WASHINGTON — House Republicans approved a bill Wednesday to block strict new tailpipe pollution limits proposed by the Biden administration, calling the plan a back-door mandate for electric vehicles.
A rule proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would require that up to two-thirds of new vehicles sold in the U.S. are electric by 2032, a nearly tenfold increase over current EV sales. The proposed regulation, announced in April, would set tailpipe emissions limits for the 2027 through 2032 model years that are the strictest ever imposed — and call for far more new EV sales than the auto industry agreed to less than two years ago.
The EPA says it is not imposing an EV mandate, but Republicans say the plan favors EVs and punishes gas engines, forcing Americans into cars and trucks they can’t afford.
“Americans should have the right to decide what products and appliances work best for their family, not the federal government,” said Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Minn., the bill’s chief sponsor.
The proposed EPA regulation would drive up costs for motorists “and hand the keys of America’s auto industry to China,” Walberg said, referring to that country’s dominance over the EV battery supply chain.
The measure was approved 221-197 and now goes to the Senate, where it is unlikely to advance. Five Democrats — Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas; Don Davis of North Carolina; Jared Golden of Maine; and Mary Peltola of Alaska — voted with Republicans to block the EPA rule.
New EVs typically cost more than gas-powered cars, although prices have declined in recent months as supplies have increased and tax credits for EV purchases approved in the 2022 climate law have taken effect. EVs also have lower operating costs because they don’t require gasoline.
The average transaction price for EVs was $53,469 in July, compared with $48,334 for gas-powered cars, according to Kelley Blue Book, an automotive research company. Tesla contributed to a substantial drop in EV prices since late last year as it cut prices, the research company said.
The White House strongly opposes the GOP bill and said in a statement that President Joe Biden would veto the measure if it reaches his desk.
The bill would “catastrophically impair EPA’s ability to issue automotive regulations that protect public health, save consumers money, strengthen American energy security and protect American investments in the vehicle technologies of the future,” the White House said in a statement.
EPA’s proposed standards for passenger cars and light trucks are performance-based, the White House said, and allow vehicle manufacturers to choose the mix of technologies best suited for their customers.
More than 100 EV models are now available in the U.S. alongside hybrid and gas-powered options, “giving Americans unprecedented flexibility in where and how they choose to fuel,” the White House said. The EPA proposal could save Americans thousands of dollars over a vehicle’s lifetime by accelerating adoption of technologies that reduce fuel and maintenance costs along with pollution, the White House said.
The GOP bill “would undermine all of these benefits, harming American consumers, companies and workers,” the White House said.
Republicans said the EPA rule would reduce choices for car owners, “shipping our auto-future and jobs to China” in the process.
“President Biden’s rush to green agenda is failing,” Rodgers said. “He wants us all driving EVs — 100% battery electric, not plug-in, not hybrid. We don’t agree.”
New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the energy panel, said the GOP bill would stifle innovation and cause uncertainty for American automakers. The bill includes “vague language” that could prevent EPA from ever finalizing vehicle standards for any type of motor vehicle, Pallone said.
Instead of working with Democrats on legislation to lower costs for consumers or protect public health, “the Republican majority is, once again, bringing an anti-clean vehicle bill to the floor as part of their polluters over people agenda,” Pallone said during floor debate.
“This bill would simply prevent the EPA from doing its job,” Pallone said, accusing House Republicans of “trying to legislate away years of innovation in clean transportation.”
WASHINGTON — House Republicans approved a bill Wednesday to block strict new tailpipe pollution limits proposed by the Biden administration, calling the plan a back-door mandate for electric vehicles.
A rule proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would require that up to two-thirds of new vehicles sold in the U.S. are electric by 2032, a nearly tenfold increase over current EV sales. The proposed regulation, announced in April, would set tailpipe emissions limits for the 2027 through 2032 model years that are the strictest ever imposed — and call for far more new EV sales than the auto industry agreed to less than two years ago.
The EPA says it is not imposing an EV mandate, but Republicans say the plan favors EVs and punishes gas engines, forcing Americans into cars and trucks they can’t afford.
“Americans should have the right to decide what products and appliances work best for their family, not the federal government,” said Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Minn., the bill’s chief sponsor.
The proposed EPA regulation would drive up costs for motorists “and hand the keys of America’s auto industry to China,” Walberg said, referring to that country’s dominance over the EV battery supply chain.
The measure was approved 221-197 and now goes to the Senate, where it is unlikely to advance. Five Democrats — Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas; Don Davis of North Carolina; Jared Golden of Maine; and Mary Peltola of Alaska — voted with Republicans to block the EPA rule.
New EVs typically cost more than gas-powered cars, although prices have declined in recent months as supplies have increased and tax credits for EV purchases approved in the 2022 climate law have taken effect. EVs also have lower operating costs because they don’t require gasoline.
The average transaction price for EVs was $53,469 in July, compared with $48,334 for gas-powered cars, according to Kelley Blue Book, an automotive research company. Tesla contributed to a substantial drop in EV prices since late last year as it cut prices, the research company said.
The White House strongly opposes the GOP bill and said in a statement that President Joe Biden would veto the measure if it reaches his desk.
The bill would “catastrophically impair EPA’s ability to issue automotive regulations that protect public health, save consumers money, strengthen American energy security and protect American investments in the vehicle technologies of the future,” the White House said in a statement.
EPA’s proposed standards for passenger cars and light trucks are performance-based, the White House said, and allow vehicle manufacturers to choose the mix of technologies best suited for their customers.
More than 100 EV models are now available in the U.S. alongside hybrid and gas-powered options, “giving Americans unprecedented flexibility in where and how they choose to fuel,” the White House said. The EPA proposal could save Americans thousands of dollars over a vehicle’s lifetime by accelerating adoption of technologies that reduce fuel and maintenance costs along with pollution, the White House said.
The GOP bill “would undermine all of these benefits, harming American consumers, companies and workers,” the White House said.
Republicans said the EPA rule would reduce choices for car owners, “shipping our auto-future and jobs to China” in the process.
“President Biden’s rush to green agenda is failing,” Rodgers said. “He wants us all driving EVs — 100% battery electric, not plug-in, not hybrid. We don’t agree.”
New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the energy panel, said the GOP bill would stifle innovation and cause uncertainty for American automakers. The bill includes “vague language” that could prevent EPA from ever finalizing vehicle standards for any type of motor vehicle, Pallone said.
Instead of working with Democrats on legislation to lower costs for consumers or protect public health, “the Republican majority is, once again, bringing an anti-clean vehicle bill to the floor as part of their polluters over people agenda,” Pallone said during floor debate.
“This bill would simply prevent the EPA from doing its job,” Pallone said, accusing House Republicans of “trying to legislate away years of innovation in clean transportation.”
BRUSSELS — Eva Kaili and Francesco Giorgi had left nothing to chance.
The duo that would later become the most famous — many would say infamous — couple in the European Union capital had been gearing up for this moment for years.
As Qatar prepared to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, they were among the Gulf state’s fiercest advocates in Brussels, defending its record on human rights and fending off criticism of its treatment of migrant workers.
And now, less than a week before the high-profile soccer tournament was to kick off, it was all coming to a head. At a crucial hearing in the European Parliament, Qatar’s Labor Minister Ali bin Samikh Al Marri — aka “the Doctor” — would come in person to plead his case before the chamber’s human rights committee.
In the preceding days, Kaili, a Greek lawmaker who was then a vice president of the European Parliament, had ramped up her efforts. According to public records, interviews and a cache of investigative files seen by POLITICO, she had flown back and forth to Doha and spent hours pleading and cajoling fellow lawmakers to give Qatar a clean bill of health on human rights.
At several points, she turned to her partner, Giorgi, for advice. “Who else should I talk to?” she texted him on November 14, according to transcriptions of her WhatsApp messages included in the police investigation files.
While Kaili worked the phones, Giorgi, an Italian parliamentary assistant, had been putting the finishing touches to the Qatari minister’s speech. In police surveillance photographs taken three days before the hearing, he can be seen poring over the text with his longtime boss, Pier Antonio Panzeri — a former EU lawmaker who Belgian prosecutors would later describe as the mastermind of a sweeping cash-for-influence operation known as “Qatargate.”
Per their usual working method, the Italian-speaking Panzeri wrote the speech in his native language and then passed it on to Giorgi for translation. With one day to go, Giorgi and Kaili huddled with Al Marri in his suite at the 5-star Steigenberger Wiltcher’s hotel, according to hotel video recordings obtained by the police.
Finally, it was the big day. As the minister took to the stage on November 14, 2022, Kaili nervously texted her partner again to ask if she should show up in person.
“Don’t come,” Giorgi replied via WhatsApp. “I’m afraid you will be exposed. To enter with the baby, everyone will notice u.”
She replied: “I don’t want to be exposed.”
So she stayed with the couple’s child, while the rest of the key suspects in what would become the Qatargate scandal crowded into the auditorium where Al Marri — the man police would later describe as the leader in his country’s efforts to corrupt the European Parliament — was taking to the stage.
At a hearing, Ali bin Samikh Al Marri laid out the case for Qatar’s labor reforms and why his country deserved the world’s respect despite reports alleging abuse of migrant laborers | Pierre Albouy/EFE via EPA
If everything went well and Al Marri came out satisfied with their efforts over many months of lobbying, the Italian former lawmaker stood to make good on a long-standing business relationship he and Giorgi would later tell police was worth more than €4 million.
And if it failed? Nobody wanted to know.
As Al Marri spoke, laying out the case for Qatar’s labor reforms and why his country deserved the world’s respect despite reports alleging abuse of migrant laborers, Kaili and her partner of five years WhatsApped back and forth, as one might do while watching a major sporting event from two different locations.
“So Arabic and speaks without reading,” Giorgi texted.
A few minutes later, Kaili commented: “He’s losing it a bit.”
As other lawmakers took to the floor following Al Marri’s speech, she bristled at criticism of Qatar.
“Who is this fat,” she texted her partner, referring to one lawmaker, adding an adjective which to her was an insult: “Communist.”
As Al Marri wrapped up, the Greek lawmaker asked: “Why he didn’t follow the speech.”
Finally, it was over.
Giorgi texted Kaili: “Ela, we did everything we could.”
For the watch party, a major milestone had been crossed. A senior Qatari representative had been given a chance to address criticism in what could have been a fiercely critical environment.
So far, so good. Except what they didn’t know was that Giorgi and Panzeri had been under surveillance by Belgian secret services for months, suspected of taking part in a sweeping cash-for-influence scheme under which Qatar paid to obtain specific legislative outcomes. Their communications, including with Kaili and other suspects, would be scooped up as part of the wiretaps and the subsequent investigations.
Eva Kaili maintains her defense of Qatar was part of her job as a representative of the European Union | Julien Warnand/EFE via EPA
Kaili denies any wrongdoing in a scheme in which police say Panzeri and others accepted money from Qatar, Morocco and Mauritania in exchange for pushing their interests in the European Parliament. Kaili maintains her defense of Qatar was part of her job as a representative of the European Union and that the investigation into her actions breached the parliamentary immunity enjoyed by sitting MEPs.
There is no other evidence in the hundreds of pages of wiretapping by the secret services that indicates Kaili directly received money from Qatar or other countries. Giorgi has provided details of the operation to police, but his lawyer has argued his statements were extracted under duress.
And yet, as the pro-Qatar operation turned to its next challenges, Belgian investigators who had taken over the probe from the secret service were closing in.
On the morning of December 9, the trap slammed shut. Kaili, Giorgi, Panzeri and a couple of other suspects were arrested and thrown into jail on charges of corruption, money laundering and participating in a “criminal conspiracy.” Two other members of the European Parliament, Marc Tarabella and Andrea Cozzolino, would also be arrested and charged.
