G.M. Sold Millions of Cars That Were More Polluting Than Allowed, E.P.A. Says| The agency reached a settlement with the automaker over the sales of S.U.V.s and pickups that emitted excess CO₂

mondoman712 ( @mondoman712@lemmy.ml ) · 3 days ago

G.M. Sold Millions of Cars That Were More Polluting Than Allowed, E.P.A. Says| The agency reached a settlement with the automaker over the sales of S.U.V.s and pickups that emitted excess CO₂

OmnipotentEntity ( @OmnipotentEntity@beehaw.org ) · edit-2 3 days ago

6 million cars, the fine is $140 million. That’s $24 or so per car. There’s no way that GM saved only $24/car doing this. So the fine is just a cost of doing business.

EDIT:

The company has also voluntarily retired about 50 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution credits, which are issued by the E.P.A. and used by auto companies to make it easier to comply with increasingly stringent federal tailpipe emissions standards. G.M. estimates the value of the loss of the credits at about $300 million, reflecting what it paid for them a decade or so ago. However, the market value of those carbon credits varies, and a more recent government estimate of $86 per credit would put the value at about $4.6 billion.

This is probably where the actual sting to them is.