Issues
The United States Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has formally launched an effort to require that drunk or impaired driving prevention technologies come standard in new vehicles. In its advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, the agency requests the public’s input on the information needed to develop a rulemaking proposal “that require…
United States Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have sent a letter to Elon Musk following a report from Reuters on Tesla vehicles’ safety flaws. In their letter, the Senators note that, “[t]he report details complaints about suspension connection points, including fore and aft links, and sudden losses of power steering – often…
A bill titled the “Insurance Data Protection Act” (S. 3349) introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) would restrict the Federal Insurance Office’s (FIO) ability to collect information directly from insurance companies. It would also rescind the director of FIO’s subpoena authority. Housed in the U.S. Treasury Department, FIO was established through…
Earlier today, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business held its last hearing of the year, titled “A Year in Review: The State of Small Business in America.” The committee heard testimony from four small business owners who described the factors contributing to their companies’ successes and challenges, as well as the ways…
A bipartisan group of twenty members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to the Secretaries of the Departments of Defense, Commerce, and the Treasury raising concern with light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology imports and exports to and from China. The letter – led by House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between…
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in 2021 allocated $7.5 billion towards building a national EV charging network. Each state assumes responsibility for spending those funds and implementation oversight. As expected, the current status this endeavor varies by state. No EV charger installed using these federal funds are operational yet. Two states (Ohio and…
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) announced last week that the state will move forward with adopting California’s Advanced Clean Cars Rule II. Beginning in 2027, the regulation will require vehicle manufacturers to produce fleets comprised of a certain percentage of electric vehicles, with that percentage growing each year. All new vehicles a manufacturer produces…
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced it is disbursing more than $857,000 cumulatively in its second round of compensatory payments to customers harmed by Napleton Automotive Group’s illegal junk fees and discriminatory practices. Napleton Automotive Group, which is based in Illinois, is the thirteenth largest dealership group in the United States based on revenue…
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has withdrawn a regulatory proposal that would have required certain vehicle-to-vehicle communication technologies in all light-vehicles. In its formal filing declaring its decision to withdraw the regulatory proposal, NHTSA stated that it still believes that, “V2V and other vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technologies hold tremendous promise to improve safety and…
Earlier this week, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust held an oversight hearing. Jonathan Kanter, the Assistant Attorney General who leads the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, provided testimony. Assistant Attorney General Kanter defended his office’s investigations into monopolistic activities that go beyond just unfair prices…