Police published photographs of bags stuffed full of hundreds of thousands of euros which they had recovered in Panzeri’s flat, at Kaili and Giorgi’s home and in a suitcase wheeled by Kaili’s father — instantly turning their probe into a page one news story for outlets around the Continent.
* * *
The shock arrests of one of the highest-ranking members of the European Parliament, her boyfriend and their alleged accomplices smashed open a window onto a murky world of lobbying for foreign governments in the heart of EU democracy.
The Brussels bubble, as the EU’s policymaking apparatus is known, likes to think of itself as a global paragon of democracy, transparency and respect for human rights. There’s another side of the EU capital, however — an ecosystem of hidden connections and low-grade corruption, of back-scratching politicians and the filter feeders that gravitate toward centers of political power and public largesse.
While the Qatargate case has yet to go to court and several of the key players, including Kaili, insist they are innocent of the charges, the scandal has already led to reforms. The European Parliament has introduced changes bolstering transparency, and the creation of an ethics body establishing common standards for EU civil servants is being negotiated.
The story of Qatargate is also still being written. And nobody better captures the human element of this complex affair — and the cozy, transactional world in which it took place — than Kaili and Giorgi.
Start with Kaili: A political celebrity in her native Greece, where she’d gained fame as a TV presenter, at the time of her arrest she was one of Brussels’ most prominent politicians, widely believed to be bound for higher office either within the EU system or back home. She’d recently had her first child with Giorgi, an ambitious parliamentary assistant nine years her junior whose wavy blond hair and dimpled smile were well known in the European Parliament.
Together, they formed a formidable power couple on the Brussels circuit — as well as a shining example of what Europeans hailing from their respective Mediterranean homelands can achieve in the EU system if they play their cards right.
And yet, in an instant, it was all over. Both of them were in jail, their reputations in tatters, their infant child outside and in the care of family members. In the space of a single morning, the EU capital’s golden couple had become the most notorious duo in town.
Pier Antonio Panzeri hired Francesco Giorgi as an intern in 2009 | European Union
To understand what propelled this sudden plunge, it helps to dial back the clock to the earliest days of their relationship, five years before anyone heard of the so-called Qatargate scandal.
It was a Monday in early 2017. Giorgi was at work doing a familiar task — interpreting for his language-challenged boss, Pier Antonio Panzeri, at a conference in Parliament.
The two men went back a long way. Panzeri had been Giorgi’s boss for nearly a decade already, having hired him first as an intern in 2009 and then as a full-blown accredited assistant. The elder Italian was a well-known politician in Parliament — a shrewd operator on the left wing of Italy’s Partito Democratico, a trade union veteran from Milan who turned to international affairs late in his 15-year parliamentary career.
But he was a man of his generation — only really comfortable speaking in Italian and, according to Giorgi, unable to switch on a computer.
For all of those things, there was Giorgi. Then aged around 30, he was in a good place professionally and socially. Like thousands of Italians who flock to Brussels every year, he looked to the EU system as a land of opportunity. And the system had served him well. Paid handsomely, he had a front-row seat on his boss’s dealings, which included travel to places like Rabat, Morocco and Doha, Qatar, as well as more mundane tasks.
But nearly 10 years in, Giorgi was ready for change. And little did he know, the embodiment of that change was about to walk in the door.
While Kaili and Giorgi had seen each other in the halls of the European Parliament a few times since her election in 2014, according to her interviews with Belgian police, that Monday meeting in Brussels would stick out for them as their first proper encounter.
The mutual interest must have been powerful because it’s hard to overstate the disparity, in terms of age and political and financial power, that separated Giorgi from Kaili as she walked in, heading a NATO delegation.
To put it bluntly, Giorgi was a cog in the machine with no political weight. By contrast, Kaili was already a well-established politician in Brussels and very well plugged-in with Greece’s political and business elite. She had barreled her way up through the ranks of the Greek socialist party, PASOK, while still in her twenties, before making the jump to the European Parliament in 2014. In her office, Kaili employed no fewer than three Giorgis.
And yet the young Italian, who’d grown up sailing in the Mediterranean and skiing in the French Alps, decided to try his luck. According to Kaili’s testimony to police, after this initial encounter, the two of them dined “two or three times.” Giorgi spent the better part of a year trying to woo the Greek lawmaker, but it was tough going as she claimed to be far too busy with her work to carve out time for a serious relationship.
It was only after about a year, she said, that things became “serious.” Marking the transition from casual dating to partnership, they made a shared commitment: co-investing in an apartment located just behind their shared place of work, the European Parliament. It was Christmas Eve, 2019, according to Giorgi’s statements to police.
After Kaili returned to Greece in 2019 to campaign for reelection, Giorgi joined her a few months later. In February 2021, they were joined by a baby girl.
Eva Kaili returned to Greece in 2019 to campaign for reelection | Menelaos Myrillas/SOOC/AFP via Getty Images
But that’s where their story departs from the norm. Most wage-earning couples don’t live surrounded by stacks of cash. Most EU bubble couples don’t possess a “go bag” brimming with bank notes, or end up as suspects in sprawling corruption probes.
Part of the explanation can be found in their link to Panzeri, the Svengali-like third wheel in their relationship, whom Giorgi described initially as a “father figure” and whom Kaili later called a manipulator taking advantage of her boyfriend’s “idealistic” personality.
Indeed, in his interviews with Belgian investigators, Giorgi traces back the “original sin” of his involvement in Qatargate to a deal he agreed to with Panzeri shortly after becoming his employee in 2009. Under that arrangement, Giorgi allegedly agreed to pay Panzeri back €1,500 per month of his wages in exchange for the privilege of working for him, a relatively common scheme in the Parliament. (As a point of comparison, when the scandal broke, Giorgi was earning some €6,600 per month as an assistant to a different MEP).
The deal was to prove an introduction to a transactional world in which Panzeri — as a lawmaker and later, as the head of Fight Impunity, a nongovernmental organization he launched after leaving Parliament — had no trouble accepting large sums of cash from foreign governments in exchange for services rendered.
From 2018, Giorgi and Panzeri dove headlong into a partnership allegedly based on lobbying for Qatar in exchange for big cash payments. According to Giorgi’s statements to police, they agreed on a long-term lobbying agreement worth an estimated €4.5 million and to be split 60/40, with the larger share going to Panzeri.
Once arrested, Giorgi and Panzeri would butt heads about the precise role of each in the lobbying arrangement. But one of the younger Italian’s key tasks was to pick up cash payments at various places around Brussels, often from total strangers. Once he picked up €300,000 in cash near the Royal Palace from a person driving a black Audi with Dutch license plates. Another time, the drop-off happened in a parking lot near the canal.
In total, there were around ten such drop-offs, two or three per year, with the smallest amount around €50,000.
The alleged quid pro quo was that Giorgi and Panzeri would deliver specific parliamentary and public relations outcomes to their clients, which in addition to Qatar included Morocco and Mauritania. The ever-meticulous Giorgi kept a spreadsheet on his computer on which he documented hundreds of influence activities that the network allegedly carried out between 2018 and 2022.
It records more than 300 pieces of work, using a network of aides inside parliament whom they called their “soldiers,” according to the files.
Even as they pressed their clients’ interests, they were also trying to exploit their lack of familiarity with the workings of the bubble, reporting certain actions that, according to Giorgi, they actually had no influence over.
The scheme, Giorgi later told police, “relied on the ignorance of how parliament works” — on the part of the duo’s clients.
Panzeri, through his lawyer, declined to comment for this article.
* * *
As Giorgi dug deeper into his partnership with Panzeri, his romance with Kaili was expanding into a business partnership.
While each already had other properties — including Kaili’s two apartments in Athens (which she said were worth a combined €400,000) and one in Brussels (estimated by Kaili at €160,000) and one belonging to Giorgi purchased for €145,000 in Brussels — they were soon eyeing other purchases.
Eva Kaili and Francesco Giorgi purchased a flat near the European Parliament for €375,000 in 2019 | Leon Neal/Getty Images
After the Christmas Eve purchase of their flat near the Parliament for €375,000 in 2019, they purchased a plot of land on the Greek island of Paros for €300,000 in 2021 which they planned to develop into four holiday villas and at least one swimming pool, according to files recovered from Giorgi’s computer in a folder called “Business”. Then, in 2022, came the purchase of their second apartment, a penthouse right next to the Parliament, worth €650,000, according to Giorgi’s statements to police.
All told, the couple’s joint real estate purchases amounted to more than €1.3 million over a period of two years.
In between these purchases, there were other expenses: sailing holidays, a Land Rover bought for €56,000 and a fully refurbished kitchen. On several occasions, the couple sought to minimize their outlay by exploiting their insiders’ knowledge of the system.
According to documents seized at Giorgi’s home, a Qatari diplomat helped him get a discount on the Land Rover by taking advantage of special conditions for diplomatic staff, reducing the sticker price by about €10,000.
By any normal standards, Kaili and Giorgi were already wealthy based on their income.
In addition to taking home €6,600 per month as a parliamentary assistant, Giorgi received €1,000 in social benefits for their daughter, €1,800per month from the rental to the Mauritanian ambassador and — since the envoy never occupied the flat — €1,200 in cash from two women to whom he sublet the flat for a few months.
As for Kaili, she earned about €10,000 before taxes plus about €900 in monthly rent from a flat she owned in Brussels.
All told, the couple was pulling in well over €20,000 per month, an eye-watering amount in a country where the median monthly wage is €3,507 before taxes.
Yet even these substantial monthly earnings seem not to have covered the mounting costs related to their real estate investments or make the couple feel fully secure. Despite the fact her partner was pulling in more than three times the Belgian median wage, Kaili would tell police during the first interview after her arrest: “I know that Francesco doesn’t have a lot of money because he isn’t able to partake in all of our expenses.”
What motivated this drive for accumulation? According to a person who knew Kaili professionally and asked not to be named due to fear of retaliation, the answer lies partly in her background growing up without much money in Thessaloniki, Greece. “It feels like she grew up with a lot of deprivations,” the person said. “She wanted to feel that even if she quits politics, she will have a comfortable life.”
According to a person who knew Kaili professionally, the answer to her drive for accumulation lies partly in her background growing up without much money in Thessaloniki | Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP via Getty Images
As a result, Kaili tended to be very focused on financial opportunities. “She loved people with power and money. She was always, ‘You know this event is going to have businessmen,’” the person added. “And she always liked to have houses and property stuff, but she was never into luxury stuff.”
As for Giorgi, the son of a school director and import-export entrepreneur, he grew up in more comfortable circumstances in a town near Milan.
But as the junior partner in his relationship with Kaili, he may have struggled to keep up financially with a partner who earned more than he did and kept company with wealthy entrepreneurs and crypto bros.
“I have never loved luxury. I don’t know why I lost my way,” he told police during his first interview shortly after his arrest.
* * *
In interviews with police, Giorgi admitted to being part of a scheme, with Panzeri, to take hundreds of thousands of euros in cash from foreign governments — admissions his lawyer now says he made under pressure from police who he says threatened to take away his daughter.
But Kaili always maintained that she had nothing to do with the setup. Not only does she claim ignorance about the ultimate source of much of the money found in her apartment, and on her father; she also told police that she had nothing to do with Panzeri and Giorgi’s deals with foreign governments — an argument that her partner has always backed up, telling police early on that she had nothing to do with the scheme.
Panzeri, however, says the opposite. He alleges that in the spring of 2019, Kaili was part of a pact struck with Qatar to fund several MEPs’ election campaigns to the tune of €250,000 each. Giorgi and Panzeri both attest that a deal like this took place — but disagree on whether Kaili was involved.
In any case, having forged a reputation as a tech policymaker, Kaili’s work as a lawmaker veered suddenly toward the Middle East and the world of human rights, particularly in the Gulf, from 2017 onwards the year she met Giorgi. She traveled to Qatar for the first time later that year, at the invitation of another lawmaker, and made trips — some with Giorgi, some without — in 2020 and 2022.
