Gas-powered vehicles "have hundreds of moving parts and other components" that keep mechanics busy, argues CalMatters (which describes itself as a "nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization.")

"By 2040, the state projects that nearly 32,000 auto mechanics jobs will be lost in California, since electric vehicles need far less maintenance and repair than conventional combustion engines." And they base that prediction on statistics from the state's own Air Resources Board (part of California's Environmental Protection Agency): Throughout the economy, an estimated 64,700 jobs will be lost because of the mandate, according to the California Air Resources Board's calculations. On the other hand, an estimated 24,900 jobs would be gained in other sectors, so the estimated net loss is 39,800 jobs, a minimal amount across the state's entire economy, by 2040. But no single workforce in the state would be hurt more than auto mechanics: California has about 60,910 auto service technicians and mechanics, and more than half of those jobs would be lost over the next two decades if the mandate goes into effect, the air board calculates....

Some industries gain jobs while others lose them as the state shifts to zero-emission vehicles. The retail trade sector, which includes gas station workers and automobile and parts dealers, would lose 38,669 jobs by 2040 or about 2% of the retail workforce. Most of the losses would be at gasoline stations. As the electric vehicle fleet grows, air board officials project gas stations could provide charging to offset the losses.... Another 20,831 jobs in state and local government would be eliminated because of the decrease in gas tax revenue.

But the transition to electric cars also will create thousands of jobs. Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and other power industry companies would benefit most, with the creation of about 5,600 jobs by 2040 as car owners spend more on electricity to power their vehicles. Insurance carriers will benefit from about 1,700 new jobs, while the construction industry is expected to gain about 3,600.... Mechanics who work on internal combustion engines would still have plenty of work: The rule would not ban sales of used cars, and it wouldn't force the state's residents to stop driving the roughly 29 million gas-powered cars that are already on the road. Californians also could keep importing new or used vehicles from out of state.

That means Californians will still own a lot of gas-powered cars past 2035, softening the blow for car mechanics and industries dependent on fossil fuels, said James Sallee, an economist and research associate at the Energy Institute at University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Sallee said the changes wouldn't occur fast enough to trigger a sharp economic slowdown within the auto repair industry.
One 67-year-old mechanic still tells CalMatters that "The electric vehicle repair market is just about nonexistent."

But another mechanic tells them "I'm not against electric vehicles. I've always loved cars and I'll work on them until I can't anymore. So we have to adjust. We have to get out of our comfort zones."

Ford's fuel-economy figures for the 2013-2014 C-Max hybrids "were not based in reality" says Iowa's attorney general.

And now the Ford Motor Company "will pay $19.2 million to a consortium of 40 states and Washington,D.C.," writes Consumer Reports (which also covers additional false advertising about the payload capacity of its Super Duty pickup trucks). In these two cases, Ford exaggerated numbers for an advantage in competitive segments. And it was caught....

Ford ran a series of ads that claimed the C-Max provided better fuel economy than the Toyota Prius. The 2013 C-Max was originally rated at 47 mpg in city and highway driving, and 47 mpg overall. The claim was that it delivered 47 mpg in every situation. Back on Dec. 6, 2012, Consumer Reports wrote... "After running both vehicles through our real-world tests, we have gotten very good results. But they are far below Ford's ambitious triple-47 figures." We got 37 mpg overall in our tests. That's close to what owners reported on the Environmental Protection Agency's fueleconomy.gov, at 39 mpg.... In our tests, the Toyota Prius at the time got 44 mpg overall, far more than the C-Max.
Iowa's attorney general notes that "In 2013, Ford admitted that its initial fuel economy rating for the C-Max hybrid was likely overstated. The carmaker announced at the time that it would make a 'goodwill payment' of $550 to consumers who purchased a 2013 C-Max hybrid and $325 to those who leased the vehicle, according to Edmunds."

Consumer Reports adds: It then made hardware updates for new models, including a higher final gear ratio, lower-viscosity motor oil, and aerodynamic improvements, including a rear spoiler, new hood seals, and air deflectors in front of the tires, and a higher speed threshold for the electric drive. The new mpg figures were 39 mpg combined for 2014 through 2016 (41 city, 36 highway)...

