Free Republic

The Supreme Court sided Friday with oil companies seeking to challenge California’s electric vehicle regulations. In a 7-2 ruling, the court allowed energy producers to continue their lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to approve California regulations that require manufacturing more electric vehicles. “The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion. “In light of this Court’s precedents and the evidence...

City health officials say nearby residents should stay indoors as much as possible, wear a mask outside, avoid strenuous physical activity and close windows and doors. Decommissioned buses were burned during a fire at the SEPTA Midvale Depot in North Philadelphia on June 5, 2025. (Emma Lee/WHYY) From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know! A fast-moving fire erupted early Thursday at a transit bus lot in Philadelphia filled with dozens of decommissioned vehicles, sending a thick plume of black smoke into the sky but causing...

A cargo ship carrying 3,000 cars, including 800 electric vehicles, caught fire off the coast of Alaska and continues to burn. The Coast Guard says that all 22 crew members escaped the ship and were picked up by two nearby freighters. The ship, a Liberian-registered car-carrier named "Morning Midas," was on its way to Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico, from Yantai, China.. ... the Coast Guard is going to let the ship burn, since trying to put out a lithium-ion fire is nearly futile. ... In 2022, the Felicity Ace, a car carrier slightly larger than Morning Midas, sank in the Atlantic...

If fire departments on land have problems unleashing the torrent of water needed to extinguish a single burning EV, the crew of a ship doesn't stand a chance against hundreds of flaming lithium-ion batteries. A cargo ship carrying around 3,000 vehicles across the Pacific Ocean caught fire on Tuesday. The Morning Midas, a 600-foot cargo ship, was in the middle of a voyage from Yantai, China to Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico when the fire broke out. Zodiac Maritime, the ship's London-based operator, noted that smoke was first spotted on a deck carrying 800 electric vehicles. Once the blaze got out of...

Sales of electric vehicles are on the rise in the United States, but the road ahead for charging infrastructure looks a whole lot bumpier. Despite growing interest in EVs, the pace of building high-speed chargers isn’t just lagging, it’s actively falling behind. Add in looming policy shifts under the Trump administration, and the gap between supply and demand could widen even further. It’s understood that the number of high-speed EV chargers being installed across the US dropped more than 21% through the first quarter compared to last year. With this in mind, BloombergNEF has cut its expectations for EV installations...

TULSA, Okla. — A north Tulsa home was damaged after an electric bike caught fire in a carport that then spread to the house. The fire happened at a home near East 56th Street North and Yale. According to Tulsa Police, a family member took the bike to the house to charge it and show it to another family member. A neighbor then later saw smoke in the area and called the fire in. The homeowners said everything inside the carport was destroyed. "Everybody's good," shared David Baxter, the owner of the home. "You know, pretty much everything lost that...

Congressional Republicans are making a last-ditch effort to gut the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) green energy subsidies via President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill.” The House Ways and Means Committee unveiled a draft bill Monday afternoon to repeal several IRA subsidies including those for electric vehicles and so-called clean hydrogen while preserving tax credits for carbon sequestration, biofuels and advanced manufacturing, which primarily benefit solar and battery storage projects. Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma’s Energy Freedom Act would take an even more aggressive approach by proposing a...

California and 16 other states are suing the Trump administration for halting federal money slated to build more electric vehicle chargers. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta accused the Trump administration of unlawfully withholding funding approved by Congress in the lawsuit filed in federal court Wednesday. The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program had dedicated $5 billion to expand clean car charging across the country, including more than $300 million for projects in California.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed that current discussions about the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles in the budget would “more likely than not” result in killing the EV incentive. The US Congress is back from its April pause, and negotiations over the federal budget continue. As part of the new budget, the Trump administration is pushing for further tax cuts that the new tariffs can’t compensate for. This will lead to an even bigger deficit, which Trump campaigned on fixing. Elon Musk’s DOGE effort was supposed to cut $2 trillion in expenses, but the target has since...

Slate Auto’s new vehicle is designed to make EVs more accessible by making most features optional add-ons. The company says it will start delivering vehicles in 2026. *************************************************************** A new auto startup is launching with a made-in-America EV that with federal tax credits will cost just $20,000. Backed by Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, Slate Auto says that affordable price is possible because of its pared-down, basic model that can then be customized—and even transformed from a truck into an SUV. Slate Auto has been in stealth for almost three years, says CEO Chris Barman, who worked as a Chrysler...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California is spending $500 million to put an additional 1,000 electric school buses on the road as federal cuts and freezes paused efforts in other states to replace aging diesel-fueled fleets that are more polluting. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced Wednesday that 1,000 zero-emission school buses and related charging infrastructure will be provided to over 130 rural, low-income and disadvantaged school districts. The state grants add about 500 more charging stations for school buses to more than 200 stations already in operation in districts. The expansion contrasts efforts in other states that were hampered by the...

