Trump emissions threat to US car industry
The US car industry will be wrecked if President Trump relaxes emissions standards, California’s governor said.
Jerry Brown said China would dominate car manufacture because it was heavily promoting electric vehicles that would dominate the future, BBC wrote.
He said huge investment was needed on electric vehicles, along with federal rules to encourage their purchase.
He said President Trump and US car-makers were ‘half asleep’ and hadn’t understood the scale of the challenge.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Costing the Earth: “There will be a serious threat to the US auto industry.
“The Chinese have taken over the world in wind turbine production and photovoltaic.
“They’re going to take over the American car industry — and the people in Detroit are half asleep. They have to wake up — and I’m hoping they will.
“China’s investing billions in battery technology and electric cars — and introducing a regulatory regime that will produce for their market a percentage of electric cars that to my knowledge no American executive can even imagine.”
Brown said he believed the electric car had a good prospect of being ‘very competitive’with petrol and diesel cars within five years.
California has special powers as a state to set its own car standards but Brown believes federal action is essential to create a big enough market.
“Boy, it’s a very tall mountain we have to climb. To make it work needs a federal tax and regulatory regime.
“But that we don’t have and won’t have until Trump returns to his hotel business.”
Brown is leading a group of 15 states refusing to follow Trump’s attempt to lower CO2 standards for vehicles and electricity.