One of the most tempting things to do the moment you bring a car with a manual transmission home is to swap out the boring stock shift knob for something that fits your style and personality. The world of shift knobs is practically endless, from the classics like skulls and 8-balls to weird ones like flight sticks and swords. But I think I found the shift knob to rule them all. My Mazda MX-5 Miata just got a shift knob made from layers of an unexpected kind of wood, and it might be the first shift knob I think of as art.

Truth be told, I’ve never really cared for doing any intense mods on my own fleet. I appreciate a good build, but my personal vehicles are pretty mild. I’ll do little things like window tint, speakers, wheels, or a trailer hitch. If I’m feeling spicy, I’ll do a catback exhaust and an intake. That’s it. You aren’t going to see me dropping in turbos or doing engine swaps. So many things divide my attention that I just know if I take a car apart, I’ll never get it back together again.

The exception to that rule is when I buy a car that has already been modified. My 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata is one of those cars, and the original owner did some really tasteful mods. I love the peanut butter-colored leather seats and the aroma they give off. I adore the metal accents and the leather interior trim that’s replaced the factory plastic parts. The original owner also gave the car a throaty HKS exhaust and some clear side marker lights. I even adore how the windshield trim is silver – possibly from a Fiat 124 Spider – rather than the black plastic that Mazda used.

I feel the car is just about perfect as it is, except for the floormats and shift knob. The original owner did have neat mats and a custom shift knob in the car, but took these pieces with them when they sold the car. I feel like it’s time to make my mark.

My solution for the floor mats was to click over to Carbon Miata for a set of full-coverage floor mats that match the seats. Unfortunately, Carbon Miata is notorious for rather insane wait times as its products ship from China, so you’ll have to wait to see those later.

The shift knob, however, is here. It’s some pretty sweet wood, right?

Not Just Any Kind Of Wood

I was overwhelmed with the frankly absurd number of choices of Miata shift knobs. Honestly, I probably didn’t even see a quarter of the options available to Miata owners, and I don’t know how Miata owners stay sane figuring out which one to buy.

At least I had an idea of what I wanted. I thought that a shift knob made out of a light-colored wood would be a tasteful complement to the seats. I also wanted a splash of color. At least to my eyes, my Miata’s paint looks sort of blue-ish under certain lighting conditions, so I thought I’d go with a splash of blue.

Most of the Miata wood knobs out there are just the color of the wood. They’re great, but didn’t quite have the pop I was looking for. Then, I sort of just stumbled into a Reddit thread where someone mentioned a shop called CDIY that makes custom knobs.

I clicked the link, and I was stunned. That Redditor really undersold just how awesome CDIY is. The shop, which is based in Lithuania, is called Commune DIY. It was founded in 2014 by lifelong skateboarders who decided to give back to their local community by rescuing discarded skateboards and turning them into beautiful art and practical objects.

Here, I’ll hand CDIY the mic, because their story is heartwarming:

CDIY started as a shelter indoor skate park for skaters to hide from the bad Lithuanian weather. Seeing that the space was too small, we have put aside the skate park idea to grow and started to experiment with broken skateboards that were laying around. Tool after tool – we have come up with something. And that something led us into believing we can do a world-wide impact on the skateboarding culture. Our mission is to inspire new generation of skaters, make better conditions for them to grow, create a space for a non-formal education and spread the benefits of skateboarding. To make that happen we are using the power of recycling.

As we know today there are more than 20M skateboarders in the world and counting. Everyday around 200K boards are broken and go to the landfill. We surely leave a bad mark in global pollution by basically throwing away broken boards that last around a few months. Skateboard recycling is a must. And as they say– start from yourself. Commune DIY stands for a better and stronger community, for skateboarders that takes matters and initiative into their own hands. Same as jumping off a ten stair – only you’re able to do it.

Here, in CDIY workshop we are now able to recycle hundreds of broken boards and produce all sorts of products for different markets in the world. Our production goes from bulk business orders to very delicate and one of a kind custom orders. We also experiment in the workshop and have some goods of our own available to buy instantly. The passionate skaters working with CDIY bring all their hearts into making great quality products out of recycled skateboards.