In early 2022, just after she became a Parliament vice president, she asked the chamber’s president, Roberta Metsola, to give her files related to the Middle East and human rights. “I hope I didn’t make it difficult for you,” Kaili WhatsApped Metsola. “You gave me everything I love the most!” She was later designated as the vice president who would replace Metsola in her absence on issues related to the Middle East.
In the days and weeks leading up to the kickoff of the World Cup, Kaili and Giorgi’s work increasingly overlapped on two main files: opposition to a resolution critical of Qatar and a deal Doha was seeking with the EU that would allow its citizens to travel to the bloc without a visa.
On November 12, two days before Qatar’s labor minister would appear before the European Parliament, she reached out to Metsola, offering her tickets to the tournament in Doha.
“My dear President!” she wrote to Metsola. “Hope you are well. I have to pass you an invitation for the World Cup, you [sic] or your husband and boys might be interested,” she wrote on WhatsApp.
Eva Kaili reached out to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, offering her tickets to the World Cup in Doha | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
It’s not clear what, if anything, Kaili asked from Metsola in exchange for the tickets. Throughout her dealings with lawmakers over Qatar, the Greek lawmaker would occasionally delete the messages she had sent. This includes her side of the rest of the conversation with Metsola — except for one text: “The rest I disagree too but I believe they will digest if we get the visa,” she wrote.
(A spokesperson for the Parliament president said Metsola never accepted any tickets to the World Cup and did not read Kaili’s messages before they were deleted.)
With the World Cup having started, the next big challenge awaiting Kaili, Giorgi and Panzeri was a plenary session in Strasbourg where rival politicians aimed to criticize Qatar’s human rights record weeks before the World Cup by putting a resolution on the agenda. Once again, they ramped up their lobbying.
So noticeable was the pro-Qatari line being pushed by Kaili and others affiliated with Panzeri that it started raising eyebrows among their colleagues.
“There were some very strange opinions being voiced on how we should not criticize Qatar, and we should rather recognize the reforms they were making and so on,” remembered Niels Fuglsang, a Danish MEP from the same S&D group. “I thought it was obvious that our group should criticize this, we are social democrats, we care about workers’ rights and migrants’ rights.”
For example, on November 21, Kaili pressed José Ramón Bauzá Díaz, a Spanish centrist MEP who ran the Qatari-EU friendship group, over his political faction’s stance on the resolution, poised to slam Qatar’s human rights track record.
“So, your group wants to vote in favor of a resolution Against Qatar World Cup,” she WhatsApped to him. He said: “It is crazy.” She went on to press him to take a pro-Qatari stance and reject the resolution.
Later that day, in a now-infamous video, Kaili took to the stage during Parliament’s plenary session and sung the praises of Qatar. “I alone said that Qatar is a front-runner in labor rights,” she said. “Still, some here are calling to discriminate them. They bully them and they accuse everyone that talks to them, or engages, of corruption. But still, they take their gas.”
With a crunch vote on the resolution’s final wording still to take place on November 24, Kaili was still going strong, texting with Abdulaziz bin Ahmed Al Malki, the Gulf country’s envoy to the European Union and NATO.
During this exchange, the Qatari gave Kaili direct instructions to take action on legislation of interest to Qatar.
“Hi Iva,” wrote the Qatari in a WhatsApp message on November 24. “My dear my ministry doesn’t want paragraph A about FIFA & Qatar. Please do your best to remove it via voting before 12 noon or during the voting please.”
Kaili deleted her responses.
Eva Kaili has challenged the lifting of her immunity in an EPPO investigation at the European Court of Justice | Nicolas Bouvy/EPA via EFE
But the recipient appeared to be pleased with what she texted, writing back a few hours later: “Thanks excellency” with a hands-clasped-in-prayer emoji.
The Qatar Embassy in Brussels and the spokesperson’s office in Doha did not respond to requests for comment.
* * *
Plainclothes Belgian police arrested Giorgi at 10:42 a.m. on December 9 at his home in Brussels. Earlier, they had picked up Panzeri. According to her statements to police, Kaili did not immediately know what had happened and originally thought Giorgi was involved in a car accident. She was told by police that her partner had been arrested.
Having tried and failed to get through by phone to Panzeri and his friends, Kaili set about trying to get rid of the stacks of cash in her apartment.
She headed to the safe that Giorgi had installed in their apartment and started to shovel stacks of bills into a travel bag. On top of them, she placed baby bottles for her child as well as a mobile phone and a laptop computer. Then she told her father, a civil engineer and sometime political operator who was visiting the family in Brussels, to take the bag and go to a hotel, where her father’s partner and Kaili’s baby were waiting. “I didn’t leave him the choice,” she later told police. “I just said, ‘Take this and go.’”
A few hours later, police followed Kaili’s father as he walked to the Sofitel, a short distance from their flat. According to a person familiar with the details of the investigation, bank notes were fluttering out of the bag as he went. Cops stoppedKaili’s father inside the hotel, seized the suitcase and detained him. Then it was Kaili’s turn. In the early afternoon, police detained her and took her to the Prison de Saint-Gilles.
The next day, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) announced it was investigating Kaili and another Greek member of Parliament in a probe looking at whether she took kickbacks from her assistant’s salaries as well as cuts of their reimbursements for “fake” work trips. Kaili has challenged the lifting of her immunity in this case at the European Court of Justice.
As the one-year anniversary of her spectacular downfall has approached, Kaili and her lawyers have done their best to turn the tables on the prosecutors, casting doubt on the evidence gathered against her and the way the investigation was carried out. Since her arrest, and through a four-month incarceration, Kaili has never wavered from her story. Her advocacy for Qatar, she has argued, was just part of her job as a European politician trying to foster ties with a petroleum-rich country in a region of critical importance to the EU.
Kaili’s lawyers have argued that the testimony provided by Panzeri, who has struck a deal with investigators and confessed in detail, cannot be trusted. Giorgi’s lawyer, Pierre Monville, has maintained his client’s statements were made under duress. “Whatever Giorgi has declared or written during his detention was under extreme pressure and preoccupation regarding the fact that his daughter was left without her parents,” he said.
Kaili’s lawyers have also noted that police kept Panzeri and Giorgi in the same cell in the days after their detention, giving them a chance to coordinate their stories. Kaili’s lawyers argue she was subjected to illegal surveillance, arbitrary detention and what amounts to “torture” while in jail.
The Qatargate suspects won a major victory last summer when the lead investigator, Michel Claise, stepped down over conflict-of-interest concerns after it was revealed that his son was in business with the son of an MEP who was close to Panzeri but hasn’t been arrested or charged.
Then, in September, Kaili played the ace up her sleeve, throwing the entire investigation in doubt with a legal challenge arguing that the evidence against her should be ruled inadmissible because it was gathered before the European Parliament voted to lift the immunity she enjoyed as a lawmaker.
The Qatargate suspects won a major victory last summer when the lead investigator, Michel Claise, stepped down over conflict-of-interest concerns | BELPRESS
Prosecutors retort that such a step wasn’t needed because Kaili had been caught red-handed by her decision to send her father out with a suitcase full of cash, but the case has been delayed pending a decision on her challenge by an appeals court expected in the middle of next year.
“We’re exploring uncharted legal territory here,” said a person familiar with the case, who requested anonymity as they were not allowed to speak on the record. In the meantime, Kaili is back in Parliament, giving interviews to international media and losing few opportunities to make the case for her innocence to her fellow lawmakers.
Giorgi and Kaili are, by all accounts, living together again. One of her lawyers says they’ve been given dispensation to do so, despite the fact that they are suspects in the same case.
Kaili and Giorgi declined to comment for this article, but they clearly haven’t given up the fight. Giorgi’s WhatsApp status is “FORTITUDINE VINCIMUS” — through endurance, we conquer.
Kaili’s profile pic on the app features the famous quote often wrongly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi:
“First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.”
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Nicholas Vinocur, Elisa Braun, Eddy Wax and Gian Volpicelli
University of Georgia senior Jack TerHaar is a massive Bulldogs fan. But when working at bars in Athens, Georgia, started cutting into his game-watching time, he knew he was ready for something else. The late nights didn’t help either.
“I didn’t want to be working until four in the morning,” he said. “I’ve always had an entrepreneurial mindset where I felt I could do more with my time.”
TerHaar, a Louisiana native, started researching other options. Car detailing (i.e., thoroughly washing and cleaning cars) struck him as a potentially lucrative and flexible side hustle with little overhead. His instincts were spot-on—or spot-free.
After a few initial missteps and some help from the entrepreneurial mentorship program at his school, TerHaar built Detail Dawgs into a $ 7,000-a-month business, donating some of this revenue to charity. He hopes to expand into other college towns after he graduates.
After TerHaar set his sights on car detailing, he gathered information by talking to a guy in his hometown who had a successful detailing business and watching a ton of YouTube videos to figure out what materials he needed.
He detailed some of his friends’ cars and posted his work on Instagram. Business was good, but it wasn’t enough to pay off his tuition. Coming from a strong family tradition in entrepreneurship (both his mom and dad started their businesses), TerHaar enrolled in a 4-week entrepreneurial accelerator program at UGA.
“My professors really pushed me,” he recalls. “They were like, ‘We wanna see you reach out to X number of people, and we wanna see you get X number of jobs this week.’ I went from doing five or six jobs a month to doing 12 jobs in that last week. “
Breaking out of his comfort zone
His professors encouraged him to shoot for a 2% conversion rate, ideally contacting 1000 potential clients weekly. That meant he needed to reach beyond his friend zone and the greater UGA campus.
“How many college kids can pay $180 to wash their car? So, I went to grocery stores and parking lots and handed out business cards. I also went to real estate and law offices,” TerHaar says.
At first, he was hesitant to approach “random strangers.” But he realized that “to find out who your customer is, you have to become uncomfortable talking to people about your business,” he says.
With coaching from his professors, he also tested out Google Ads, pushing potential customers to his website. Eventually, he ranked number one in his area for car detailing.
Business began to boom to around 15 jobs a week, requiring him to hire an additional three other guys. He charges $180 for sedans and $210 for SUVs and trucks, earning around $7,000 monthly.
TerHaar admits his team could be detailing more cars, but they still must balance their school work. This is a side hustle, after all.
Photo by Detail Dawgs
Giving back
Not all of their profits are going into their pockets. In September, TerHaar donated a portion of Detail Dawgs’ revenue to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation. TerHaar’s older sister Abby has Alopecia, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss.
“My sister’s my only sibling, and she’s somebody who I look up to a lot. I felt that a super positive way to support her was to donate some money to help raise awareness.”
Again, this was a lesson TerHaar learned from his parents. When he was a kid, they ran a golf tournament and a 5K race for five years, raising more than $250,000 for the National Alopecia Areata Foundation.
Photo courtesy of Jack TerHaar.
Learning on the job
TerHaar began his business by driving cars to the nearby coin-operated carwash, but he went mobile when that didn’t scale. Now, he and his crew show up in his 4-Runner with a hose, Shop-Vacs, and whole lot of chemicals, including tire cleaners, interior cleaners, leather conditioners, and stain removers. He learned early on that a drill brush is indispensable for quick cleaning.
He also learned that car detailing can be dirty business.
“This one guy had any type of McDonald’s food you could think of in his car,” TerHaar says. “He had Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets in there. That was when we invited in gloves.”
The future of the business
TerHaar hopes Detail Dawgs gets so big that he can focus less of his time on the detailing and more on the scaling details.
“Hopefully, I won’t have to be on cars anymore, and I can run the business from my office, managing it and acquiring customers.”
He is considering expanding the business after college. “If I decide to pursue it full-time and scale it to other college towns, I think it’ll be a six-figure business.”
But for now, TerHarr’s happy just being in control of his financial destiny and not having to miss any more Bulldogs games.
Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.
