• potate
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    5 months ago

    Fines clearly don’t work. We need criminal penalties.

    • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      They don’t work because they are super low.

      If the fines cost more than what companies gain from cheating, they will be a lot less inclined to cheat.

      But in this case, this is a joke fine.

  • OmnipotentEntity@beehaw.org
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    5 months ago

    6 million cars, the fine is $140 million. That’s $24 or so per car. There’s no way that GM saved only $24/car doing this. So the fine is just a cost of doing business.

    EDIT:

    The company has also voluntarily retired about 50 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution credits, which are issued by the E.P.A. and used by auto companies to make it easier to comply with increasingly stringent federal tailpipe emissions standards. G.M. estimates the value of the loss of the credits at about $300 million, reflecting what it paid for them a decade or so ago. However, the market value of those carbon credits varies, and a more recent government estimate of $86 per credit would put the value at about $4.6 billion.

    This is probably where the actual sting to them is.

  • KeriKitty (They(/It))@pawb.social
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    5 months ago

    That’s how many major car companies caught bullshitting emissions requirements now? It’s almost as if there’s some kind of underlying thing driving (pun unintended but welcome ;3 Call it comic relief if you like) capitalist entities toward awful behaviour.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    5 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The Biden administration reached a settlement with General Motors after determining that the automaker sold nearly six million cars that emitted more planet-warming carbon dioxide than the company had claimed, violating federal regulations.

    will pay more than $145.8 million in penalties for selling vehicles between model years 2012 and 2018 that were required to comply with Obama-era auto tailpipe emissions standards designed to reduce planet-warming pollution.

    “Our investigation has achieved accountability and upholds an important program that’s reducing air pollution and protecting communities across the country.”

    GM remains committed to reducing auto emissions and working toward achieving the Administration’s fleet electrification goals,” the statement said.

    Once fully implemented, the new rules are designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032, up from less than 10 percent last year.

    The loss of G.M.’s carbon dioxide pollution credits in the settlement could make it more difficult or expensive for the company to comply with those new rules.


    The original article contains 554 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Delusional@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    People shit on CA smog tests but if every state had them, this wouldn’t be as much of an issue and the states would generate more revenue.

  • ch00f@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    How do you emit excess CO2? Like I can imagine if it isn’t burning clean and shitting out CO or particulates or something, but wouldn’t “excess CO2” just mean they’re just inefficient?

    Do they not meet their mileage ratings?

    • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      They had standard to meet that a vehicle of a certain weight/class must not exceed certain amount of emissions. They made vehicles that didn’t meet that standard, shrugged and put them to market anyway because they knew the profits would outweigh any “punishment” fron the spineless regulatory bodies.

      The whoe CAFE standards and the shift in car sizes associated with them should be enough evidence to prove the EPA has failed and become disconnected from its true purposes

      • ch00f@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yeah I get that. I think it’s just odd to phrase it as emitting too much CO2, and not getting poor mileage.