Electric Vehicles
The Cybertruck Recall Is Different
Tesla has dealt with quality control issues before — but never with a robotaxi on the horizon.
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Tesla has dealt with quality control issues before — but never with a robotaxi on the horizon.
The first Quilt units will be available to San Franciscans in just a few weeks.
On Ukraine aid, a solar geoengineering test, and California snowpack
With a total solar eclipse on its way — the last one visible from the U.S. in the next 20 years — millions are asking: What will the weather be?
On carmakers’ quarterly reports, Shell’s climate case, and solar panel fences
Tesla Superchargers are — finally — coming to some of our most remote National Parks.
On methane emissions, an extreme heat summit, and endangered species
Current conditions: Cyclone Gamane killed at least 18 people in Madagascar • A Saharan dust storm is choking tourist hot spots in the Mediterranean • It’ll be wet and stormy across large parts of California for Easter weekend.
A new study suggests America’s landfills are releasing 40% more methane than what’s being reported. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas responsible for about one-third of global warming since pre-industrial times. It spews from landfills as organic waste breaks down. Most U.S. landfills have to measure their methane emissions, but this new study suggests current monitoring methods – which usually involve sending a worker to check for emissions by walking around the landfill armed with a sensor – are falling short. The research, published in the journal Science, utilized aerial surveys to identify emissions from more than 200 active landfills in 18 states between 2018 and 2022. The researchers detected methane plumes at 52% of the landfills and found most releases went on for months if not years. “If we’re going to hit our climate targets, reductions in methane emissions can’t come from oil and gas alone,” Daniel Cusworth, the study’s lead author and scientist with the non-profit Carbon Mapper, told CNN. “Landfills should be garnering a similar type of attention as oil and gas.”
Starting next week, Ford will begin cutting the workforce at its F-150 Lightning plant in Michigan. Only about 700 of 2,100 workers will remain at the facility. The rest will either be transferred, reassigned, or take a retirement package. Demand for Ford’s electric pickup truck has been “slower than expected,” the company said in January. “The workforce reduction comes as Ford shifts plans from larger EVs to smaller, more affordable ones,” noted Peter Johnson at Electrek, adding that the company faces mounting pressure from competing pickup manufacturers like Tesla, Rivian, and Chevy.
The Biden administration yesterday reinstated regulations in the Endangered Species Act that protect threatened species and their habitats. Under the Trump administration, the regulations were weakened to protect “endangered” but not “threatened” species. The new rules also say agencies can no longer consider economic impacts when deciding whether to list a species as threatened or endangered. “As species face new and daunting challenges, including climate change, degraded and fragmented habitat, invasive species, and wildlife disease, the Endangered Species Act is more important than ever to conserve and recover imperiled species now and for generations to come,” said Martha Williams, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The first ever Global Summit on Extreme Heat took place yesterday. The virtual event, co-hosted by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), aimed to highlight the growing dangers of extreme heat and encourage commitments from governments to develop heat action plans. “At a time when some have grown numb with increasingly familiar headlines about ‘hottest days on record,’ we absolutely need to resolve never to get used to the scale of this problem, never to get used to the threat it poses to human life,” said USAID administrator Samantha Power. The summit ended with the launch of an online Heat Action Hub “where people can share experiences and best practice when it comes to tackling extreme heat.”
In case you missed it: Oregon finalized its right-to-repair law this week. It’s the fourth state to enact Right to Repair rules for consumer electronics, but the new law, SB 1596, is the first in the nation to ban manufacturers from “parts pairing,” a gatekeeping practice in which a device’s software must “pair” with a replacement part in order for that part to work. Banning such practices will make it easier for consumers to fix their devices rather than throw them away. “Electronic waste is growing five times faster than our electronics recycling capacity,” said Nathan Proctor, director of the PIRG Right to Repair Campaign. “We need to cut down the insane cycle of churning through personal electronics — and that starts by empowering repair.” The law will take effect next year.
