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Auto Mileage Standards Raised to 35 mpg
Ponca City, We Love You writes "The Senate just passed a bill that will increase auto mileage standards for the first time in three decades. The auto industry's fleet of new cars, sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and vans will have to average 35 mpg by 2020, a significant increase over the 2008 requirement of 27.5 mpg average. For consumers, the legislation will mean that over the next dozen years auto companies will likely build more diesel-powered SUVs and gas-electric hybrid cars as well as vehicles that can run on 85 percent ethanol. Automakers had vehemently opposed legislation in June that contained the same mileage requirements and Fortune magazine reported that American automakers were starting the miles-per-gallon race far behind Japan and that the new standards could doom US automakers. At the time, Chrysler officially put the cost of meeting the proposed rules at $6,700 per vehicle. The White House announced the President will sign the bill if it comes to his desk."
I'm glad they're finally getting to this. As for Detroit, they'd have been better off if they hadn't had to be dragged kicking and screaming into this if the bill gets signed. Although given that the deadline is 2020 it seems like they have more than enough time to do this. Between nutating and gerotor engines it seems like the technology is just waiting to be taken seriously by an industry stuck in the 1960's.
Since Big Oil has decided to raise the prices to triple what it was 5 years ago, I see no reason why I can't expect my auto manufacturer to attempt at least double my MPG from 5 years ago.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
I own a Ford Escort from the turn of the century. It may not be very pretty, or very fast, but gets roughly 40 MPG. I can't understand how people are content with their goddamn SUVs getting 25 or less miles to the gallon. Oh well.
~ C.
And I'm not really thrilled with the other provisions of the bill, namely requiring 15% of every utility's power from every state to come from non-renewable sources. This is going to draw a lot of capital away from Nuclear energy, and in the states without wind or clear skies, will likely prompt a lot of wasteful programs(Apparently, burning Forests for energy counts as renewable energy).
And the CAFE standards? I don't care enough to fight about it(mainly since it seems the market is heading that way anyway), but I would prefer more specific mandates that don't smack of populism. CO2 emissions are pretty poorly tied to gasoline consumption, and regulation on tail-pipe CO2 emission would make a lot more environmental sense(And cost a lot less money), at least until a carbon credit scheme is implemented.
The funny thing, is that nobody is even considering implementing CAFE standards for the military and other government agencies. The Government's massive purchase of fuel inefficient cars, since agencies have very little incentive to save on gas costs, has a surprisingly discretionary effect on the production decisions of American Car Makers. We've all seen police drive around in SUVs.
Instead of saddling American consumers with extra costs, why don't we mandate that all agencies that receive money from Congress must not use cars with a MPG below 35? This includes charities, police departments, the Military, and even foreign governments.
35 mpg average, not including all the except vehicles in their fleet, like the Hummer.
Seriously, why else do you think Bush is going to sign it -- it looks like a good thing when it isn't.
Legislation that's just good enough to keep pace with the status quo is exactly what the auto industry wanted. They know that if they completely succeeded in opposing the legislation, that they'd face consumer revolt. And as long as everybody else has to keep up with the status quo -- the most cost-effective manner for them -- then they don't have to worry too much about being undercut by companies in Korea and China that don't have emission controls. Instead, they only have to worry about Japanese and European cars, which they'll likely never be able to beat.
All in all, it's a good deal for the auto industry, and a bad deal for the customer, as we'll never get an incoming Democratic administration to support higher CAFE standards in the future. Last time they were raise significantly was during Reagan. His administration also introduced the catalytic converter as a requirement, too. *sigh*
It's quite common for normal cars to get to that kind of mileage. Yet, it's a good step to force that kind of emissions. And $6700 isn't much as the dollar isn't worth that much any more, and maybe people will buy a car one size smaller, so extra benefits!
By 2020 the world may very much on the other side of the peak.
... but it's a start. If my car (big old 80s thing) was getting through that much fuel I'd check that it wasn't on fire.
The whole idea of engine design and track testing is to get the most out of your pint of gasoline. I's called cash economy. If a car maker isn't prepared to do their homework and give me an engine that will pull the maximum mileage out of my hydrocarbons then I'm not going to apologise for going elsewhere. I mean, /just what exactly is the point/ of building a car that does 150-200mph, when the only place you can open up to that kind of speed is on a racetrack??
/old/ standards, and /two years/ to build one that complies with the /new/ standards. Then cry open season on the local market for the foreign makers who are /already there/ with their ecobugs. That's right, drop the insane tariffs on foreign cars and give people real choice: SUV that pulls 8 to the gallon or the Honda that does 60.
/ten Dollars US/ per gallon of gasoline! So, DAMN RIGHT we're preferring economical cars. Not all of us can afford a £55 bill every time we fill up, particularly considering the forty five minutes each of us spend commuting to and from work /every single day/. Just waiting in the queues burns petrol, and most people I know if they get stuck in standing traffic will turn the engine off. Just to save money.
Two things need to happen here for the automakers to get their fingers out of their arses or die like the dinosaurs of the 1970's.
1. Tell the automakers they have zero time to build a car that complies wit hthe
2. Give the people incentive to choose the ecobug. Hike gas prices to come in line with eg the UK. We're paying the equivalent of
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Headline: "Auto Mileage Standards Raised to 35 mpg"
First sentence of summary: "The Senate just passed a bill that will increase auto mileage standards for the first time in three decades."
Of course, given the current state of affairs, it seems unlikely this bill won't become law (considering Democrats can force it through the House even if it doesn't get support from Republicans and Bush says he'll sign it). But it's still a bill, not law.
Then again, given the current state of affairs, it would seem unlikely that Slashdot editors would actually read the first sentence of a summary (let alone a story, or even the headline of a story).
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
...so before all us Brits start going on about how our cars perform so much better, you need to multiply US MPG figures by 1.2 to make them equivilant to UK MPG figures, as an Imperial gallon > US gallon.
There were cars getting better than that average in the late 70s and all that took was the threat of people refusing to buy gas guzzlers because of the oil shortage. The problem is they just spent 15 years convincing people they needed to drive tanks and now they have to figure out either how to make the tanks get good gas mileage or convince people they no longer need SUVs. With hybrids I'm sure they can reach those standards. The real problem is trying to figure out what the mileage is on a rechargeable hybrid. They'll either try to overstate the mileage to offset the gas sucking giants or they won't want to produce them unless they get to take additional credit for the extra mileage potential. I can't see they not trying to use it as a barginning chip. Unless it directly benifits profits or numbers of cars sold the auto industry has a history of resisting change.
I dont think US automakers like Tesla Motors or Phoenix Motorcars will cry much about this. They are aiming for complete zero emissions vehicles anyway.
Look, the crying from automakers is silly, like the DaimlerChrysler announcement that "we cant make it". Well, tough luck. Innovate or die. Its a market and competition, you dont have any birthright to sit there and dictate things.
Auto industry is long overdue for some serious shakeup, and the ones that get with the future sooner will likely survive.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
Sorry, it was indeed a type. I'm glad to hear that provision was dropped from the bill after all, thanks for brightening my day a bit.