Most of the newer cars on the road have displays allowing you to tap into Apple CarPlay or Android Auto to navigate, take calls, manage your music, and more right through the car. It keeps your hands free and lets you drive safely. And if you’re driving an older model vehicle, you never know when your phone might distract you while you’re driving, so it’s better to have everything go through a hands-free display like this one.
This display runs an Android 12 operating system and, as the name suggests, works with both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. You’ll have access to a host of apps for convenience, safety, and entertainment purposes. You’ll be able to read your messages and make calls directly through the car screen, navigate in real-time with mapping apps like Google Maps and Waze, and get online easily via your phone’s hot spot. It even offers an automatic backup camera when you set it up correctly.
The device also includes a built-in speaker and Bluetooth support, so you can hook up without wires to navigate, take calls, and more. And if you want, you can even tune into FM radio stations because the display supports FM transmission.
According to an article on CNBC, low inventory is still driving up the cost of both used and new cars. This display will elevate your older model car for an affordable price and help reduce the amount of phone juggling you’re doing while driving.
DETROIT — BMW is recalling a small number of SUVs in the U.S. because the driver’s air bag inflators can blow apart in a crash, hurling metal shrapnel and possibly injuring or killing people in the vehicles.
U.S. auto safety regulators say in documents posted Saturday that the recall covers 486 X3, X4 and X5 SUVs from the 2014 model year that are equipped with air bags made by Takata Corp. of Japan.
The recall raises questions about the safety of about 30 million Takata inflators that are under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Most have not been recalled.
Takata used volatile ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion to inflate air bags in a crash. But the chemical can deteriorate over time when exposed to high temperatures and humidity. It can explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal canister and spewing shrapnel.
At least 26 people have been killed in the U.S. by Takata inflators since May 2009, and at least 30 have died worldwide including people in Malaysia and Australia. In addition, about 400 people have been injured.
Potential for a dangerous malfunction led to the largest series of auto recalls in U.S. history, with at least 67 million Takata inflators involved. The U.S. government says many have not been repaired. About 100 million inflators have been recalled worldwide. The exploding air bags sent Takata into bankruptcy.
Documents say the inflators in the BMWs have a moisture absorbing chemical called a dessicant that were not part of previous recalls.
BMW says in documents that in November, it was told of a complaint to NHTSA that the driver’s air bag in a 2014 X3 had ruptured. The automaker began investigating and hasn’t determined an exact cause. But preliminary information points to a manufacturing problem from Feb. 22, 2014 to March 7, 2014, the documents said.
The German automaker says in documents that it’s still investigating but it has not yet been able to inspect the X3 with the faulty air bag.
NHTSA records show a complaint saying that on Oct. 23, the inflator on a 2014 X3 exploded in Chicago, sending a large piece of metal into the driver’s lung. The driver also had chest and shoulder cuts that appeared to be caused by shrapnel, the complaint said. A surgeon removed a gold-colored disc from the driver’s lung, according to the complaint, which did not identify the driver.
NHTSA says Takata air bags with a dessicant are under investigation because they have the potential to explode and expel shrapnel. The investigation opened in 2021 covers more than 30 million inflators in over 200 models from 20 car and truck makers, including Honda, Stellantis, General Motors, Ford, Nissan, Tesla, BMW, Toyota, Jaguar Land Rover, Daimler Vans, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, McLaren, Porsche, Mazda, Karma, Fisker, Spartan Fire vehicles.
The agency decided in May of 2020 not to recall the inflators with the dessicant, but said it would monitor them.
“While no present safety risk has been identified, further work is needed to evaluate the future risk of non-recalled dessicated inflators,” the agency said in a document opening the probe.
A spokeswoman for NHTSA said Saturday she would check into the status of the investigation. A message was left seeking comment from BMW.
In the BMW recall, dealers will replace the air bags at no cost to owners, who will be notified by letter starting Jan. 16.
The BMW recall comes after General Motors recalled nearly 900 vehicles in July with Takata inflators that have the dessicant. GM also blamed the problem on a manufacturing defect at Takata.
In a statement about the GM recall last summer, NHTSA said the agency did not have any data suggesting that other dessicated Takata inflators might rupture.
DETROIT — BMW is recalling a small number of SUVs in the U.S. because the driver’s air bag inflators can blow apart in a crash, hurling metal shrapnel and possibly injuring or killing people in the vehicles.
U.S. auto safety regulators say in documents posted Saturday that the recall covers 486 X3, X4 and X5 SUVs from the 2014 model year that are equipped with air bags made by Takata Corp. of Japan.
The recall raises questions about the safety of about 30 million Takata inflators that are under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Most have not been recalled.
Takata used volatile ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion to inflate air bags in a crash. But the chemical can deteriorate over time when exposed to high temperatures and humidity. It can explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal canister and spewing shrapnel.
At least 26 people have been killed in the U.S. by Takata inflators since May 2009, and at least 30 have died worldwide including people in Malaysia and Australia. In addition, about 400 people have been injured.
Potential for a dangerous malfunction led to the largest series of auto recalls in U.S. history, with at least 67 million Takata inflators involved. The U.S. government says many have not been repaired. About 100 million inflators have been recalled worldwide. The exploding air bags sent Takata into bankruptcy.
Documents say the inflators in the BMWs have a moisture absorbing chemical called a dessicant that were not part of previous recalls.
BMW says in documents that in November, it was told of a complaint to NHTSA that the driver’s air bag in a 2014 X3 had ruptured. The automaker began investigating and hasn’t determined an exact cause. But preliminary information points to a manufacturing problem from Feb. 22, 2014 to March 7, 2014, the documents said.
The German automaker says in documents that it’s still investigating but it has not yet been able to inspect the X3 with the faulty air bag.
NHTSA records show a complaint saying that on Oct. 23, the inflator on a 2014 X3 exploded in Chicago, sending a large piece of metal into the driver’s lung. The driver also had chest and shoulder cuts that appeared to be caused by shrapnel, the complaint said. A surgeon removed a gold-colored disc from the driver’s lung, according to the complaint, which did not identify the driver.
NHTSA says Takata air bags with a dessicant are under investigation because they have the potential to explode and expel shrapnel. The investigation opened in 2021 covers more than 30 million inflators in over 200 models from 20 car and truck makers, including Honda, Stellantis, General Motors, Ford, Nissan, Tesla, BMW, Toyota, Jaguar Land Rover, Daimler Vans, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, McLaren, Porsche, Mazda, Karma, Fisker, Spartan Fire vehicles.
The agency decided in May of 2020 not to recall the inflators with the dessicant, but said it would monitor them.
“While no present safety risk has been identified, further work is needed to evaluate the future risk of non-recalled dessicated inflators,” the agency said in a document opening the probe.
A spokeswoman for NHTSA said Saturday she would check into the status of the investigation. A message was left seeking comment from BMW.
In the BMW recall, dealers will replace the air bags at no cost to owners, who will be notified by letter starting Jan. 16.
The BMW recall comes after General Motors recalled nearly 900 vehicles in July with Takata inflators that have the dessicant. GM also blamed the problem on a manufacturing defect at Takata.
In a statement about the GM recall last summer, NHTSA said the agency did not have any data suggesting that other dessicated Takata inflators might rupture.
DETROIT — BMW is recalling a small number of SUVs in the U.S. because the driver’s air bag inflators can blow apart in a crash, hurling metal shrapnel and possibly injuring or killing people in the vehicles.
U.S. auto safety regulators say in documents posted Saturday that the recall covers 486 X3, X4 and X5 SUVs from the 2014 model year that are equipped with air bags made by Takata Corp. of Japan.
The recall raises questions about the safety of about 30 million Takata inflators that are under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Most have not been recalled.
Takata used volatile ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion to inflate air bags in a crash. But the chemical can deteriorate over time when exposed to high temperatures and humidity. It can explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal canister and spewing shrapnel.
At least 26 people have been killed in the U.S. by Takata inflators since May 2009, and at least 30 have died worldwide including people in Malaysia and Australia. In addition, about 400 people have been injured.
Potential for a dangerous malfunction led to the largest series of auto recalls in U.S. history, with at least 67 million Takata inflators involved. The U.S. government says many have not been repaired. About 100 million inflators have been recalled worldwide. The exploding air bags sent Takata into bankruptcy.
Documents say the inflators in the BMWs have a moisture absorbing chemical called a dessicant that were not part of previous recalls.
BMW says in documents that in November, it was told of a complaint to NHTSA that the driver’s air bag in a 2014 X3 had ruptured. The automaker began investigating and hasn’t determined an exact cause. But preliminary information points to a manufacturing problem from Feb. 22, 2014 to March 7, 2014, the documents said.
The German automaker says in documents that it’s still investigating but it has not yet been able to inspect the X3 with the faulty air bag.
NHTSA records show a complaint saying that on Oct. 23, the inflator on a 2014 X3 exploded in Chicago, sending a large piece of metal into the driver’s lung. The driver also had chest and shoulder cuts that appeared to be caused by shrapnel, the complaint said. A surgeon removed a gold-colored disc from the driver’s lung, according to the complaint, which did not identify the driver.
NHTSA says Takata air bags with a dessicant are under investigation because they have the potential to explode and expel shrapnel. The investigation opened in 2021 covers more than 30 million inflators in over 200 models from 20 car and truck makers, including Honda, Stellantis, General Motors, Ford, Nissan, Tesla, BMW, Toyota, Jaguar Land Rover, Daimler Vans, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, McLaren, Porsche, Mazda, Karma, Fisker, Spartan Fire vehicles.
The agency decided in May of 2020 not to recall the inflators with the dessicant, but said it would monitor them.
“While no present safety risk has been identified, further work is needed to evaluate the future risk of non-recalled dessicated inflators,” the agency said in a document opening the probe.
A spokeswoman for NHTSA said Saturday she would check into the status of the investigation. A message was left seeking comment from BMW.
In the BMW recall, dealers will replace the air bags at no cost to owners, who will be notified by letter starting Jan. 16.
The BMW recall comes after General Motors recalled nearly 900 vehicles in July with Takata inflators that have the dessicant. GM also blamed the problem on a manufacturing defect at Takata.
In a statement about the GM recall last summer, NHTSA said the agency did not have any data suggesting that other dessicated Takata inflators might rupture.
STOCKHOLM — Tesla on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Swedish state via Sweden’s Transport Agency as striking postal workers in the Scandinavian country halted the delivery of license plates of new vehicles manufactured by the Texas-based automaker.
Tesla is non-unionized globally, but the Swedish workers are demanding that the carmaker sign a collective bargaining agreement, which most employees in Sweden have. Tesla has no manufacturing plant in Sweden, but has several service centers.
Tesla said it was suing “the Swedish state through the Swedish Transport Agency” because not accessing the registration plates “constitutes an unlawful discriminatory attack directed at Tesla.”
Mikael Andersson, a press spokesperson for the agency, told The Associated Press in an email that “we at the Swedish Transport Agency do not share this view” that the agency was blocking the distribution of license plates. “Therefore Tesla has decided to have the issue tested in court, which is their right.”
“We have not yet seen the lawsuit and it is therefore difficult for us to give any direct comments. We need to look at the lawsuit and Tesla’s reasoning in it,” Andersson said.
According to the lawsuit obtained by The Associated Press, Tesla demands that the district court fine the agency 1 million kronor ($95,383) to “oblige” the Swedish Transport Agency to allow Tesla “retrieve license plates” within three days from notification of the district court’s decision.
The lawsuit was handed in on Monday. Tesla said that the agency has “a constitutional obligation to provide license plates to vehicle owners.”
The fact that the license plates are withheld “cannot be described in any other way than as a unique attack on a company operating in Sweden.”
The lawsuit argues that should the agency “not fulfill its constitutional obligation,” it “obstructs the applicant’s right.”
The trade union ST whose members work for the postal and delivery service PostNord, said that they were blocking the delivery of mail and packages to Tesla in accordance with the rules of the Swedish labor market.
