Giving Compass' Take:

• Dave Cooke at GreenBiz discusses how policies to promote innovation and prevent pollution can help consumers and move the auto industry towards new progress.

• How can individuals advocate for these changes on the local level?

• Read about the barriers still remaining for electric vehicles.

The Trump administration is looking to finalize its rollback of vehicle efficiency and emission standards by the end of the year. The exact level of the standard is expected to be somewhere between "complete and total abdication of responsibility" and "essentially worthless" — and no matter where it lands, it will not be based on the best-available data, nor will it be in the best interest of consumers or the environment.

We already have science-based standards on the books right now — but automakers have worked with the Trump administration to undermine those protections, whether that was pushing the administration to undo the regulations as soon as Donald Trump was sworn in or recent actions by a coalition of automakers led by Toyota, GM, and Fiat-Chrysler to rip authority away from the states precisely because they are doing their best to protect their citizens.

One of the biggest strategies automakers have used is to claim that the 2025 standards we have are simply not possible. But our blog series analyzing how brands’ most important and popular vehicles could be improved in the next generation shows that this is nothing but puffery. After doing the analysis, here were my three biggest takeaways:

  1. Tech exists, but is frequently deployed elsewhere first
  2. Lighter (and safer) materials can provide a big leap forward
  3. More efficient vehicles pay off for consumers

Read the full article about the push to build better cars by Dave Cooke at GreenBiz.