Featured It turns out that Akio Toyoda was right

While a PHEV will have an internal combustion engine in it, it's a hybrid, not just an internal combustion engine vehicle. Your difference on this pertains to the terms, not the consequence. That someone could bring in a conventional ICE car or buy one used doesn't address the prohibition of a conventional ICE vehicle in CA under the proposed rule.

If you review, you will see that this is incorrect.

Indeed, the following policy shift did pertain to Co2. That was the subject of MA v. EPA. No one disputes that CA had a ZEV program and federal waiver prior to the regulatory shift, but whether moving to prohibition and adding Co2 is "just an extension".

Sadly, CAFE does something slightly different. It imposes an efficiency standard along a scale that becomes more difficult to satisfy as vehicle size decreases. A B segment car may produce less Co2 than a minivan and cost much less, but the tech needed to meet the heightened standard imposed on the smaller vehicle makes then essentially unmarketable.

When we wonder why the cheap and small car seems absent in the current US market, CAFE is one of the culprits.

The death of an EV mandate doesn't result in an unregulated market, but a less regulated market.

Since monopoly enforcement is a genre of government regulation, it isn't an example of an unregulated market. Even in the absence of government enforcement of a monopoly, e.g. an illicit drug distribution monopoly, it requires some kind of enforcement to remain a monopoly.

There isn't a path to get from a prohibition on new sales of a class of vehicles, those that run only on an internal combustion engine, as increasing the breadth of consumer choice. It appears that a decision has been made that the mandate would have been too burdensome.

As I may have noted elsewhere, I foresee people continuing to buy battery cars as the tech improves. I'll be happy to see people voluntarily drawn to the excellence of a product rather than government employees seeking to foreclose ordinary market options.

 

It's a large information load, especially for a driver not yet familiar with it. I probably should have sat parked and played with the buttons for a while, but that also does not give a perfect sense of how it all works while driving. When my father was alive, I tried to teach him how to use simple cruise control. I failed. I can't imagine him being presented with a complex menu of options and not hitting someone.

The alerts and chimes and tones are a bit much at least at first. Maybe I just don't hear them any longer.

I'll still see the cell phone as the greater villain. The adaptive cruise isn't demanding that you think about its emotional state or whether the problem it is telling you about will affect its family. It just wants you to guess whether it will toss in some lane assist to keep you on your toes.


EDIT - For a low information load and not too many distractions, a basic current generation Corolla is awfully good. I bought one in 2022 for my mother in law and showed her how to drive it. It had a tumbler and key ignition, normal dials and a conventional gear selector. A radio with frequency dial and push button presets would have looked right at home on that dash.

 

My first long drive (2+ hours) in the Prius was in the dark, driving home from the dealership. I was distracted enough a few times that I could have been pulled over by police. When you see those full screen notifications, you automatically assume something is seriously wrong. I do not need a full screen notification saying the radar cruise sees the car in front of me, or no longer sees it. Those notifications could not be turned off either.

 

Mine was 130 miles in daylight. I took a longer route through some small towns, playing with the drive modes along the way. I probably had a solid three hours of playtime with it before I got to my office.

If I had bought locally and used it to commute in morning rush hour, I might have done less well.

 

I drove home 20 miles when I picked up my bev, easy peasy.
Just push the go button , step on the accelerator, and brake when necessary.
Other features can be learned later, if desired

 

An interesting take on government trade regulation, suggesting it's there to enforce monopolies, which businesses would not otherwise engage in? Sort of like the world of Fahrenheit 451, where the job of the fire department is to start fires.

SInce 1890, by contrast, there seems to have been notable enforcement emphasis on deterring "monopolization, attempted monopolization, or conspiracy or combination to monopolize."

The Antitrust Laws | Federal Trade Commission

 

That may involve a level of emotional maturity I've not mastered.

I wanted to know when the rear motor was engaging, so I had to find the display for that, and wanted to track the efficiency for the tank and found that.

I wanted to know how it stuck in corners and how it behaved overtaking on two lane roads. Lateral grip was OK, but acceleration in the 50mph to 70mph range was surprising.

It's a lot more than my first car, a Karrman Ghia with a gas gauge, speedo dial and clock.

 

I had a friend with a karrman ghia when we were teenagers, it was a pretty nice car

 

I credit it with saving my life a few times. I started driving it when I was 10.

In addition to a gas gauge, speedo and clock not distracting my still forming brain, my accidents didn't happen at very high speeds because it wasn't a hugely fast car. If you come out of a turn and the back snaps around as you sail into a ditch, it's a better experience at 30mph than 50mph.

 

I occasionally want to do stuff, like direct the cabin air to the windshield, as it's fogging up, on a dark/twisty coastal highway. Without going off-road.

Our first car, an 81 Civic, I could easily do that without any great mental effort, and with my eyes on the road the whole time. Now, not so much.

I know a couple of ways to do it with our '10, but neither are ideal, nor easy.

 

Agreed, touch screen controls are not optimal when driving

 

My ire is not limited to touch screens:

if you want to get our '10 to direct the cabin air "mostly" to the windshield (50/50 mix, half still goes to feet), and don't relish the full blown front defog button (which cranks the AC way up, accelerates fan, and is only practical for short bursts I think), you've got to look down, away from the road, find the "vent mode" button (in a row of identical buttons), and push it multiple times while watching a small LCD display of icons, scrolling through the options. Go too fast and you'll go by the one you want, have to start again.

That's distraction personified.

 

Here is a screenshot I stole from a video on the 2025 Camry.


