Ohio, the state where a river caught fire at least 12 times, just voted to protect oil
The Ohio House has voted on a bill to ensure that the state cannot ban gas-powered vehicles, protecting pollution in a state that has one of the worst environmental legacies in the US.
One of the biggest environmental stories in the history of the US was when the Cuyahoga river, which runs through Akron and Cleveland, caught fire in 1969 when an oil slick on the water was set ablaze, damaging a railroad bridge.
The fire made headlines and news spread across the country, and the story in some ways sparked the national environmental movement. But that’s not the only time the river caught fire – it burned at least a dozen times before that, due to constant oil slicks on the river.
Despite that wake-up call, things haven’t improved much for Ohio since then. The state ranks 46th in air pollution and 48th in toxic pollutants, and 42nd place in life expectancy, its residents dying more than 4 years earlier than those of California, New York and Hawaii.
And now, Ohio House republicans are expanding on that terrible environmental legacy by passing a bill that ensures the state won’t ban gas-powered vehicles, which are broadly responsible for poor air quality and significant health harms across the US. The bill specifically stops Ohio from adopting California’s “Advanced Clean Cars II” regulation, or any regulation which would be stronger than federal standards, even though nobody was proposing adoption of those standards. It passed 70-23, with all 65 republicans and 5 Democrats voting in favor.
As is common with republican policymaking, the bill does not have a lot of substance to it. The relevant section is only 10 lines long, and does not make any attempt to lay out the reasons or backing for its existence (compare to California’s thousands of pages of scientific documents and analysis backing its regulation).
The bill’s reasoning is backwards
The best “reasoning” we can find are a series of quotes from state republicans, quoted by WOUB, Ohio University’s public broadcaster.
One particularly ridiculous quote is from Representative Bill Seitz (R-Cincinnati), who says EVs would “socialize the price of recharging an EV while keeping the benefits private.” This runs counter to reality, where in actual fact, gas-powered vehicles impose significant health costs which are not paid for by the private car users burning that gasoline.
These socialized costs of gasoline total up to $7 trillion globally over the course of a year, and $760 billion in the US alone – costs which Seitz wants you to keep paying in the form of health bills forced on you by the poisonous fossil fuels he’s voted to support.
Seitz was also a co-sponsor of Ohio’s House Bill 6. Described as the “worst energy bill of the 21st century,” it raised energy prices to pay for a corrupt bailout of energy companies. It was passed after bribes to state republicans and led to a racketeering conviction for republican former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder. That bill extended subsidies to coal plants which continue to cost Ohioans hundreds of millions of dollars, socializing the costs of dirty pollution on both the front end through direct subsidy and the back end through higher health costs. So we hardly think that Seitz is genuinely interested in reducing costs to Ohioans.
What happens next
Ohio is not content to harm its own residents’ health, it’s also trying to harm the health of those outside of Ohio. In September, Ohio republicans championed a bill which passed in the US House of Representatives which would force California to have worse pollution standards. But that bill didn’t go anywhere – Senate Democrats, and President Joe Biden, aren’t outwardly hostile to human life like republicans are, and were not interested in passing such legislation.
But the Ohio bill might actually make progress, particularly due to Ohio’s unconstitutionally-gerrymandered district maps which give the environment-hostile republican party large majorities in its statehouse. It moves on to the state Senate next, and if it passes through the Senate, on to republican Governor DeWine’s desk.
But in the end, this bill probably won’t do much. The state wasn’t planning to adopt California’s regulations anyway, so this is just an example of Ohio House republicans showing everyone who they are. Whenever they’re given a chance – even when it’s not even a question anyone is asking – they’ll side against people and in favor of pollution. We’ve seen this before from the national republican party, too – it’s kind of a pattern.
What the bill might do, though, is signal to EV companies that their investment dollars are not welcome in Ohio. There are currently hundreds of billions of dollars being invested across the country into green jobs. Ohio has already seen some of that money, with Honda investing over $4 billion in the state to build up EV jobs, and is moving forward with installing DC fast chargers with federal money, despite being an EV laggard (perhaps due to one of the highest dumb EV fees in the nation, at $200/year).
Actions like this could make the state less attractive for future investment, as we’ve noted about other states’ anti-EV efforts. This was pointed out by Rep. Michele Grim (D-Toledo), who said “it signals those who want to invest their valuable dollars in clean energy and electric vehicle development that Ohio is not welcome to those investments. We should instead be taking steps to make sure Ohio is a more attractive state for clean energy job creation.”
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Tesla has reportedly yet to start testing its robotaxi service in Austin without a safety driver behind the wheel – just weeks before the planned launch.
For months now, Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have been hyping the launch of “Tesla Robotaxi”, a Uber-like ride-hailing service powered by autonomous Tesla vehicles, starting with a launch in Austin, Texas in June.
We have extensively reported that this launch is disappointing compared to what Tesla promised for years: that all its consumer vehicles built since 2016 are capable of self-driving.
