more of the technology that data is starting to show might have gotten us into this predicament in the first place. 

Manhattan State Senator Brad Hoylman (D-NY) introduced just such a bill on August 12th, one that would effectively require all new vehicles to incorporate some form of speed-limiting technology by 2024 and direct the Department of Motor Vehicles to establish new rules for all transportation over 3,000 pounds. Considering that even teensy hatchbacks like the Mini Cooper already clock in dangerously close to that threshold, such a law would impact just about everything with four wheels that’s bigger than a Mazda MX-5 or Nissan Kicks. 

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NHTSA Boss Leaving to Head California Air Resources Board


The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has had a difficult time finding permanent leadership ever since Mark Rosekind resigned in 2017. But the Senate managed to confirm Steven Cliff as administrator in May of 2022, providing the agency with some welcome but short-lived stability. The NHTSA announced that its current boss would be leaving to join the California Air Resources Board (CARB) on Friday. 


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Car Dealers Cheesed Over FTC's Proposed Rule Changes

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed comprehensive rules changes regarding dealership advertising and how finance and insurance offices are handled. However, dealers, specifically the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), aren’t happy with these new ideas and have issued formal challenges to the regulatory scheme.

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Europe Now Requires Speed Regulators for All New Vehicles

On July 6th, the European Union formally introduced laws that require auto manufacturers to install speed-limiting hardware on new vehicles. While speed governors have been around for years (and are becoming increasingly popular among certain manufacturers) the EU’s new rules actually require technology that takes things a step further by allowing cars to actively detect and then regulate the speed for any given road.

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Goodyear Recalls Tire Nobody Uses Anymore

Goodyear has agreed to recall more than 173,000 intended for commercial delivery vehicles and RVs nearly two decades after the last one was manufactured. The company’s G159 tires have been under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) since December of 2017 and the recall comes in the wake of years of lawsuits alleging the rubber contributed to a series of fatal accidents dating back to 1998.

Despite no new claims having launched in years, court orders and settlement agreements delayed an order to make corporate data pertaining to the tire-buying public for five full years. The NHTSA didn’t even launch a formal investigation until late in 2017, followed by the recent announcement that the agency has pushed Goodyear into a recall for a tire that ended production during the Bush administration.

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Stellantis Paying $300 Million in Emission Fines, Seeking Plea Deal

Stellantis has reportedly agreed to plead guilty to criminal conspiracy charges relating to emissions requirements on over 100,000 diesel-powered Ram and Jeep products sold in the United States. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) was previously on the hook for $800 million in civil penalties over a so-called “defeat device” equipped to the automaker’s 3.0-liter turbo-diesel engine. Allegations began in 2017 as regulators were hunting for compliance violations in the wake of Volkswagen’s massive emissions scandal from a couple of years earlier.

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Gas War: Republican States Sue EPA Over Californian Standards

Last week, a group of Republican attorneys general decided to sue the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its decision to reinstate the waiver allowing California to set its own limitations on exhaust gasses and zero-emission vehicle mandates that would exceed federal standards.

The agency approved the waiver after it had been eliminated as part of the Trump administration’s fuel rollback on the grounds that it would create a schism within the industry by forcing automakers to produce vehicles that catered to the Californian market at the expense of products that might be appreciated in other parts of the country. However, Joe Biden’s EPA sees things differently and has aligned itself with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in giving the state more leeway to govern itself in regard to emissions policing.

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California Tech Mogul Launches Senate Run to Destroy Tesla

Dan O’Dowd, the billionaire founder and CEO of Green Hills Software, has announced he’s running for the U.S. Senate and his campaign has a single platform — destroy Tesla Inc.

“Today I launched my campaign for U.S. Senate to make computers safe for humanity. The first danger I am tackling is @ElonMusk‘s reckless deployment of unsafe @Tesla Full Self-Driving cars on our roads,” O’Dowd tweeted on April 19th.

The tweet was accompanied by a 60-second advertisement that showed clips of various Tesla vehicles equipped with the contentious software nearly striking pedestrians and making other mistakes in traffic while a disembodied voice explains does its utmost to make you feel like Tesla is an evil company that wants its cars to kill people.

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How Much Are Updated CAFE Standards Actually Going to Save You?

With the United States Department of Transportation having formally announced upgraded Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards starting in 2024, the Biden administration was quick to point out that the decision would likely make automobiles even more expensive than they already are. However, the caveat to this was that it also assumed fuel prices would come down as improved efficiencies reduced North America’s hunger for fuel.

This effectively undoes fueling rollbacks instituted under the Trump administration on the grounds of reducing costs to consumers and cutting regulatory red tape for a prospective future where fuel prices are reduced without the need to spur oil production. But what does that actually mean in terms of dollars and cents?

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Biden Administration Meets With Auto Execs, Including Elon Musk

The Biden administration held another meeting with automotive executives about how to ensure electric vehicles go mainstream. But this time it included Elon Musk, who runs the most successful EV brand in the entire world.

After taking criticism for shunning the Tesla CEO in earlier meetings, senior officials held an event on Wednesday where he and other industry leaders could contribute as to how the United States should handle a national charging infrastructure and spur adoption rates. Despite Musk having often expressed a dissenting opinion in regard to President Biden’s strategy, the White House said that the meeting was productive and resulted in a “broad consensus that charging stations and vehicles need to be interoperable and provide a seamless user experience, no matter what car you drive or where you charge your EV.”

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Annoy the Driver: IIHS Says Seatbelt Chimes Aren't Loud Enough

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has spent the last few years branching out from crash tests to focus on some of the safety tech in modern vehicles. However, this arguably peaked when the group realized that modern vehicles with higher ride heights were blinding everyone with their headlights and decided that might be something worth including in general safety testing. The IIHS has since preoccupied itself with advocating for additional electronic nannies and mimicking government regulators by suggesting vehicles should annoy drivers as often as possible.

This week, that manifested by way of the IIHS upgrading its safety program to include pressuring manufacturers into making seat belt reminders more irritating. While the federal standards specify that undone belts must include an audible signal that lasts between four and eight seconds, in conjunction with a minute-long warning light, the non-profit (supported by insurance companies) believes reminders should be longer and louder than outlined by existing requirements.

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  • Ronin It's one thing to stay tried and true to loyal past customers; you'll ensure a stream of revenue from your installed base- maybe every several years or so.It's another to attract net-new customers, who are dazzled by so many other attractive offerings that have more cargo capacity than that high-floored 4-Runner bed, and are not so scrunched in scrunchy front seats.Like with the FJ Cruiser: don't bother to update it, thereby saving money while explaining customers like it that way, all the way into oblivion. Not recognizing some customers like to actually have right rear visibility in their SUVs.
  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.