This case underscores why Consumer Reports goes to great lengths to test the fuel economy of every nonelectric car we purchase. It provides realistic, objective, independent information for car shoppers and helps keep the auto industry honest.
Consumer Reports also quotes Ford's statement on their false advertising. "We are pleased that the matter is closed without any judicial finding of improper conduct."

"We worked with the states to resolve their concerns."

"Ukrainian fighters are using electric bikes in the battle against Russia," reports the Washington Post, "mostly in support of reconnaissance missions, demining operations and medical deliveries, according to one of the Ukrainian e-bike makers involved."

"They've reportedly also been used for carrying out sniper attacks." The bikes have a top speed of 55 miles per hour and are relatively silent — helping their riders evade Russian fire.

Ukrainian e-bike firm Eleek initially gave a few bikes to the military when the war began, according to manager Roman Kulchytskyi. Soon after, they began to mass-produce bikes — kitted out in military green, with a small Ukrainian flag on the rear wheel — for Ukraine's fighters.... Working from a bomb shelter, Eleek began making a power bank based on lithium-ion battery cells it had left in stock. After struggling for parts, it turned to electronic cigarettes — launching a social media campaign to get people to send in their devices....

The company added footrests for passengers, improved the charging time, installed a battery control system and included a 220V output that allows soldiers to charge gadgets and can help power Starlink satellite Internet terminals, Kulchytskyi said.... Another advantage of the bikes is that they may not be visible on thermal imaging systems, which are used to detect differences in temperature and help militaries pinpoint potential targets. That's because the electric motor doesn't heat up like an internal combustion engine, Kulchytskyi said.

Daniel Tonkopi, founder of e-bike company Delfast, wrote on Facebook this month that his California-based firm has been donating electric bikes to the Ukrainian army since the war broke out. He included pictures of the bikes carrying antitank weapons and said he had received feedback from the military that they planned to use the bikes to target Russian armored vehicles. During one recent mission, they recounted to him that several vehicles came back with holes but that the riders were intact.... The company is donating 5 percent of all sales to fund humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
The article notes electric bikes are also being tested by Asutralia's military and New Zealand's Air Force.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Airbus is launching a U.K.-based facility focused on hydrogen technologies, a move which represents the firm's latest attempt to support the design of its next generation of aircraft. In a statement Wednesday, Airbus said the Zero Emission Development Centre in Filton, Bristol, had already begun working on the development of the tech. One of the site's main goals will center around work on what Airbus called a "cost-competitive cryogenic fuel system" that its ZEROe aircraft will need.

Details of three zero-emission, "hybrid-hydrogen" concept planes under the ZEROe moniker were released back in Sept. 2020. Airbus has said it wants to develop "zero-emission commercial aircraft" by the year 2035. The ZEDC in the U.K. will join other similar sites in Spain, Germany and France. "All Airbus ZEDCs are expected to be fully operational and ready for ground testing with the first fully functional cryogenic hydrogen tank during 2023, and with flight testing starting in 2026," the company said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The IndyCar racing series is switching to an entirely renewable fuel next year. On Friday, ahead of Sunday's Indianapolis 500 race, IndyCar announced that starting next year, the race cars will be powered by a new, second-generation renewable ethanol race fuel developed by Shell. The manufacturing process for IndyCar's ethanol will be slightly less exotic than that seen in the low-carbon fuel that Formula 1 is considering for 2026. Rather than carbon capture and electrolysis, Shell will use sugarcane waste and other renewable feedstocks, which are hydrolyzed and fermented at a plant in Brazil operated by Raizen (Shell is a co-owner).

Shell says that the switch "enables at least" 60 percent less carbon dioxide emissions than fossil fuel gasoline, although IndyCar currently runs on an E85 blend of gasoline rather than 100 percent fossil fuel or the 100 percent methanol that powered the sport for so many years. [...] Among other changes to help green the sport is the installation of a 150 kW DC fast charger at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. And the roughly 5,000 tires that Firestone will transport to the track by Sunday will be hauled there from the tire maker's central Indiana warehouse by one of Penske's electric Freightliner eCascadia trucks.

