Fuel economy fines nearly triple for legacy automakers in a boon for Tesla, as the U.S. reverses a Trump administration delay

[Redaktion]

The parent company of Chrysler alone will now have to pay US$572 million in retroactively applied fuel economy standard penalties as per the NHTSA decision. The new penalties that will be applied as far back as model year 2019 will be a boon for EV makers like Tesla which can now charge even more for CAFE standard compliance credits.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Fuel-economy-fines-nearly-triple-for-legacy-automakers-in-a-boon-for-Tesla-as-the-U-S-reverses-a-Trump-administration-delay.610425.0.html

[vertigo]

It amazes me this is even legal. Car companies are told one thing, then told another after the fact, so they either need to time travel to know the rules in time or just have to pay for going by what they were told by the government at the time. The govt is one of the biggest criminal enterprises there is. Next they'll be increasing the income tax rate starting a couple years ago and charge a fine for not having paid enough when the taxes were done at the previous rate. I wonder how many congresspeople, NHTSA officials, etc have stock in Tesla, because this seems suspiciously like a(nother) conflict of interest/insider trading scandal to me, not like it would matter, since they just get away with whatever they want.

[anan]

The manufacturers knew the exact dollar amount they would have to pay in advance (from way back in 2016). The Trump administration initiated a review of the rules. It was a stay in implementation. The rules were upheld. Everyone knew that would happen the moment Biden was elected. None of the manufacturers have complained about the amount to be paid. They have only reiterated that this money should specifically go towards electrification.

[_MT_]

It amazes me this is even legal...

Generally speaking, retroactivity is difficult. I imagine that in this case, it was provided for. The decision was already made, its application was just postponed to allow for review. In which case, they would have known about the risk. And the decision was upheld. I haven't noticed any complaints. The alternative is that the government takes the money and if the decision is overturned, they return it. Which is hardly better.

If something stinks, I think it's the whole complexity of our legal systems. I don't understand how you can require people to follow laws and yet have such a complicated system that learning the rules and keeping up is essentially a full-time job. That ought to be against a constitution. The system should be simple enough so that it is actually possible to know the rules.

[vertigo]

Ok, thanks for the clarification. That makes more sense. And yes, the laws are overly complex, which I believe is due to two reasons: they (legislators and lawyers) want laypeople to have a hard time understanding it, so they will be more important/needed, and because if laws are made simple, that allows for more loopholes and interpretation, which results in more court cases to decide subtleties that weren't clear in the basic legislation. The laws, like contracts and other legal documents, have to cover every possible contingency, otherwise people will try to play the system, saying the obviously wrong thing they did was illegal because it wasn't specifically addressed by the law. The only solution would be common sense law, but that would obviously go badly.

[_MT_]

And yes, the laws are overly complex, which I believe is due to two reasons: they (legislators and lawyers) want laypeople to have a hard time understanding it, so they will be more important/needed, and because if laws are made simple, that allows for more loopholes and interpretation, which results in more court cases to decide subtleties that weren't clear in the basic legislation. The laws, like contracts and other legal documents, have to cover every possible contingency, otherwise people will try to play the system, saying the obviously wrong thing they did was illegal because it wasn't specifically addressed by the law. The only solution would be common sense law, but that would obviously go badly.

I disagree. And it will obviously differ country to country. For example, here, one of the big problems in my view is that legislators try to use fully qualified sentences. Which leads to ginormous constructs that are very hard to understand. By the time you reach the middle of a compound sentence, you often forget what was at the beginning. A big problem being that human language isn't designed to be formal, to always have only one meaning. A single comma can end multiple subordinate clauses and even start a new one. Creating ambiguity. When one clause ends, you aren't sure to which clause the following words belong. And this then creates interpretation problems. Sometimes, the alternative meaning just makes no sense and you can exclude it. But sometimes, you really aren't sure. And to understand it in the first place, you almost have to draw diagrams. Frankly, I doubt many legislators possess the necessary inteligence to understand what they legislate in the first place. It's a huge mess.

Which is exactly why I avoid writing in this style when I need someone to understand exactly what I mean. The gist of it should be kept simple. You can define words beforehand and you can qualify and nail down the details later. But getting the basic message shouldn't take half an hour and then a debate among lawyers. If ten lawyers can't agree on a meaning, it's useless trash, not law. And it's the edge cases where things start falling apart, where you aren't sure whether they actually meant what they wrote, or whether they never considered the case. All the while obscuring the basic idea. Often, when I read a law, I end up with more questions than I started with. And what annoys me is that there is no authority that can give me a binding interpretation. So, a new law comes into force and nobody actually knows what it means until it gets tested in court. All sorts of people can give you an opinion, but, in the end, only opinions of judges matter.

It's the complexity that creates loopholes. The more complex a law is, the more difficult it is to write it correctly. And the more difficult it is for anyone to understand it, creating many opinions on the meaning. If I was designing a system, I would probably have hard law that's all about principles and is kept simple. And then soft law that is all about clarification and guidance. A single example can do more for understanding than a thousand words. Often times, you do not need the detail. The added complexity just slows you down and makes understanding more expensive.