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Re: Trump’s EPA Will Fix the Most Hated Car Rule in America 

By: scubavol in GRITZ | Recommend this post (1)
Thu, 15 May 25 3:15 PM | 13 view(s)
Boardmark this board | Grits Breakfast of Champeens! 		Msg. 08349 of 08374
(This msg. is a reply to 08348 by De_Composed)
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I've dropped vehicles from my potential purchase list because their start/stop wasn't easliy defeatable. Horrible for the car. It's been years since ethanol-free was difficult to find anywhere I've wanted it.

http://www.pure-gas.org/

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The above is a reply to the following message:
Trump’s EPA Will Fix the Most Hated Car Rule in America
By: De_Composed in GRITZ
Thu, 15 May 25 2:31 PM 		Msg. 08348 of 08374

That's the most hated rule? How can it be the most hated rule when I had never even heard of it? I was hoping they were going to kill ethanol in our gas. That's the rule *I* hate. Sugaring the gas has ruined many of my gas-powered tools, to the point where I now drive fifty miles and pay 80¢ extra to get ethanol-free gasoline.

May 15, 2025

Making Automobiles Great Again: Trump’s EPA Will Fix the Most Hated Car Rule in America

The Trump administration vows to scrap the hated engine kill switch at stoplights—an unpopular climate gimmick critics call useless, unsafe, and maddeningly inconvenient.

by Jeff Reynolds
AMgreatness


It’s aggravating, unsafe, and doesn’t solve any climate problems.

The Trump administration has taken bold, decisive action in its first few months back in the White House. Many of these actions have zeroed in on wasteful spending, and some have caused a bit of controversy. But Trump 2.0 announced one action on May 12 that has the potential to heal our national wounds and repair the fissures in the Union. EPA Chief Lee Zeldin announced his agency will reverse the incentives that make automakers install an engine kill switch at red lights to keep you from idling your engine too long while you wait.

Our long national nightmare is over.

Uploaded Image
Calling it a climate participation trophy hits the absolute nail on the head. What problem does this solve?

How Did We Get Here?

The cult of climate doom has fostered some zany ideas over the years. Remember Steven Chu, who served as President Obama’s Secretary of Energy? He wanted to paint every roof and roadway in America white to reflect sunlight away from the Earth’s surface. Then there’s all that geoengineering, like spraying sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to block the light of the sun from reaching the atmosphere. Never mind implementing global communism to curtail the rise of carbon dioxide in the air.

It sure seems like the solutions to the so-called “climate crisis” have way more impact on the feelings of the unproven theory’s acolytes than on solving any actual problem.

It’s in this context that we examine why your newer car will shut itself off if you come to a stop for more than a few seconds while driving. The EPA created all sorts of goofy incentives for automakers to get their entire fleets of vehicles for sale in compliance by allowing them to average the miles per gallon across vehicles. Congress first enacted the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards in the 1970s in response to the Arab oil embargo that caused gas prices to skyrocket.

Since that time, CAFE standards have become a political playground for all sorts of progressive environmental jiggery-pokery (to paraphrase the late Antonin Scalia). Such was the case in 2007, when the Pelosi Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act that targeted an absurd CAFE average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The auto stop/start function allows automakers to boost their CAFE numbers, at least on paper. Somehow, the creative accounting behind the kill switch allows automakers to claim more fuel efficiency for their cars in stop-and-go traffic.

Never mind that it is aggravating, ineffective, and unsafe.

Many people commented on social media about how much they hate this feature in new cars. It saves a minuscule amount of fuel. Never mind the exponentially higher amount of wear and tear placed on the starter mechanism, which gets engaged about ten times more often due to these contraptions. The kill switch may mitigate a small amount of idling done at red lights and stop signs. But the fuel savings are barely noticeable—less than a gallon a month, according to one X user. As Not the Bee reported, “The average driver might save $1,000 over a decade of using the vehicle if they live in an urban area with frequent stops, but Enhanced Flooded Batteries and heavy-duty starters also cost more, meaning maintenance swallows up much or all of their savings.” It tends to wear out batteries far sooner than necessary, too.

Drivers in warm-weather states rejoiced, noting that the kill switch also kills the air conditioning on hot days. And many were quick to point out that a pause while waiting to make a left turn could cause the engine to cut out right when you need it most, causing real safety hazards.

In short, everybody hates this feature. But carmakers had too many financial and regulatory incentives to expand the program.

What Lee Zeldin Announced

It’s important to realize that nothing has actually been announced yet. No regulatory change or executive order has yet surfaced. But judging by the viral reaction to Zeldin’s post on X—8.3 million views and tens of thousands of reposts and replies, action could come soon. This is one of those issues that unites Americans of all stripes. When 80 percent of people agree on something, it makes you wonder how the laws came about that oppose it—no matter the issue. If the Trump administration can cut through the morass to get something like this done, it will go down in history as one of the most effective and consequential periods in American history.

As popular influencer Matt Van Swol remarked on X, if Donald Trump gets this done, he belongs on Mt. Rushmore.

http://amgreatness.com/2025/05/15/making-automobiles-great-again-trumps-epa-will-fix-the-most-hated-car-rule-in-america/

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