This week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new vehicle standards with updated limits on car and truck emissions. If adopted, the rules would include prioritizing electric vehicles (E.V.s) and mitigating climate change. While those are good goals, it’s not clear if the auto industry will be able to pull them off on the government’s timeline.

More to the point, while it’s entirely inappropriate for the government to make such mandates, it also may hinder future progress on E.V. technology. …

The EPA estimates that adopting all of its rules “would avoid nearly 10 billion tons” of carbon emissions and “reduce oil imports by approximately 20 billion barrels” through 2055. But the auto industry may not be able to meet these accelerated deadlines, and it could even disincentivize innovation in the field.

[The math on this is amusing too, especially on oil savings. We currently use 20 million barrels of oil a day. That would amount to a savings of 1,000 days’ worth of oil in a 25-year period. That’s a savings of roughly 11% of expected use, which is not *insignificant* but is hardly a blockbuster or a sign of complete independence from foreign sources either. One has to imagine that we could achieve the same outcome by just innovating and improving on internal-combustion engineering. — Ed]