And indeed, I guess you could justify military vehicles as commercial vehicles.
And by 2020 the rest of the world will be on 70mpg. And then there's electric cars. The Tesla Roadster has proven that the technology is viable - by 2020 there will surely be a wider and affordable range of electric vehicles.
The smart thing for the American manufacturers to do would be to start using Japanese or European engines and start achieving 30-40mpg now, while they develop their own technology.
I was looking for alternative fuel to my self back in the early 1990s. I commuted to work, and fuel at $1.00/gal was an expense, a legit expense but regardless. My first choice for a retrofit was Natural Gas as your typical carbonated vehicle, which was normal at the time requires very little modification. Just shut off the petrol supply and add an air air mixer, adjust the timing and poof. The ONLY reason I didn't shell out the couple of grand to do the conversion was the simple fact that there was NO place with in 30 miles I could fuel up.
Ethanol looks attractive, more so now that fuel is in excess of $3.00/gal. Brazil tried switching in the 1980s IIRC and last I checked continued to promote the use of the sugar beet surplus to make Ethanol.
Turbo diesel engines on the other hand look even more attractive. Diesel makes MORE sense for SUVs and trucks than petrol or Ethanol, and AFAIK is are much more flexable as far as the fuel medium due to the very high compression ratio and fuel injection at the top of the stroke cycle.
Methane, while not as practical to store as fuels which are liquid at standard pressures, is another form of fossil / renewable we should look into as well. We produce a ton of waste, some is converted to tegro, a form of fertilizer made from human waste.
But regardless of the path America decides to go as far as fuel, we NEED good public transportation.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
The summary points out E85 as a possible alternative to gasoline that lowers emissions. From what I have read it appears that E85 is not something that will reduce emissions. Looking at Wikipedia's E85 entry and today's NY Times article, it appears that E85 will lower fuel efficiency up to 20-30% (depending on the car). From Wikipdia's Ethanol Fuel article it appears that comparing to gasoline, CO2 emissions are the same, CO emissions are lower, but more ozone is produced. I'm not sure if these numbers are for an equivalent amount of gas vs. ethanol or whether they take into account that you need more ethanol/mile.
I understand if people want to push E85 as a gasoline replacement to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But it definitely does not seem to be something that can easily lower our emissions.
But still do not know under which circumstances these 6.7l shall be attained. City traffic, highway, or total mix? I have trouble keeping my moderately motorized car on 7l/100km in city traffic, it can do much better on the autobahn (if i don't push it too hard).
And even more. My car drives 1 on 20 km/l (that is almost 50 mpg). It's a normal car, well suitable for all purposes from Subaru/Toyota/Daihatsu.
Actually 6,7 L/100KM is moderate for now, but in 2020 that should be considered more or less crap. In example new BMW 3-series with 3 liter diesel gets 6,1 L/100 KM and the 2 liter version gets 4,8 L/100KM. Even X3 with 2 liter diesel gets 6,5 L/100 KM. So in that sense that todays cars can get to that standard easily, it's really abysmal to set the standard for the future on the level what can be achieved in today.
In my opinion the standards should be set so that they make the car industry to invent and make innovations in order to stay in business. Actually in developed markets, I would say that it's actually a good way to protect own car industry by setting the standards higher as then the low cost low R&D manufacturers from developing countries can be easily closed from the markets. Thought as the US car industry really hasn't spend any money to R&D in the last 20 years, maybe in the point of view of US administration, that wouldn't be so good idea.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
"Gerotor motors need complex seals. see Wankel. They have high surface area/volume ratios. see Wankel."
Or you could realize that technology advances and that Mazda is still making Wankel powered cars (RX-8).
"I see no evidence that the traditional piston and crankshaft, poppet valve, type of mechanism is going to be replaced by a new IC engine."
That's assuming those are the only two contenders.
You want to know what OIL costs? http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/ Or any of the other market quote sites. OPEC is full of shit, they might conspire to change price on some level at the beginning, but(OUR PRICE) is dictated on Wall Street. They will be happy to watch it go to $100 and way over. Next for the peak oil psychopaths. Which of you out there can PROVE that OIL comes from FOSSILS? Until then, I'm sorry buddy but there is no such thing as "fossil fuel" because fuel does not come from fossils. Whenever you hear fossil fuel, think, "I am being subliminally manipulated." Say, someone is spreading misinformation again, and I really need to scrutinize what's being said, is it just the entity saying it that is misled or is it from the beginning of the myth in the first place. Next for the vehicle manufactures "change or die" argument. Perhaps it's time you die, if you can't change to using hydrogen. Just as long as when you die, the taxpayer don't have to bail your ass out again. And finally for the proposed 35MPG and the timetable 2020. What pure bullshit. 35MPG is way too low. And 2020 is way too late. This isn't even worth wasting our government's time. We already fucking have cars that get 35MPG!! The dirty little secret is that since the 1970's (you know back when 1GAL regular gas was a quarter) they pushed this energy crisis crap on the people. Some of you reading are actually old enough to remember the fist fights in the filling station parking lots, got scary for a while there, and if that happens again expect the public to react the same way. Anyway, some inventors got concerned (Stan Meyer)did make a water powered car. (There have been others since then.) All the current "electrolysis takes too much energy" naysayers can go back up and join with the peak oil/fossil fuel disinformation crowd. a.) you haven't tried to BURN STEAM in PLASMA on the fly. b.) even if you were storing the hydrogen on the vehicle in tanks (A bad idea) you could still make the stuff off the grid. c.) Either method would burn cleaner solving this pollution problem. But what will happen is our corrupt corporate government will bring back nuke plants and all the crap pollution that goes with that. I just can't wait until all that wonderful nuclear waste has some accident that makes it impossible to live, how about you? Wouldn't you like to have it stored in an earthquake fault zone right near your home? Your children's, children's ... children's, children's won't be living there for hundreds of thousands of year. We can't even protect something for 1000 years let alone 100,000.
Give me a break.
It's going to take the underground to modify their cars, and stop buying fuel. You can find the information out there if you look, you can avoid the naysayers when they flap their lips, and you can refuse to do business with the same.
We don't need this corporate crap anymore, it's destroyed everything now, all at the expense of profit.
If you got a god you should probably pray to it, whatever that might be. Pray for the voting machines that tabulate votes electronically to be destroyed, pray that the oath breakers get tossed in prison. Pray that we get some real leaders (like our original founders) that can solve these problems and restore our constitution. Pray that a law get's passed to stop the abuse of power from ever happening again. Pray that our children fighting in IRAQ, AFGANISTAN, and BUSHSHITISTAN all are brought home asap. Pray that our most secret agencies go through a security background check and those that are corrupt are prisoned. Pray that McCarthyism version 2.0 isn't rolled out in your own face before you finally get it.