By going to court, Tesla, “shows that they do not accept the rules that prevail” in Sweden, Åsa Erba Stenhammar of the ST trade union said.
On Oct. 27, 130 members of the powerful metalworkers’ union IF Metall walked out at seven workshops across the country where the popular electric cars are serviced, demanding a collective bargaining agreement.
Swedish mechanics stopped servicing Tesla cars and several unions, including postal workers, have joined in a wave of sympathy with IF Metall’s demands. Dockworkers at Sweden’s four largest ports also stopped the delivery of Tesla vehicles to put more pressure on the automaker.
Last week, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which he owns, that it was “insane” that Swedish postal workers were refusing to deliver license plates for new vehicles.
IF Metall earlier said that Tesla Sweden has “refused to sign a collective agreement and violates basic principles in the Swedish labor market.” It called such agreements “the backbone of the Swedish model.”
The union also asked consumers for their understanding, saying, “We are doing this for the sake of our members, to ensure that they have safe working conditions.”
In the lawsuit, Tesla demanded the district court ensure the Swedish Transport Agency delivered its license plates.
Recall is due to a missing piece in the front seat belt pretensioners.
ByThe Associated Press
November 25, 2023, 11:47 AM
FILE – People walk near the logo of Honda Motor Company at a showroom Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022, in Tokyo. Honda is recalling several hundred thousand 2023-2024 Accord and HR-V vehicles, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2023, due to a missing piece in the front seat belt pretensioners, which could increase injury risks during a crash. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Honda is recalling select 2023-2024 Accord and HR-V vehicles due to a missing piece in the front seat belt pretensioners, which could increase injury risks during a crash.
According to notices published by Honda and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration earlier this week, the pretensioners — which tighten seat belts in place upon impact — may be missing the rivet that secures the quick connector and wire plate. This means that passengers may not be properly restrained in a crash, regulators said.
The NHTSA credited the issue to an error made during assembly. More than 300,000 Accords and HR-Vs are potentially affected.
As of Nov. 16, Honda had received seven warranty claims, but no reports of injuries or deaths related to the faulty pretensioners, according to documents published by the NHTSA.
For consumers impacted by this recall, dealers will inspect all cars and potentially replace the seat belt pretensioner assembly at no cost. Those who have already paid for these repairs at their own expense may also be eligible for reimbursement.
Honda estimates that less than 1% of the potentially affected vehicles will require a replacement. The vast majority are expected to be satisfied by an inspection alone, a Honda spokesperson told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Notification letters will be sent via mail to registered owners of the affected vehicles starting Jan. 8, 2024. Replacement parts should be available to dealers by the end of the month, the spokesperson said, but consumers can go to an authorized Honda dealer for the inspection now.
For more information about the recall, consumers can visit the NHTSA website and Honda’s and online recall pages.
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This story corrects references to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Honda is recalling select 2023-2024 Accord and HR-V vehicles due to a missing piece in the front seat belt pretensioners, which could increase injury risks during a crash
ByThe Associated Press
November 25, 2023, 11:47 AM
FILE – People walk near the logo of Honda Motor Company at a showroom Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022, in Tokyo. Honda is recalling several hundred thousand 2023-2024 Accord and HR-V vehicles, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2023, due to a missing piece in the front seat belt pretensioners, which could increase injury risks during a crash. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Honda is recalling select 2023-2024 Accord and HR-V vehicles due to a missing piece in the front seat belt pretensioners, which could increase injury risks during a crash.
According to notices published by Honda and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration earlier this week, the pretensioners — which tighten seat belts in place upon impact — may be missing the rivet that secures the quick connector and wire plate. This means that passengers may not be properly restrained in a crash, regulators said.
The NHTSA credited the issue to an error made during assembly. More than 300,000 Accords and HR-Vs are potentially affected.
As of Nov. 16, Honda had received seven warranty claims, but no reports of injuries or deaths related to the faulty pretensioners, according to documents published by the NHTSA.
For consumers impacted by this recall, dealers will inspect all cars and potentially replace the seat belt pretensioner assembly at no cost. Those who have already paid for these repairs at their own expense may also be eligible for reimbursement.
Honda estimates that less than 1% of the potentially affected vehicles will require a replacement. The vast majority are expected to be satisfied by an inspection alone, a Honda spokesperson told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Notification letters will be sent via mail to registered owners of the affected vehicles starting Jan. 8, 2024. Replacement parts should be available to dealers by the end of the month, the spokesperson said, but consumers can go to an authorized Honda dealer for the inspection now.
For more information about the recall, consumers can visit the NHTSA website and Honda’s and online recall pages.
___
This story corrects references to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The negative impact on the climate from passenger vehicles, which is considerable, could have dropped by more than 30% over the past decade if not for the world’s appetite for large cars, a new report from the Global Fuel Economy Initiative suggests.
Sport utility vehicles, or SUVs, now account for more than half of all new car sales across the globe, the group said, and it’s not alone. The International Energy Agency, using a narrower definition of SUV, estimates they make up nearly half.
Over the years these cars have gotten bigger and so has their cost to the climate, as carbon dioxide emissions “are almost directly proportional to fuel use” for gas-powered cars. The carbon that goes in at the pump comes out the tailpipe.
Transportation is responsible for around one-quarter of all the climate-warming gases that come from energy, and much of that is attributable to passenger transport, according to the International Energy Agency.
But the negative environmental impact from SUVs could have been reduced by more than one-third between 2010 and 2022, if people had just continued buying the same size cars, according to the initiative, which is a global partnership of cleaner vehicle groups.
One fix for this could be electric vehicles.
George Parrott, an avid runner at 79, who lives in West Sacramento, California, decided to switch to cleaner vehicles in 2004 when he bought a Toyota Prius hybrid. Since then, he has owned several pure-electric cars, and currently owns both a Genesis GV60 electric SUV and a Tesla Model 3.
“This was all a combination of broad environmental concerns,” he said.
Parrott and his late partner also knew their region ranks high on the American Lung Association’s polluted cities list. “We were going to do anything and everything we could to minimize our air quality impact here in the Sacramento area,” he said.
Not all consumers think of the energy consumption and environmental benefits the same way, especially in the U.S. While EV sales accounted for 15% of the global car market last year, that was only 7.3% in the U.S.
Meanwhile, smaller vehicles, or sedans, have lost a lot of ground in the U.S. market over the past decade. In 2012, sedans accounted for 50% of the U.S. auto retail space, with SUVs at just over 30%, and trucks at 13.5%, according to car-buying resource Edmunds. By 2022, U.S. sedan share dropped to 21%, while SUVs hit 54.5% and trucks grew to 20%.
“People don’t want to be limited by their space in their car,” said Eric Frehsée, president of the Tamaroff Group of dealerships in southeast Michigan. “Everyone wants a 7-passenger.”
Large SUVs such as the Chevrolet Tahoe, Toyota Sequoia, or Nissan Armada have highway gas mileages of 28, 24, and 19, respectively. But even the most efficient SUVs will be less efficient than sedans because SUVs weigh so much more. A sign of progress, however, is that compact SUVs, such as the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V (at 35 and 34 highway miles-per-gallon, respectively) are now leading the U.S. SUV market, accounting for about 18% of new vehicle sales last year.
More efforts by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, are also underway to improve gas-powered vehicle fuel economy and tailpipe emissions. Some initiatives could include SUVs, which has the industry up in arms.
Until recently, consumers had few electric models to choose from if they wanted to reduce the impact of their own transportation. A majority of early electrified car options were sedans, particularly in the luxury segment.
More automakers are launching larger EV types, but those could require even heavier batteries onboard. The environmental aspect also needs to be weighed if an SUV is replaced by an EV, said Loren McDonald, CEO of market analysis firm EVAdoption. “Just electrifying doesn’t get us much if we also don’t focus on weight and efficiency of these vehicles and smaller battery packs,” McDonald said.
The industry is racing to advance battery tech to reduce the size of batteries and the amount of critical minerals needed to make them.
Figures like those from the Global Fuel Economy Initiative are sure to be pertinent at the upcoming COP28 U.N. climate change talks next week.
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Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @alexa_stjohn.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey will prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 as part of an effort to improve air quality and reduce planet-warming pollutants, officials announced Tuesday.
A rule that will take effect Jan. 1 commits the state to an eventual move toward zero-emission vehicles, the state Department of Environmental Protection said in a news release.
It is one of a growing number of states to do so, including California, Vermont, New York, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Virginia, Rhode Island, Maryland and Connecticut, according to Coltura, a Seattle-based nonprofit advocating for an end to gasoline vehicle use.
New Jersey will start limiting the amount of new gasoline-powered cars that can be sold in the state starting in 2027, eventually reaching zero in 2035.
The move does not prohibit ownership or use of gasoline-powered cars, not does it force consumers to buy electric vehicles, the DEP said. It will not prohibit the sale of used cars powered by gasoline, and consumers would still be free to purchase gas-fueled cars elsewhere and bring them into New Jersey, as long as they met certain emissions standards.
“The steps we take today to lower emissions will improve air quality and mitigate climate impacts for generations to come, all while increasing access to cleaner car choices,” said Phil Murphy, the state’s Democratic governor.
“Cleaner cars and trucks mean cleaner air for our children and families, because the tailpipes of our own vehicles are a leading cause of poor local air quality,” said Shawn LaTourette, the state’s environmental protection commissioner. “As New Jersey transitions to a zero-emission vehicle future, we will improve our quality of life and public health. At the same time, we will reduce climate pollutants from the transportation sector, the greatest source of planet-warming pollution in New Jersey and the nation.”
The rule has been hotly opposed by business groups since word that the state was moving to implement it started circulating earlier this year.
Ray Cantor, an official with the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, said over 100 business, labor and other groups have sent nearly 10,000 letters to state legislators “asking them to step in to stop a proposed DEP rule that will ultimately mandate what type of car residents can drive, and in some cases, if they can afford to drive.”
“This ban of the sale of new gas-powered cars in such an expedited time does not take costs or feasibility into account,” he said. “It does not take the lack of local and highway infrastructure into account. It does not take grid capacity into account. It ignores consumer choice. It doesn’t take New Jersey residents into account, especially low- and moderate-income families.”
Environmental groups hailed the decision.
“This is a huge win not only for the environment, but for public health and the communities who suffer every day from the pollution from congested roadways,” said Anjuli Ramos-Busot, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
“The electric vehicle revolution is upon us, and the benefits are far-reaching — even for those who never plan to get behind the wheel of an EV,” added Kathy Harris, an official with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
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Follow Wayne Parry on X, formerly Twitter, at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC
This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.
Last week’s surprise deal between China and the United States may provide a boost to the climate talks in Dubai — but the two powers remain at odds on tough questions such as how quickly to shut down coal and who should provide climate aid to developing nations.
The world’s top two drivers of climate change are also divided by a thicket of disagreements on trade, security, human rights and economic competition.
The good news is that Washington and Beijing are talking to each other again and restarting some of their technical cooperation on climate issues, after a yearlong freeze. That may still not be enough to get nearly 200 nations to commit to far greater climate action at the talks that begin Nov. 30.
The two superpowers’ latest detente creates the right “mood music” for the summit, said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at climate think tank E3G. “But it still is not saying that the world’s two largest economies and two largest emitters are fully committed to the scale and pace of reductions that are needed.”
The deal, announced after a meeting this month between U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua, produced an agreement to commit to a series of actions to limit climate pollution. Those include accelerating the shift to renewable energy and widening the variety of heat-trapping gases they will address in their next round of climate targets.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping endorsed that type of cooperation after a meeting in California on Wednesday, saying they “welcomed” positive discussions on actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during this decade, as well as “common approaches” toward a successful climate summit. Biden said he would work with China to address climate finance in developing countries, a major source of friction for the U.S.
“Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” said Xi ahead of his bilateral with Biden.
