TechCrunch Mobility: The wheels are starting to come off the Fisker EV bus

TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Before we jump into the startup and tech fray, I wanted to touch on some activity over on the hill — Capitol Hill, that is. The Biden Administration has released two new (and separate) proposed standards — via the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency — that will affect U.S. automakers and, ultimately, you. While both regulations have been softened to assuage the automotive industry, car dealers and unions, they also put in place far stricter standards than existed before. The DOE issued a gentler “petroleum equivalency factor,” which gives EVs a score, of sorts, under the government’s corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards. The original proposal would have made it difficult for automakers to meet the CAFE standards, which would have meant billions of dollars in fines. (E&E has a nice explainer.) Meanwhile, the EPA released its tailpipe standards for 2027 to 2032 model year cars and light-duty trucks that will put stiffer requirements on automakers but gives them more flexibility to meet the proposed rules via a variety of powertrains. In other words, the standards are technology agnostic and can be met without shifting an entire fleet to battery electric. It’s also far less stringent than the… Click below to read the full story from TechCrunch
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