I love creatively reusing and repurposing old goods. It’s why some of my favorite motorhomes are retired school buses that have been given a second life. Things that seem like they are trash or used up might have an entire future left in them if you just get creative.

A big part of CDIY’s business is converting sheets of broken skateboards, typically consisting of pressed boards of Canadian maple hardwood and the colored layers the skateboard had, into car enthusiast pieces. CDIY describes this further:

Recycled skateboards material have some unique features to become a great new product:

Made out of strong and durable Canadian maple hardwood. Skateboards consists of 7 wood plies pressed and laminated together that usually have from 1 to 7 coloured layers and some natural wood colour plies.

The shop will happily make you a custom shift knob and a custom handbrake lever shroud for whatever car that you drive. While most of the knobs that the shop makes are for manual transmission vehicles, it has done some shift knob projects for cars with automatic transmissions, too. The shop can engrave logos into the knob, produce a variety of shapes, give you just about any color you want, and so much more. Your shift knob will also have a nice, hefty stainless steel core.

While shift knobs are a major focus, CDIY has also turned skateboards into Bluetooth speakers, flash drives, lamps, phone cases, trophies, earbuds, drumsticks, and even GoPro handles. The company takes custom orders, so if there’s something that you think would look cooler if it were made out of a skateboard, CDIY is the place to go.

My Knob

My request wasn’t that crazy. I requested a round shift knob with some exposed metal and a good mix of natural wood with splashes of blue. The CDIY folks were refreshingly straightforward and transparent right from the jump. I got an immediate price quote, a production time estimate, and even got to pick from some color samples – I chose the third, below.

From there, I just waited. CDIY gave me weekly updates, and in them, I got to watch a block of wood become a shift knob. Here’s what it looked like in the beginning:

… and after shaping:

Then came the final touches. CDIY added the classic ‘M’ logo on top:

Then, they added a cream filler to make the ‘M’ pop:

CDIY had it done exactly 20 days after it all started. Technically, they did it even faster than that because I accidentally took a few days to respond to a couple of emails. Without my delay, I bet it would have been closer to two weeks.

Shipping then took another two weeks. This was not CDIY’s fault. My knob left Lithuania and reached Chicago with gusto. I also prepaid CDIY for Customs duties, so there wouldn’t be any problem. Unfortunately, Customs held my knob for about two whole weeks. I never got a reason for it, but eventually, it left Chicago and finally reached my mailbox.

CDIY’s presentation is top-notch. The knob comes in a protective cylinder that’s made out of wood. The base the knob sits on could be used as a display stand if you’d rather look at the knob than use it. Honestly, I sort of expected some bubble wrap and maybe tissue paper, so this was excellent.

My photos don’t do this knob justice. It’s not just a blend of natural wood and blue. The blue parts of my knob shimmer in sunlight. The colors are bold and rich.

Every layer shines just a little bit differently, and I can spot the unique, intricate details in every part of the many coats of wood. I hate using the term “one of a kind,” but that’s exactly what this is.

Even if someone copied my exact idea, their knob will come out slightly different. Maybe the rings of natural wood would be in a different place, or the blue might have a different tone. The wood itself will be naturally unique.

I won’t lie, I actually put the knob on display in my bedroom for a couple of weeks before I even put it in the car. It looks just that good.

Installation was easy. The factory Miata knob just unscrews right off, and this one screwed right on. Immediately, I was stoked that the knob gave me the look I was going for. I think it complements the seats and adds just a touch of color. At least, I don’t think it’s obnoxious. I just need to move the shift boot up a little, and it’ll look nice and flush.

I Definitely Recommend These Knobs

As for driving with it, I’ve always been a fan of round knobs, and I like my knobs with some heft to them, and my knob does it in spades. It feels as heavy as the stock ND knob, which is great. I like it when I feel like I’m shifting with purpose, even though my normal style is pretty relaxed.

I paid €124.25 ($152.79 at the time of purchase) for my knob. That covered making the knob, tariffs, and shipping. I think every penny was well spent. I’ve never put much thought into shift knobs. Nor have I ever really thought of a shift knob as anything other than something to grab to shift.

