Electric Vehicles
Congress Could Break Tesla’s Revenue Model
Between the budget reconciliation process and an impending vote to end California’s electric vehicle standards, a lot of the EV maker’s revenue stands to go poof.
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Between the budget reconciliation process and an impending vote to end California’s electric vehicle standards, a lot of the EV maker’s revenue stands to go poof.
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On fired climate scientists, the California waiver, and Tesla’s Semi
Current conditions: Severe weather warnings continue through this evening in parts of Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota, with strong tornadoes remaining a possible threat • It will be 85 degrees Fahrenheit in Washington, D.C. today, about 14 degrees above average • Late afternoon thunderstorms are expected in Ottawa, where Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is out of a job after Monday’s snap election, which also saw Liberal Mark Carney elected to a full term as Canada’s prime minister.
On Monday, the Trump administration dismissed all of the nearly 400 contributors to the National Climate Assessment, the congressionally mandated review of how global warming impacts the United States. According to the termination email, the Sixth Climate Assessment, due out in 2028, is “being reevaluated” by the administration, although one former contributor pointed out to The New York Times that “if you get rid of all the people involved, nothing’s moving forward.”
The move follows a series of targeted attacks by the Trump administration on the country’s ability to monitor the impacts of climate change, including the termination of contracts with global research partners and the reduction of funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which the conservative policy blueprint Project 2025 has described as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” Erin Sikorsky, the director of the Center for Climate and Security, slammed the decision on Bluesky, writing, “Pretending climate risks don’t exist doesn’t make them go away, unfortunately. This move puts Americans, our communities, and our security at risk.”
As we’ve covered at Heatmap, the Fifth Climate Assessment, published in 2023, contained a grim accounting of the stakes: that “every region in the world is projected to face further increases in climate hazards” without “urgent, effective, and equitable” progress away from our current rate of greenhouse gas emissions.”
On Monday, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation sent a letter to every member of the House of Representatives, urging them to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s waiver for California to set vehicle emissions standards stricter than the federal government’s when the matter goes to a vote this week. The Washington D.C.-based trade association, which represents Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, and others, argued that companies were being “forced to substantially reduce the number of overall vehicles for sale to inflate their proportion of electric vehicles sales.”
Many are skeptical that Congress actually has the authority to revoke the waiver under the Congressional Review Act; the Government Accountability Office and Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough have both stated that the waiver does not fall into the category of “rules” that the CRA can block. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation remains hopeful, however, going on to refer erroneously to the waiver as a “gas vehicle ban” and adding that it will “reduce vehicle choices for consumers across the country at precisely the same time they are adjusting to the marketplace shock of 25% tariffs on imported vehicles and auto parts.”
Tesla
Tesla announced Monday that it plans to produce its Semi electric trucks at its Nevada gigafactory campus by the end of the year. “We’ll be ramping the factory throughout 2026,” Dan Priestley, the head of Tesla’s Semi program, said in a video posted to Twitter, adding that the factory can produce as many as 50,000 units per year. Tesla first scheduled production to begin in 2019, with CEO Elon Musk subsequently promising in 2022 that 50,000 Semis would be in production by 2024.
If Congress votes to repeal California’s ability to set stricter car and truck pollution standards, however, it could take a big bite out of the anticipated demand for the Semis. Separately, Massachusetts earlier this month postponed enforcement of its rule requiring manufacturers of medium- and heavy-duty trucks to sell an increasing number of zero-emission vehicles beginning in 2025.
Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency received an email Monday offering them another opportunity to take a voluntary retirement or a deferred resignation, USA Today reports. The agency has already reduced its staff by at least 1,000 workers as part of the administration’s efforts to downsize the federal workforce; current employees have until May 5 to accept one of the two new options. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has previously said he intends to cut the agency’s spending by 65%. At the same time, Russ Vought, the influential head of the Office of Management and Budget, has taken a particularly aggressive attitude toward the EPA, stating in a 2023 speech, “We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.”
When the long overdue Cascadia earthquake eventually strikes the northwest coast of the United States, the entire coastline could drop by nearly 7 feet — which suggests not only that more than twice the number of people and structures are at risk than originally thought, but also that said risk will continue to worsen over the next 75 years due climate change-driven sea-level rise. That’s according to new research published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which also found that following such an earthquake, flooding events along the coast could dramatically worsen. “The land persists down” after an event of such a magnitude, and it can last for decades or centuries, meaning “any areas that are kind of on the cusp of the floodplain are now it,” lead author Tina Dura told NBC News.
As I’ve previously reported for Heatmap, there is additional increased danger in the event of the Cascadia earthquake — known colloquially as “the Big One” — due to the recent cuts at NOAA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In the immediate aftermath of the expected earthquake, the Washington and Oregon coasts will be hit by a massive tsunami, the damage of which will also increase as sea levels rise. Seismologists estimate a 15% chance that a magnitude 8.0 or greater earthquake will strike the region within the next 50 years.