But the deal leaves some big issues unaddressed, including specific measures for ending their reliance on fossil fuels, the main contributor to global warming. Andthe two countries are a long way from the days when a surprise U.S.-Chinese agreement to cooperate on climate change had the power to land a landmark global pact.
That puts the nations in a dramatically different place than in 2014, when Xi and then-President Barack Obama made a historic pledge to jointly cut their planet-warming pollution, paving the way for the landmark Paris Agreement to land in 2015.
Even a surprise joint deal between the two nations in 2021 failed to ease friction, with China emerging at the last minute to oppose language calling for a phase-out of coal power. The summit ended with a less ambitious “phase-down.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks after receiving the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon, Taiwan’s highest civilian honour | Handout/Getty Image
The two countries’ struggles to find comity have come at the worst possible moment — at a time when rapid action is crucial to preventing climate catastrophe. A growing number of factors has threatened to widen the U.S.-Chinese wedge further, including their competition for supremacy in the market for clean energy.
Two nations at odds
While the U.S. has contributed more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than any other nation during the past 150 years, China is now the world’s largest climate polluter — though not on a per capita basis — and it will need to stop building new coal-fired power for the world to stand a chance of limiting rising temperatures.
The recent agreement hints at that possibility by stating that more renewables would enable reductions in the generation of oil, gas and coal, helping China peak its emissions ahead of its current targets.
The challenge will be bridging the countries’ diverging approaches to climate issues.
The Biden administration is urging a rapid end to coal-fired power, which is waning in the U.S., even as it permits more oil drilling and ramps up exports of natural gas — much of it destined for Asia.
At the same time, it wants the United States to claim a larger role in the clean energy manufacturing industry that China now dominates, and is seeking to loosen China’s stranglehold on supply chains for products such as solar panels, electric cars and the minerals that go into them. It’s also pressuring Beijing to contribute to U.N. climate funds, saying China’s historic status as a developing country no longer shields it from its responsibility to pay.
China sees the U.S. position as a direct challenge to its economic growth and energy security.
Beijing wants to protect the use of coal and defend developing countries’ access to fossil fuels. It has also backed emerging economies’ demands that rich countries pay more to help them deploy clean energy and adapt to the effects of a warmer world. China says it already helps developing countries through South-South cooperation and points to a clause in the 2015 Paris Agreement that says developed countries should lead on climate finance.
Hanging over the talks is also the prospect of a change of administration in the U.S., and continued efforts by Republicans to vilify Beijing and accuse the Biden administration of supporting Chinese companies through its climate policies and investments. And as China’s response to Pelosi’s trip underscored, climate cooperation remains hostage to other tensions in the two countries’ relationship, a dynamic likely to heighten in the coming year as both Taiwan and the U.S. hold presidential elections.
One challenge is that China doesn’t seem to see much to gain from offering more ambitious climate actions amid worsening relations with other countries, said Kevin Tu, a non-resident fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and an adjunct professor at the School of Environment at Beijing Normal University.
“In the past several years, China has voluntarily upgraded its climate ambitions a few times amid rising geopolitical tensions,” Tu said, pointing to its 2020 pledge to peak and then zero out its emissions. “So China does not necessarily have very strong incentive to further upgrade its climate ambition.”
The divide between the two nations has created a dilemma for some small island nations that often walk a fine line between negotiating alongside China at climate talks while pushing for more action to scale back fossil fuels.
The U.S. and China remain at odds on how quickly to shut down coal and who should provide climate aid to developing nations | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
“The U.S. is trying to drag everyone to talk about an immediate coal phase-out,” Ralph Regenvanu, climate minister for the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, said during a recent call with reporters, calling the effort a “U.S.-versus-China thing.”
“But we also need to talk about no more oil or gas as well,” he added.
Operating on its own terms
The dynamic between China and the U.S. will either drag down or bolster the ambitions of countries updating their national climate pledges, a process that begins at the close of COP28. Nations are already woefully behind cuts needed to hit the goals they laid out in Paris.
China’s new 10-year targets will be crucial for meeting those marks, given that China accounts for close to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and that it plans to build dozens of coal-fired power plants in the coming years. The U.S., and many other countries, will be looking for greater commitments from China — whether that’s modifying what it means by phasing down coal or setting more stringent targets.
China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and zero them out before 2060,a decadelater than the United States has promised to reach net-zero. Beijing is unlikely to accelerate that timeline, in part because — analysts say — its philosophy is fundamentally different from that of the U.S.: underpromise and overdeliver.
Even without committing to more action, China’s massive investments in low-carbon energy installations — twice that of the United States — may inadvertently help the country achieve its peaking target early, some analysts say.
A complicated picture
If the Trump years drove China further from America, the global pandemic and resulting economic slowdown that started during his final year didn’t bring it closer. And the energy crunch stemming from Russia’s war with Ukraine cemented China’s drive for reliable energy to meet the rising needs of its 1.4 billion people. That created a coal boom.
Meanwhile, China heavily subsidized the expansion of wind, solar and electric vehicle production. Its clean energy supply chain dominance has lowered the global costs for those technologies but drawn scorn from the U.S. as it tries to rebuild its own domestic manufacturing base.
China has turned more combative in response. Rather than work with the U.S. to make joint announcements on climate action, Xi has made clear that China’s climate policy won’t be dictated by others. At G20 meetings, China has aligned with Saudi Arabia and Russia in opposing language aimed at phasing out fossil fuels.
“At the end of the day, it’s harder to make a claim that China needs the U.S. and it’s harder to make the claim that the U.S. can rely on China,” said Cory Combs, a senior analyst at policy consulting firm Trivium China.
Wealthy countries’ inability to deliver promised climate aid to vulnerable countries hasn’t helped. While China remains among the bloc of developing nations in calling for more action on climate finance, it also points to the investments it’s making in the Global South through its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and bilateral aid.
A foreign diplomat who asked for anonymity to speak openly said China has resisted pressure to contribute money to a climate fund that would help developing countries rebuild after climate disasters and would likely push back against a focus on its continued build out of coal-fired power plants.
US climate envoy John Kerry sits next to China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images
“Anything that would signal that they would need to do more is something that gets blocked,” the person said.
China did release a plan earlier this month to cut emissions of the potent greenhouse methane, delivering on a promise it had made in a joint declaration with the U.S. at climate talks in 2021. But it has still not signed onto a global methane pledge led by the U.S. and the European Union.
All that amounts to a complicated picture for the U.S.-Chinese relationship and its broader impact on global climate outcomes.
“The U.S.-China talks will help stabilize the politics when countries meet in the UAE, but critical issues such as a fossil fuel phase-out still require much [further] political efforts,” said Li Shuo, incoming director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
“It’s very much about setting a floor,” and the talks in Dubai still need to build out from there, Shuo added.
He argues in a recent paper that China will subscribe to targets it sees as achievable and will continue toside with developing countries on climate finance. Chinese government officials are cautious about what they’re willing to commit to internationally, which sometimes serves as a disincentive for them to be more ambitious, he said.
The calculation is likely to be different for Biden’s team, who “want a headline that the world agrees to push China,” said David Waskow, who leads the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative.
Not impossible
The power of engagement can’t be completely written off, and in the past it has proven to have a positive effect on the U.S.-China relationship.
“[Climate] sort of was a positive pillar in the relationship,” said Todd Stern, Obama’s former chief climate negotiator. “And it came to be a thing where when the two sides have come to get together, it was like, ‘What can we get done on climate?’”
Engagement with Chinaat the state and local level and among academics and research institutes has potential — in large part because it’s less political, said Joanna Lewis, a professor at Georgetown University who closely tracks China’s climate change approach.
There could also be opportunities to separate climate from broader bilateral tensions.
“I do feel like there’s that willingness to say, ‘We recognize our roles, we recognize our ability to have that catalytic effect on the international community’s actions,’” said Nate Hultman, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability and a former senior adviser to Kerry. “It doesn’t solve all the world’s issues going into the COP, but it gives a really strong boost to international discussions around what we know we need to do.”
Sara Schonhardt and Zack Colman reported, and Phelim Kine contributed reporting, from Washington, D.C.
This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.The article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.
This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.
LONDON — World leaders will touch down in Dubai next week for a climate change conference they’re billing yet again as the final off-ramp before catastrophe. But war, money squabbles and political headaches back home are already crowding the fate of the planet from the agenda.
The breakdown of the Earth’s climate has for decades been the most important yet somehow least urgent of global crises, shoved to one side the moment politicians face a seemingly more acute problem. Even in 2023 — almost certainly the most scorching year in recorded history, with temperatures spawning catastrophic floods, wildfires and heat waves across the globe — the climate effort faces a bewildering array of distractions, headwinds and dismal prospects.
“The plans to achieve net zero are increasingly under attack,” former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, who set her country’s goal of reaching climate neutrality into law, told POLITICO.
The best outcome for the climate from the 13-day meeting, which is known as COP28 and opens Nov. 30, would be an unambiguous statement from almost 200 countries on how they intend to hasten their plans to cut fossil fuels, alongside new commitments from the richest nations on the planet to assist the poorest.
But the odds against that happening are rising. Instead, the U.S. and its European allies are still struggling to cement a fragile deal with developing countries about an international climate-aid fund that had been hailed as the historic accomplishment of last year’s summit. Meanwhile, a populist backlash against the costs of green policies has governments across Europe pulling back — a reverse wave that would become an American-led tsunami if Donald Trump recaptures the White House next year.
And across the developing world, the rise of energy and food prices stoked by the pandemic and the Ukraine war has caused inflation and debt to spiral, heightening the domestic pressure on climate-minded governments to spend their money on their most acute needs first.
Even U.S. President Joe Biden, whose 2022 climate law kicked off a boom of clean-energy projects in the U.S., has endorsed fossil fuel drilling and pipeline projects under pressure to ease voter unease about rising fuel costs.
Add to all that the newest Mideast war that began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
On the upside, investment in much of the green economy is also surging. Analysts are cautiously opining that China’s emissions may have begun to decline, several years ahead of Beijing’s schedule.And the Paris-based International Energy Agency projects that global fossil fuel demand could peak this decade, with coal use plummeting and oil and gas plateauing afterward. Spurring these trends is a competition among powers such as China, the United States, India and the European Union to build out and dominate clean-energy industries.
But the fossil fuel industry is betting against a global shift to green, instead investing its profits from the energy crisis into plans for long-term expansion of its core business.
The air of gloom among many supporters of global climate action is hard to miss, as is the sense that global warming will not be the sole topic on leaders’ minds when they huddle in back rooms.
“It’s getting away from us,” Tim Benton, director of the Chatham House environment and society center, said during a markedly downbeat discussion among climate experts at the think tank’s lodgings on St James’ Square in London earlier this month. “Where is the political space to drive the ambition that we need?”
Fog of war
The most acute distraction from global climate work is the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The conflagration is among many considerations the White House is weighing in Biden’s likely decision not to attend the summit, one senior administration official told POLITICO this month. Other leaders are also reconsidering their schedules, said one senior government official from a European country, who was granted anonymity to speak about the sensitive diplomacy of the conference.
The war is also likely to push its way onto the climate summit’s unofficial agenda: Leaders of big Western powers who are attending will spend at least some of their diplomatically precious face-time with Middle East leaders discussing — not climate — but the regional security situation, said two people familiar with the planning for COP28 who could not be named for similar reasons. According to a preliminary list circulated by the United Arab Emirates, Israeli President Isaac Herzog or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will attend the talks.
A threat even exists that the conference could be canceled or relocated, should a wider regional conflict develop, Benton said.
The UAE’s COP28 presidency isn’t talking about that, at least publicly. “We look forward to hosting a safe, inclusive COP beginning at the end of November,” said a spokesperson in an emailed statement. But the strained global relations have already thrown the location of next years’ COP29 talks into doubt because Russia has blocked any EU country from hosting the conference, which is due to be held in eastern or central Europe.