MattSparkes shares a report from New Scientist: The idea that autonomous cars, even in small numbers, can increase fuel efficiency, travel times and safety for all cars on the road will be put to the test on routes around Nashville, Tennessee, later this year. Benedetto Piccoli at Rutgers University, New Jersey, and his colleagues previously used a computer model of a simple circular road with just one lane in each direction, and found that autonomous cars could decrease overall fuel consumption of all traffic by 40 percent, even once adoption of these vehicles had only reached 5 per cent.

The best-case scenarios from these new models "rarely happen" in the real world, he says, but his team still hopes to reduce fuel consumption of all vehicles on the road during the trial -- not just the driverless cars -- by as much as 10 percent. "If you take just the overall cost of the traffic system in any country, and you reduce that by even 5 percent we are talking about billions of dollars," he says. The researchers have shared their findings in a paper via arXiv.org.

The EPA is formally accepting applications for its Clean School Bus Program, a $5 billion program to replace dirty diesel school buses with more environmentally friendly options. Ars Technica reports: Specifically, the EPA is aiming to replace older (model year 2010 or older) diesel-powered school buses, which must be scrapped in order for a clean bus to be bought to replace them. Oh, and the old bus has to be fully functionalâ"this isn't intended as a way to make the government pay for broken junk to be replaced with shiny new buses. But the agency says it will also accept applications from schools looking for zero-emission buses that are prepared to scrap older non-diesel school buses, as well as newer internal combustion buses (which should either be sold, scrapped, or donated).

The EPA isn't requiring the replacement buses to all be electric, however. While the program will pay for battery-electric buses -- such as the Thomas C2 Jouley that was delivered to a school in Alexandria County in Virginia on Friday to mark the start of the program -- it will also pay for buses powered by propane or compressed natural gas as long as they're also model year 2021 or newer and will serve the school district for at least five years, among other requirements.

The EPA will consider applications to replace up to 25 buses at once and has set aside $250 million for zero-emission buses in 2022 and $250 million for clean school buses, with another $4.5 billion remaining for 2023-2028. Rebates range from $375,000 for a zero-emissions Class 7 or Class 8 bus down to $25,000 for smaller propane buses (classes 3-6). The application process is open until August 19, and successful applicants should be notified in October that it's time to order some new buses.

The Drive's Adam Kehoe noticed something during this week's UFO hearings in the U.S. Congress. "After intense public speculation, stacks of official documents obtained via the Freedom Of Information Act, ambiguous statements from top officials, and an avalanche of media attention, it has now been made clear that the mysterious swarming of U.S. Navy ships off the Southern California coast in 2019 was caused by drones, not otherworldly UFOs or other mysterious craft.

"Raising even more questions, a similar drone swarm event has occurred off another coast, as well." These revelations came from top Department of Defense officials during a recent and much-anticipated house hearing on UFOs, which you can read all about here.

The strange series of events in question unfolded around California's Channel Islands in July of 2019. On multiple evenings, swarms of unidentified drones were spotted operating around U.S. Navy vessels. In numerous instances, the drones flew within close proximity to ships, even crossing directly over their decks. The behavior provoked defensive reactions from the ships, including the deployment of emergency security teams... Deck logs demonstrate that the Navy appears to have drilled and implemented a variety of counter-drone techniques in response to these incidents. This eventually included the deployment of Northrop Grumman's Drone Restricted Access Using Known EW (DRAKE) platform. The DRAKE system is a man-portable backpack that allows sailors to use radio frequency signals to interrupt the control links of drones. The DRAKE system appears to have been actually deployed in one of the incidents....

It is entirely unclear where the drones were operating from, how they were controlled, or who was controlling them. Still, the Navy could identify the objects as drones without those questions being fully answered at this time.... The Department of Defense's open acknowledgment of these drone swarm events just off U.S. shores shows that the threat is not theoretical. It is also not a future threat. Significant drone swarm events have occurred in the last three years, unknown to the public, and evidently unresolved by defense authorities. Judging by what is known to date about the 2019 incident, it is clear that the United States is not well-positioned to detect, identify and neutralize such threats. It remains to be seen what level of priority these issues will receive by lawmakers in relation to more speculative questions surrounding UAP.