This one has me thinking it’s functional art. So, CDIY will probably see me again because I have more cars I want custom knobs for. If you’re looking for a cool knob, send CDIY an email. This isn’t a sponsored post or anything. I just love the knob that much. The fact that it helps the local economy in Lithuania and keeps some material out of landfills is just icing on the cake.

All photos: Mercedes Streeter

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post I Tricked Out My Miata With A Bespoke Shift Knob And You’ll Never Guess What It’s Made Out Of appeared first on The Autopian.

RV Tech, a joint venture between Volkswagen Group and Rivian, has completed a successful winter test program, it said this morning. The partnership was created in 2024 when VW Group announced it would invest $5.8 billion in the American electric vehicle maker to gain access to Rivian's expertise in vehicle software and electronic architecture. VW Group initially paid Rivian $1 billion in cash, with further payments over time: the completion of the winter testing milestone should unlock a further $1 billion payment.

VW's decision to turn to Rivian followed a tortuous history of its own internal software development. It created a new division in 2019 just to develop software for cars, then immediately bit off more than it could chew by trying to simultaneously develop three different vehicle operating systems. Things went the opposite of smoothly, with software-related delays to the two new platforms used by cars like the VW ID.4 and Porsche Macan that led to chairman Herbert Diess' firing and the third platform delayed until late in this decade.

Rivian, meanwhile, had no such problems developing its own vehicle electronic architecture and software, starting from a clean sheet unencumbered by generations of legacy cruft. As a startup automaker, Rivian needs money, and since Volkswagen needs better tech, the joint venture makes a lot of sense.

To the Arctic Circle

Automakers love testing cars in the Arctic Circle. It's about as cold an environment as anyone's going to drive a car, so if you can make your systems reliable in those extreme temperatures, they should be just fine in milder winters. And there are plenty of frozen lakes, with vast flat expanses of ice thick enough to drive cars across with no worries. So you can test chassis tuning and traction and stability control work at the same time.

A team of engineers from Volkswagen, Audi, Scout (VW Group's new electrified SUV brand), and RV Tech decamped to Arjeplog in Sweden to test several development vehicles in the Swedish winter, including an Audi, a Scout, and the ID.EVERY1, a new entry-level VW EV destined for Europe with a targeted starting price of less than 20,000 euros ($23,000). After successfully completing vehicle dynamics work and testing the platform's over-the-air software updatability, the bosses signed off on the program after sampling the results.

"We are accelerating toward the future," said VW Group CEO Oliver Blume. "With the successful completion of the winter tests, our joint venture once again demonstrates the speed and precision of its work. The close integration between the joint venture, our brands, and the Group follows a clear objective: to excite people with products and technologies that set new standards. This is how we are driving development forward across the Volkswagen Group—with the ambition to become the global automotive tech driver."

New EVs with the RV Tech zonal architecture should start appearing next year. There seems little chance that VW will bring the small and cheap ID.EVERY1 to North America, but expect to see RV Tech's work inside new electric Audis and Scouts (and presumably Porsches) that will be sold here before too long.

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The 2000s was a gloriously weird decade for cars. Saab still existed, General Motors decided that every car had to be a performance car, Scion was presumably a way for Toyota juniors to throw raves using company money, and European automakers went harder than any other nation of car companies. We’re talking V10-powered BMW M5s, W12-powered Bentleys, unhinged AMGs that would tear your face off, and the glorious ridiculousness of Wheeler-era TVR. Even Volkswagen itself got in on the party with the Touareg V10 TDI and Phaeton W12, but those almost weren’t contenders for the craziest Volkswagen-badged car sold in America.

While the horsepower war raged on, a new sort of fight had come to town: The battle for cost and economy. For the new millennium, Honda and Toyota threw the opening salvos in the form of the Insight and Prius, and things only got more interesting from there. While Volkswagen already had a lineup of diesel-powered vehicles, something must’ve been in the water at the firm’s California offices. In 2005, a team called Moonraker was formed to, in VW’s words, “convert the wishes, dreams and needs of American drivers into mobility.” These days, you’d expect the end result to be some sort of autonomous vehicle or battery-powered city pod. You’d be half-right, in that the end result wasn’t a car in a traditional sense.