Dear Lord, folks -- or, at least, those of you who seem almost mad that the gov't has passed this -- wake up! Detroit is obviously immune to reality, and dragging them, kicking and screaming, into the 90's is a really, really good idea. Why? Well, for a moment, let's even set aside the question of whether or not this will impact the environment, and let's look at economics, instead: Detroit, through its arrogance, is rapidly trying to win a Darwin award. Their sales continue to sag, layoffs continue to mount, and yet they seem to delude themselves as to whether or not people are voting with their pocketbook. People WANT better gas mileage, for the most simple and selfish of reasons: it saves them money at the gas station. And their increased procurement of Japanese and Korean vehicles proves this.
Detroit's response? FUD commercials claiming that increasing mileage would remove the consumer's ability to choose. I have never seen such a clear case of head-in-sand than today's American car manufacturers. As for the $6,700 price tag increase, that sounds an awful lot like 1998 Microsoft claming that removing IE from Windows would cause performance issues. If Japan can -- and has -- done it, for comparable money, so can America. And if Detroit doesn't do it, they WILL eventually become irrelevant, and go under. So, yeah, as much as I believe in a free market, it's time for the gov't to proactively save their collective (and oh, so sorry) a**es.
I'm just sad it wasn't 40 MPG -- specifically what my Saturn used to get before GM re-Borg'd them.
I predict that by 2020 the USA will be consuming about 15 million Barrels of Oil Per Day (MBOPD).
At present the consumption is about 20 MBOPD. So this will be a 25% reduction.
I also predict that Mathew Simmons prediction of Oil costing most than $300 per barrel will also be correct.
The short of it is that this is too little too late and I will not be surprised to see gas rationing within the next 10 years.
Bold eh? Or should I just look out my window and look at the footsteps in the snow with regard to the Canadian Oil industry? The latest? PetroCanada enters into a deal with Libya. PetroCanada pick up 75% of the cost for 25% of the results. Tell me... Why would ANY company enter into a deal like this? Its just more of the footsteps in the snow.
Oil - proved reserves for the world (billion barrels):
1,312,000,000,000 bbl
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2178rank.html
(notice Canada's oil shale is second to Saudi Arabia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale
Oil - consumption for the world (bbl per day):
82,590,000 bbl/day
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2174rank.html
I agree that, even now, we will be seeing an exponential increase in the price of oil. That doesn't diminish the fact that Hubbert's "peak oil" is real, and will occur on a global scale in a matter of decades if not already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Conservative_predictions_of_future_oil_production
I work in the oil exploration industry.. Oil isn't so easy to find, you know.
-metric
"For consumers, the legislation will mean that over the next dozen years auto companies will likely build [...] vehicles that can run on 85 percent ethanol."
Bah, in Sweden I've got a Mazda 626 from 1988 and that run perfectly well on a mix of 50% gas (==95% petrol and 5% ethanol) and 50% "E85" (==85% ethanol and 15% petrol), that is, effectively 55% petrol and 45% ethanol.
In Sweden, almost all gas already got 5% ethanol mixed in, and I think old as well as new cars handles that perfectly well. So, next *dozen* years, sounds like a really slow progress in order to reach a 15% mix in.
You might want to read the Darpa paper at the very end. Now the paper is dated 2004, so he needs to update with his progress. But his engine isn't pseudoscience.
Good thing, since you guys have some catching up to do. Seriously.
"I mean, /just what exactly is the point/ of building a car that does 150-200mph, when the only place you can open up to that kind of speed is on a racetrack??"
You'll need that for the coming revolution someone on slashdot is always prophesizing.
Disclaimer: I'm a European and am not familiar with the US Auto Mileage Standards regulation, or the US in general. Still, as most Europeans, I find the American love for big cars a bit funny.
I somehow think that the $6700 extra per car is highly exaggerated. Your average European or Japanese car is already there, and they're not more expensive than the American cars (at least not in Europe, if you exclude the luxury cars). I mean, you can get an *entire new car* for about $9000 (not a very big one, though). On the other hand the current development of the Euro and the US Dollar will probably make European cars less and less attractive for US residents. I don't know about the Japanese ones, though.
Assuming that the average car does 100k miles in its lifetime, the new regulations imply that it'll use 100k/35 = 2857 gallons instead of 100k/27.5 = 3636 gallons. That's 779 gallons saved. At a price of $4 per gallon that's $3116 saved. Which is less than $6700.
Assuming that it does 200k miles that's $6232. Still less than $6700, but much closer.
At European gas prices (I'm taking $7/gallon) the saved costs would be $5453 and $10906.
Assuming that gas prices in the US go up another bit, that the $6700 are exaggerated and that your car will run 150k miles, I don't see the big deal. The costs are about the same, with the additional benefit of wasting less fuel. If you don't buy a bigger car than what you actually need, you might even save some money.
35 miles per gallon of what exactly? Diesel? Gasoline? Ethanol? The energy density (or lack thereof) of ethanol basically means you have to make adjustments, as there is only about 3/4 the energy in a gallon of ethanol as there is in a gallon of gasoline -- and diesel is richer still. Let's hope that mandating a higher MPG doesn't simultaneously doom fuels that can't possibly meet it.
If the bill is written in a "gallon is a gallon is a gallon" sense, we may well be facing the next generation of cars being diesel-electric serial hybrids because all other fuels are squeezed out by economy mandates -- unless there is major advocacy for butanol as a fuel. Ethanol's primary advantages are that the technology for making it is very mature, and it's not particularly toxic. A straight substitute for gasoline, it isn't.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I don't mean to be offensive but it seems from my POV in the UK that Americans (and other countries like Australia?) need to stop putting such damn big engines in cars/pickups. I mean seriously, there is no need for everyone to own a vehicle with a 3.0 litre or bigger engine. A big engine in a normal car (non sport) in the UK is around 2.0 litre? Something like a Ford Mondeo? My car (Peugeot 107) has a 1.0 litre engine, it does upto 60MPG, although I usually get 50 - 55 out of it in the current cold weather, and it gets me to and from work fine and is plenty fast enough for motorway driving too. It has extremely low emissions, one of the lowest of any car you can buy at the moment. Unless you need to carry passengers regularly or your constantly transporting things in your car then there is no need for a big car with a big engine, its just pointless! Wasting your money, wasting oil and ruining the environment!
35mpg....come on!
-- Fuck Beta
Regulating fuel consumption (and exempting the really big guzzlers) is just the wrong way to manage technology. All it does is tell the industry to get up to current standard (in 13 years) and not to innovate any more than needed.
The best way to improve efficiency is market forces. Once gas is expensive enough to be a real consideration when buying a vehicle, people might actually see past the marketing hype and realize they don't need that huge StupidUglyVehicle after all.
Yes, gas got expensive enough to get people to complain. But for most families it's still less than their cable bill. Clearly not something that would change habits.
Another major component in reducing fuel consumption or CO2 emissions is modifying our behavior: number of trips, distances traveled, and god help us car-pools and public transport. Raising the mileage standard does nothing on any of these fronts. Increasing gas prices gives a strong incentive to reduce consumption in any way possible.
Waiting for the oil to run out will hurt much more than adding a couple of thousand dollars onto the price tag of an SUV (which will easily be recovered over the lifetime of the vehicle anyway).
When there's no oil then say goodbye to plastics and most of the chemical industry. No more plastics will put the price of food up, and *that* will be bad for the economy.
