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I’m Quinn Emmett, and this is science for people who give a shit.
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This week: Are car dealers the devil? And why?
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Car Dealers, Man
Here’s the thing about American car dealers: they’re wealthier than you think, and standing directly in the way of reducing fossil fuel use by 2/3 and our emissions by 1/3.
Caveating here that electric vehicles are still pollution-spewing nightmares and that parking laws have destroyed our cities, so they’re not THE answer. Far fewer cars and drastically better, safer, and more prevalent public transportation and mobility infrastructure are the big win.
But at the same time EV’s remain one enormous lever to reduce our overall emissions by eliminating our transportation emissions — with the vital co-benefits of immediately eliminating tailpipe emissions as every ICE engine is replaced.
But among the obstacles standing in the way of completely turning over our automobile fleet, at least in the US, are ever-powerful and relatively wealthy GOP-loyal car dealers.
From Slate:
“Car dealers, gas station owners, and building contractors, it turns out, make up the majority of the country’s 140,000 Americans who earn more than $1.58 million per year.“
Some more context:
Pre-IRA, we spent years asking how we could possibly sell all the electric cars we need to, considering unreliable federal subsidies, nary a charging network, range anxiety, all by way of car dealers who simply weren’t incentivized to sell them.
One big reason? The lion share of dealership profits come from gas engine maintenance and repairs.
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