Who's forcing Marchionne and all the other major automakers to sell mostly money-losing electric vehicles? More than any other person, it's Mary Nichols. She's run the California Air Resources Board since 2007, championing the state's zero-emission-vehicle quotas and backing President Barack Obama's national mandate to double average fuel economy to 55 miles per gallon by 2025. She was chairman of the state air regulator once before, a generation ago, and cleaning up the famously smoggy Los Angeles skies is just one accomplishment in a four-decade career.
Nichols really does intend to force automakers to eventually sell nothing but electrics. In an interview in June at her agency's heavy-duty-truck laboratory in downtown Los Angeles, it becomes clear that Nichols, at age 70, is pushing regulations today that could by midcentury all but banish the internal combustion engine from California's famous highways. "If we're going to get our transportation system off petroleum," she says, "we've got to get people used to a zero-emissions world, not just a little-bit-better version of the world they have now."
We've seen campaigns to defend smoking and not wearing seatbelts and not getting vaccinated. Is this like that, or is there more to it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Monday August 03 2015, @08:41PM
Btter yet, it's not even us, it's our children. Strangely, the "think of the children" line works less well when there's any sort of money involved. We're a greedy species.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @09:15PM
Problem is, we are also a lying species.
When one herd of fatcats is attacking another "because ecology!" and it makes you believe they are really caring about someone, or something besides their bank accounts... Well, there is that bridge for sale somewhere.