California Creates A Black Market For Tires
Which state has the highest retail tire prices in the country? It’s not a data point that anyone, as far as we know, compiles, but artificial intelligence suggests that it’s California. What we can be sure about, though, is that in about three years, California drivers will be paying more for tires than they are today.
Significantly more.
It won’t happen because the tire makers and retailers will suddenly raise prices. It will happen because California’s hyperactive government launched yet another new rule last week. Beginning in 2029, all new replacement tires sold in the state will have to be “at least as energy efficient, on average, as tires sold on new vehicles,” according to the California Energy Commission, which bragged that it had “approved the nation’s first replacement tire efficiency standards.”
Supposedly the rule will help consumers pocket extra cash due to the tires’ low rolling resistance. The CEC estimates the savings will reach $1 billion a year in gasoline and electricity costs.
Companies that actually make tires and therefore might know what they are talking about say that the savings are a third-rate tall tale. The new compliant tires will cost far more than the few extra dollars each the CEC reckons. During the rule’s comments period, Goodyear said prices could spike by hundreds of dollars per tire while the rule will eventually eliminate about 70% of current replacement tire market.
In a much less defiant tone, Dunlop Tires North America said the state should not “unintentionally compromise the performance, choices, affordability and competition that consumers depend upon from the replacement tire market” by focusing on a single tire component.
In doing exactly that, the Energy Commission bypassed safety concerns. Low rolling resistance tires don’t grip the road as well as conventional tires. Energy-efficient tires have a smaller contact patch, so the distance needed to stop is increased while driving on wet surfaces becomes even more treacherous.
The CEC’s claim that consumers will save money is a fig leaf to cover the fetish of a state obsessed with squeezing every last molecule of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Californians know by now that when someone from the government swears the latest plan will save money, they will soon have to reach for their wallets.
To keep the Energy Commission honest and accountable, consumers should demand that lawmakers order the CEC to show exactly how much the scheme has saved over its first years, and then every year after that.
It’s painfully obvious that California will regulate anything, without conscience, without prudence, without remorse, with no regard for the consequences. It’s a single-party state where elected officials and unelected functionaries know no bounds.
There are state lines, though, and Californians will cross them to buy the tires they want and the tires they can afford. Enterprising off-the-books merchants will buy contraband tires in Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and elsewhere and sell them in California outside the normal channels to avoid the regulators.
Who knows, some might feel the rule is the straw that finally breaks their backs and sends them fleeing the state as so many others already have because policymakers continue to make living in California an intolerable burden.
— Writ
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