EPA finalizes first clean trucks rule in 21 years, but it could be better
The EPA has finalized a long-awaited update to their truck emissions rules, the first update to US truck clean air standards since 2001, though environmental groups say the EPA could do better.
The new rule starts in model year 2027 and is up to 80% stronger than the current standard. It will reduce smog-forming Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) emissions from trucks by almost half by 2045.
NOx is one of the primary components of smog, and is emitted by the combustion of gasoline and diesel. Diesel engines tend to produce much more NOx than gasoline engines, so heavy diesel trucks have significant NOx impacts. About 16-18% of NOx emissions come from heavy duty trucks (though in some states it’s higher, like in California at 32%), despite them accounting for a smaller percentage of total road traffic.
So, regulating the relatively smaller amount of trucks can have outsized influence on overall NOx emissions.
The EPA claims this new regulation will result in several benefits by 2045:
- Up to 2,900 fewer premature deaths
- 6,700 fewer hospital admissions and emergency department visits
- 18,000 fewer cases of childhood asthma
- 3.1 million fewer cases of asthma symptoms and allergic rhinitis symptoms
- 78,000 fewer lost days of work
- 1.1 million fewer lost school days for children
- $29 billion in annual net benefits
The regulations will also “increase useful life of governed vehicles by 1.5–2.5 times, and will yield emissions warranties that are 2.8–4.5 times longer,” according to the EPA.
But not everyone is happy with the new rule. While it’s a big step forward for diesel truck emissions regulation, environmental groups had hoped the rule would focus more on zero-emissions trucks, rather than merely making cleaner versions of dirty diesels.
The Natural Resources Defense Council hailed the EPA for finally updating these rules after 20 years of inaction, but claimed that “these standards fall short, and the agency missed a critical opportunity to slash soot and smog and accelerate the shift to the cleanest vehicles” – by which it means fully-electric trucks. And the American Lung Association praised the rule, looking forward to the EPA’s plans to issue more rules on cleaner trucks starting next year.
On the other side, the Diesel Technology Forum, an industry group in favor of expanded diesel trucking, seemed quite happy with the new rule. They claim this will help accelerate the turnover of old diesel trucks to newer, more efficient models – and think that electric trucks are not the ideal solution for trucking.
Thankfully, this isn’t the end, as far as the EPA goes. The EPA plans to release further rules for greenhouse gas emissions in heavy duty vehicles starting spring of 2023, and these rules will also go into effect in 2027. Today’s rule change focused on NOx emissions, but CO2 is another important emission to regulate in order to fight climate change.
Transportation is the largest source of emissions in the US. Medium- and Heavy-duty trucks combined are responsible for 26% of US transportation CO2 emissions. Light-duty vehicles are responsible for more – 57%, a majority of transport emissions – but there are a lot more of them than there are of trucks.
The world is currently well-above pre-industrial CO2 levels. Any carbon-positive technology, such as diesel, can only make CO2 levels go up when they need to be going down. The first step towards getting back to ~350ppm CO2 from our current measure of 416ppm (and rising) is to move to zero-carbon technology in every sector, particularly the most-polluting ones like transportation. Putting more new diesel engines on the road just ensures that they will continue polluting for decades into the future, and which will eventually need to be replaced by zero-emission trucks anyway.
The EPA had planned to issue truck CO2 rules this year, but due to new incentives for zero-emission vehicles in the Inflation Reduction Act, they pushed back their decision until this coming spring. With up to $40,000 available for commercial zero-emission vehicles and several new electric trucks just recently coming to market, the EPA seems confident that it can issue stricter CO2 rules than previously planned.
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Renewables increased their output by almost 10% and provided nearly a quarter of US electrical generation in 2024, according to newly released US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data.
Solar was still No 1
Solar remained the US’s fastest-growing source of electricity in 2024. Utility-scale and “estimated” small-scale (e.g., rooftop) solar combined increased by 26.9% in 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, according to the SUN DAY Campaign, which reviewed EIA’s “Electric Power Monthly” report data.
Utility-scale solar thermal and photovoltaic expanded by 32%, while small-scale solar increased by 15.3%. Together, solar was nearly 7% (6.91%) of total US electrical generation for the year.
In December alone, electrical generation by utility-scale solar expanded by 42% compared to December 2023.
Small-scale solar (systems <1 MW) accounted for 27.9% of all solar generation and provided 1.9% of the US electricity supply in 2024. In fact, small-scale solar PV generates over five times more electricity than utility-scale geothermal.
2024 renewables milestones
The electrical output of US wind farms in 2024 grew by 7.7% year-over-year. Wind remains the largest source of electrical generation among renewable energy sources, accounting for 10.3% of the US total.
Wind and solar combined provided more than 17.2% of US electrical generation during 2024. The mix of all renewables – wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, geothermal – provided 24.2% of total US electricity production in 2024 compared to 23.2% of electrical output a year earlier.
Between January and December, electrical generation by renewables grew by 9.6% compared to the same period the year before – nearly three times the growth rate of natural gas (3.3%) and over 10 times that of nuclear power (0.9%).
In December alone, electrical generation by renewables grew by 10.1% compared to December 2023.
Wind and solar together produced 15.9% more electricity than coal and came close to matching nuclear power’s share of total generation (17.2% vs. 17.8%).
The mix of renewables reinforced their position as the second largest source of electrical generation, behind only natural gas.