It was a trike, but not in the Harley-Davidson vein. Instead, designers drew inspiration from sport bikes and open-wheeled race cars to produce something striking. A swoosh of light and dark finishes with asymmetric headlights and gold suspension, it looked nothing like anything else in Volkswagen’s lineup. It was called the GX3, and on Jan. 4, 2006 at the Los Angeles Auto Show, then-VW brand chief Wolfgang Bernhard unveiled it to the world.

Sure, the GX3 didn’t have a windshield, or doors, or really any conventional car features, but this three-wheeler’s spec sheet got the people going. It had an enormous 315-section rear tire, the steering rack from a Lotus Elise, and the 125-horsepower 1.6-liter turbocharged engine from a Lupo GTI. Thanks to a scant curb weight of 1,257 pounds, the Volkswagen GX3 could dash from zero-to-62 mph in 5.7 seconds and return a claimed 46 MPG. Oh, and did I mention up to 1.25 g of lateral acceleration? That edges out the C8 Chevrolet Corvette Z06, a machine nearly 20 years newer and basically a supercar. Perhaps the best part was Volkswagen touting a starting price of $17,000. As the company wrote at the time, “Fact is: a production counterpart of the GX3, could be on the market very soon. It all depends on the American driver’s feedback.”

Needless to say, this got people salivating, and official comments only added fuel to the fire. Shortly after the unveiling, Bernhard told Automotive News, “If this gets positive feedback, we will see this on the streets of California soon.” Members of the press even got to drive it, and the feedback was good. As Motor Trend wrote:

After three or four hours of nonstop carving, skating, and gliding up and down challenging alpine roads, I have a broad grin on my face. No other car this inexpensive (VW claimed that it would have theoretically cost about $17,000) has ever been this much fun. Corner by corner, the sticky roadholding and the sweet handling balance enhance the appeal of this bug-eyed street machine. Climb by climb, the mix of instant grip and eager acceleration brighten its halo. Descent by descent, the subtle load transfer, the aggressive brake bite, and the very physical downshifts test the driver’s skills.

It likely helped that Lotus had a hand in sorting the handling, but the GX3 looked and sounded like a belly-laugh, a practicality-be-damned admission that cars should be fun.

Every sign pointed towards volume production in 2007, yet if you walked into a Volkswagen dealer during the year Mims had an unexpected pop chart hit, you wouldn’t have found a GX3. What happened? Well, it wasn’t a fiscal problem, as Motor Trend noted:

“The business case was watertight,” confirms Jens Berger, who was in charge of body development, specification, and vehicle safety. “Even the base model would have made money from day one.” With the exception of the frame and the floorpan, all the major components come out of existing parts bins. The Germans struck a deal with Lotus Engineering, which was to build the GX3 and sell it to VW at a fixed price. Insiders claim that the net cost per unit was about $10,000, so each vehicle would have made a healthy profit–and that’s before options.

According to Autoweek, product liability concerns started to rear their heads as early as May of 2006. As the magazine wrote:

The low-slung GX3 legally would have been considered a motorcycle, meaning VW could have engineered it to different standards than a car. But blurring the line between cycle and car could be too risky.

“It was somewhere between the two—a motorcycle and a car—and that is a problem,” says a source close to the project.

By December 2006, Motor Trend reported that the GX3 had been axed. It was basically ready to go, but the legal gap simply couldn’t be closed. With the project being canned in America, it was canned everywhere, and the publication found that unfair, writing: “America may live in the insular darkness of lawyer-led repression, but Europeans, at least, should get the chance to go play in the street.”

Maybe the GX3 was just too cool for mass consumption. Too wild, too extreme, too much fun for the money. Sure, it was immensely impractical for anyone living in a place where rain and snow are concerns, but as a fair weather toy? What other new car for $17,000 would’ve given you this sort of performance in 2007? Still, I wish I could buy one of these second-hand today. It looks so much sleeker than a Polaris Slingshot, and that golf ball shifter probably feels fantastic.