I seriously don't get the resistance to having economical cars. Soccer mom really doesn't need to be able to accelerate her two-ton SUV like a race car.
No sig today...
European regulation requires car manufacturers to average 100 kilometers on 5 liters, which is roughly 47 mpg. This is in 2012, not 2020!
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
it will only cost Chrysler an extra $6700 per vehicle if THE CONTINUE MAKING THEM THE SAME CRAPPY WAY THEY DO NOW!! OMFG go the US gov. mileage reports for the early 90's. The average car 14 years ago got WAY better mileage than today. My 95 Dodge Stratus, ( A nice big car) got almost 38MPG. but we had to make them SAFER, and in doing so, we cut our own throughts. So we decrease the MPG to make a car safer, then we go to war where more people get killed so we can gas up our poor MPG cars!! Makes sense to me!!!!
If you want an economical car, go ahead! I'm not trying to stop you. But don't tell me what car to drive when it's not hurting anyone. "No oil" will not happen, the price will just continue to increase until there is a natural (i.e. free market) transition to alternative energy sources. So the price of plastic will increase...big deal, it's super cheap anyway right now. I certainly won't be spending $6,500 more on plastics if the price of oil goes to $300/barrel.
If we were really serious about cutting gasoline consumption, we would take a serious look at land use and zoning, so that people didn't have to drive such long distances to get to work or shop.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Good ol' 225 cu.in. (3.6 liters), three on the floor, 1/3 engine compartment, 1/3 passenger compartment (you could fit 6 footers in the front AND back comfortably), 1/3 trunk. That charm got me 27/30 MPG on the flat land and 32 on a real good day at freeway speeds. Emissions consisted of a PCV valve.
I remember rather fuzzily from my college chemistry class that there are ideal points to burn things the most efficiently. I believe gasoline is somewhere around 14.7:1. air to fuel. Air is mostly nitrogen, some oxygen, some carbon dioxide, and a few other gases. Gasoline is made of carbon, hydrogen, and maybe a few other elements. This is a delicate balancing act to get to work right. Yes, engines are getting better at it and are probably as good as they are going to get in that department in terms of emissions, if the engines are well maintained - but that is another story altogether.
Fuel economy ratings are not real. They are published panaceas that are meant to placate the uneducated masses and keep the current administration in office by appearing to be do-gooders. But it does not solve the problem.
After I picked up my daughter from where she works, we went home. For the trip home, which is NOT flat but up and down, I spent more time stopped at traffic lights that actually moving. Well, there goes my fuel efficiency.
I can continue on with this but it is not really worth it. I will buy the vehicle that works for me. I travel on the flat lands, in the mountains, and at posted speed limits. I am 6 feet tall and I don't like my head putting a dent in the headliner with the seat all the way back because I am in a sardine can. I also appreciate a car that can accelerate going up hill from a start in the mountains, not having to bribe the two squirrels under the hood to put out to get moving. I also appreciate a strong, well built vehicle that is not designed to accordion-fold when hit by a feather at 10 MPH by someone who is too busy talking on a cellphone. Yes, my back bumper has totaled several cars because I can stop and the drivers that are following are either tailgating, not paying attention, or both.
The subject of energy efficiency is a classic study in trade-offs and compromises. It is the government and the media that are willing ignore that fact to guide the great uneducated masses to the Philosopher's Stone that you can have fantastic gas mileage with no detractions - like perpetual motion.
The poor in America often falls into two categories: city dwellers [no car anyway, or have mass transit options] and the rural dwellers [no mass transit options and long drives]. Clearly, this will have a bigger impact on the rural poor, but also lower middle class homes in the suburbs. If the price of gas went up quickly, these poor wouldn't have time to migrate to more efficient cars. Also, since they typically buy used cars, the used car market needs to have an adequate supply of fuel efficient vehicles, and it doesn't yet.
So, it seems to me the way to do it is to raise the gas tax a penny. Each month. Indefinitely. This will ratchet up the demand for fuel efficient vehicles in a way that allows the new car market and the used car market a little time to adapt.
P.S. Those other things: mass transit, car pooling [more HOV lanes!], staggered work time, encouraging tele-commuting, improving intra city rail... all great things on which tUSA should be spending more money IMO.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Maybe someone can enlighten me: are the CAFE standards based on the PRODUCT LINE of the car company, or on the average of all cars sold?
I mean, if it's an average of the product LINES, that's almost meaningless; a manufacturer could still offer the same slate of guzzling SUVs but then instead of offering 1 hybrid microcar they could offer 15 *slight* variations on that same design, pulling the average MPG for the product line over 35.
If it's based on total sales, I don't really see how that's fair. I don't sympathize much with giant automakers who (for example) insisted that airbags were going to cost $10,000 more per car, but to require that the market be interested in something it isn't willing to buy seems unreasonable.
-Styopa
In case you aren't aware, gasoline-ethanol blends are subject to a little trick known as the water scam. As you are probably aware, water is not soluble in gasoline - but water is soluble in ethanol, and this ethanol-water mix is partially soluble in gasoline. In short, water can be mixed into gasoline-ethanol blends.. I'm sure you can see where this is going.
As high-ethanol blends such as E85 become more widespread, and fuel prices climb, the opportunity and ability to scam the consumer will multiply. Fortunately, testing for water in gasoline blends is relatively simple, requiring only a simple, inexpensive test kit.
Believe it or not, I actually managed to get an Amoco station shut down (temporarily) in the late 1980s for pulling just this scam. I was in tech school at the time, and noticed that fuel from this station had a way of making my fuel-finicky BMW motorbike run very badly. Did the test, found something like 8-10% water, and called the regulatory authority. Saw the closed sign on the station several days later..
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Why don't we send you over to the sandbox to ensure that our HMMWVs, Bradleys, Abrams, and every other military vehicle are compliant with your proposed mileage standards. Are you really that jaded to think that fuel economy should come at any cost? Are you going to tell the driver of an M1A2 that he just went from a 65mph top speed down to 15mph because we need our military vehicles to comply? Or tell the boys strapping armor plate to their HMWWVs that they must slim down to improve mileage or else risk getting punished? Are you going to tell a cop that he must fit all of his duty gear, comms equipment, laptop, assault gear, and paperwork into a Civic so that he can get 35mpg? Currently fielded police vehicles are production equipment. It meets the standards of the year in which it was produced. So do the SUV's puchased by law enforcement and government agencies. It's not as if the government has a free ticket to be running 1940s technology in their 2007 vehicles. The added weight of the equipment required to perform the job will affect mileage, but that is not inherent to the vehicle.
Join the fight in the preservation of your right to bear arms. www.righttokeepandbeararms.com
The world is most likely past the peak of production. This means USA oil imports are going to start to drop whether they like it or not!
It really doesn't matter what laws congress might pass because the laws of nature are what people are going to follow and this includes auto manufacturers. When we start to see fuel shortages I expect we'll see gas rationing soon after.
So if someone wants to drive a gas guzzler, then fine, but they won't be driving it far.