If anything else, top confirmation that adversaries are operating swarms among America's most powerful weapons in training areas where their most sensitive capabilities are put to use should make national headlines, but because it was buried in sensationalism around UFOs, it clearly did not.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the best things about electric cars, other than their power trains, immediate torque, and relaxing quiet, is the fact that as the electrical grid becomes cleaner, so too does every EV that uses that grid to charge. That process took a step forward this week with the news that by next year, the Electrify America (EA) charging network will be entirely offset by solar energy.

On Wednesday, EA signed a 15-year agreement with Terra-Gen to purchase electricity from a 75 MW solar farm being built by the latter in San Bernardino County, California. The Electrify America Solar Glow 1 project will break ground later this year, and when it's fully operational in 2023, it should have an annual energy production of 225,000 MWh. That's more than enough to account for the annual energy use of the EA charging network. In fact, EA says that as of April, its electricity is already 100 percent renewable thanks to purchases from various suppliers, but with the commissioning of Solar Glow 1, the charging company should have complete confidence that it's putting more solar energy into the grid than it uses to charge our cars.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The S&P 500 booted electric vehicle maker Tesla from its ESG Index as part of an annual update to the list. Meanwhile, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and even oil and gas multinational Exxon Mobil were still included on the list. The S&P 500 ESG Index uses environmental, social and governance data to rank and effectively recommend companies to investors. Its criteria include hundreds of data points per company that pertain to the way businesses affect the planet and treat stakeholders beyond shareholders -- including customers, employees, vendors, partners and neighbors. Changes to the index took effect on May 2, and a spokesperson for the index explained why they were made in a blog post published Wednesday.

It said that Tesla's "lack of a low-carbon strategy" and "codes of business conduct," along with racism and poor working conditions reported at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California, affected the score. Tesla's handling of an investigation by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration also weighed on its score. "While Tesla may be playing its part in taking fuel-powered cars off the road, it has fallen behind its peers when examined through a wider ESG lens," the S&P spokesperson wrote. The CNBC report cited Tesla's settlement with the EPA in February "after years of Clean Air Act violations and neglecting to track its own emissions." They also mentioned last year's Toxic 100 Air Polluters Index, where Tesla ranked 22nd -- "worse than Exxon Mobil, which came in 26th."

Tesla has notoriously scored poorly, "though it's not just about the environmental aspect but the assessments that have also criticized Tesla's company culture," notes Electrek's Fred Lambert. "ESG doesn't really take into account the fact that Tesla's entire business is about transitioning the world to sustainable energy but rather looks at strategies to decarbonize operations."

On Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said S&P Global Ratings has "lost their integrity" and has been "weaponized by phony social justice warriors."

Hyundai is expected to announce that it's building "a massive electric vehicle plant near Savannah, Georgia," reports the Associated Press, citing a U.S. official "familiar with the anticipated announcement."

The plant is expected to bring thousands of new jobs to Georgia. The plant could grow to include 8,500 employees and would be built on a 2,200-acre (890-hectare) site that state and local governments own near the hamlet of Ellabell, Georgia, said two people familiar with Georgia's talks with Hyundai.... The second person said Hyundai would invest more than $7 billion and could also build some cars powered by gasoline engines at the site, with an announcement in Georgia set for May 20...

It would be the second massive electric vehicle plant announced in Georgia in less than a year. Rivian Automotive in December announced it would build a $5 billion, 7,500-job electric truck plant about 45 miles (70 kilometers) east of Atlanta.

Flying cars — or even electric flying taxis — are the dream of several well-funded manufacturers building "electric vertical-takeoff and landing aircraft" (or eVTOLs).

But will they face stricter government regulations than anticipated? Long-time Slashdot reader wired_parrot reports that America's Federal Aviation Administration has shifted gears — "revising it certification requirements for eVTOLS from small aircraft to a powered-lift category." (The original submission cites a "growing number" of issues for the industry to resolve — and asks whether this raises concerns about the viability of the whole potential eVTOL market.)