The upshot is that the bubble of global cooperation that landed the Paris climate agreement in 2015 has burst. “We have a lot of more divisive narratives now,” Laurence Tubiana, the European Climate Foundation CEO who was one of the drafters of the Paris deal, said at the same meeting at Chatham House.
The Ukraine war and tensions between the U.S. and China in particular have widened the gap between developed and developing countries, Benton told POLITICO in an email.
Now, “the Hamas-Israel war potentially creates significant new fault lines between the Arab world and many Western countries that are perceived to be more pro-Israeli,” he said. “The geopolitical tensions arising from the war could create leverage that enables petrostates (many of which are Muslim) to shore up the status quo.”
Add to that the as yet unknown impact on already high fossil fuel commodity prices, said Kalee Kreider, president of the Ridgely Walsh public affairs consultancy and a former adviser to U.S. Vice President Al Gore. “Volatility doesn’t usually help raise ambition.”
The Biden administration’s decisions to approve a tranche of new fossil fuel production and export projects will undermine U.S. diplomacy at COP28, said Ed Markey, a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts.
“You can’t preach temperance from a barstool, and the United States is running a long tab,” he said.
U.N. climate talks veterans have seen this program before. “No year over the past three decades has been free of political, economic or health challenges,” said former U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa, who now heads the consulting firm onepoint5. “We simply can’t wait for the perfect conditions to address climate change. Time is a luxury we no longer have — if we ever did.”
The EU backlash
Before the Mideast’s newest shock to the global energy system, the war in Ukraine exposed Europe’s energy dependence on Russia — and initially galvanized the EU to accelerate efforts to roll out cleaner alternatives.
But in the past year, persistent inflation has worn away that zeal. Businesses and citizens worry about anything that might add to the financial strain, and this has frayed a consensus on climate change that had held for the past four years among left, center and center right parties across much of the 27-country bloc.
In recent months, conservative members of the European Parliament have attacked several EU green proposals as excessive, framing themselves as pragmatic environmentalists ahead of Europe-wide elections next year. Reinvigorated far-right parties across the bloc are also using the green agenda to attack more mainstream parties, a trend that is spooking the center.
Germany’s government was almost brought down this year by a law that sought to ban gas boilers — with the Greens-led economy ministry retreating to a compromise. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has joined a growing chorus agitating for a “regulatory pause” on green legislation.
If Europe’s struggles emerge at COP28, the ripple effect could be global, said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank.
The “EU has established itself as the global laboratory for climate neutrality,” he said. “But now it needs to deliver on the experiment, or the world (which is closely watching) will assume this just does not work. And that would be a disaster for all of us.”
U.K. retreats
The world is also watching the former EU member that stakes a claim to be the climate leader of the G7: the U.K.
London has prided itself on its green credentials ever since former Prime Minister May enacted a 2019 law calling for net zero by 2050 — making her the first leader of a major economy to do so.
According to May’s successor Boris Johnson, net zero was good for the planet, good for voters, good for the economy. But under current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the messaging has transformed. Net zero remains the target — but it comes with a “burden” on working people.
In a major speech this fall, Sunak rolled back plans to ban new petrol and diesel car sales by 2030, bringing the U.K. into line with the EU’s 2035 date. With half an eye on Germany’s travails, he said millions of households would be exempted from the gas boiler ban expected in 2035.
In making his arguments for a “pragmatic” approach to net zero, Sunak frequently draws on the talking points of net zero-skeptics. Why should the citizens of the U.K., which within its own borders produces just 1 percent of global emissions, “sacrifice even more than others?”
The danger, said one EU climate diplomat — granted anonymity to discuss domestic policy of an allied country — was that other countries around the COP28 negotiating table would hear that kind of rhetoric from a capital that had led the world — and repurpose it to make their own excuses.
Sunak’s predecessor May sees similar risks.
“Nearly a third of all global emissions originate from countries with territorial emissions of 1 per cent or less,” May said. “If we all slammed on the brakes, it would make our net zero aspirations impossible to achieve.”
Trump’s back
The U.S., the largest producer of industrial carbon pollution in modern history, has been a weathervane on climate depending on who controls its governing branches.
When Republicans regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022, it created a major drag on Biden’s promise to provide $11.4 billion in annual global climate finance by 2024.
Securing this money and much more, developing countries say, is vital to any progress on global climate goals at COP28. Last year, on the back of the pandemic and the energy price spike, global debt soared to a record $92 trillion. This cripples developing countries’ ability to build clean energy and defend themselves against — or recover from — hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires.
Even when the money is there, the politics can be challenging. Multibillion-dollar clean energy partnerships that the G7 has pursued to shift South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and India off coal power are struggling to gain acceptance from the recipients.
Yet even more dire consequences await if Trump wins back the presidency next year.
A Trump victory would put the world’s largest economy a pen stroke away from quitting the Paris Agreement all over again — or, even more drastically, abandoning the entire international regime of climate pacts and summits. The thought is already sending a chill: Negotiations over a fund for poorer countries’ climate losses and damage, which Republicans oppose, include talks on how to make its language “change-of-government-proof” in light of a potential Trump victory, said Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for a bloc of island states.
More concretely for reining in planet-heating gases, Trump would be in position to approve legislation eliminating all or part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden’s signature climate law included $370 billion in incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles and other carbon-cutting efforts – though the actual spending is likely to soar even higher due to widespread interest in its programs and subsidies – and accounts for a bulk of projected U.S. emissions cuts this decade.
House Republicans have attempted to claw back parts of Biden’s climate law several times. That’s merely a political messaging effort for now, thanks to a Democrat-held Senate and a sure veto from Biden, but the prospects flip if the GOP gains full control of Congress and White House.
Under a plan hatched by Tubiana and backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, countries would in the future log their state and local government climate plans with the U.N., in an attempt to undergird the entire system against a second Republican blitzkrieg.
The U.S. isn’t the only place where climate action is on the ballot, Benton told the conference at Chatham House on Nov. 1.
News on Sunday that Argentina had elected as president right-wing populist Javier Milei — a Trump-like libertarian — raised the prospect of a major Latin American economy walking away from the Paris Agreement, either by formally withdrawing or by reneging on its promises.
Elections are also scheduled in 2024 for the EU, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Russia, and possibly the U.K.
“A quarter of the world’s population is facing elections in the next nine months,” he said. “If everyone goes to the right and populism becomes the order of the day … then I won’t hold out high hopes for Paris.”
Zack Colman reported from Washington, D.C. Suzanne Lynch also contributed reporting from Brussels.
This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.The article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.
DETROIT — General Motors’ Cruise autonomous vehicle unit is recalling all 950 of its cars to update software after one of them dragged a pedestrian to the side of a San Francisco street in early October.
The company said in documents posted by U.S. safety regulators on Wednesday that, with the updated software, Cruise vehicles will remain stationary should a similar incident occur in the future.
The Oct. 2 crash prompted Cruise to suspend driverless operations nationwide after California regulators found that its cars posed a danger to public safety. The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles revoked the license for Cruise, which was transporting passengers without human drivers throughout San Francisco.
In the crash, another vehicle with a person behind the wheel struck a pedestrian, sending the person into the path of a Cruise autonomous vehicle. The Cruise initially stopped but still hit the person. But it then pulled to the right to get out of traffic, pulling the person about 20 feet (six meters) forward. The pedestrian was pinned under one of the Cruise vehicle’s tires and was critically injured.
Cruise says in documents posted by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it already has updated software in test vehicles that are being supervised by human safety drivers. The driverless fleet will get the new software before resuming operations, the company says.
In a statement Wednesday, the GM unit said that it did the recall even though it determined that a similar crash with a risk of serious injury could happen again every 10 million to 100 million miles without the update.
“We strive to continually improve and to make these events even rarer,” the statement said. “As our software continues to improve, it is likely we will file additional recalls to inform both NHTSA and the public of updates to enhance safety across our fleet.”
Cruise said that after examining its system, it has decided to add a chief safety officer, hire a law firm to review its response to the Oct. 2 crash, appoint a third-party engineering firm to find the technical cause, and adopt companywide “pillars” to focus on safety and transparency.
Problems at Cruise could slow the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles that carry passengers without human drivers on board. It also could bring stronger federal regulation of the vehicles, which are carrying passengers in more cities nationwide.
NHTSA opened an investigation Oct. 16 into four reports that Cruise vehicles may not exercise proper caution around pedestrians. Agency documents cited two injuries, including the Oct. 2 crash. The complaints involved vehicles operating autonomously and “encroaching on pedestrians present in or entering roadways, including pedestrian crosswalks in the proximity of the intended travel path of the vehicles,” the agency said.
In documents filed with NHTSA, Cruise said its automated driving system was designed in some cases to pull over and out of traffic to minimize safety risks and disruption after a crash, with the response dependent on the characteristics of the crash. But in certain circumstances such as a pedestrian positioned on the ground in the vehicle’s path, pulling over is not the desired response.
The Cruise system “inaccurately characterized the collision as a lateral collision and commanded the AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic, pulling the individual forward rather than remaining stationary,” the company said.
While the Department of Motor Vehicles didn’t elaborate on specific reasons for its suspension of Cruise’s license, the agency accused Cruise of misrepresenting safety information about the autonomous technology in its vehicles. The revocation followed a series of incidents that heightened concerns about the hazards and inconveniences caused by Cruise’s robotaxis.
The DMV and others have accused Cruise of not initially sharing all video footage of the accident, but the robotaxi operator pushed back — saying it disclosed the full video to state and federal officials.
General Motors Co., has ambitious goals for Cruise. The Detroit automaker had been expecting annual revenue of $1 billion from Cruise by 2025 — a big jump from the $106 million in revenue last year.
GM is temporarily pausing production of the Origin, a fully autonomous vehicle designed for Cruise to carry multiple passengers. The company is expected to resume production at a Detroit-area factory once Cruise resumes autonomous ride-hailing.
DETROIT — General Motors’ Cruise autonomous vehicle unit is recalling all 950 of its cars to update software after one of them dragged a pedestrian to the side of a San Francisco street in early October.
The company said in documents posted by U.S. safety regulators on Wednesday that with the updated software, Cruise vehicles will remain stationary should a similar incident occur in the future.
The Oct. 2 crash prompted Cruise to suspend driverless operations nationwide after California regulators found that its cars posed a danger to public safety. The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles revoked the license for Cruise, which was transporting passengers without human drivers throughout San Francisco.
In the crash, another vehicle with a person behind the wheel struck a pedestrian, sending the person into the path of a Cruise autonomous vehicle. The Cruise initially stopped but still hit the person. But it then pulled to the right to get out of traffic, pulling the person about 20 feet (six meters) forward. The pedestrian was pinned under one of the Cruise vehicle’s tires and was critically injured.
Cruise says in documents posted by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it already has updated software in test vehicles that are being supervised by human safety drivers. The driverless fleet will get the new software before resuming operations, the company says.
In a statement Wednesday, the GM unit said that it did the recall even though it determined that a similar crash with a risk of serious injury could happen again every 10 million to 100 million miles without the update.
“We strive to continually improve and to make these events even rarer,” the statement said. “As our software continues to improve, it is likely we will file additional recalls to inform both NHTSA and the public of updates to enhance safety across our fleet.”
Cruise said that after examining its system, it has decided to add a chief safety officer, hire a law firm to review its response to the Oct. 2 crash, appoint a third-party engineering firm to find the technical cause, and adopt companywide “pillars” to focus on safety and transparency.
Problems at Cruise could slow the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles that carry passengers without human drivers on board. It also could bring stronger federal regulation of the vehicles, which are carrying passengers in more cities nationwide.