People might like to believe they live in a fairy tale world created by Hollywood but the reality is that they live in a real world. This will be a world with less oil production in very short order. As the USA dollar tanks we can expect to see more oil exporting countries refuse to accept it. The consequences are obvious.
defensive reasons. If we really want to change the oil situation we have to stop driving 3000lb vehicles for moving 100-300 pounds of people. Diesel SUV are counter productive in the big picture.
"...the legislation will mean that over the next dozen years auto companies will likely build more ...vehicles that can run on 85 percent ethanol"
Given that an automobile gets LESS mileage from ethanol than gasoline, how does producing more vehicles that use ethanol increase average mileage?
Fata viam invenient.
who live in the civilized world,
could you please put your numbers in SI?
..mine was a 74 dart, same slant six. In retrospect, probably the best normal basic transpo car I have owned. Plenty roomy, great mileage, never needed *anything*. I mean, it just didn't, put in gas, the dang oil never got dirty! Never needed a tuneup, the plugs would stay clean even. I changed oil anyway, but that was a nice car. I think it was too good, they weren't breaking down as required to keep people buying new cars, so they had to fix what wasn't broken and muck it up with the K car concept, which was total crap. The only thing I don't like about the slant six is where they stuck the distributor, road splash would sometimes get the wires and cap wet and cause misfires, etc. (especially when I had to cross streams living rural and they didn't build bridges for small streams, just concrete/rocks in the water...) I solved that with some plastic and tape.
The detroit big three actually all made a few what of I would consider industrial quality engines, get a vehicle with one of those and they were usually pretty good, the straight sixes from chrysler 225 and ford 250 and 300 and chevy 300 cu inch engines. I've had at least one of each and they were all great. I am seriously considering swapping my 350 chev in my old big van for a 300 inch straight six.
My 2004 4-cyl Camry gets 31mpg @80mph on cruise control with 3 people in the car. The CAFE standards are for operating averages which means that when I sit at one 7 minute red light after another getting 0mpg that doesn't count. All the car makers need to do is stop putting huge engines in their cars. Do I NEED a 260hp Camry (the 6-cyl high performance option) no of course I don't. Do I NEED a V-10 Dodge Ram? No of course not. You need a 300hp engine to pull an 18 wheeler not you your fat assed buddies and an 18ft bass boat.
They will need a mighty dose of that RDF to convice american consumers that they actually want a small economic car.
If His Steveness was able to turn the tables between powerPC and Intel, he shoul be able to do the same for SUVs...
That's not a nick, that's my NAME.
And apparently this is one of the issues that the Market cannot solve before it's too late. I wonder, if this legislature were passed 10 years ago, how fewer Ford F-150's and F-250's would people see outside of the countryside and how many more Ford Rangers? There's no practical purpose for 99% of city and suburban pickup drivers to be driving anything more powerful than a Ford Ranger. Hell, my grandpa was a farmer his whole life and drove Ford Rangers instead of F-150's or F-250's, and he managed just fine.
On a side-note:
Does this give any increase in the probability of Citroen selling cars in the US in the next 10 years? Because I'd love to have a C5 or a C6
35 miles per gallon = 0.067 liters per kilometer
New Government Standards for safety will come in to make the cars safer or the date 2020 will get pushed out to practically to infinity because gas will not be the dominate fuel in 20 years.
As another plus, the penalty for autos with MPG less than 35 will be a tax the buyer gets to pay when he buys the vehicle. More money for government.
If you want a car that gets 35/mpg you can buy it now. If enough people want it somebody will make it. You don't need government for everything.
If a company sells one pure electric car, which get infinite miles per gallon, the fleet average will be infinite miles per gallon!
one electric car at 0L/100km doesn't do anything to the average if it's a big fleet.
... beware of unintended consequences. Taxing fuel to maintain roads makes the assumption that there's only one source of fuel for transportation.
In the US, this has led to stupidities like people being arrested and fined for home-cooking biodiesel fuel - they hadn't paid the fuel taxes, and there was no system set up for them to do so.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
It's not. You are absolutely correct. The main useful effect of subsidizing corn/maize derived ethanol is to drive up food prices. Much/most of the food eaten here in the US has some corn/maize component in it. It does not in any substantial way reduce our oil dependency, it uses valuable arable land, and it is basically a handout to farmers who are already subsidized quite heavily. Like steel tariffs it benefits a few at the expense of the rest of society.
I have no beef with ethanol being a part of our energy supply, particularly from bio-waste. Diversity in energy sources is a good thing. But corn derived ethanol is just a terrible product to subsidize.
Automakers had vehemently opposed legislation in June that contained the same mileage requirements and Fortune magazine reported that American automakers were starting the miles-per-gallon race far behind Japan and that the new standards could doom US automakers.
Not to be heartless, but "so what"? I would rather buy a Japanese or German car made in America (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEFDF1F39F937A15757C0A963958260) then an "American" car that is only assembled here out of primarily Mexican or Chinese components. Frankly, these days buying "foreign" is more American then buying Ford or Chevy. That and the higher standards, and far more expensive fuel in the engineers native lands, translates into higher quality and more MPG vehicles.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
If they followed their standard operating procedure since they got into power, they would have developed a bill Bush didn't like and then used it as a wedge issue in the upcoming election (like the children's insurance bill, for which Pelosi's rhetoric somehow managed to link Bush's veto to supporting cigarette makers over children).
Honestly, the MPG requirements here don't go far enough. With gas prices outpacing inflation and hostile leadership controlling significant chunks of the oil supply, we need more efficient vehicles to reduce the risks to our economy.
Ahh, the Mud Hut Socialists are at it again. I remember the cries of Horror!, yes, HORROR! at the wasteful conspicuous consumption of those horrid Americans! If only they would conserve our "Precious Natural Resources" (See "Dr. Strangelove" and "Precious Bodily Fluids" for a correlate absurdity). Well, prices rose and..."HORRORS!!!...gas is so...expensive. "I wanted conservation but not at the expense of MY enjoyment!" Read all of the comments above about what others need and don't need to drive. And somewhere in the bowels of some building in Washington DC, some bureaucrat smiles. He just got a 3.079% raise. Making the world safe for Fascism! Once again. CW
So true. Remember how they cried wolf when the Clean Air act passed and mandatory air efficiency guidelines were set into effect? That too was going to cost the consumer "thousands" of dollars and also be the end of the American auto industry. Didn't happen.
Unfortunately, while 35MPG sounds good the bill is little more than a whitewash, with a loophole large enough to drive an SUV through. Apparently once again the 35MPG is a "fleet" standard, so not every vehicle has to meet it as long as the fleet as a whole does.
Worse, vehicles get a 50% milage "credit" if they're ethanol-friendly. Add $50 or so worth of corrosion-resistant fittings and seals to that Chevy Subdivision so it can burn E85, and bingo: that 20MPG land bruiser now gets 30MPG in the eyes of the bill, raising fleet averages considerably.
And which in passing gives yet another sop to the corn/ethanol industry.
Did you honestly think they'd pass a bill that managed to do something positive?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Anyone who believes something like that has no grasp whatsoever on fundamental economics, not to mention any sort of understanding of the global oil supply.