Above the pushbuttons, some of those are multiple push switches. Fr instance, turning on the seat heater goes to high & then decreases for each additional push.. A gri[pe I have compared to the 2017 Prius is that when on Auto, the fan speed and air directions do not show what was chosen by the car. You have to guess if you want just different air direction or increased fan speed,

 

I'm a small cheap car fan, so this isn't to make fun of you, or if it is it makes fun of us both.

That formula was a body with the rigidity of a garbage can, a simple little engine and a simple cable clutch and manual transmission with outstanding visibility in all directions. Neither ABS nor power steering interfered with the car telling us what the tires were doing. The cell phone thing wasn't an issue. Yes, you were good at operating the controls without looking away from the road, but it was just a stick, a slide lever and a radio dial.

You knew what the car was doing, what was around you and that if someone bigger hit you, it would not be good.

Contrast it with a rolling pillbox with thick pillars in which you sit and choose options for how much of the detached experience should be handled entirely by the onboard computer while you amuse yourself with other things not related to driving. Beep-beep look at this screen telling you a car moved into your lane ahead of you! Hey It's 37 degrees out there! Beep! I know you can't see through the big pillar by your head, but there's truck there!

The inability to convey to a young person that it wasn't always so is a sign of aging.

 

I was 77 when I bought my current Rav4 hybrid. I bought at a dealer 3 states away. I had previously read a model specific forum for a few weeks, read the pdf of the manual available from the Toyota web site. I arrived at the dealer with a list of about 20 settings I had decided I wanted. I had the dealer set those and the GPS to my home address and then drove 350 miles home in the late afternoon and evening arriving home at midnight. During the boring stretches of the interstate, I played with various settings to familiarize myself with them. I learn by building layers of experience until I have a working set of concepts to rely on.

Did I set up cruise control with lane keeping on that first trip. Yes.

Granted I don't use CarPlay or AA. Nor did I want that level of complexity. But I make phone calls through the car all the time ... short information only types when safe. Do you want me to get milk on the way home? OK, bye. Generally at a stop light but not always. We agree not to distract each other.

Could I do the same car pick up at 82 next week? Yea I could but not everybody can and should those even be driving?

Do I like the Tesla style 40ish icons interface I see my son using? Heck no. Give me stalks and a wheel and buttons for the safety items. Not that I know all the buttons even after 5 years but at least I recall approximately where they are and I'm only searching through maybe 8 items. Love a HUD my wife's car has.

Any time Toyota wants to know my list of dumb IMHO designs and suggestions for improvements, I can give them about 30 items. But their 5 year old functionality works for me. And in fairness, newer model years have eliminated several of those items.

 

Before I bought my Camry, i test drove a Camry SE at my local dealer.As we were driving I complained about the blind spots. He actually said Toyota is more concerned about safety than blind spots!

My thought was, :if they dealt with the blind spots, safety would be a lot simpler. Then again, the driver would actually have to DRIVE and pay attention. Who wants to torn theor head?

 

i told theor if he ever did that again i would torn his head

 

Banning lead in paint limited consumer choices. It was there cause it offered great mold and mildew prevention.

Government has made regulation for decades that has dictated requirements for safety, fuel efficiency, and emissions for cars. The latter two will result in the end of the conventional ICE in the near future. What new models don't have auto start/stop?

You can no longer buy Jarts, uranium glazed pottery, and 3 wheel ATVs. Nor can you just burn all your trash in the back yard. The knowledge base of humanity expands with time, and we come to realize the way of doing things was causing harm to ourselves and others. Be great if everybody just did the right thing, but government sometimes has to step as market forces don't always choose the best way. The Pinto was equipped with a fuel bladder and airbags, but people weren't going to pay for those while the other choices were cheaper.

People in California have ten years to buy their conventional ICE car. After that, what won't a PHEV do that a conventional ICE or hybrid can?

With the other benefits, there is no need for them to add CO2 to do this. It is just another reason for it.

Fuel economy of cars for federal regulations is measured by measuring the CO2 coming out of the tail pipe during the EPA emission test cycles. The government already has the ability to regulate CO2 emissions without additional legislation.

Um, you have that backwards. Monopolies come about when there isn't government regulation. They are the natural end result in a capitalist system that is truly free market.

Can you buy a new, street legal car today that requires leaded fuel and no emission controls? Did getting rid of leaded gas, and requiring emission controls result in reducing consumer choice?

They are. The step of the clean car ZEV program doesn't start until 2026. California is still under ZEV 1, and EV sales exceed the program's targets.

Much of the blind spots are the dictates of aerodynamics, and safety regs to keep your head from being crushed in a roll over.

 

Like many california regulations that is a bad one. Instead of doing the credit trading things to make pure ice vehicles relatively more expensive, they are foreclosing the option.

There was a good point to the original incentives, the country needed a critical mass of vehicles to bring the cost of technology and fear of it down. At this point as long as they phase them out instead of simply cutting them off there likely will be continued plug in growth. Cutting them off completely will likely cause ford and gm to be less competitive and maybe the government will have to bail them out again. After companies invest in a technology it is truely destructive for the government to cut off incentives randomly. It creates chaos and higher prices.

 

I think there's a golden mean in which good design gets most of two antagonistic goals mostly achieved.

Some of that poor visibility is the result of pillars so thick you can drop the Camry on its top and you can walk away. I think there isn't a way to accomplish this with the beautiful and spindly pillars of an '88 Honda Civic.

We all assess risk differently. When I wanted an MGB convertible as a lad I hit mutliple vetoes on the basis that if it turned over I'd be killed. Did my parents understand that this almost never happens? Didn't they appreciate how amazing I'll be driving an MGB?

After seeing Freddie Flintoff's Morgan accident, I understand they had a point.