Barack Obama’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Power Plant has officially failed and will begin shutting gone operations early 2026.. - $1.6 BILLION in federal loans. - $535 MILLION grant. - $600 MILLION tax credit. - MASSIVE investor write-offs.. A SCAM paid for by US Taxpayers for NOTHING ... Obamala himself is not bankrupt. Indeed, he remains awash in undrowned private chefs. Never leave your wallet unattended in the presence of Democrats. ... His first scam was Solyndra. ... Ivanpah: $2.7B to boil birds in the desert. California Bullet Train: $100B to almost connect two places no one’s trying to go. One...

US Experience The US has seen two eras in e-bike injury—an early era with the majority of deaths in older patients who have the financial resources to purchase earlier generation and more expensive e-bikes but were less skilled riding a bicycle. During the pandemic, sales of all bikes increased, and the closure of gyms and social distancing led some to purchase e-bikes as a safe option for outdoor exercise. In the second era, e-bike prices fell significantly and became more affordable, leading to a dramatic increase in pediatric use and injury. [snip] For decades, MarinHealth Medical Center has been the...

"How many deaths are we prepared to accept in order to rush through an EV transition that nobody wants?"

It’s become vogue on the right to trash electric vehicles. And, mostly, we’re right to. Most of them are garbage retrofits that rely on a garbage network of chargers which are made by garbage ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) manufacturers who have absolutely no idea what they are doing. What they are manufacturing is virtue-signaling, not cars with anything even remotely resembling good EV—or any other type of—engineering. And then there’s Tesla. There are EVs, and there are Teslas. And though they are both clearly electric cars, they are two completely different animals. This article aims to give you a permanent...

Data Center Alley, a 30-square-mile stretch outside Washington D.C. and home to more than 200 data centers, consumes roughly the same electricity as Boston. So power company officials were alarmed when a big chunk of those centers – 60 of them – suddenly dropped off the grid one day last summer and switched to on-site generators. The mass reaction was triggered by a standard safety mechanism across the data center industry, intended to protect computer chips and electronic equipment from damage caused by voltage fluctuations. But it caused a huge surge in excess electricity, according to federal regulators and utility...

… Oregon transportation officials say that without more funding, residents like (Timothy) Taylor could see further declines in the quality of roads, highways and bridges starting this year. But revenues from gas taxes paid by drivers at the pump are projected to decrease as more people adopt electric and fuel-efficient cars, forcing officials to look for new ways to fund transportation infrastructure. States with aggressive climate goals like Oregon are facing a conundrum: EVs can help reduce emissions in the transportation sector, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, but they also mean less gas tax revenue in government...

The electric buses in question were made by a company called Proterra, which went bankrupt two years ago.. A city in Washington is selling nearly half of its electric bus fleet following reliability issues and difficulty getting replacement parts. The Everett City Council voted earlier this week to sell nine of the electric buses, of which only four are in service right now, because of reliability issues, including critical sensors and components that have been failing since they went into service. The city is now looking to purchase retrofitted diesel buses so there are no gaps in service. According to...

In yet another stunning example of government waste, the Biden administration’s $3 billion scheme to convert the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) fleet to electric vehicles (EVs) has delivered nothing but empty promises, skyrocketing costs, and a mere 93 vehicles out of the planned 50,000. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Representative Michael Cloud (R-Texas) are leading the charge against reckless taxpayer-funded disaster. They introduced the Return to Sender Act, a bill aimed at clawing back the unspent billions that were funneled into the failed USPS EV initiative under Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). “Biden’s $3 billion EV fleet for USPS...

State Democratic lawmakers are trying to pump the brakes on the Hochul administration’s “nearly impossible” green-energy rule requiring more new large trucks to be emissions-free. The proposal, pushed by state Sen. Jeremy Coney Cooney (D-Rochester) and Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo (D-Binghamton), would postpone the start of the Democratic governor’s edict until at least Jan. 1, 2027. Hochul’s recent “Advanced Clean Trucks” rule requires manufacturers of vehicles greater than 8,500 pounds to sell an increasing number of zero-emission vehicles in New York, starting with a 7% zero emissions sales percentage in 2025 and ramping up every model year through 2035, to 40%...