CARB, EPA, and the law: clarifying the history and the future

Since 1967, the EPA has consistently said that California can make its own emissions rules. In fact, California’s ability to do this is embodied in federal law. With yesterday’s refusal to grant an additional waiver, the EPA has put itself on very shaky legal ground. Many people think this is really a delaying tactic to put the matter in the courts until the current administration is out of office.

The legal issues

Because it had its own air pollution agency and laws before the federal laws were passed, California is exempt from the various Clean Air Acts (including a specific exemption in the Clean Air Act of 1977) as long as it obtains a waiver from the federal government and its rules are more stringent than applicable federal standards.

In forty years, the EPA has never, until now, denied a waiver to California. The EPA has not, in spite of an executive order issued in May, enacted any federal CO2 standards, therefore California’s standards meet the test (some is more stringent than none). The EPA only denied a specific waiver; it did not, and cannot (despite various headlines) override the law permitting California to create its own standards. Furthermore, the EPA’s decision can be appealed in the courts of the United States and the US Supreme Court has already said that greenhouse gases can be treated as a pollutant, so the legal precedents and existing case law are all on California’s side. In all likelihood, the only thing the EPA has done is delay the implementation of the California laws, probably until after the end of the Bush Administration unless a federal court and a federal appeals court decide in their favor and the Supreme Court allows the case to be fast-tracked.

Again, the EPA did not say California couldn’t make its own rules any more; it doesn’t have that authority. It simply refused to grant a waiver. California does have the right, guaranteed by the current federal law, to enact its own standards so long as they are more stringent than existing federal standards. For whatever reason, the EPA has not set greenhouse gas standards, despite the fact the courts have already said they can be treated as pollutants. California’s right to enact restrictions in the absence of federal standards has been established numerous times from the earliest days of restrictions on auto emissions.

The EPA decision may not be legal. The EPA is going to have to show cause, in conformance with the law, for denial of the waiver in the absence of any standards of its own. This is exactly why California has the exemption it does; it had a regulatory agency and required compliance with emissions standards before the federal goverment did. The fact the EPA is currently under an executive order to promulgate such standards and has not done so makes its stance even less likely to stand up to close scrutiny.

I don’t know why Congress, which up until January 2005 could have passed legislation vesting sole power for this type of standard in the EPA, did not do so. I do know why they can’t do it and I am somewhat concerned about what might happen in a year or so, when the matter either makes it through the courts or a new EPA administrator grants the waiver. Like I said, the bulk of legal precedent is on California’s side and they are quite likely to prevail and then proceed to enforce their standards with a vengeance, which would be disastrous for the entire auto industry, among others.

If the EPA’s decision is reversed by the courts, not only do the CARB standards become law in California, they also become law in the other states that have decided to adopt the California standards because current law allows any state to adopt the California standards. The issue has already been decided in the federal courts. So, again, it’s not a case of one set of standards for one state, another for the other 49; it’s a case of 17 states, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Washington, or just over one-third of the states, containing over 46% of the U.S. population, with one standard and the rest with another, although they are also free to choose to adopt the California standards whenever they want.

The patchwork argument

The main argument of the auto industry is that this decision was needed, and that the EPA is saving customers thousands of dollars on each car they buy, because otherwise there would be a patchwork of different rules for different states. However, CARB rules are not just for California; a number of other states, including New York and Massachusetts, have signed on and their decisions have been upheld in three separate court cases, including one in Vermont. So it’s not 49 states and one; it’s a number of states where a sizable percentage (nearly half) of the American people live.

As far as a patchwork goes, I live in a state where the EPA, under the current administration, has different rules for different cities. We can’t have a 70 mile-per-hour speed limit in Harris County, our vehicles have to pass a stricter (and more costly) annual emissions test, we even have special rules governing how long trucks can idle. This is Texas, hardly what one would call a bastion of liberalism.

If you want a one country-one rule standard, it’s quite simple. The EPA can adopt the California standards nationwide and industrywide, rendering the issue moot. Or Congress could pass a law that says the EPA has sole jurisdiction in this type of issue.

I am all for a single set of standards but the EPA has to set them, and I don’t see that happening in the current administration which is hostile toward anything to do with greenhouse gases. California standards are unrealistic at this time and there is a large middle ground between the California standards and those implied in the new energy law that should have been addressed by both the CARB and the EPA before they came to loggerheads.