Top graphic image: Volkswagen

 

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For as long as we've known that soil bacteria manufacture molecular weapons to fight each other, we've been swiping their battle plans. In clinics and hospitals, those turf-war weapons have become miraculous drugs of modern medicine—antibiotics—that blow away otherwise deadly infections.

But, of course, there's a dark side of mimicking microbial munitions—bacteria have defenses, too, namely antibiotic resistance. You're probably aware that we're facing a rising threat of drug resistance among disease-causing bacteria, one that is rendering much of our stolen weaponry obsolete and making infections harder to defeat.

Often, this growing crisis is framed as a clinical failure: We're overusing and misusing antibiotics, hastening our bacterial foes' natural ability to develop and spread resistance. While this is certainly true, a new study in Nature Microbiology this week identifies a potentially new driver of rising antibiotic resistance—and we're at least partly to blame for this one, too.

A series of experiments by researchers at the California Institute of Technology found that dry soil—drought conditions—consistently select for and enrich antibiotic resistance in soil bacterial communities. More concerningly, the researchers found that pro-resistance conditions in soil link to higher frequencies of antibiotic-resistant infections in hospitals around the world. And with human-driven climate change, drought conditions are expected to increase. Assuming the link is real, projections indicate that drought-threatened regions across the globe will face heightened emergence of antibiotic resistance.

While the authors acknowledge that more research is needed to confirm the connections, "our study offers a clear example of how climate change has the potential to intersect with microbial ecology to shape public health outcomes," they conclude.

The underlying mechanism hypothesized to explain this connection is a fairly simple one: as soil dries, natural antibiotics produced by soil microbes reach higher concentrations in the remaining pockets of moisture. Those higher concentrations, in turn, select for bacteria that can resist the antibiotics.

Soil to clinic

They found evidence of this in a set of experiments, first finding that the relative abundance of antibiotic and antibiotic-resistant genes increased under drought conditions in soils from five distinct geographic regions. They also dried out soil samples spiked with an antibiotic, finding that the concentration of the antibiotic increased within lingering soil moisture. Further, non-resistant bacteria died off in the drought conditions, while resistant bacteria were unscathed.

They next turned their attention to the bigger picture. Bacteria are known to be good at sharing genetic material, even across distantly related species. This is particularly true for antibiotic resistance genes. The researchers note that not only are soil bacteria and clinical pathogens known to share the same resistance genes, there are examples of the genetic sequence of those genes being 100 percent identical across the strains found in soils and hospitals. The genetic flow between the environmental microbes and clinical pathogens is thought to occur through a variety of pathways, including through agriculture, recreation, and simple dust inhalation.

The researchers collected data on antibiotic-resistant infections in over 100 hospitals across the world and looked at the soil conditions in the areas around those hospitals. They found a strong correlation between increased frequency of resistant clinical isolates and drought conditions. The association held up when researchers accounted for economic factors.

In an accompanying commentary piece, microbial ecologist Timothy Ghaly of Macquarie University in Australia argues that the study reframes how we think about the "soil-to-clinic axis." Instead of a one-way extraction of natural antibiotics from soil, Ghaly writes, "The authors now expand it to describe an ecological pathway through which climate-driven selection pressures in soils actively promote and disseminate antibiotic resistance into hospitals."

In all, the findings offer a warning that we may need a broader approach to combating the rise of antibiotic resistance. "Effective strategies must recognize that antibiotic stewardship in hospitals, while crucial, may not be enough if we neglect stewardship of the planet’s changing climate," he concluded.

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If you’ve paid any attention to the news these past few weeks, or simply stopped at a gas station to fill up your tank, you’ve probably realized that gas prices are on the rise. The new conflict in Iran, as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine, means prices are probably going to stay elevated through the summer, which means you’ll likely be paying more for that summer road trip than you expected.

In an effort to curb rising prices, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced yesterday plans to issue a waiver to allow the nationwide sale of E15 gasoline—gas blended with 15% ethanol, popularly known as “winter gas”—during the first 20 days of May.