... etc.
/. and elsewhere) were saying we were hitting peak oil.
Robert Hirsch must have made a serious omission by not including the great "kmac" in his congressional report.
For one thing, any sort of "abrupt peak" and resulting fuel shortages is ridiculous.
Too young to remember the 70s I see...
As the supply decreases, the price will increase, lowering demand...not difficult to understand.
Demand is relatively inelastic. You either purchase home heating oil or you freeze, you either drive to work or you're fired
Oil is everywhere
Geologically incorrect
and as the price increases, new sources are becoming economically viable all the time.
Economically viable but lacking any real ability to scale. Tar sand and shale oil production are a joke in terms of yield.
I remember about two years ago a bunch of people (on
Crude oil production peaked in May of 2005 (74.30 mbpd vs 2007 73.23 mbpd)
For consumers, the legislation will mean that over the next dozen years auto companies will likely build more diesel-powered SUVs and gas-electric hybrid cars as well as vehicles that can run on 85 percent ethanol.
Since E85 actually gets worse mileage than regular gasoline, I doubt that this is true. E85's benefit is that it is made of primarily of renewable resources so it is more sustainable that gasoline.
This smacks of holler pandering to me. How is it that consumers can already purchase vehicles which average 90mpg (british)?
http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff135/BlueF2/VMPolo-90mpg.jpg
Chrysler officially put the cost of meeting the proposed rules at $6,700 per vehicle.
So, instead of selling people twice the vehicle they need, people will buy the equivalent of a $23K Prius instead of a $30K Expedition and Chrysler will lose $7K?
And the buyer will get nearly three times the gas mileage?
why 2020? this is such a freebie giveaway to the petroleum-based auto economy it's shameful. had they said "by 2010" it would have meant more. any manufacturer who doesn't push for 35mpg by 2010 deserves to face layoffs and further marginalization.
should the US auto industry ever grow some balls, they'll push for alternative means of energy and tell the petroleum industry and those jackasses in the OPEC nations to pound sand. it would be a nationalistic, proud moment for America, and that would hurt the sales of Japanese / Korean / Chinese cars in the US market. but GM & Ford are too fing stupid/archaic.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Note that US gallons are much smaller than the measure of the same name used in the UK. So you got to multiply US figures by about 1.3 when comparing to anywhere else. Of course, no journalists ever do that and always complain about the 'bad mileage' of US cars which really are no different.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The low-cost producers in the Middle East and some other places can lift oil for dollars a barrel and can sell it for $90/barrel and have us over a barrel. This high price produces powerful economic incentive to do just about anything to produce liquid fuels, but the just about anything (cellulosic ethanol, tar sands, deep water drilling, more advanced recovery) takes gobs of money to implement and takes years to ramp up. It seems it is no longer a matter of the folks in Saudi turning a tap because in the absence of major investment and new drilling, they seem to be tapped out.
The further trouble is that the last time oil was this high in real terms the price crashed to a level that put a lot of people out of business. There is a kind of fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me kind of thinking.
I agree with the Peak Oilers that the Earth has been reasonably-well surveyed and that the last era of mega-discoveries was Saudi in the 1950's, which pretty much did in the coal-burning steam locomotive and put us on the path to the automobile culture of today. It seems that the resolution of the late 70's Oil Crisis was 1) demand destruction, partly efficiency and conservation, partly a world wide economic slowdown, and 2) "reserve growth" in the form of enhanced recovery of existing oil.
There are a number of futures, and they don't all entail the "exponential growth in price" of the Peak Oil Doomers. The demand side has a strong China component, and while I don't wish recession and economic trouble on anybody, that economy may be shakier than you think. On the supply side, Daniel Yergin, the CERA dudes, and others are tallying up all of the coal-to-liquids, gas-to-liquids, tar sands, and other projects in the works to add another 20 MBPD to give us 10 MBPD growth in the current mid-80 MBPD World oil use when you allow for 10 MBPD decline in the "easy oil." Those combination of things may put us into another cycle where we are back in the 1990's again oil-price wise.
The one thing which bugs me about GM, Ford, and Cerebrus is that their entire livelihood depends on cheap oil. As far as the fuel-economy standards they are bitching about, something like a Toyota Yaris easily exceeds those standards (remember the auto-maker compliance is on the old EPA test while the mileage sticker in the window is on the de-rated MPG so consumers feel happier about their driving skills).
A Toyota Yaris can transport two people to work in better comfort by far than a city bus. You want a higher crash test rating? OK, that adds weight and bulk and cost to the car. You want more zip? OK, a bigger engine adds weight and adds idling and part-load losses and uses more gas. You say that you have to do your turn taking the kids to soccer practice -- OK, you need a minivan now. You want to sit up higher to see out over (sedans, mainly -- doesn't help if everyone drives one) -- OK, more air drag on the highway. OK, now you tell me you own a boat and need to tow it to the landing. We have started with "basic transportation", which is much nicer than any public transportation when you think of it, but the auto companies don't make any profit on that basic transportation, but then you start adding features: more crash safety, more performance, more seats, taller seating position, towing capacity, and now you are talking about a high-value high-profit vehicle using twice the gas.
So the deal is, not only do American automaker sales depend on cheap gas, sales of the "value-added" cars and light trucks that could help them stay in business depend on cheap gas. Don't these dude's have energy economists on their payrolls to forecast trends. Or if they do, do they know something about the long-term oil supply situation that the Peak Oilers don't know? Or do the multi-million salaried top execs have their heads up their backsides?
Ok, since we have a lot of engine/fuel people reading this, let's go slightly off topic.
CO2 is that comes out of the tailpipe. That's easy, no real work needed, aside from a catalytic converter to scrub CO to CO2.
But how much more effort would it be to have something instead of CO2 be the output? Ideally, we're talking carbon brickettes, here, but some other denser carbon construction which could be dumped at the same time as we take up more Hydrocarbons would be fine. (I saw an article a while ago on turning the carbon into Sodium Bicarbonate, but that's just one carbon for three oxygens and a sodium, which means trucking around salt and since we'd be burying this, it's a bit wasteful for space/oxygen.)
I assume there are prodigious barriers to this in terms of energy needs, and extra weight/cost in trucking around extra molecules to bind up the carbon, but are there any good ideas out there? Can we actually isolate the carbon in a carbon-dense molecule which we can accumulate?
Can we put all that waste heat the car puts out to work on a chemistry project?
And of Mustangs and other "affordable" cars with higher powered motors?
One thing I've noticed is that Euro/Asian countries tend to vehemently oppose "power-to-the-people", or that only the rich elite should be allowed to drive them, as if they were Homo Superior.
I'm not opposed to higher MPG, per se. If there were a 2010 Vette that got 52 MPG, I'd be quite ecstatic! But it seems that with most non-US countries, gas-guzzling cars are given a free pass insolongas they're driven by people in the top 2% income bracket (or higher). Why is it that the very rich get a free pass on the environment while us proletariat are relegated to only driving ho-hum automobiles in the name of saving the environment?