Instead, Tesla plans to build an internal fleet of “10-20” Model Ys and have them offer ride-hailing services in a geo-fenced area around Austin, Texas, helped by human teleoperations. This is very similar to what Waymo has been offering in other cities for years, specifically in Austin, for months now.
Even with the significant downgrade in self-driving capabilities promised with this project, there are many doubts about Tesla’s ability to achieve the lesser goal.
That’s because the robotaxi service will be based on Tesla’s ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ program, which is currently achieving about 500 miles between critical disengagements fleet-wide, according to the latest crowdsourced data.
Tesla will be able to improve on that by optimizing a version for the geo-fenced area in Austin and it has been training its neural nets for that for months with vehicles going around Austin.
However, a new report now claims that Tesla has yet to start testing its service without safety drivers at the wheel – similar to Tesla’s public ‘Supervised FSD’. The Information wrote in a new report:
Elon Musk’s deadline for launching Tesla’s first robotaxi service, in Austin, Texas, is weeks away, but the company hadn’t started testing its cars without a human safety driver as of last month, according to an engineer close to the testing and a former employee. That’s a crucial step required before Tesla can launch the pilot service for customers.
For comparison, before launching its paid ride service in Austin, Waymo tested its vehicles with safety drivers in the area for 6 months and then without safety drivers for another 6 months.
Waymo has now taken over a significant market share of ride-hailing rides in the Texas capital, but it still has limitations; for example, it doesn’t drive on the interstate.
The report also mentions that Tesla has been working with local emergency services in Austin to develop intervention plans in order to avoid causing issues if its autonomous vehicles fail.
Electrek’s Take
This is the biggest softball goal. It’s a fraction of what was promised, it’s something that others have achieved before. It’s a punt created for Tesla to finally get a “win” in self-driving.
If they can’t even make it, it would be disastrous, but at least, I hope that it will finally open the eyes of many Tesla shareholders to the reality that Tesla is actually behind in autonomous driving and that Musk’s latest claims that Tesla will have “millions of robotaxi on the road” in 2026 are just the same as when he claimed it would happen in 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019: corporate puffery.
My main concern now is for public safety. I have little hope of US regulators being able to stop Tesla considering Trump is firing anyone who got in Musk’s way after he gave him over $250 million.
If Tesla brings its cowboy approach to this, it could get bad quickly.
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The development of Rivian’s R2 validation builds continues to progress. We know so because the American automaker’s founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, continues to pepper us with welcome updates with plenty of fantastic images. The latest post features the inner workings of Rivian’s Maximus drive unit, which will propel the upcoming R2 EVs when they hit the market next year.
Another day, another exciting social media update from RJ Scaringe. Nine days ago, the Rivian CEO shared a peek at the company’s new Maximus drive unit, designed to be more compact and efficiently built to help reduce cost-per-unit production.
Our only look was from outside the drive unit’s casing at the time, but it was exciting news nonetheless. As an encore, Scaringe posted photos of the R2 validation builds on a pilot line at the automaker’s facility in Normal, Illinois.
This evening, Scaringe took to Instagram and X once again to share a better look at the inner workings of the Rivian Maximus drive unit. Check it out:
RJ shares more images of Rivian’s Maximus development
Rivian’s CEO posted the three images above, which showcase some interesting perspectives of the developing drive unit. As previously shared by Rivian, Maximus uses a new continuous winding technique that reduces the total welds per stator and thus the total overall cost of building each one.
For comparison, Rivian’s current Enduro drive unit requires 264 stator welds, while Maximus only needs 24. You can see the stator windings in the image above to the left. Scaringe shared excitement in the progress of the Rivian team’s Maximus drive unit as well as some insight in his post:
I love the packaging on Maximus — the drive unit for R2. It has a side mounted inverter that utilizes flat area at the end of the motor to minimize the length of bus bars, keeping them light and efficient. The large planar shape also allows all processing and power electronics to exist on a single printed circuit board.
The inverter chassis closes out the oil cooled motor cavity and seamlessly routes coolant from the power modules to the drive unit’s heat exchanger with no extra parts.
Overall, the inverter part count is reduced by 41% relative to Enduro and structural inverter lid saves more parts and fasteners by also serving as the drive unit mount. I love this design efficiency. (heart emoji)
Looks fantastic, RJ. We can’t wait to see the visual progress of the R2 you share next!
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On today’s thrilling episode of Quick Charge, we’ve a huge spike in global EV sales and a huge dip in Tesla deliveries. Plus a whole bunch of news from Toyota, including an updated bZ that’s just a bit better than before … but is a bit better going to make a big difference?
We’re also on track for more than 1 in 4 new cars sold this year to be electric, with a whole lot more hybrids coming in to make up the difference and drive fuel demand down to a new yearly low. All this, plus the top 5 cheapest EVs to insure when you hit the play button.
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