Compared to Summer-grade gasoline, winter gas is cheaper because it’s slightly less energy-dense. That also means it’s a tiny bit less efficient. And depending on what car you drive, it could do more harm than summer gas on your fuel system. Here’s what you need to know.

What’s The Difference Between Summer Gas And Winter Gas?

Back in 1989, the EPA began putting limits on the volatility of gasoline sold at gas stations nationwide. “Volatility,” in this case, doesn’t refer to my portfolio of high-risk tech and healthcare stocks I’m too ashamed to admit my lifetime gains/losses on. Instead, volatility is the point at which liquid evaporates, turning into vapor and entering the air. This is bad, as gas vapors contribute to smog, which can cause respiratory issues for people.

This law outlaws the sale of gasoline with a Reid vapor pressure (RVP) of over 9 pounds between June 1 and September 15, according to Car and Driver. In places like California, that time window is extended to between April 1 and October 31. RVP, according to the American Society for Testing and Materials, is the gasoline’s vapor pressure at 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

There are a lot of additives that fuel suppliers use to adjust RVP, but ethanol is the most significant. Basically, the more of the corn-based fuel you have in the gas, the higher the fuel’s RVP will be. And the higher the RVP, the more easily it will evaporate from your gas tank when it’s hot outside. During summer months, E10—that is, gasoline blended with 10% ethanol—is the standard, as that’s the most suppliers can add before reaching that EPA-enforced RVP limit. During the winter months, when the gasoline isn’t as susceptible to evaporating, more Ethanol is added to the mix.

Why is the percentage of ethanol higher in the winter? Well, in addition to offering a higher-volatility blend that works better in colder temperatures, it means the fuel can be cheaper. Amsoil explains it well in its blog on the subject:

Winter-blend fuel requires increased RVP. If the fuel doesn’t evaporate readily in cold temperatures, the engine will start hard and run rough when it’s cold outside.

To achieve this, refiners often blend winter gasoline with butane, a relatively inexpensive additive with a high RVP. They adjust the RVP of the final formulation to as high as 15.0 psi to help the gasoline ignite readily in the cold.

Of course, because Butane has a high RVP, it can’t be used during the summer because of the EPA’s rules. Here’s Amsoil explaining how fuel manufacturers make the switch:

Once the temperature warms up in summer, however, high-RVP gasoline can volatilize more easily, which contributes to increased emissions and air pollution.

For that reason, federal law restricts sales of gasoline with an RVP greater than 9.0 from June 1 through Sept. 15.

To comply, refiners reduce the amount of butane in the gasoline and instead use pricier additives, hence one reason gas prices generally increase in summer. The blending process also takes longer, adding to the cost.

So, now you know what those labels on the gas pump talking about ethanol blend are all about – not that it’s likely to matter much if you drive a remotely modern car.

How Does It Affect My Car?

The EPA says that cars after 2001 can safely handle gasoline with up to 15% ethanol blend, and that’s true for “flex fuel” cars, which are designed from the factory to handle up to 85-percent ethanol blends. But as Thomas wrote last year, some manufacturers don’t recommend it:

[T]here are lots of vehicles made after 2001 that aren’t designed for E15. For instance, BMWs only approves a maximum of 10 percent ethanol content in its vehicles, as does Mazda, as does Mercedes-Benz on all models not approved for E85. Volvo only approves a maximum of 10 percent ethanol content across its lineup, as does Mitsubishi.

Some other manufacturers like Nissan are more selective when it comes to E15 approval. The current Frontier, Rogue, Z, Pathfinder, and Altima can take E15, but the Sentra, Kicks, and almost all outgoing models like the previous-generation Armada aren’t rated to handle it.

The thing with ethanol is that it’s hygroscopic, which means it pulls in moisture from the air. And having water mixed in with your fuel is, of course, very bad. Anyone who’s seen those videos of vehicles attempting to ford a water crossing only to hydrolock their engines knows that. Also, ethanol, when mixed with oxygen, can form acetic acid, which is the active ingredient in vinegar. While the stuff is good for cooking and cleaning rusty car parts, it’s not so great for fuel system components.