I just wanted to let people know about the Volt concept which is quickly coming to life (planned to be released in 2010 for the 2011 model year). GM calls it an "E-REV" for "extended-range electric vehicle". It's an electric vehicle with a 40 mile range on pure electric, but then has a high-efficiency (it always runs at its maximum-efficiency rotation rate) 1.0 L diesel engine which gives it 55 MPG. With a 12-gal. diesel fuel tank, that means that you can go 700 miles on one battery charge and 12 gal. of fuel!
This is the first time I've been excited about an American-made vehicle in my adult life, and I've been evangelizing it to everyone I know. I think it has a lot of promise.
There is a lot of good discussion at this guy's blog: GM-Volt and here is the Wikipedia article.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
is a Toyota Yaris Verso, anno 1996 or 1997 as far as I remember. It's big enough to transport pretty much everything that isn't a cow or a horse, yet it averages at 5.2l/100km according to the factory and more like 4.4l/100km on the highway and driving economically. If the entire US population had bought a comparable car in 1997, we could have saved several dozen billions of gas in the US alone. Instead, thesy go on selling and buying gas-guzzlers, now officially legal into 2020. Oh my...
Nobody gets it.
The petroleum economy is dead. Why?
Because it can't grow anymore; at least, it can't keep up with world economic growth rates.
Until we can figure out a new energy source or cycle (be it bio-petroleum, electric/nuclear, electric/renewable, or something else), all of these conservation, efficiency, and subsidize mechanisms are stop-gap measures at best.
Transportation, and in general, the large economy of the world will remain constrained by our inability to satisfy the world's energy needs, and getting American consumers to switch to smaller cars is really only a small part of the solution.
Frankly, the "best" solution would be for the U.S. government to begin incentivizing realistic alternative energy sources, whether that be nuclear or anything else.
The size of the car you drive doesn't really matter; hell, the MPG or efficiency of your vehicle (in terms of energy use/kilometer) doesn't really matter. What *really* matters is the efficiency of transportation in dollars/kilometer, and in a greater sense, the efficiency of energy production in dollars/gigajoule.
There would be no problem with everyone driving a Hummer or a M1 Main Battle Tank if they were powered electrically or via algae-grown biofuel, and we had a vast excess of algae farms and fusion reactors. In bills like this, the government seems to think that 10-20 years is "long term", when realistically mankind needs to start to think about how to radically increase our ability to harness and generate energy at extremely low costs.
The universe is awash in energy. Our planet is literally baked by a fusion reactor 100,000x the size of it. With breeder reactors, the energy locked up in transuranic isotopes is immense.
Dickering around with oil, whether at 20, 30, or 100 MPG is really kind of short sighted.
Do I have all the anwers? No; however, when you look at the energy bill in TFA, you'll see that the amount of money going towards Big Oil is immense. I'd rather see that money plowed back into the federal budget, and then create a "tax shelter" whereby investments into nuclear, renewables, and other formers of sustainable energy would be entirely tax free; and those entities doing the research should get massive tax breaks as well.
I don't pretend to have all the technical answers, however, given a lot of the promising research that was done on conversion of algae directly into "home-grown" petroleum in the 1970s, a major breakthrough in that area could replace the petroleum economy over night, and at least put us back into a situation where energy use could grow linerally rather than logrithmatically, which is what is happening right now.
*shrug* None of this is me saying that I'm opposed to more efficient cars, however, praising this bill for increasing efficiency is preposterous when the vast majority of the bill (and its funding!) goes to subsidizing big oil.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Today, now, currently you can buy a number of cars that can get better than 35 MPG. Why is the government forcing detroit to produce a product that obviously people do not want. So much for choice. All you whiny people who like the government to force people to do things against their will. So much for being liberal you are more of a facist. But it is for the "better good", so you shouldn't mind sacrificing your freedom.
If you were throwing trash out of the back of your car would you be defending your right to litter? Telling us to "go ahead and not litter, you won't stop us"?
"it's not hurting anyone."
That's what you think...
No sig today...
The answer is simple. And you will likely not believe it. The reason is that there simply is no demand for it. People, on the whole, are demanding that cars have lots of horsepower, lots of acceleration. They don't want little wimpy cars. All of the major US auto makers (Ford and GM at the moment; Chrysler is not a US automaker anymore) have made little gutless, high-mileage cars, and they can't sell enough of them to even pay for the R&D costs of developing them. So despite the outcry on slashdot, as a whole people just don't want what the government is seeing fit to mandate. In Europe and Asia, cars are smaller and much more efficient. The people there don't seem to want bigger, more powerful vehicles. So those companies are producing cars with higher mileage and doing just fine. Sadly here in the US we're the ones responsible for what GM and Ford are. And forcing through regulation rather than trying to change the attitudes of consumers, will just end up in the end killing Ford and GM and eliminating 10s of thousands of jobs from our own economy.
Oh and electric cars? No demand on the scale that would break even the costs. It wasn't GM that killed the electric car back in the 90s (whenever that was). It was a combination of very immature technology and total and utter consumer apathy. GM lost a lot of money on that little venture. They couldn't actually sell the cars because to do so would have been a huge loss for them, so they just leased them. And when the car was deemed "finished," GM brought them all back and destroyed them. Because the cost to GM of leaving them with the few people that wanted them would have been far too high in terms of GM's maintenance obligations.
Ironically, it's these large, gas guzzling SUVs that stand to benefit the most from hybrid technology. They are already large enough to easily replace the transmission with the hybrid module. Then in city driving an SUV should actually get close to 30 MPG, and have the perceived increase in acceleration (perceived power) that people think they want.
In short, it's all of us who keep the auto industry back. Computer-controlled, constantly variable transmissions for optimal engine efficiency? Nope, it feels too unnatural and the acceleration feels poor, even though it's actually better: put in artificial shift points so I can feel my body pushing back into the seat as I accelerate in spurts. Electrically-controlled breaks? No way! what happens when a wire is cut? Too dangerous! More efficient vehicles? Oh yeah, as long as I can accelerate off the light to 25 MPH in 1 second flat! Oh, and I might need to go 90 MPH on the freeway too. Oh, and I want to be able to drive 500 miles on on tank of gas. But it's so wrong that it costs me $130 to fill up my tank every day. Someone needs to do something.
I recently imported 2 vehicles from Japan. They BOTH get around 60mpg and they are 16 years old!! The North American auto industry is stuck in the stone age compared to Japanese and European auto makers. This is due to the lack of legislation limiting the size and power output of vehicles. In Japan for the last 20 odd years, the auto industry has been highly regulated. For example, they have legislation which specified that an individual can only own a car within a certain size limit and engine capacity (660cc) if they don't have access to a regular parking spot. These cars are commonly called kei cars, they are all very fuel efficient and are easily capable of highway/freeway speeds and many are even fitted with a turbo. On top of that, most of the larger vehicles that they have feature fuel efficient diesel engines.
In North America, even the Japanese auto makers build the vehicles made for our market with larger less fuel efficient engines, and charge a higher price. To me, it seems this new 35mpg average by 2020 law is more of a protectionist act for the north american auto industry than anything.