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Hemi-hugger or a tree-hugger, a single set of standards that allow industries to function while making an effort to advance technology and allowing time for the development of infrastructure of one kind or another (hydrogen filling stations, better distribution of ethanol, etc.) needs to be worked out. Sadly, no one on either side seems to want to do this.

Even if California wins, instead of the so-called patchwork of standards, there are really only two: California and federal. All states must adhere to one or the other.

Other arguments

Let’s start with the title of the AutoBlog entry, “Sorry CARB: EPA says states can’t regulate their own emissions.” That’s factually incorrect, because, as I have repeatedly pointed out, California can regulate emissions. California has done so many times since the 1960s. Also, as I repeatedly pointed out, the EPA cannot, by law, prohibit California from regulating emissions; it can only approve or decline the federally mandated waiver.

Next, “In short, it means that California and the 16 other states vying for independent CO2 regulations are completely helpless in forcing automakers to be held to a separate, higher standard. Of course, California is now threatening to sue the EPA, which will provide interesting headlines but likely no alternative outcome.” That’s wishful thinking; California is extremely likely to prevail because every court decision to date, including a Supreme Court decision on greenhouse gases, and existing federal law support their position. In addition, they have ample precedent in that no previous waiver has been declined and the California statutes comply with the standards established by existing federal law.

Finally, “Having multiple regulations would set back R&D spending for years, as automakers would be chasing their own tails trying to comply with multiple regulations.” The maxiumum number of standards, if California prevails, is two: California or federal. Yes, that’s a multiple, and quite possibly the highest number the blog author can count without assistance, but a rather low one and it’s a situation automakers have had to deal with for years. Plus they all have the option of designing their new vehicles to meet a single standard, California’s, which would also meet the federal standards by exceeding them.

So Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Washington, far from being completely helpless, have plenty of ammunition and a superior strategic and tactical advantage in this matter.

Allpar’s holiday schedule

Normally, our traffic drops off sharply for the Christmas weekend, so we’re probably not going to do our usual update on Monday, December 24. Instead, we’ll either delay it a couple of days and start doing Wednesday updates for a while, or we’ll just drop it to December 31.

We have a lot of good material coming up, including more minivan repair guides, Chrysler cars of 1966, a history of Chrysler Airtemp, and - well, you’ll find out! (The Airtemp story has already been posted. Can you find it?)

I would like to thank everyone involved in Allpar over the past 13 years; the number of people who provided key information is amazing when I look back on it. The people who made Allpar a friendly, social place to visit on the Web are also invaluable, and I appreciate both groups - along with those who provided necessary help, resources, code, or just a pat on the back.

Happy New Year to everyone, with my heartfelt thanks for your help in making Allpar what it is now - and for enabling me to take this strange and amazing journey.

What’s been going on?

What’s been going on?

First, I’ve been trying to get photos of the old Chrysler Airtemp air conditioners. I think you can guess what’s coming up..

Second, I’ve been trying to lay my hands on a 1986 Annual Report from Chrysler Corporation.

Third, I’ve been going through masses of our 1,360 pages trying to get everything onto strict html (so Explorer users can see the new margins), checking the descriptions, keywords, and titles (which are wrong more often than I’d like to admit), and make everything Unicode (to make the server happier).

Fourth, I’ve moved off most of the ancillary sites to a virtual private server where they can play without adding to the Allpar load. Hopefully we’ll see a small speedup from this.

Finally, I’ve been lying on a very expensive table being moved back and forth in the cold, cold air … I’m not sure how much of this I should say except that the technicians are very nice in what could be a rather nasty or embarassing situation. Oh, and I have some new, small tattoos - replacing my laundry-marker cross-hairs with permanent dots (I’m very glad they didn’t tattoo on cross-hairs!) I don’t know if I can get to Detroit for the auto show this year but someone will represent Allpar - I hope.

Oops, BBEdit’s finished getting the next batch of files ready. Time to go.

Chrysler Easter eggs

Three people have now written in to say that this 2009 Dodge Ram, taken from the Mopar site, is “for real.” (See our full story with more photos and details including the higher-power Hemis.)

But this is not a story about the Dodge Ram. It’s about incentives, Easter eggs, and Jason Vines.