NHTSA opened an investigation Oct. 16 into four reports that Cruise vehicles may not exercise proper caution around pedestrians. The reports, including two injuries, involved vehicles operating autonomously and “encroaching on pedestrians present in or entering roadways, including pedestrian crosswalks in the proximity of the intended travel path of the vehicles.” It wasn’t immediately clear whether the Oct. 2 crash was included in the probe.
In documents filed with NHTSA, Cruise said its automated driving system was designed in some cases to pull over and out of traffic to minimize safety risks and disruption after a crash, with the response dependent on the characteristics of the crash. But in certain circumstances such as a pedestrian positioned on the ground in the vehicle’s path, pulling over is not the desired response.
The Cruise system “inaccurately characterized the collision as a lateral collision and commanded the AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic, pulling the individual forward rather than remaining stationary,” the company said.
While the Department of Motor Vehicles didn’t elaborate on specific reasons for its suspension of Cruise’s license, the agency accused Cruise of misrepresenting safety information about the autonomous technology in its vehicles. The revocation followed a series of incidents that heightened concerns about the hazards and inconveniences caused by Cruise’s robotaxis.
The DMV and others have accused Cruise of not initially sharing all video footage of the accident, but the robotaxi operator pushed back — saying it disclosed the full video to state and federal officials.
General Motors Co., has ambitious goals for Cruise. The Detroit automaker had been expecting annual revenue of $1 billion from Cruise by 2025 — a big jump from the $106 million in revenue last year.
A whole lot of drivers want to get rid of their cars, apparently.
Google searches for “give car back” have reached record highs, a trend first spotted by podcast host, CarDealershipGuy, who then posted the revelation on X, and showcased that searches are nearly double compared to almost 10 years ago.
The discovery that people are looking to ditch their vehicles isn’t exactly a shock considering the soaring costs associated with auto ownership.
The average monthly payment for a new car has increased by 28% over the past three years, according to data from online auto resource Edmunds, per Investopedia. The increase in car payments aligns with the rise in new car prices — which hit $46,229 in June, a 31% hike from three years ago, per the outlet.
An uptick in sticker prices also means more drivers took on auto loans, and now, auto loan debt currently stands at $1.58 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an all-time high.
All of this has left many Americans in a bind.
“I’m paying a ton of money right now for a car that I don’t really need, and I’ve been struggling and struggling to sell it,” Sean Miller, who took out an auto loan in 2019, told CNBC. “If I were to sell it today, it would probably be at a $10,000 to $15,000 loss. This is something that right now is preventing me from being able to save up in order to start a family.”
Rising car loan rates havecoincided with increasing interest rates, reaching levels not seen since 2008, subsequently leading to the surge of borrowing money, per Bankrate.
On the bright side, the Fed decided on Wednesday to maintain interest rates within a range of 5.25% to 5.50%, offering temporary relief from escalating interest rates.
DETROIT — When Enterprise started to see automobile supply problems after the pandemic hit in 2020, the car and truck rental, fleet management and mobility company decided to cater to its long-term customers.
Chrissy Taylor, CEO of the newly renamed Enterprise Mobility, emphasized rentals to businesses and insurance companies with clients whose cars were damaged in crashes.
Now that travel has made a comeback, Taylor sees rental cars growing again, but says most of the St. Louis-based company’s business is still with its core customers.
Enterprise is now up to more than 2.3 million vehicles in its fleet, more than it had right before the pandemic.
Taylor talked with The Associated Press about where her business is headed, the resurgence in travel, and rental prices. The answers have been edited for length and clarity.
A: A third of our business happens in the airport and two-thirds happens in our suburban market. And our suburban market has been growing exponentially with our contracted business, which includes the corporate customers and the road warrior. They are back and they do travel regionally. So we do have a lot of that business, not just at the airport but in the home city, and then insurance replacement. People still have been driving the last several years, even with the pandemic. So accidents happen. And so we have long-term relationships with insurance partners. That business has also been back on track. Travel demand was through the roof, through the summer. We have also experienced that both domestically and globally and in Europe in particular. And so the airport business is growing. We have a very diverse business line. All of it is growing right now.
A: We’re coming back online with our leisure customer. About 25% of our business is leisure and the rest is contracted. During the pandemic, when supply chain and vehicle availability were difficult, we made the decision to prioritize those long-term contracts with corporate customers and insurance customers because they’ve been with us for decades. And now with vehicle availability, we’ve been able to bring that leisure customer back online.
A: As demand loosens, we have seen prices moderate year over year, but we’re happy where pricing is. People continue to travel. Pricing is also a factor because we’re in the suburban market. It is based on availability of vehicle, what location you’re going to, what vehicle type you are trying to rent. So there are different factors that go into pricing. The experience needs to be positive, but we feel good about where pricing is.
A: We definitely are not buying as many vehicles as we were pre-pandemic. Vehicle supply is down, but we are in a much better place. And so we partner with all of our OEM partners, not just the big three in Detroit, but we’ve got great relationships. We are talking to them on a daily basis and working on what works for them, what works for us. And so we feel really good about vehicle supply coming into the back half of the year.
A: When we look back at everything that we’ve been through, whether it’s a financial crisis, whether it’s a pandemic, whether it’s the supply challenges, we are in a great position with our local operators and great leadership and great partnerships with the OEMs that we can weather anything that’s coming our way. We feel good about the car flow that’s coming in really through December and into the first part of the year. And if some of that is delayed, that is normal course of business because things don’t always come in when you think they’re going to come in.
A: We anticipate that it will most likely stay elevated. We do not have a crystal ball. We are monitoring that on an individual market basis, how we sell those vehicles after we’re finished with them with rental, how we sell them back to our dealerships, how many and at what price, who needs them. It’s very important to keep the residual value high for the manufacturers, making sure that the customer is getting a well-maintained and great vehicle. We also have a very large retail car operation, so dealerships of our own. Pricing is in a good place, but it is elevated.
A: Even though our miles are up and we are holding vehicles longer, our customer service has never been higher. So our peak was about 2022. That has come down this year. It is still elevated over pre-pandemic and you really have to dig in to make and model of our fleet because some of the vehicles just are not readily available from the manufacturer and they’re in high demand in the summer. Everybody wants a minivan, they want a large SUV. We tend to keep those a little longer because the demand has been so high. We have a team dedicated on the maintenance, the miles and how long we keep those vehicles to make sure the customer is getting a great product.
The United Auto Workers union has widened its strike against General Motors, the lone holdout among the three Detroit automakers, after reaching a tentative contract agreement with Jeep maker Stellantis.
The escalated walkout began Saturday evening at a Spring Hill, Tennessee plant, GM’s largest in North America, just hours after the Stellantis deal was reached. Its nearly 4,000 workers join about 14,000 already striking at GM factories in Texas, Michigan and Missouri.
The UAW did not immediately explain what prompted the new action after 44 days of targeted strikes. The added pressure on GM is substantial as Spring Hill makes engines for vehicles assembled in a total of nine plants as far afield as Mexico, including Silverado and Sierra pickups. One plant already on strike it supplies with engines, in Arlington Texas, makes full-size SUVs including the Tahoe and Suburban. Vehicles assembled at Spring Hill include the electric Cadillac Lyriq, GMC Acadia and Cadillac crossover SUVs.
“The Spring Hill walkout affects so much of GM’s production that the company is likely to settle quickly or close down most production,” said Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan business professor. The union wants to wrap negotiations with all three automakers so “Ford and Stellantis workers don’t vote down (their) tentative agreements because they want to see what GM workers get.”
The Stellantis deal mirrors one reached last week with Ford, and saves jobs at a factory in Belvidere, Illinois, that Stellantis had planned to close, the UAW said.
GM said it was disappointed with the additional strike at the Spring Hill plant, which has 11 million square feet of building space, “in light of the progress we have made.” It said in a statement that is has bargained in good faith and wants a deal as soon as possible.
In a statement, UAW President Shawn Fain lamented what he called “GM’s unnecessary and irresponsible refusal to come to a fair agreement.”
“Everybody’s really fired up and excited,” Spring Hill assembly line worker Larry Montgomery said by phone on Sunday. He said workers were taken by surprise by the strike call. “We thought it was going to happen earlier.”
UAW Local 1853 President John Rutherford in Spring Hill didn’t immediately return a telephone message.
Fain said in a video appearance Saturday night that 43,000 members at Stelantis would have to vote on the deal — just as Ford workers must. About 14,000 UAW workers had been on strike at two Stellantis assembly plants in Michigan and Ohio, and several parts distribution centers across the country. The company makes Jeep and Ram vehicles.
The pact includes 25% in general wage increases over the next 4 1/2 years for top assembly plant workers, with 11% coming once the deal is ratified. Workers also will get cost-of-living pay that would bring the raises to a compounded 33%, with top assembly plant workers making more than $42 per hour. At Stellantis, top-scale workers now make around $31 per hour.
Like the Ford contract, the Stellantis deal would run through April 30, 2028.
Under the deal, the union said it saved jobs in Belvidere as well at an engine plant in Trenton, Michigan, and a machining factory in Toledo, Ohio.
“We have reopened an assembly plant that was closed,” Fain said. The deal includes a commitment by Stellantis to build a new midsize combustion-engine truck at the Belvidere factory that was slated to be closed. About 1,200 workers will be hired back, plus another 1,000 workers will be added for a new electric vehicle battery plant, the union said.
Vice President Rich Boyer, who led the Stellantis talks, said the workforce will be doubled at the Toledo, Ohio, machining plant. The union, he said, won $19 billion worth of investment across the U.S.
Fain said Stellantis had proposed cutting 5,000 U.S. jobs, but the union’s strike changed that to adding 5,000 jobs by the end of the contract.
Gordon, the University of Michigan professor, said the Stellantis deal “shows that the car companies feel they are at the mercy of the UAW, that the UAW is not going to give any mercy, and that companies will be co-governed by their boards and the UAW.”
He said competing companies with non-unionized workforces, which include Toyota and Tesla, “couldn’t have gotten a better year-end gift.”
Under the Stellantis contract, a top-scale assembly plant worker’s base wage will exceed all increases in the past 22 years. Starting wages for new hires will rise 67% including cost-of-living adjustments to over $30 per hour, it said in a statement. Temporary workers will get raises of more than 165%, while workers at parts centers will get an immediate 76% increase if the contract is ratified.
Like the Ford agreement, it will take just three years for new workers to get to the top of the assembly pay scale, the union said.
The union also won the right to strike over plant closures at Stellantis, and can strike if the company doesn’t meet product and investment commitments, Fain said.
Bruce Baumhower, president of the local union at a large Stellantis Jeep factory in Toledo, Ohio, that has been on strike since September, said he expects workers will vote to approve the deal because of the pay raises above 30% and a large 11% raise immediately. “It’s a historic agreement as far as I’m concerned.”
Some union members had complained that Fain promised 40% raises to match what he said was given to company CEOs, but Baumhower said that was merely an opening bid.
“Ultimately, the numbers they did come to agree with is what the UAW wanted,” said Jermaine Antwine, a 48-year-old Stellantis worker who had been picketing the automaker’s Sterling Heights, Michigan, plant Saturday. A team leader in materials at the plant, the Pontiac, Michigan man has has 24 years with the automaker.
Negotiations between the UAW and Stellantis had intensified Thursday, the day after the Ford deal was announced.
The union began targeted strikes against all three automakers on Sept. 15 after its contracts with the companies expired. At the peak, about 46,000 workers were on strike against all three companies, about one-third of the union’s 146,000 members at the Detroit three.
With the Ford deal, which set a template for the other two companies, workers with pensions will see small increases when they retire, and those hired after 2007 with 401(k) plans will get large increases.
Other union leaders who followed aggressive bargaining strategies in recent months have also secured pay hikes and other benefits for their members. Last month, the union representing Hollywood writers called off a nearly five-month strike after scoring some wins in compensation, length of employment and other areas.
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Bajak reported from Boston. AP writers John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, Corey Williams in Sterling Heights, Michigan, and Haleluya Hadero in Jersey City, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
