I agree with commodore, it does often feel like a giant cash grab. But emissions testing in general, have strict standards does force auto companies to innovate at least somewhat, along with market forces.
I like to look at led lighting as an example. I have no idea if regulators or simply the free markets eventually made led tech affordable but you can get an 8 watt led bulb for under $10 at home depot (which is actually a huge ripoff, direct sales sites online they sometimes go under $2) that produces same light as a 60 watt incandescent. You recoup your money in under 200 days, over like a 10 year lifespan you can save a few hundred PER BULB. And that's not even counting that in 10 years you probably ran through ~15 incandescent bulbs and spent the same on those as you did the one led. I mean people can literally save thousands now if they switch their whole houses over.
Thing is when leds and those squiggly cfls first came out I hated them. They looked weird, the cfls took forever to heat up and get bright, they were toxic if you broke them, they never lasted as long as advertised, and leds cost like $50 a bulb, cfls around $10. It sucked. I was bemoaning the death of incandescent and thought I never like house my lights looked again. But few years later the tech is great and cheap and I'm switching my whole house over. I didn't get two hoots about saving electricity and the environment when it was a poor user experience. As soon as it became a good one and saves me a lot of money I'm all in.
Cars are the same way, people aren't going to switch to electric until they're cheaper and work better, but there will be demand if they can make a good enough product and everyone will be happy, environmentalists, the companies selling the cars and the consumers. That's the way it should work anyway.
