Trump cuts vehicle fuel economy goal to 34 mpg by 2031 from 50 mpg by 2031 under Biden

 CNBC.

AI says the current US light duty vehicle fleet gets about 26 mpg.

Donald Trump is building out the police state on the nation's roads through U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Border Patrol's license plate reader program

 Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with ‘suspicious’ travel patterns

... Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years. ... 

The result is a mass surveillance network with a particularly American focus: cars. ...

The Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, former officials say, even going so far as to propose dropping charges rather than risk revealing any details about the placement and use of their covert license plate readers. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels. ...

... it reaches far into the interior, impacting residents of big metropolitan areas and people driving to and from large cities ... beyond the agency’s usual jurisdiction of 100 miles (161 kilometers) from a land or sea border. ...

Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said they use license plate readers to help identify threats and disrupt criminal networks and are “governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.” ...

Today, the deserts, forests and mountains of the nation’s land borders are dotted with checkpoints and increasingly, surveillance towers, Predator drones, thermal cameras and license plate readers, both covert and overt.

Border Patrol’s parent agency got authorization to run a domestic license plate reader program in 2017, according to a Department of Homeland Security policy document. At the time, the agency said that it might use hidden license plate readers ”for a set period of time while CBP is conducting an investigation of an area of interest or smuggling route. Once the investigation is complete, or the illicit activity has stopped in that area, the covert cameras are removed,” the document states.

But that’s not how the program has operated in practice, according to interviews, police reports and court documents. License plate readers have become a major — and in some places permanent — fixture of the border region. ...

The Border Patrol also has access to a nationwide network of plate readers run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, documents show, and was authorized in 2020 to access license plate reader systems sold by private companies. ...

Nissan Leaf EV comes down with a bad case of thermal runaway at the grocery store in Littleton Colorado

 

CNBC has a good table of all the stuff that cost more in August 2025

I had to shell out a grand for new brake lines on one old car last month, and nearly half that on a tune-up for the other.

Beats buying a new car by a long shot, but holy hell, motor vehicle repair up 15% yoy.

 

 Here’s the inflation breakdown for August 2025 — in one chart

 

 

Redesigned Ford Expedition, an ICE vehicle which gets 18/19 combined mpg, sees best sales in 21 years

Ford’s redesigned three-row Expedition SUV is seeing explosive growth.

The Detroit automaker reported Wednesday that it sold 8,724 Expeditions in August, up 53.7% from the same time last year and marking its best sales in 21 years. It’s sold 61,022 of the vehicles so far this year, a 13.1% increase from the same period in 2024. ...

More. 

GM to make new EV production cuts in Tennessee and Kansas City according to Reuters

 

... GM will stop production of two electric Cadillac SUVs at its assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, during the month of December, according to a person familiar with the matter and communications to GM employees viewed by Reuters.

The plant produces the midsize Cadillac Lyriq — a relative hit and one of GM’s top-selling EVs — and the Vistiq, a larger electric SUV.

GM also plans to significantly curtail production of those vehicles during the first five months of next year by temporarily laying off one of its two shifts of workers, according to the sources. The company will additionally shutter the plants for one week in October and November.

The automaker is also planning to indefinitely delay the start of a second shift at an assembly plant near Kansas City, which is still slated to begin production of the Chevy Bolt EV later this year, the person familiar with the matter said. ...

More. 

Population adjusted vehicle miles traveled in the first half of 2025 is lower than at the bottom of the Obama travel depression in 1H2014

Ain't got no where to go, I guess, with all that new delivery availability spawned by the pandemic.

 

 

OMG the dumbest line in this story: people who buy trucks often use them to haul things

 Well no shit, Sherlock.

The Electric Pickup Truck Boom Turned Into a Big Bust

... many electric versions just aren’t up for the task. ... 

Pickup sales, first half of 2025:

EVs 35,000

Internal Combustion: 1,600,000 

Power hungry data centers break the utility model of socializing electricity costs: Seventy percent of last year's increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand

 

 As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act

... Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog for the mid-Atlantic grid, produced research in June showing that 70% — or $9.3 billion — of last year’s increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand. ... 

PJM [Interconnection, the mid-Atlantic grid operator], has yet to propose ways to guarantee that data centers pay their freight, but Monitoring Analytics is floating the idea that data centers should be required to procure their own power. 

In a filing last month, it said that would avoid a “massive wealth transfer” from average people to tech companies. ...

 Demand for Electricity Takes Off. US Power Generation by Source in 2024: Natural Gas, Coal, Nuclear, Wind, Hydro, Solar, Geothermal, Biomass, Petroleum 

The quantity of electricity generated in the US by all sources, from natural gas to rooftop solar, rose by 3.1% in 2024 from 2023 to a record of 4,304,039 gigawatt-hours (GWh), according to data from the EIA today.

This is now clearly a breakout in demand, after 14 years of stagnation, from 2007 through 2021, when electricity users, to reduce their costs, invested in more efficient equipment – lights, appliances, electronic equipment, industrial equipment, heating and air-conditioning, etc. – and in better building insulation, shading, etc., to reduce their power costs. This relentless drive for greater efficiency kept demand roughly stable for years despite the growing economy and population. And it mired many power generators and electric utilities in a no-growth business where it was difficult to justify investment.

