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It's a new year, and while few of us still have the headache of needing to remember to write the new year on checks, 2024 brings a new annoyance of sorts. As of yesterday, tough new US Treasury Department rules concerning the sourcing of electric vehicle batteries went into effect; as a result, most of the battery and plug-in hybrid EVs that were eligible for the Internal Revenue Service's clean vehicle tax credit until Sunday have now lost that eligibility.

Under the federal government's previous program to incentivize the adoption of plug-in vehicles, it offered a tax credit, up to $7,500, based on the battery capacity of a BEV or PHEV, and once a car maker sold more than 200,000 plug-in vehicles, it lost eligibility for the tax credit—Only Tesla and General Motors reached this threshold.

Changes came as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and went into effect at the start of 2023. Thanks to heavy industry lobbying, credits linked to union-made EVs went by the wayside, with US Senator Joe Manchin acting as point man for companies like Toyota that sought to slow down the EV transition .

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How does the US Environmental Protection Agency decide how far an electric vehicle can go on a single charge? The simple explanation is that an EV is driven until the battery runs flat, providing the number that goes on the window sticker. In practice, it's a lot more complicated than that, with varying test cycles, real-world simulations, and more variables than a book of Mad Libs, all in an effort to give you a number that you can count on to be consistent and comparable with other vehicles on the road.

The start of EPA mileage testing

The EPA started testing vehicle fuel economy in 1971, and that initial testing still plays a major role in how modern cars are measured.

The year before, President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (followed by the Clean Air Act of 1970) and established the EPA with a mandate that included lowering motor vehicle emissions. Part of the EPA's plan to reduce emissions was to let buyers know just how much fuel a car would use so they could cross-shop cars effectively.

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You may have read about the recent lawsuits against Kia and Hyundai in New York and other US cities. But what exactly led us to this point? As with many viral topics these days, it all started on TikTok.

During the pandemic, bored and tech-savvy teenagers began posting videos online showing how to steal Kias and Hyundais. Thefts of these cars began increasing dramatically around the country, and soon the social media challenge—where people film themselves doing something (like dumping a bucket of icy water over their head) then post the video online as proof—had caused deadly car accidents, a class-action lawsuit , and even drops in the automakers’ stock prices. Kia and Hyundai both began offering software updates and recalling cars, but the damage was done.

The Kia Boys & the TikTok challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a huge number of social media challenges, especially among kids, simply due to boredom and extra time. In late 2021, the “Kia Boys” began going viral on TikTok. They were participating in a social media challenge that involved stealing Kias and Hyundais using a specific method and posting the results on TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube.

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Synthetic fuel promises to put gasoline back in our future. Motorsport will be using it in 2026, and European Union law is using it as a stay of execution for the combustion engine. Advertising promises that a future without fossil fuels doesn't need to be one without gasoline. But burning petrochemicals, wherever they come from, is still burning petrochemicals, and synthetic fuels come at a cost their supporters aren't talking about.

We live in perilous times. The annual Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has become blunter with every edition. The sixth, published this March , described the steps we need to take to "secure a livable future." Not a good future filled with an abundance of resources and biodiversity, just a survivable one. We're in this situation because we've spent the better part of two centuries digging up fossil fuels and burning them, putting carbon and other greenhouse gases like methane into the atmosphere and causing significant global warming.

But even though there's a domino effect to climate change—drought breeds drought as the land cooks and water seeps into the sea, for instance—mathematically, there is still time to act.

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Earlier this week , the IRS began enforcing the new clean vehicle tax credit rules . This program is an incentive of up to $7,500 for the purchase of a new battery-electric vehicle, plug-in hybrid EV (or hydrogen fuel cell EV), albeit with some conditions, including a requirement for a certain level of domestic content in those cars' battery packs. As a result, many previously qualifying vehicles lost their eligibility, but not all.

When the rules went into effect on April 18, 10 models qualified for the full $7,500 tax credit, and another seven were eligible for a $3,750 credit. The Volkswagen ID.4 was a notable omission from the list, which was puzzling at the time given that VW now builds its electric crossover in Chattanooga, Tennessee . Perhaps it was a day late with its paperwork to the IRS, because the ID.4 now appears on the US Environmental Protection Agency's official list of eligible vehicles .

