@ucsdave
Using my white male privilege to rabble rouse companies and govt agencies into doing more. Midwest-grown, California-schooled, Senator-less citizen of the Douglass Commonwealth. This is a personal acct, but I'll still be mad about transportation issues.
Not gonna lie -- there's still a good chunk of the public with whom talking about electrification feels like this. Education is a continuous process, and there's never a substitute for butts in seats.
I agree, that's not too bad. That's interesting. Is there an understood reason for greater stability on leasing? Is it just a stronger resale market?
And to be clear, not saying leasing value hasn't changed, but I just think what little remains of the sedan market is probably not indicative of the broader trends.
In that time the Camry went from the #3 selling model to #8, despite losing most of its competition. I'd be more interested in seeing a lease comparison on a RAV4 in that time because I think the low end of the market has remained a lot more fixed and the value cars aren't what's driving prices.
Fascinating new piece by @sipappas.bsky.social looking at the geology behind the geopolitics:
🧪
Quoted text from Experian: Q4 2025 Report State of the Automotive Finance Market Access an in-depth review of the U.S. Automotive Finance Market. This report analyzes trends for auto originations and portfolios during the second quarter (error: should say fourth quarter). Highlights include: - Average New Loan Amount Hit a Record High - Nearly 19% of Loan Payments Are Over $1,000 - Used Loan Amount Reached Highest Level Since 2022 - Consumers Saved Over 2% by Refinancing in Q4 2025
JFC. Just got the latest @experianautomotive.bsky.social finance report, and it's like a perfect summary of how f'ing insane the automotive sector is right now. "Guys, I wonder if it's good that we have rapidly escalating monthly payments and term lengths on a rapidly depreciating asset?"
A lot of people say AI isn't very good for the world and its outputs are routinely unreliable, but these haters fail to see how it's revolutionizing how we incinerate schoolchildren.
Stand Up For Science announces Gretchen Goldman, President and CEO of Union of Concerned Scientists (@ucs.org) as a speaker at the Washington D.C. National Day of Action rally on Saturday, March 7th!
Visit standupforscience.net/march7 to find a rally near you!
#standupforscience
#March7DC
#rally
This might be the first time that D.C.’s CFO has been directly protested. Someone sent me a photo of a @freedcproject.bsky.social flyer posted outside his office in the Wilson Building today.
None of this spiel at the front about Tesla is correct in this @usatoday.com article on fuel economy ranking. There are no extra credits here! IT'S NOT COMPLIANCE DATA. Gah. Nat'l pubs misrepresenting even the most basic information will never stop bothering me. www.usatoday.com/story/cars/r...
Car Culture ≠ Financial Freedom
The Automobile: The ultimate machine for independence and freedom. No government infringing on my civil rights in MY metal box!
Unless I’m trans. Or Black. Or Brown. Or disabled. Or poor. Or an immigrant.
The biggest effect I see from people still spending time on X—which many deny or don't even notice—is how it shifts their perception of what's normal. Such as:
Actively anti-trans is speaking like a normal person
Objecting to Nazi symbols turns off the working class
Epstein knew a bunch of Jews
etc
SCIENCE FIGHTERS!
Join us in Washington D.C. on March 7th to TAKE BACK OUR SCIENCE!
Visit this link to see when and where!
fight2win.standupforscience.net/DC-March/
SAVE SCIENCE. PROTECT HEALTH. DEFEND DEMOCRACY.
Graphic showing a busy urban arterial clogged with cars and trucks. The text says that car dependency does not equal freedom. Mobility freedom comes from mobility choices. The image is tagged with the Urban Truth Collective logo.
They still want us to think cars equal freedom. But car DEPENDENCY is the opposite of freedom.
Mobility freedom comes from mobility choices.
#UrbanTruth
Every New York Times column & Atlantic thinkpiece, every Guardian broadside led us here. Jesse Singal and Ben Ryan and all the others "just asking questions" led us here.
Every bit of coverage that's treated us as suspicious outsiders and punching bags helped speed this day.
You are responsible.
🧵 In its Endangerment Finding rescission, US EPA chose to ignore the effects of the rule on public health and the environment by refusing to even quantify them or report them in the rule.
So I dug into the docket to quantify those costs myself, using EPA's own models.
Automakers aren't caught in the middle of anything -- they're directly culpable. You don't get any sympathy around uncertainty when you explicitly lobbied for the actions causing that uncertainty. FAFO. www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...
Their opinion side of the business may be total and utter garbage, but WaPo's reporters have still got it. Why are car prices so damn high? It's profit-chasing automakers building a market for the rich over the past decade-plus.
And yet, every day, our most prominent Democratic politicians, scholars, public intellectuals, universities & university leaders, & other civil society organizations continue to use his platform as their primary social media outlet. One cannot help but notice this & draw conclusions.
And, because of the way lab testing works when it comes to different driving modes, the ability to turn a feature off will shift how EPA considers it in evaluating the lab test. It is still in manufacturers' interest to boost fuel economy by making stop/start the default, much to Zeldin's dismay.
Please, @nytimes.com, just ask me next time so you get your facts correct. Yes, credits are gone, but THIS TECHNOLOGY IS CREDITED VIA TESTS ALREADY, just not for the full real-world benefit. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/b...
I feel this in my bones.
Quote from a New York Times article on how the U. S. auto industry has fucked itself into global uncompetitiveness by seeking to eliminate all meaningful environmental and emissions regulations on automobiles: "Matthew Beecham, a senior research analyst at S&P Global Mobility, an automotive company, said that given the uncertainties, automakers were likely to hedge their bets. They might expand their gasoline car lineups, he said, but most likely would not abandon electrification completely. And despite no penalties for violating the remaining fuel economy standards, there was unlikely to be “wholesale lawbreaking,” he said, because state rules and investor scrutiny could keep companies in check. “Expect tactical shifts toward profitable trucks, not open defiance,” he added."
If you're going to be quoted as an automotive expert, you should at least know that GM and Stellantis have been "wholesale breaking the law" for years so to pretend like these supposed constraints exist is to deny reality. US auto industry is a dead man walking.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/c...
The Response to Comments doesn't even pull text from the comments! They just responded to what is presumably just an AI summary of comments.
As far as I am aware, no preprint of the rule has yet been made available.
Yeah, sure, there'll be LESS credit, but this is one that shows up on the label tests for consumers as well as the lab certification tests because it does, in fact, cut fuel use in a very testable way.
The least significant part of today's endangerment presser, but elevating it as they did really just begs the question: What vehicle in particular pissed Zeldin off? He's going to be sad to learn that stop-start gets credit on fuel economy tests so this won't make much difference in its deployment.
Today, Administrator Zeldin took a chainsaw to the Endangerment Finding, undoing this long-standing, science-based finding on bogus grounds at the expense of our health.
“I don't see any plan, any strategy, any end game,” says Pat Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at the University of Vermont. “I don't see anything from this administration, just fuck everything up as much as you can. You can print that.”
