Earlier quoted context omitted.
"This is a result of the cold hard engineering fact that our current level of technology is insufficient to hit the numbers without raising costs significantly. But once one automaker starts to fudge the numbers at a given price point, all the others must do the same thing or they fall behind." I'm going to have to remember to bring this up as an example whenever people claim private industry can police/regulate them…
there'd be no incentive to lie if the EPA wasn't forcing these "standards" on them. Now, there's no reason to innovate because someone spends big bucks to actually do what everyone else is lying about. This isn't damming of private industry - it's damming of the regulation. (Er, to me. Obviously you might come to a different conclusion. Just wanted to throw in how this article can be read both ways.)
You're essentially claiming we should abolish all regulations period because some people will cheat. The actual solution is to heavily punish cheaters. We don't have to guess and argue about this; go visit China then come back here and regale us about how horrible the EPA is and how we should eliminate pollution regulations.
The technology may not exist yet but government standards can be a forcing function that makes manufacturers invest in creating it and bringing the cost down.
In fact government has had a huge hand in many forms of innovation; the trans-continental railroad was only made possible by government backing. The internet could not have been created by private companies from scratch, but government investment made bootstrapping possible.