Of course, that doesn’t mean your car will immediately fall apart if you run E15 through it. You’ve probably been doing it all winter without even knowing, along with millions of other drivers on the road. Today’s fuel systems are sealed pretty well, which means water egress isn’t a huge issue. If anything, the rubber hoses in your fuel system might degrade slightly quicker over the life of the car than if you ran E10 year-round. If you have an older car with rubber hoses that aren’t designed to handle ethanol, you might want to be a bit more cautious.

More important is the difference in energy content between winter gas and summer gas. Ethanol is about 30% less energy-dense than gasoline, which means the drop in ethanol from E15 to E10 results in summer gas being roughly 1.7% more energy-dense, according to Car and Driver. That’s enough for a small (but measurable) increase in fuel economy, all other things equal. So while winter gas might be cheaper, you might not actually be saving any money, since you’re using more fuel to drive the same distance.

Why Is The Government Doing This?

Officially, the EPA says it’s issuing a waiver to give drivers more options as the country inches closer to the Summer driving season. Here’s the relevant stuff from the announcement:

Through the waiver, EPA is fortifying the domestic gasoline supply chain and providing Americans relief at the pumps ahead of the summer driving season. Beginning on May 1, 2026, EPA’s waivers will work to prevent disruption in America’s fuel supply by keeping E15 on the market and giving Americans more fuel options.

According to the EPA, not only will drivers benefit thanks to lower prices, but corn farmers will also see a benefit thanks to the increased demand for ethanol, which is derived from corn. The announcement even threw in a quote from the Secretary of Agriculture:

Allowing the summer sale of E-15 will provide drivers more options at the pump, and deliver a bigger domestic market for American farmers,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins. “While today’s announcement is great news for farmers, year-round E-15 is essential for the farm economy, and Congress needs to find a common sense solution that provides much needed certainty to consumers and farmers.

The savings found at the pump are debatable for the energy density reasons mentioned above, but whether people actually realize that the slightly lower prices won’t actually result in any money saved is another story. As Bloomberg points out, the timing of this move to lower prices comes during a midterm election year, when voters are increasingly faced with higher costs of living. It’s a safe bet to assume this waiver is being used to counter the spike in oil and gas prices from the current conflict in Iran.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen an admin use waivers on RVP to drive down fuel prices during an election cycle. The Biden administration did the same thing back in the spring of 2022, claiming to counter fuel price increases due to the war in Ukraine (though pandemic-induced supply chain ripples also contributed to those price jumps). These emergency waivers have been extended several times since, and they’re continuing again into the summer of 2026.

What does this mean for the environment? Well, more E15 gas in cars means more gasoline evaporating into the air when it gets hot out, which will likely result in more harmful smog. But that tracks with this current admin. Last year, it eliminated penalties for manufacturers that don’t meet corporate fuel economy targets and announced a $625 million investment into the coal industry. The push to keep winter gas flowing comes just three days after the Department of the Interior agreed to pay French company TotalEnergies $1 billion to walk away from an offshore wind power lease, directing the company to use that money towards natural gas projects instead. The government’s priorities are clear.

While this waiver is only set to last a few weeks, the EPA says it’s “ready to extend the emergency fuel waivers as long as the fuel supply circumstances warrant such action.” Seeing as how the waiver’s been extended for the last few summers past, I would count on that happening.

Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com

 

 

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Across much of the Western United States, winter 2026 was the year the snow never came. Many ski resorts got by with snowmaking but shut down their winter operations early. Fire officials and water supply managers are worried about summer.

Where I live in Boise, Idaho, temperatures hit the low 80s Fahrenheit (high-20s Celsius) in mid-March. The same heat dome sent temperatures soaring to 105° F (40° C) in Phoenix.

Ordinarily, water managers and hydrologists like me who study the Western US expect the mountain snowpacks to be at their fullest around April 1. Snowpacks are natural reservoirs of water that farms and communities depend on through the hot, dry summer. Their snow water equivalent, meaning the amount of liquid water in the snowpack, is seen as a bellwether for water supplies.

But the 2026 water year has been anything but ordinary. In fact, its snow drought has few historical analogs.