"This is great news for consumers in the US because it expands the choice of truly affordable EVs," said Pablo Di Si, president and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America. "The ID.4 is already one of the lowest-priced electric SUVs on the market, and the $7,500 Federal Tax Credit makes it even more attainable. This shows that we made the right decision to localize production of the ID.4 in Tennessee and invest even further in battery production, components and innovation. Every ID.4 sold supports thousands of American jobs and helps advance our goal of a carbon-neutral future."

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By now, regular readers probably know that this year saw a major change to the Internal Revenue Service's Clean Vehicle Tax Credit, the consumer-facing incentive that aims to drive electric vehicle adoption here in the US. The tax credit was reformed by last year's Inflation Reduction Act and now places conditions on where a clean vehicle—a battery EV, a plug-in hybrid EV, or a hydrogen fuel cell EV—is manufactured, as well as the sourcing of its battery pack.

It was feared that these new rules would drastically reduce the number of eligible EVs once the sourcing requirements go into effect on April 18 , and now we can confirm that is the case. From tomorrow, only 10 new vehicles will qualify for the full $7,500. Half of the list is made up of vehicles from General Motors but also includes two models from Tesla, Ford's electric pickup truck, and plug-in hybrids belonging to Chrysler and Lincoln.

The full list of vehicles that qualify for the $7,500 clean vehicle tax credit is:

Enlarge / We thank the curators and designers at the Strong Museum of Play for including a human-scale joystick set at ground level. While more accurate, the cabinet controls would offer terrible ergonomics. (credit: Strong Museum of Play)

Working with Nintendo, and perhaps the surreal dreams of emulation enthusiasts, the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, intends to offer a nearly 20-foot-tall, yet playable, version of the 1981 classic Donkey Kong this summer.

The cabinet, built to barrel-tossing-gorilla scale, will be part of a $65 million, 90,000-foot expansion to the museum, due to open June 30, 2023. The museum, which also hosts the World Video Game Hall of Fame and contains some of the most fascinating objects of gaming history, intends to make the giga-cabinet "as authentically and true to the original game as possible," according to a press release .

The cabinet will be constructed from "an aluminum frame with MDF fiberboard." As is suggested by Strong's rendering, you won't be playing the game on a step stool or ladder, but using a human-scale, hip-height control panel from ground level. You can then be overcome with the vastness of the vertical construction worksite in which Donkey Kong holds court, whilst also holding Pauline. The game will run on "a motherboard from an original Donkey Kong cabinet," according to the Strong Museum.

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On Wednesday, after a week of rumors and anticipation, the US Environmental Protection Agency published proposed new vehicle emissions regulations . If adopted, the new rules would go into effect for model years 2027–2032 and would be the strictest fuel economy regulations yet seen in the United States, cutting fleet carbon emissions for light-duty vehicles by 56 percent from 2026 levels.

The new regulations would also bring in tougher standards for other airborne pollutants emitted by the internal combustion engines in those light-duty vehicles. Additionally, the EPA proposes tougher new rules on medium-duty (class 2b and class 3) vehicles—mostly large pickup trucks and vans with a gross vehicle weight rating of 8,501–14,000 lbs. The EPA is also looking to modify some credit programs and wants new durability and warranty standards for the battery packs in battery electric vehicles.

The EPA thinks that two-thirds of new car sales will be electric within the next decade if the rules are adopted, as they require automakers to sell many more BEVs.

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The last few years have, after much inaction, seen a flurry of new policies informed by the looming threat of climate change. Among these has been the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, which will spend almost $5 billion by 2027 in order to build out a national network of fast-charging stations along federal interstate highways .

But where are those chargers being installed, and will they be reliable when someone turns up and needs to charge? We spoke to Gabe Klein, executive director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which was created to oversee the government's EV charging investment, to find out more.

Klein's office is meant to act as a "front door" for the federal government for charging infrastructure. "We are made up of staff from DOT and DOE as well as in the national labs, and we are really focused on bringing technical expertise, alignment between government and the private sector, helping to facilitate industry standards, along with our partners," Klein told Ars recently.