Meanwhile, AVWeb reports: According to a Reuters report, the impetus for the shift came from an ongoing audit by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General. The IG said so-called Urban Air Mobility vehicles present the FAA with "new and complex safety challenges...."

In a written response to a request for clarification, an FAA spokesperson told AVweb:

"The FAA's top priority is to make sure the flying public is safe. This obligation includes our oversight of the emerging generation of eVTOL vehicles. The agency is pursuing a predictable framework that will better accommodate the need to train and certify the pilots who will operate these novel aircraft.

"Our process for certifying the aircraft themselves remains unchanged. All of the development work done by current applicants remains valid and the changes in our regulatory approach should not delay their projects. As this segment of the industry continues to grow, we look forward to certifying innovative new technologies that meet the safety standards that the public expects and deserves."

Whatever happened to those two pilots who attempted to swap planes in mid-air — skydiving from one to the other while the planes slowly tumbled toward the desert 65 miles southeast of Phoenix?

One pilot successfully reached the other plane — but the other pilot didn't, parachuting safely to the ground instead. "All of our safety protocols worked," the first pilot said triumphantly in a documentary streamed on Hulu. Er, but what about that second plane, slowly tumbling toward the ground without a pilot? It fell 14,000 feet, landing "nose first" (according to footage from a local newscast) — though its descent was also slowed by a parchute. (Both planes also had a specially-engineered braking system to slow their fall so the skydiving pilots could overtake them.) The stunt was sponsored by Red Bull.

Both pilots had previously conducted more than 20,000 skydives — "but there's a problem," that local newscast pointed out. "The FAA says it had denied Red Bull permission to attempt the plane swap because it would not be in the public's interest." So now both pilots — who'd had "commercial pilot certificates" from America's Federal Aviation Administration — have had their certificates revoked.

The Associated Press reports: In a May 10 emergency order, the FAA cites the two pilots, Luke Aikins and Andrew Farrington, and describes their actions as "careless and reckless." Aikins also faces a proposed $4,932 fine from the agency....

Aikins had petitioned for an exemption from the rule that pilots must be at the helm with safety belts fastened at all times. He argued the stunt would "be in the public interest because it would promote aviation in science, technology, engineering and math."

While both pilots must surrender their certificates immediately, there is an appeal process.
Aikins had shared a statement on Instagram after the stunt, saying he made the "personal decision to move forward with the plane swap" despite the lack of the FAA exemption.

"I regret not sharing this information with my team and those who supported me."

"I am now turning my attention to cooperatively working transparently with the regulatory authorities as we review the planning and execution."

BeerFartMoron shares a report from Motherboard: For the last five years, driverless car companies have been testing their vehicles on public roads. These vehicles constantly roam neighborhoods while laden with a variety of sensors including video cameras capturing everything going on around them in order to operate safely and analyze instances where they don't. While the companies themselves, such as Alphabet's Waymo and General Motors' Cruise, tout the potential transportation benefits their services may one day offer, they don't publicize another use case, one that is far less hypothetical: Mobile surveillance cameras for police departments.

"Autonomous vehicles are recording their surroundings continuously and have the potential to help with investigative leads," says a San Francisco Police department training document obtained by Motherboard via a public records request. "Investigations has already done this several times."

Privacy advocates say the revelation that police are actively using AV footage is cause for alarm. "This is very concerning," Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staff attorney Adam Schwartz told Motherboard. He said cars in general are troves of personal consumer data, but autonomous vehicles will have even more of that data from capturing the details of the world around them. "So when we see any police department identify AVs as a new source of evidence, that's very concerning."

As companies continue to make public roadways their testing grounds for these vehicles, everyone should understand them for what they are -- rolling surveillance devices that expand existing widespread spying technologies," said Chris Gilliard, Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center. "Law enforcement agencies already have access to automated license plate readers, geofence warrants, Ring Doorbell footage, as well as the ability to purchase location data. This practice will extend the reach of an already pervasive web of surveillance."

