OpenMarket: Automobiles and Roads

The Washington Post reported on July 25th that Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW North America have “struck a deal with California to produce fleets that are more fuel-efficient in coming years, undercutting one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive climate policy rollbacks.”

After two years of work, last week the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) published its model state legislation on automated vehicles. By and large, ULC’s Uniform Automated Operation of Vehicles Act is a very positive step in the right direction.

Modern transportation is hugely beneficial in American society, but it carries the potential for significant, and sometimes fatal, risks. The average American is expected to experience at least four car crashes over the course of a lifetime. For teens and young adults between the ages of 15 to 25, traffic collisions are the leading cause of death.

CEI has released my fourth annual report on state barriers to vehicle platooning, “Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning: A Guide for State Legislators, 2019 Edition” (read the 2018 edition here, 2017 edition here, and 2016 edition here).

The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on June 20th on the Trump administration’s Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) motor vehicle rule. The rule proposes to freeze Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards at model year 2020 levels and terminate California’s unlawful power to regulate fuel economy.

A recent survey conducted for the American Energy Alliance clearly shows that the public does not support congressional efforts to extend or expand federal tax credits for purchasers of electric vehicles. Current subsidies of up to $7500 are available only for the first 200,000 EVs sold by each automaker. 

In 1982, when Congress designated the National Network—the approximately 200,000 miles of truck corridors that crisscross the U.S.—it also set a 28.5-foot minimum limit on tandem trailer length. Some states have opted to allow trucks that pull two longer, 33-foot trailers (“twin-33s”), but most have not. In the interest of promoting interstate commerce as the Constitution directs the federal government to do, these limits should be standardized nationwide.

Today the Competitive Enterprise Institute released my new report, “Transforming Surface Transportation Reauthorization: A 21st Century Approach to Address America’s Greatest Infrastructure Challenge.” In it, I argue that past approaches to funding America’s highways—namely, having the federal government pick up the majority of the initial construction tab while assuming states will then maintain these highways, all largely funded through taxes on motor fuel—will no longer hold and that a new approach is needed.

Seventeen automakers, including Ford, General Motors, and Toyota Motor North America sent a letter on 6th June to President Donald J. Trump urging him not to challenge California’s authority to regulate fuel economy. Instead, the companies want Mr. Trump to negotiate a compromise with California over model year (MY) 2021-2026 fuel economy standards. 

As we pointed out last year when New York City attacked Uber, Lyft, and other ride-hailing firms by imposing an interim supply cap, politicians fighting these new entrants to the urban transportation sector ignore the harms their protectionist policies do to their constituent consumers.