“Renewable energy sources now provide a quarter of the nation’s electricity,” said the SUN DAY Campaign’s executive director, Ken Bossong. “Consequently, the rash efforts of the Trump Administration to undermine wind, solar, and other renewables will have serious negative consequences for the nation’s electricity supply and the economy.”
Read more: Renewables provided 90% of new US capacity in 2024 – FERC
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Tesla has applied for a permit to operate a ride-hailing service in California, but it will be using human drivers rather than the promised robotaxi.
Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that Tesla would launch “unsupervised self-driving in Texas and California in Q2 2025.”
However, we suspected that this would not be “unsupervised self-driving’ in customer vehicles like Tesla has been promising since 2016, but an internal fleet with teleoperation support in a geo-fenced area for ride-hailing services, much like Waymo has been doing for years.
Sure enough, Musk confirmed last month that this was the plan for Austin in June. We describe this as a “moving of the goal post” for Tesla.
With the focus on Austin in June, Tesla stopped talking about California, which was announced to happen at the same time as Texas last year.
Now, Bloomberg reports that Tesla has applied for a ride-hailing permit in California:
The electric vehicle manufacturer applied late last year for what’s known as a transportation charter-party carrier permit from the California Public Utilities Commission, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg. That classification means Tesla would own and control the fleet of vehicles.
But this application is for a regular ride-hailing service, like Uber, albeit for an internal fleet rather than vehicles operated by customers.
Tesla has yet to apply for a permit to operate driverless vehicles:
In its communications with California officials, Tesla discussed driver’s license information and drug-testing coordination, suggesting the company intends to use human drivers, at least initially. Tesla is applying for the same type of permit used by Waymo, Alphabet Inc.’s robotaxi business. While Tesla has approval to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver in California, it doesn’t have, nor has applied for, a driverless testing or deployment permit from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, according to a spokesperson.
Musk claimed that he believes Tesla will be able to achieve “unsupervised self-driving” in California by “the end of the year”, but he has claimed that every year for the past decade.
The latest available data shows that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system is achieving about 500 miles between critical disengagement. Tesla has stated that it believes it needs to reach 700,000 miles between critical disengagement to be safer than humans.
Electrek’s Take
This is just a step for Tesla to test ride-hailing services ahead of autonomy. A nothing burger, really, since ride-hailing has obviously been solved already by several companies, Lyft, Uber, Didi, etc.
What needs to be solved is autonomous driving.
As I have been saying for the last year, I am sure Tesla will be able to launch an internal fleet with teleoperation support in a geo-fenced area for a ride-hailing service in California later this year like it plans to do in Austin in June, but that’s nowhere near what Tesla promised since 2016.
It’s a moving of the goal post, and it’s basically just proving that Tesla is able to do something similar to Waymo – 5 years later.
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Tesla drivers in China are using the new Full Self-Driving update and are racking up fines as the system drives in bike lanes and makes illegal turns.
As we reported earlier this week, Tesla has started to release advanced driver-assist features sold under its Full Self-Driving (FSD) package in China.
The feature is called “Autopilot automatic assisted driving on urban roads” as Tesla seems more cautious about using the term “Full Self-Driving” in China, but it is a feature known for being in the FSD package everywhere else.
Tesla has been facing a lot of issues in releasing FSD features in China. The automaker has been limited in its neural net training due to restrictions about data coming in and out of the country, and it found it difficult to adapt to regulations regarding bus lanes and other China-specific road rules.
CEO Elon Musk warned that FSD in China would be a problem during Tesla’s earnings call last month due to the different rules. He mentioned bus lanes as an example:
By the way, were about the biggest challenges in making FSD work in China is the bus lanes are very complicated. And there’s like literally like hours of the day that you’re allowed to be there and not be there. And then if you accidentally go in that bus lane at the wrong time, you get an automatic ticket instantly. So, it’s kind of a big deal, bus lanes in China.
The automated ticketing system is not just for bus lanes and Tesla owners are learning about it the hard way.
Tesla owners have been testing out the features in live streams on social media and some of them are reporting getting numerous tickets for using FSD.
For example, this Tesla driver received 7 tickets in the space of a single drive because the FSD drove in bike lanes and made illegal maneuvers:
Car News China tracked several live streams and customer feedback on Chinese social media, and the consensus appears to be that it’s “pretty good, but with lots of bugs”.
The drivers are particularly impressed with how “natural” FSD drives, but they also noted that it still
Where the system lacks is the understanding of local traffic rules (such as no use of shoulder/bike lanes on turns, similar to the bus lane rules that Elon talked about in the most recent earnings call) and the sporadic use of wrong lanes (e.g. going straight in a left or right turn only lane) or navigation showing the vehicle in one lane when in fact it’s in another or wrong perception of objects (red balloons as traffic lights). Many of the live streams counted the number of traffic violations from the vehicle and the number of points that would have been taken off or licenses suspended (12 points = suspension) as a result.
Chinese media websites are now getting flooded with Tesla vehicles running red traffic lights, failing to recognize green lights, and driving on restricted lanes, like the video above.
The report also highlights how Tesla is facing strong competition in ADAS in China, with competitors like Nio, Xpeng, BYD, and others launching competitive products, which is not necessarily the case in other markets for Tesla.
Electrek’s Take
I feel like this is likely going to result in bad PR for Tesla in China. You can’t have drivers losing their licenses because FSD doesn’t recognize bike lanes.
Now, of course, Tesla will say that the driver remains responsible, but I don’t know how good Tesla’s messaging is on that front in China.
It’s going to be an interesting story to track in the coming months.
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