Free Republic

The Biden administration is poised to soon finalize gas-powered car tailpipe emissions standards that consumer advocates and energy industry groups have dubbed a "de facto electric vehicle mandate." The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed tailpipe emissions – which were in recent weeks submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for final review – are designed to ensure a staggering 67% of new car sales are electric by 2032. Over the weekend, the New York Times and Washington Post reported the White House is set to double down on that lofty goal while loosening earlier targets. "The President...

internal-combustion engine, any of a group of devices in which the reactants of combustion (oxidizer and fuel) and the products of combustion serve as the working fluids of the engine. Such an engine gains its energy from heat released during the combustion of the nonreacted working fluids, the oxidizer-fuel mixture. This process occurs within the engine and is part of the thermodynamic cycle of the device. Useful work generated by an internal-combustion (IC) engine results from the hot gaseous products of combustion acting on moving surfaces of the engine, such as the face of a piston, a turbine blade, or...

European legislators on Thursday evening reached an agreement to phase out the sale of new combustion engine cars and vans by 2035. The deal between representatives of the European Parliament and the European Council was struck at around 21:00 CET and represents the first made under the bloc’s flagship Fit for 55 package to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030. The new legislation plans for a 55% CO2 emission reduction target for new cars and 50% for new vans by 2030 compared to 2021 levels and for a 100% CO2 emission cut by 2035, effectively...

Earlier this month, California-based electric car startup Lucid Motors ($LUCIDMOTORS) locked in a billion-dollar infusion from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Through this deal, the official sovereign wealth fund of the Saudi government is helping to put Lucid on track to produce its first commercially available electric vehicle, the Lucid Air, on the market in 2020, thus putting it in direct competition with Tesla ($NASDAQ:TSLA). Since announcing its deal on September 17, Lucid listed more than double the amount of job openings month-over-month, which is understandable given a billion-dollar influx in capital....

France’s swashbuckling TV star turned environment minister Nicolas Hulot laid out France’s new “climate plan” intended to meet the ambitious targets of the Paris climate accord on Thursday and become carbon neutral by 2050. […] “We are announcing an end to the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040,” Hulot said, calling it a “veritable revolution”. “The solutions are there,” Hulot said. “Our own manufacturers have what they need to support this promise”, adding that it all contributed to the “public health agenda”. Acknowledging that reaching the target would be “tough”, particularly for automakers, Hulot said that France’s car...