00:02Why shouldn't consumers expect immediate relief if, you know, it was to blame for higher vehicle prices?
00:10Yeah, I mean, vehicle prices are so much, especially in this day and age where we've seen tariffs on, you know, a lot of material costs as well.
00:18So while I think in a long-term strategy, a, you know, lessening of fuel restrictions is helpful to the overall prices and maybe availability of lower cost prices,
00:30I think consumers are looking for relief tomorrow, not sometime in the future.
00:34And while I think this does take some of the financial pressure off of the automakers that are feeling a lot from things like the tariffs,
00:41things like electrification, autonomous technology, so that will help a little bit.
00:45But when you frame it as such, it seems like people are expecting that all of a sudden vehicle prices are going to drop
00:50and they could buy a vehicle before the end of the year, and that seems unlikely.
00:55Can automakers shift gears that easily?
00:57Fun, I guess, kind of intended.
00:59In the sense that they plan their lines long in advance and they have to retool their factories and so on.
01:05And, you know, maybe this administration will, you know, lead into another Republican administration,
01:09but maybe another administration will roll back these, will reverse what Trump is about to do.
01:16Exactly.
01:16And I think that is an issue, is automaking is a long process.
01:20You're planning, you're designing, you're planning for costs, factories, all of those things.
01:24It takes several years.
01:25We're not producing, you know, sweaters or something that is a bit more straightforward.
01:28So I think what we have seen over the administration changes, you know, just over the past eight to ten years,
01:35it's going from one extreme to the other.
01:37So it's very hard to plan long term when this happens.
01:40I mean, I think they're planning for the, you know, the market conditions that they can handle.
01:43But it does put a necessary strain, probably additional costs, stuff that you can't plan for upon them,
01:50which it just makes it hard to make those 10, 15 year plans, which all automakers do.
01:54Now, Jessica, you point out that weaker standards pushes the U.S. off the sort of track that we've been on,
02:01you know, as has Europe, as has China.
02:04You could argue that China was well ahead of everybody actually on EVs.
02:07But does that mean that we're setting ourselves back decades when it comes to technology or does it matter?
02:16I mean, it could be, right?
02:17Because the rest of the world are pushing the exact opposite agenda.
02:20They're pushing, you know, clean technology, efficiencies, electrification.
02:24And even when you go to other parts of the world, all of a sudden the cars that you see there
02:28don't look like the cars in the United States anymore.
02:30Before you could name all of them.
02:31Now that's just that's simply not the case because there's options available that just don't sell here.
02:36So while the rest of the world is moving forward, you could say that we're kind of staying stagnant.
02:41I mean, part of it could be that, you know, Americans are demanding lesser cost vehicles and that's all fine and well.
02:48But we could be missing out on new technologies, you know, more electrification because automakers are going to focus.
02:55They have to move their focus to where the most advancements are being made.
03:00So if they're building cars for China and they're not necessarily building cars here for the United States,
03:04it just creates, you know, a bit of imbalance that maybe ultimately may not be good for the American consumer
03:10if we want to stay on the cutting edge of things like technology and fuel efficiency.
03:13Real briefly, Jessica, is there any option for the car makers to continue making some fuel efficient cars
03:19and satisfy the administration if it rolls back these standards?
03:23Well, I think the goal is, of course, to move fuel efficiency standards upwards.
03:27I think that's what consumers want.
03:28Whenever there is good fuel efficiency, there is definitely a consumer reward
03:32because people see that price of the pump every week.
03:34It has far more psychological effect than even MSRP, which you pay once and you sort of forget over the next six years.
03:40So fuel efficiency is something that they need to strive for,
03:42but maybe in a container that is more attainable when you think of the, you know,
03:47the broader economy and what's going on kind of in this space.
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