Now the scenario has changed, largely due to the growth in demand from data centers (AI, cloud, crypto) and the increasing penetration of EVs in the national vehicle fleet – EVs accounted for over 10% of US vehicle sales in 2024. ...

EV sales achieve record high 9.1% of total sales of passenger vehicles in July, 90.9% sold still internal combustion lol

 

EV sales soar as Trump axes $7,500 tax credit: ‘People are rushing out’ to buy, analyst says

Consumers are racing to buy electric vehicles before a fast-approaching deadline to claim tax credits worth up to $7,500, according to auto analysts.

Legislation championed by Republicans on Capitol Hill and signed by President Donald Trump in July eliminates the tax breaks — available for new, used and leased EVs — after Sept. 30.

The Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act had originally offered the tax breaks to consumers through 2032.

“We’re expecting Q3 may be [a] record for EV sales because of the tax incentives going away,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, a senior analyst at Cox Automotive.

“People are rushing out” to buy, she said.

Consumers purchased nearly 130,100 new EVs in July, the second-highest monthly sales tally on record, behind roughly 136,000 sold in December, according to Cox Automotive data. The July figures represent a 26.4% increase from June and nearly 20% increase year-over-year, Streaty said.

The share of EV sales in July also accounted for about 9.1% of total sales of passenger vehicles that month, the largest monthly share on record, according to Cox.

“We’re seeing significant volume in new EVs,” said Liz Najman, director of market insights at Recurrent, an EV marketplace and data provider. ...

 

Population-adjusted total-vehicle-miles-traveled in the United States is lower in April 2025 than at any point in the Obama depression and is down almost 9% since the April 2005 peak twenty years ago

 

The average price of a new vehicle in 2024 ran ahead of inflation from 1978 by about 75%

 

The average price of a new vehicle in 1978 was about $5,780.

Adjusted for inflation to 2024, that would be about $27,852. 

The actual average price in 2024 was about $48,724. 

The $3.45 average price of gasoline in 2024 was not quite 7% higher than the inflation adjusted price of $3.23/gallon from 1978

 Gasoline prices are moderating slowly in 2025 even as the inflation-adjusted price rises to $3.27.

Gasoline actually averaged $3.27 in the first half of 2025, dead on the money for what it should cost if it were only adjusted for inflation since 1978.

Gasoline retailers like convenience stores don't make their money on gasoline, with profit margins on gasoline in the 2% range. They make it on stuff like milk, the free-market price of which is a great mystery. AI thinks the unregulated price of milk right now would be about $4.00/gallon.

At the corner convenience store near where I live, a gallon of whole milk is a whopping $4.99, but eight miles down the road at my grocery it's only $3.45, so it's a mark-up of 45% for the convenience. 

But my grocery offers a routine discount coupon of 60 cents per gallon of milk, which brings the price down to $2.85, which Sam's can't beat at $3.23. Milk is my grocery's loss leader to get me in the store, like rotisserie chicken is a loss leader for Sam's and Costco, or like gasoline.

Gasoline this morning at Sam's is $3.01/gallon.

My momma told me, you better shop around. 

Meanwhile average fuel economy in 2023 is 27.1 miles on a gallon of gasoline, up from about 17.6 in 1978.

Seems like we should be doing better in that department. 

 

Adjusted for population growth, total vehicle sales in the United States in 2024 are down 35% since the peak in 1978

 At the same time, the average age of a vehicle on the road in 1978 was about 6.6 years, compared with 12.6 years in 2024, up 91%.

 

 

 

 

The average vehicle on the road is now 12.8 years old, a new record as of May 2025

 

This index of used car values is still up 39% from the pre-pandemic level of 150 in June 2025

 

Down she goes

 

Corvette chief engineer speak English goodier then evah

 

... “It brings performance, electrification and all-wheel drive to further enhance the unthinkable ZR1,” said Josh Holder, Corvette chief engineer. “It brings learnings from the ZR1 and the E-Ray, and combines them to create an unbelievable driving experience.” ...

Moar. 

Total bs about Tesla from CNBC relying on Business Insider, lying by omission

 

Tesla stock slips after report EV maker is halting Cybertruck and Model Y production

... The pause, which is for maintenance on production lines, would be the third such shutdown at the Austin facility in the past year, according to BI. ...

GM will not produce EVs at Orion Assembly Plant in suburban Detroit as the company moves production of gasoline vehicles to the US from Mexico to avoid 25% tariffs

 GM to invest $4 billion in U.S. plants amid tariffs for Mexican-produced vehicles

... GM said the investment will add assembly of the gas-powered Chevrolet Blazer and Chevrolet Equinox that are currently produced in Mexico to two other plants in the U.S. and convert a large idled plant in Michigan — formerly expected to build all-electric trucks — to make gas-powered SUVs and trucks in 2027. ...