At Google I/O, the company said their Android Auto car interface app is now "built to adapt to any screen size." Ars Technica reports: Google says "there are three main functionalities that drivers prioritize in their cars: navigation, media and communication," and the new Android Auto design puts each of those interfaces in its own panel. Maps gets the biggest, main panel, media and communication panels get stacked next to each other, and there's a combo status/navigation bar. To accommodate the million different screen sizes, these items can be arranged in whatever orientation works best in the car.

One example, close to the current Android Auto configuration, shows the combo bar oriented vertically against the side of the screen, followed by a vertical stack of the message and media panels, then a big Google Maps panel. Another example of a more vertical screen design shows a big Google Maps panel on top of the message and media panels, with the combo bar on the bottom. Things can be arranged to fit. The new interface will be out "this summer."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motor1: The two flagship models from Mercedes-Benz, the S-Class and the all-electric EQS, will soon be able to be ordered with conditional self-driving tech in Germany. Starting from May 17, the so-called Drive Pilot system will be offered as an extra-cost option for the two sedans, allowing the driver to hand the entire control of the machine over to the system under certain conditions. The Stuttgart-based automaker became the first in the industry to receive international approval for Level 3 autonomous tech in December last year. Releasing the system on the market now becomes the next logical step and Mercedes will ask 5,000 euros for Drive Pilot on the S-Class and 7,430 euros on the EQS, respectively around $5,260 and $7,813 at the current exchange rates. These figures include both the required hardware and software and for now, no further subscriptions are needed.

It's important to note that Level 3 doesn't mean a fully autonomous vehicle. The system used by Mercedes allows the driver to hand all driving tasks to the tech in heavy traffic or on suitable motorways in Germany with speeds of up to 60 kilometers per hour. Under these conditions, the driver can fully disengage from driving with the system controlling the speed and distance, as well as guiding the vehicle within its lane. More importantly, the system also reacts to unexpected traffic situations and avoids dangerous maneuvers. Mercedes is currently working on receiving certification in the United States, notes Motor1.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Volvo will only sell electrified cars in the US beginning with the 2023 model year, the automaker confirmed Tuesday. "Electrified" means that in addition to EVs, Volvo will continue to offer gas-powered cars, but they'll all either have mild-hybrid or plug-in hybrid technology. Volvo will continue to offer plug-in hybrid powertrains, as well. In fact, these T8 Recharge models recently received a power boost, in addition to increased electric-only driving range. The 2023 model year Volvos should arrive at dealers this summer. Meanwhile, Volkswagen says it has "sold out" of battery-powered models in the U.S. and Europe for this year as persistent supply chain bottlenecks hit global production.

The Biden administration plans to begin a $3.1 billion effort on Monday to spur the domestic production of advanced batteries, which are essential to its plan to speed the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy. The New York Times reports: President Biden has prodded automakers to churn out electric vehicles and utilities to switch to solar, wind and other clean energy, saying the transitions are critical to eliminating the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. In the wake of surging energy prices caused largely by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, administration officials also have described the transition to clean energy as a way to insulate consumers from the fluctuation of global oil markets and achieve true energy independence. Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, last week called renewable energy "the greatest peace plan this world will ever know." Yet currently, lithium, cobalt and other minerals needed for electric car batteries and energy storage are processed primarily in Asia. China alone controls nearly 80 percent of the world's processing and refining of those critical minerals.

Ms. Granholm plans to announce the funding plan on Monday during a visit to Detroit, a senior administration official said. The $3.1 billion in grants, along with a separate $60 million program for battery recycling, is an effort to "reduce our reliance on competing nations like China that have an advantage over the global supply chain," according to a Department of Energy statement. The funding is aimed at companies that can create new, retrofitted or expanded processing facilities as well as battery recycling programs, officials with the Department of Energy said. The grants will be funded through the $1 trillion infrastructure law, which includes more than $7 billion to improve the domestic battery supply chain.

Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science at Argonne National Laboratory, told the panel that the United States "can become a dominant force in energy storage technology" and has a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize the moment." Between electric vehicles and grid storage, the market for lithium-ion batteries in the United States is expected to increase by a factor of 20 to 30 in the next decade but a secure domestic supply chain is needed, Dr. Srinivasan said. The Biden administration wants half of all new vehicles sold in the United States to be electric by 2030. The president also has issued procurement guidelines to transform the 600,000-vehicle federal fleet, so that all new cars and trucks purchased by the federal government by 2035 are zero-emission.

