How effective was this at anything other than making loopholes big enough to drive a truck through, and eventually getting assembly moved to NAFTA countries?
Having a 40 mpg target for a small truck and a 25 mpg target for a big truck makes it pretty hard to build and sell a small truck.
Hmm, that's interesting. If manufacturers have been basically locked out of making small pickup trucks due to unattainable fuel efficiency requirements [1, 2], an implication of that is that as EVs become easier to make at reasonable cost, there's a potentially huge untapped market that could be filled by whoever is the first company to make a small, simple, and cheap electric pickup truck.
A modern version of, say, a Datsun 620 [3] or an 80's Ford Ranger [4] could be pretty popular. One might even be able to circumvent the chicken tax by importing the body/frame of a foreign-made truck and building an electric drive train in the U.S. or NAFTA country.
> there's a potentially huge untapped market that could be filled by whoever is the first company to make a small, simple, and cheap electric pickup truck.
Well, the third really; Ford made 1500 1998-2001 Ford Ranger EVs, and Chevrolet made a few hundred 1997-1998 S10 EVs. But yeah, one with modern batteries and drive trains and (therefore) decent capacity and range could sell a bunch.
Having a 40 mpg target for a small truck and a 25 mpg target for a big truck makes it pretty hard to build and sell a small truck.