New England recorded its lowest ever electricity demand on its six-state regional grid on Sunday, thanks in part to the region’s many “behind-the-meter” rooftop solar resources.
Maybe you remember the time before the “basic economy” fare. A ticket on a major airline like Delta or United used to come with a few automatic amenities, like the ability to choose one’s seats — or, before 2008, even to check a bag without a fee. In the 2010s, facing rising costs and competition from the likes of Spirit and Frontier, the big airlines began to embrace the a la carte approach of the budget airlines: Passengers could buy an uber-cheap fare, but anything beyond a seat on the plane and a Diet Coke became an upsell.
The trajectory of air travel was on my mind this week as the world learned more details about Slate. The EV startup backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, among others, revealed its compact electric pickup to the world, and the world was struck by the vehicle’s simplicity. The little truck represents a kind of bare-bones transportation not seen at American car dealerships in decades, with power windows and plain metal panels coming standard — and everything else as an add-on.
Its success or failure will tell us something about Americans’ appetite for the kind of truly compact trucks that disappeared from our roads when bloat came for the pickup. It will tell us even more about whether Americans, faced with a lousy economy and skyrocketing car prices, are ready for the Spirit Airlines model to come to the automotive world.
Slate’s name is a clear reference to the idea of a blank slate. The base version of the little electric truck comes with manually adjustable rear view mirrors, no built-in infotainment system, and an uninspiring 150 miles of range. The exterior comes in any color the customer wants, as long as it’s the hue of plain, unadorned metal.
The little truck’s pitch is about the power of customization. Buyers will be able to choose from more than 100 add-on features, including roll bars, more airbags, and extra seats. There will be kits to lower the truck, kits to raise the truck, kits to turn the truck into an SUV. Most of these additions are advertised as DIY, though once the truck arrives in 2026, Slate promises there will be service professionals to install these add-ons for those who are not weekend garage mechanics. You’ll even be able to put on a vinyl wrap to make your truck something other than gray. Just how much these additions will raise the price is not yet clear.
It’s a compelling case, and one meant to be the antithesis of the car industry’s modern approach. A typical new vehicle comes in a handful of trim levels, where each successive trim represents another tier that adds a new group of luxury or technology features. (This is what the alphabet soup on the back of a car means, if you’ve ever wondered just what Toyota RAV4 “XLE” is.) The Ford F-150, the best-selling vehicle in the country, comes in eight trim levels that take the truck from a base price around $38,000 to nearly $80,000 for the fanciest, most capable trucks. You can do some customization outside of those tiers, sure. What you can’t do is buy a brand-new F-150 for $25,000 because it comes with the best in-car amenities 1995 had to offer, even though such a vehicle would do a perfectly good job of transporting people and cargo from A to B, the thing a truck is supposed to do.
Today’s cars come in mostly neutral colors because buyers have been taught to maximize resale value and it’s easier to sell a silver truck than a teal one; Slate’s encouragement to customize the exterior is a reaction against this aesthetic staleness. And EVs, in particular, haven’t been built with the hacker or tinkerer in mind. With Tesla (led by Bezos rival Elon Musk) at the forefront of the industry and legacy automakers following its lead, electric vehicles have become smartphones on wheels — closed boxes of intimidating hardware and proprietary software. Slate is a welcome change.
One could, of course, pay for upgrades to make the flight aboard Spirit Airlines a little more tolerable. But the cheap fare is the point. Spirit may be the butt of “Weekend Update” jokes, but basic economy is a lifeline for people who need cheap air travel. The test for Slate, then, isn’t whether buyers will embrace its DIY model and get excited about configuring their own trucks, though some definitely will. It is, instead, whether the rock-bottom, dirt-cheap, simple version of the truck is enough to convince a lot of people to go electric.
Incentives will go a long way to providing the answer. With a sticker price in the mid-$20,000s, a barebones Slate truck is a tough sell compared directly to other new vehicles; its spartan interior and inferior range don’t compare well to the kinds of entry-level gasoline cars a person could buy in that price range, all of which offer at least a taste of the latest in automotive technology. But if the $7,500 federal tax credit were to stay in place despite the EV antagonist living the White House, then the basic Slate will be a new car that can be had for less than 20-grand.
That’s a tempting number for the many Americans who see their car as an appliance, not an extension of their personality, and who generally make automotive decisions with their wallets. It’s also a powerful example of how much difference incentives could make once EVs approach the affordable end of the car market. A Rivian with $7,500 knocked off is a slightly cheaper expensive car. A Chevy Equinox EV at $7,500 off is cost-competitive with combustion rivals. A Slate truck marked down by $7,500 goes from an ugly duckling to an economic lifeline for the countless Americans who need an affordable ride.