Old Polluting Cars Exported To Poor Countries

The latest clickbait article that has been reworded a dozen times through various outlets

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/21536763/climate-change-africa-un-used-cars-environment

The gist is that Europe wants to force poor countries that can’t afford new cars to have stronger environmental standards and quit exporting Euro junkers to them

This is one of the situations where I say do nothing, each nation needs to eventually make decisions to benefit its own citizens.

Net result, If this occurs is that poor people have even fewer cars that are even older and pollute more. Crushing drivable cars will only raise prices above what they can afford.

Wheras we could leave things alone and eventually the European junkers will be old EVs without driving shortages and illegal activity

Funny part is while the us requires imported cars to be 25 years or older certain African countries require imports to be under 5, sounds like they are more progressive than we are .

 

Myth...

Vehicles do not need to meet any us standard besides lights, bumper height and material sourcing. Even a vehicle that fully fails testing can be sold as low speed.

To be sold vehicle manufacturers do need to have paid the millions of dollars to have the vehicle tested in the US for sale here.

The fact that no International vehicle Sold outside Canada has ever been tested in the US in its international configuration means that the US does not allow vehicles titled outside the US or Canada to be permanently imported.

Even an identical vehicle model Originally sold both here and in Europe cannot be cross Imported from its home region, in many cases besides lights and seatbelts the cars may have identical parts but are still banned from import either direction, even after a retrofit.

So from any practical standpoint no vehicle sold in another part of the world can be privately imported to the US unless it’s 25 years old, even if it’s an identical car with different lights and seatbelts

As an example...
I attempted to get a 2 year old Canadian Manual Transmission Trax through a legal importer Supersellers to replace my decrepit Cobalt (I hate automatic cars)

No importer would touch the sale with a 10 foot pole, they validated that all pollution controls, programming and safety equipment met spec but refused because Chevy only provides compliance letters on trucks.

there was no legal or substantive reason to block the import but a missing sheet of paper stopped the sale.