America's largest banks and asset managers enable substantial greenhouse gas emissions with their investments. If these emissions were to be compared to those of other nations, they would represent the third-largest emitting country in the world, behind China and the U.S.
On shuttered coal plants, New York’s congestion charge, and Volvo’s last diesel car
Current conditions: Flood watches are in effect for the eastern half of North Carolina • Egg-sized hail smashed car windshields in eastern China • Europe is forecast to be unusually warm through April.
New England will soon follow the Pacific Northwest in becoming a coal-free region. Granite Shore Power, which owns the region’s last-remaining coal plant, said it will close Merrimack Station in Bow, New Hampshire, by 2028 at the latest. The move is voluntary, but is part of a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency over the facility’s excessive particulate matter emissions. Granite Shore Power says it will transform the plant, as well as Schiller Station in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, into a “renewable energy park.” “The end of coal in New Hampshire, and for the New England region as a whole, is now certain and in sight,” said a statement issued by Tom Irwin, the vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation in New Hampshire. “Now we must vigorously push for the phaseout of other polluting fuels like oil and gas.” New Hampshire will be the 16th state to go coal free.
The Department of Energy is giving the green light to Project Cypress, a cluster of facilities in southwest Louisiana that will filter carbon dioxide directly from the air and store it underground. The agency will award the project $50 million for the next phase of its development, which will be matched by $51 million in private investment. But there is a long road ahead: The project’s four implementation phases will take several years, and members of the surrounding community near Lake Charles (home to some of the most contested energy projects in the country) are skeptical the project will benefit them. Once it’s fully operational, Project Cypress is designed to capture 1 million tons of carbon from the air per year. Louisiana alone releases more than 200 million tons annually. “Even if we scale this up, we'd have to scale it up orders of magnitude higher than will ever be possible,” one Louisiana activist told Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo.
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has approved a plan to start charging drivers $15 for entering Manhattan below 60th Street, “the most congested district in the United States.” The congestion charge is expected to result in 100,000 fewer cars entering that region every day, reducing gridlock and improving air quality. Research shows that low-emission zones and congestion charging zones, which have been rolled out in other cities across the world, are associated with health benefits, including lower rates of cardiovascular disease.
MTA
New York would be the first city in the United States to implement such a program, but the plan faces challenges from six lawsuits that need to be settled before it can go ahead. “I’m keeping my champagne on ice until the lawsuits are resolved (which stopped a version in 1980) and no acts of Congress passed to block it (which stopped tolls on East and Harlem river bridges in 1977) and the first car is charged,” traffic analyst Sam Schwartz toldGothamist.
The Biden administration finalized a rule yesterday requiring oil and gas companies to reduce methane emissions from their operations. The rule “will hold oil and gas companies accountable” by tightening restrictions on gas flaring on federal lands and requiring producers to find and prevent leaks. “By setting a ceiling on how much gas companies can vent and flare without paying royalties, the new rule is expected to generate more than $50 million in additional payments to the federal government each year,” The Washington Post reported. “It will also conserve billions of cubic feet of gas that might otherwise have been vented, flared, or leaked.”
Volvo
You’re looking at the last diesel car Volvo will ever make. The XC90 SUV rolled off the line at the carmaker’s plant in Torslanda, Sweden, this week, and will head straight to a museum, “where it will be on display for anyone wanting to ponder the noxious emissions of yore,” wrote Jennifer Mossalgue at Electrek.
As recently as 2016, diesel vehicles accounted for half the company’s sales. Noting the surprising speed of the EV revolution, Volvo credited “tightening regulations around tailpipe emissions, as well as customer demand in response to the climate crisis.” Volvo plans to be all-electric by 2030, “making it one of the first legacy carmakers to do so,” Mossalgue said.
“The fact that we can say, ‘Look, this is slowing down the entire Earth’ seems like another way of saying that climate change is unprecedented and important.”–Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, whose new research suggests climate change might be affecting global timekeeping
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