The New Car Assessment Program helped prove that car-buyers care about safety. But the program, now decades behind modern standards, no longer serves its purpose.
Back in the 1950s, local expressways in their planning stages were always known by their nicknames — the proposed Riverfront Route (Interstate 787), Northside Route (Interstate 90), and Crosstown Arterial (NY 85).
Some names have remained — like Alternate Route 7, the Thruway, and the Adirondack Northway but those are the exceptions rather then the rule. I think we should go back to calling the local roads the Riverfront Route, the Northside Route, and the Crosstown Arterial.
- Electric vehicles are being driven about half the distance of conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, according to new a new paper from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC). That means policymakers may be underestimating the costs of going fully electric, according to the authors.
- The study combined hourly electric meter readings with address-level EV registration records in California, and found the purchase of an EV raised a household's electricity consumption by just 2.9 kWh/day — indicating an average EV is driven about 5,300 miles annually. According to EPIC, that's less than half of the U.S. fleet average.
- There are several possible reasons EVs are driven less. "Perhaps most pessimistic for electrification would be if EVs are viewed by drivers as complements to gasoline cars, as opposed to substitutes," David Rapson, an associate professor in the University of California Davis economics department and a co-author of the paper, said in an email.
For years, automakers stalled progress on climate change and cleaning up our air. Consumers interested in electric vehicles often struggle to find them on dealer lots, in part because manufacturers don’t make or distribute enough of them.
Automakers spend a tiny fraction of their ad budgets on their plug-in products. When Donald Trump came into office, Toyota, GM, and other major automakers like Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler) asked his administration to weaken Obama-era greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards for cars — which had been our government’s most ambitious program to reduce planet-warming emissions. Until recently, they also supported the Trump administration’s attack on California’s authority to protect its residents from vehicle pollution, which was the foundation of 14 other states’ authority to do the same.
Advocates for public transportation often promote practical advantages: affordability, accessibility, environmental friendliness, reduced traffic jams.