By now you may know that Jason Vines resigned; buried in the story of his resignation, and not even mentioned by the internal Scoop, was Mike Aberlich’s retirement. One wonders if there’s a connection between at least the Vines story and the Ram photo.

Until recently, news was released in a traditional fashion by Chrysler. Major outlets and privileged reports got advance notice of big releases, letting them take the time to edit carefully (or not), with the inevitable leaks at times - one of the glossy magazines was photographed taking photos of the Dodge Challenger, unleashing that prototype months before the planned deluge.

Then, in what may have been an over-reaction to a photo prematurely released on a South American message board - a release that was somehow blamed by some on Allpar, even though we were about the last to post it, waiting for it to appear on Autoblog, Jalopnik, and other sources - last December. At that time, Allpar had the press materials for the January auto show, ready and waiting for posting; and as each car was leaked, we posted the information that was leaked, following the traditional “once it’s out, it’s out” logic. We did not like this system; it’s much easier to set articles to automagically appear exactly at the end of the embargo period than to suddenly have to post right away to avoid being the last one out with the news.

Allpar, by the way, has NEVER broken an embargo. We have, however, released information that was given to us by people outside the company - spy shots, rumors, etc. When given embargos, we honor them. When not given an embargo, we post.

Moving on, there was a lot of talk about the best way to handle this. Most companies would be clever and have a different version of a news story, maybe saying that a gear ratio was 3.91 to one person, 3.92 to another, etc., until the source was uncovered. Instead, Chrysler instituted an Easter egg hunt. News suddenly started to arrive without warning, showing up on any site they felt like posting on. Sometimes it was the Firehouse, sometimes it was the actual news page, then it was the corporate news page on the public site, then there was the internal Scoop. Suddenly we had to be looking at four or five different places at once, never knowing where the next big story would appear. Last week I thought Autoblog had gotten an exclusive on Challenger pricing, but it turned out they just saw a press release where we hadn’t looked recently.

It’s been nutty, and the only rationale I can think of for this, other than possibly having a deep-seated resentment of journalists and/or bloggers and/or enthusiast sites, is that someone might be getting bonuses or performance appraisals based on hits to their web site complex. If you know you’ll be rewarded for hits to chrysler.com, you release stuff there now and then, and hordes of people will have to check to see if anything’s changed. Nasty for the server guys who have to deal with the extra load for no good business reason, but nice for your personal metrics. If, that is, anyone is being judged based on this metric. I do recall that, when the PR people were trying to justify the most recent inane Buy German campaign, they used hits to the askdrz.com site as a public metric to show that the ads were successful. At the same time, they made darned sure they’d see a huge number of hits by making that site the only avenue for electronic communications with Chrysler (by customers and prospects, that is), and by launching a massive Web ad campaign that paid for hits to askdrz.com.

Of course, it’s possible that this jaundiced view is unmerited. That’s what happens when you take training in organizational psychology and apply it to seemingly unrelated facts. But let’s just say that Mr. Vines was being judged, one way or another, on hits to various web sites. What better way to get hits into the mopar.com site than by planting an Easter egg there? And what would you do if you were his boss and discovered this?

Then again, maybe he got a job offer somewhere else, or decided to jump off the sinking ship when he saw product or marketing plans. Maybe these seemingly unrelated issues really were unrelated. And I haven’t figured out where Mike Aberlich fits in, except that perhaps he, too, is tired of Chrysler being a basket case, after being the hottest automaker in the word a short ten years ago.

Some small changes at allpar

For your convenience, I’ve been moving over non-allpar sites to a new server (a VPS for energy efficiency). Allpar runs on its own dedicated server, but what with all the forum traffic, we’ve started to have slowdowns now and then. Moving off other sites hosted on the same server should help to ease the load and make things faster.

I’ve already moved over valiant.org, pentastars.com, eekcars.com, acarplace.com, and toyoland.com (which, incidentally, I no longer run). In progress is ptcruizer.com. Allpar.org is remaining where it is for the moment, because it has nearly no impact, though it is gaining in popularity.

Personally, I wish I could offload some of my own activities, particularly those that involve lying down on an electronic slab for 90 minutes, in a freezing-cold room, wearing nothing but a strategically placed blankie, but that’s another story.

