New findings from InfluenceMap's Automakers and Climate Policy Advocacy report show that Toyota is the worst automaker in the world, being a prime force against climate rules.
Conversely, Tesla is the industry leader in automakers' advocacy for favorable climate policies.
InfluenceMap reportedly regularly ranks automakers and car industry associations according to the extent to which they advocate against climate policy goals.
These rankings indicate not only automakers' electric vehicle (EV) ambitions but also the extent to which each carmaker is attempting to thwart government efforts to safeguard the public from pollution.
Automakers lobby on their behalf and through their membership in trade associations, which pool the positions of multiple businesses to strengthen their clout.
InfluenceMap examines the activities of global trade groups and assigns automakers a ranking based on the number of associations they belong to, the number of briefs they have filed supporting or opposing different climate policy objectives, and their future production plans.
This is divided into four categories: the amount of lobbying the organization does on its own, the manufacturer's total electric vehicle manufacturing plans, membership in trade associations and the effectiveness of those organizations' lobbying efforts, and "engagement intensity" or the level of corporate lobbying.
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Tesla's Climate Policies
Despite topping the list, Tesla's low involvement intensity earned it only a "B" rating. Tesla does not advocate as much as other organizations do, despite supporting positive climate policy and generally being a member of groups fighting for positive rather than negative climate policy (a position that could have been made harder by the departure of Tesla's policy head in April).
The group discovered that all of those automakers except Tesla actively opposed at least one law that supported electric cars. The most troubling thing is that the majority of these automakers are actively pushing against electric vehicles in addition to their little anti-EV initiatives.
Based on InfluenceMap's approach, ten of the fifteen received a final grade of D or D+ due to their exceptionally high negative engagement levels.
Toyota is ranked lowest in this research due to its strong opposition to climate legislation that supports rechargeable electric cars in the US, UK, and Australia, among other regions.
EV Against Climate Change
Research released in April 2022 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that electric automobiles are assisting in the global slowdown of climate damage by slowing the rise of emissions.
The research highlighted specific factors that contributed to the generally positive news, including falling production costs for EV batteries and renewable energy and significant legislative changes from international governments.
All of these have helped to slow down the rate of climate change over the past ten years, but scientists contend that more work remains.
According to the 2-year-old report, if everyone chooses to develop EVs "more aggressively," global greenhouse gas emissions should drop by an absurd 80-90% by 2050.
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(Photo: Tech Times)