Data from the US Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service shows that out of approximately 70 river basins across the Western US, only five are at or above the 1991–2020 median snow water equivalent for this time of year. Most of those are clustered around the Yellowstone region of western Wyoming and eastern Idaho.

The majority of river basins in the Western US were at less than 50 percent of their 1991–2020 median snow water equivalent on March 23, 2026. Credit: Natural Resources Conservation Service National Water and Climate Center

By contrast, 11 basins have less than 25 percent of the 1991–2020 median, and more than half are below 50 percent. The headwaters of critically important rivers, including the Colorado, the Columbia, and the Missouri, are peppered with basins that are far below historical averages.

Other important measures of snow water storage and ecosystem health, including which areas have snow cover in the Western US and how long it’s been there, also point toward snow reserves that are far below recent years.

How did we get here?

Just because the Western US is in a snow drought doesn’t mean it isn’t getting precipitation. Temperatures have been high enough since the start of the water year in October that a lot of what normally would have fallen as snow fell as rain instead.

The West experienced a very warm December at all but the highest elevations, but strong storms also drenched large parts of the region. Washington state was swamped with rain that triggered flooding and melted the existing snowpack.

The total area of the Western US with snow cover has been exceptionally low compared to the years 2001 to 2025. Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

Temperatures in January were less extreme but still warmer than historical averages. However, precipitation in January was far below the 1991–2020 average throughout much of the region. February brought precipitation conditions closer to historical averages, but temperatures were much warmer than normal.

The Western US, therefore, got a triple whammy: Two of the three critical snow-accumulation months were too warm, and the third was too dry.

Water worries ahead

So what does this mean for water supplies and river flows?

A recent assessment of drought conditions from NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System suggests 2026 will be a tight year for water supplies.

Water managers in Wyoming and Washington are already signaling that some water rights holders—cities, irrigation districts, individual farms, and industries can take limited amounts of water from rivers, canals, and aquifers—can expect to receive less than their full allotment of water in 2026. It’s not unreasonable to expect other states to soon follow suit.

Throughout the Western US, water rights are administered according to the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation—those who hold the oldest legitimate claims to water from a river, reservoir, or aquifer are entitled to receive their allotments first.

Junior water rights holders who may be at risk of receiving less than their full allotment of water likely have difficult decisions ahead related to the planting and management of their crops. The challenges are compounded by the likelihood of increases in fertilizer and transportation costs associated with the ongoing war in Iran.

Credit: The Conversation/CC-BY-ND

In the Colorado River Basin, the US Bureau of Reclamation’s most probable forecast indicates water levels in Lake Powell falling below the minimum power pool elevation in December 2026. That’s bad news for power supplies, because below that level, the Glen Canyon Dam can’t produce hydroelectric power. The dam contributes power for millions of customers across seven states.

What the snow drought means for fire season

Another big concern is whether the historic snow drought is setting up the West for a bad fire season. That’s still an open question.

Rain has meant moisture is available now for plants to grow, but the lack of snowpack that normally keeps meltwater flowing through summer raises concerns about whether those plants will dry out, leaving them ready to burn.

Fire is a historically important feature of the forest and rangeland ecosystems of the West, and these ecosystems are to some degree adapted to large swings in conditions from year to year and season to season.

Because precipitation across much of the West is close to historical averages, there is snow in some of the highest-elevation mountains. And at lower elevations, some of the precipitation that fell as rain likely remains in the soils.

Weather conditions in the late spring and summer—how much rain falls and how hot and dry conditions become—will play critical roles in determining the shape forests and rangelands will be in for fire season.

What this winter suggests about the future

The record-low snowpack may be a harbinger of what a warmer future will look like in the region. Many researchers have investigated how climate change will influence snowpacks and water supply throughout the Western US, but questions and critical challenges remain.

Among them: In years like this, with near-normal precipitation but low snowpack, are there difficult-to-observe stores of water in the deeper subsurface that can help buffer against loss of snow for periods of time? That’s one of several questions my colleagues and I have been working on.

This year’s snow drought presents a timely, albeit high-stakes, stress test for the West. Everyone will be watching.

Alejandro N. Flores is a professor of geoscience at Boise State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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