We’ll be going back to shooting video when the weather warms up.

The ultimate Mopar holiday present

The ultimate Mopar holiday gift has just been introduced - by the Society of Automotive Engineers. It’s Willem Weertman’s long-awaited book, Chrysler Engines 1922-1998, and it’s about what you would expect from the company’s chief engine designer - the man in charge when the slant six, Hemi V8, and 2.2 liter engines were created.

The book is intensive in detail, discussing little-known aspects of every engine built by Chrylser (for car use) during the long time span from the company’s creation through to 1998. Weertman tells the inside story not only of the engines he was involved with, but also of the earliest engines used by Chrysler, even those not sold in Chryslers — the original engines from the cars that predated the company.

Chrysler Historical threw open its collection for Weertman, not surprisingly, since the book sprang out of an internal project which was to discuss the company’s engines and cars, as an educational piece for the new owners. As a result, the book is filled with rare photos, diagrams, and specifications, the like of which have never been seen in one place. Many of the diagrams have been greatly enhanced, so unlike the average car book where many pictures are less than the original, in Chrysler Engines 1922-1998, they are better. Photographs appear to have been digitally enhanced, so the black and white photography is also far more clear than we are used to. The two-column layout is clear and easy to read; and tables abound with specific details, in some cases year by year. Weertman also covers the cars the engines went into, goes into critical reviews and racing results, and in essence provides an almost complete story.

Every engine gets full attention in this book, unlike many others (including, for example, The Ultimate American V-8 Engine Data Book). That means development history, charts, diagrams, and photos. The largest share of attention seems to go into the first three Chrysler engines, with huge diagrams and cross sections carefully reconstructed so they are very clear and easy to see; but everything is covered. Weertman also goes over alternative choices - engines that were considered but not made, such as a V-6 based on the 318 (rejected for the Australian Valiant), and the aluminum-head slant six. The 2.2 liter and 2.5 liter engines get attention that is normally lacking, and even the foreign engines, including the Volkswagen 1.7 liter motor for the Rabbit, are covered to a degree (including cutaway diagrams, specifications, and photos of the cars it went into). Dodge Brothers engines, from the time the company was acquired, are also covered, as are AMC engines at the time of the acquisition (selected prior engines are discussed briefly). Not included were engines from cars that were actually engineered and built by other companies and sold with the Dodge labels (e.g. Mitsubishi Colt), diesels or gasoline engines purchased for use in Dodge trucks, or alternative-fuel engines other than the turbines; most experimental engines are also not covered, though, again, some are mentioned in passing and some are covered fairly well.

There are special sections for the military engines developed and built by Chrysler during World War II (mainly for tanks and aviation), for truck engines, for boats, and for the turbines. For every engine, specifications include bore spacing, number of main bearings, valve operation, and other details; often, horsepower and torque ratings are listed by year. The photos and detail on marine engines is welcome since this is an area where information tends to be hard to find; aviation engines used in World War II are also discussed, and in both cases, photos and diagrams are plentiful and high quality.

Willem Weertman - not surprisingly for a long-time Chrysler engineer wrote clearly, with craftsmanship, and is easy to understand. His language and fact base are exacting, as one would expect from him but not from many writers. One can feel confident that he got his facts right.

Chrysler Engines 1922-1998 has perhaps one fault; it generally does not mention any possible drawbacks or compromises in design of engines that were actually produced, and many interesting or colorful aspects of engine development revealed by other engineers of the company are skipped in favor of a more direct, purposeful, descriptive, but above all else 100% positive coverage. He does mention in passing items like the origin of the V-10 truck engine (a call from Bob Lutz asking if the 360 could have two cylinders added; its feasibility was shown on computer and then checked with a test engine), and provides the kind of looks at discussions of engine design that only an insider has access to.

That said, this book - measuring 381 pages plus appendices - is an invaluable resource that will provide Mopar fans and owners with a huge amount of knowledge they have probably never encountered before. As we write this, in early December, it seems like a good time to mention that for $75, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better, more engaging present for the Mopar fan in your life - and personally, I think we can buy presents for ourselves!

Available from the Society of Automotive Engineers. You can read the interview first (or after you order the book!)

PS: if you want to buy a Mopar-lovin’ friend a book and find Willem’s is too rich for your blood, take a look at our selection of books from Amazon.