Slashdot reader schwit1 shares this report from an automotive blog called The Truth About Cars: A group of German automakers, chemical concerns, and battery producers have announced the joint development of a "battery passport" designed to help government regulators trace the history of the cells. The consortium is funded by the German government and is supposed to work in tandem with new battery regulations that are being prepared by the European Union.

According to the German economic ministry, officially the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, the overarching plan is for the EU to mandate traceable hardware be installed in all batteries used in the continent by 2026. Those intended for use in electric vehicles are up first, with the passport scheme also serving to chronicle everything from the vehicle's repair history to where the power cell's raw materials were sourced.
Reuters reports that batteries "could carry a QR code linking to an online database where EV owners, businesses or regulators could access information on the battery's composition." This digital tool should also make it easier to recycle raw materials inside batteries, the government statement said, which would cut dependence on foreign suppliers which control the vast majority of resources, like lithium and nickel, essential for battery production.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Postal Service is facing lawsuits from 16 states and several environmental groups challenging its decision to buy tens of thousands of gasoline-powered delivery vehicles instead of electric vehicles. As previously reported, the Environmental Protection Agency says the gas-powered trucks being ordered by the USPS "are expected to achieve only 8.6 miles per gallon (mpg), barely improving over the decades-old long-life vehicles that achieve 8.2 mpg." The USPS countered that the vehicles get 14.7 mpg when air conditioning isn't being used and that the trucks' size will make it possible to deliver the same amount of mail in fewer trips. The USPS plan is to buy 50,000 to 165,000 vehicles over 10 years. Of those, at least 10 percent are slated to be battery-electric vehicles (BEV). [...]

A lawsuit filed by California and 15 other states on Thursday said the USPS failed "to follow a process mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)," continuing: "Instead, the Postal Service first chose a manufacturer with minimal experience in producing electric vehicles, signed a contract, and made a substantial down payment for new vehicles. Only then did the Postal Service publish a cursory environmental review to justify the decision to replace 90 percent of its delivery fleet with fossil-fuel-powered, internal combustion engine vehicles, despite other available, environmentally preferable alternatives. In doing so, the Postal Service failed to comply with even the most basic requirements of NEPA."

The lawsuit seeks an injunction forcing the USPS to stop the vehicle purchases "until it has complied with NEPA." It was filed against the USPS and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed by the USPS Board of Governors in 2020 under then-President Donald Trump. All 16 states involved in the lawsuit have Democratic attorneys general. They allege that the USPS "violated well-established legal precedent prohibiting 'an irreversible and irretrievable commitment of resources' before completing the NEPA process by signing contracts with a defense company (Oshkosh Defense, LLC) to procure vehicles six months before even releasing its draft environmental review and a year prior to issuing the Final Environmental Impact Statement ('Final EIS') and Record of Decision." The states also claim the USPS failed to consider and evaluate reasonable alternatives. "Specifically, the Postal Service did not properly evaluate several environmental impacts of its action, including air quality, environmental justice, and climate harms, by simply assuming that any upgrade to its vehicle fleet would have positive impacts on the environment," the complaint said. States also alleged the USPS "failed to ensure the scientific integrity of its analysis by relying on unfounded assumptions regarding the costs and performance of electric vehicles, infrastructure, and gas prices, and refusing to identify the source of the data relied upon in the Final EIS." "The Postal Service conducted a robust and thorough review and fully complied with all of our obligations under NEPA," a USPS spokesperson told Ars.

The statement continues: "The Postal Service is fully committed to the inclusion of electric vehicles as a significant part of our delivery fleet even though the investment will cost more than an internal combustion engine vehicle. That said, as we have stated repeatedly, we must make fiscally prudent decisions in the needed introduction of a new vehicle fleet. We will continue to look for opportunities to increase the electrification of our delivery fleet in a responsible manner, consistent with our operating strategy, the deployment of appropriate infrastructure, and our financial condition, which we expect to continue to improve as we pursue our plan."