What are the bill's fuel economy requirements for John Forbes Kerry's yacht?
As for the water crossings in the midwest and southeast, I'd bet that is potentially part of 1/1,000,000 people's lives. Most people I know there are smart enough not to try to ford a stream that has flooded the road as the current can quickly surprise and take vehicle and/or life with it.
Yep. You definitely don't live in the South. Most people around here are bored enough to try driving their truck across a flooded stream just to see if it'll work. And if there ain't any flooded streams... well, try googling "mud bogging".
Why do we have SUV's today? Because they weren't covered by the milage requirements. Before the milage requirements were passed peopl drove GIANT cars. My parents had a Buick LeSabre that was about 20 feet long. So whatever vehicle isn't covered by these regulations will become the new SUV. Americans like big cars so whatever the lawyers can figure out is what Detroit will build.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Yes. This is only 1 liter in 15 KMs on average in the nearby future for those americans. This is 1970's european standard I guess. Even my simple Opel Corsa diesel is doing 1 liter in 20+ kilometers. And that is old technology. Why o why did *they* ever agree to this weak USA goal?
Iowa: First primary, swing state, biggest producer of corn. Coincidence?
The English have gallons. Europeans have litres.
Deleted
It's a good thing because the United States is a net exporter of food. If you look at just the United States, rising food prices would hurt other nations before they would hurt the United States, since those other nations aren't self-sufficient in maize. That being said, corn-based ethanol is very inefficient and requires so much corn that it's almost not worth it.
http://students.sae.org/competitions/supermileage/ (PDF warning, in case you try to download the results)
Screw you, Detroit. High school students can get better gas mileage than big business. That's sad.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
As Congress has sought to target the increasingly large vehicles that Americans seek to buy, the auto makers response is to market larger and larger GVW vehicles to the consumer segment of the population. While many people will end up buying the more economical vehicles, there is a certain segment of the population that cannot deal with the tradeoffs* in performance and will switch to the next larger size. Currently, our local GMC dealer is beginning to carry pickup trucks based on the 4500 Series. They are selling like hot cakes. Larger vehicles are also possible, depending on how the MPG standards are written.
*One interesting tradeoff has nothing to do with fuel economy, but rather with the IRS's treatment of vehicle expenses allowed for 'cars' (and other light vehicles) vs those allowed for heavy trucks. People who use vehicles for business purposes, even if these do not involve the hauling of goods or equipment, realize such a tax savings by purchasing a vehicle that qualifies as a large truck, that fuel costs just vanish in the economic equation. Until the IRS removes the penalties for using smaller vehicles, I anticipate that this trend will only continue.
Have gnu, will travel.
Put a smaller engine in the car, problem solved :)
Why is everyone so in favor of mandating by law more fuel efficient cars? What's wrong with a big, fat gas tax instead?
Mini-Rant: I purchase gas by volume, not by distance. When I put XYZ units of gasoline into my tank, I want to be able to easily guesstimate how far I'll be able to go until I refuel.
Gas tanks at the time the standard went into effect couldn't report how many liters it has left in it -- a wiper arm and a potentiometer provided an estimate of somewhere between 100%-of-capacity to 0%-of-capacity.
The signs on the highway don't interrogate my car, and based on its year/make/model and the current speed limit, tell me how much fuel it'll take me to get to my destination. They show units of distance.
Consider 20 miles per gallon, 50 miles to destination, 2.5 gallons of gas, at $3.00/gal is $7.50. (It's 50km to your destination, you get 12L/100km, how much does it cost if gas costs $1.00/L? $6.00, but good luck performing that in your head at highway speeds if I didn't give you round numbers to work with...)
In MPG, 50/20=2.5. 2.5*$3=7.50 -> One division, one multiplication, and you only have to remember a unitless "2.5" for a few milliseconds.
In L/100km, 100/50=2, 12/2=6, 6*$1.00=6.00 -> Two divisions, one multiplication, and you have to remember both a "2 (unitless)" and a "6 (liters)". Since you're dividing by that unitless quantity instead of multiplying by it... and since that unitless quantity is based on 100/distance-to-travel, you can end up trying to divide by 2.5, or 1.5, or even 0.75 (150km) in your head? Easy to do if you've got pen/paper and can write down the reciprocal (5/2, 3/2, 4/3), but if you're doing it in your head, that one unitless quantity becomes two unitless numbers (represented as a fraction), and gives you one more multiplication to deal with. It's grade-school math, but juggling more than one or two numbers in your head is a bad idea at highway speeds.
I'm not arguing English-vs-Metric -- metric is the only sane measuring system. But would it have fucking killed the fuel-consumption-standards weenies to measure fuel consumption in "kilometers-per-liter" instead of the useless "liters-per-100-km"?
The "next big thing" for IC engines will probably be rotary valves or camless engines. You are right, though, that future changes will almost surely be incremental.
Let me get this straight. For the last 10 or more years, the big three have been lobbying and fighting tooth and nail to block tougher emission standards, begging for government handouts (out of taxpayer pockets) to help them 'compete' with foreign car makers, they've stuck their collective heads in the sand while Toyota et al. innovate cars that consumers want, streamlined manufacturing processes and cleaner running and hybrid cars. Basically ignored the OBVIOUS path that the auto industry has been on, and as a result they are now far behind.
Then, surprise, surprise, emission standards are tightened (really, who didn't see this coming??) and they are now bitching and moaning to the government that, no shit, they are behind the foreign car makers?
I live in one of the most automotive-dependent cities in North America, and I could see the obvious signs of what steps that GM, Chrysler and Ford and their unions should have been taking all along to stay competitive. They refused to do so, or if they did a bit it was half hearted at best.
If you fail to stay ahead of your industry. If you watch your competition take a direction that consumers are jumping all over and you refuse to take it seriously, or think you can lobby the problem away, then I'm sorry, you deserve to lose market share. Even though my own home town would take, and is taking a serious knocking as the domestic car makers bleed profits... I'm secretly praying they either shut-up and get to work, or go out of business completely. These dinosaurs are keeping us behind.
the auto manufacturers may complain -- but this improves a small metric that will yield tremendously beneficial results for decades to come. by 2020 - when fuel prices are at a premium, the american autos won't be thought of as the equivalent of the 1970s gas-guzzlers with V8 engines -- they'll have got ahead of the curve and squeezed out at etra 7mpg -- bringing the american autos that much more into consideration vs the much more fuel efficient autos made everywhere else.
it may be bitter short term medicine for the auto industry, but it is good for you!!
2cents from toronto
Hurray, one of the thousand reasons not to buy a domestic will be erased, and just 20 years too late. Spectacular. The fact that American automakers are still in business is testament to the stupidity of American people. Their stubborn refusal to accept that this change was necessary and entirely possible decades ago is just one more turd in the massive shitpile they call a business model. The purchase of a domestic automobile is proof that you did not do your research, plain and simple. The thing I truly don't understand is how a company like Chrysler expects to still be in business in 13 years if they don't make this change, and many, many others.
American automakers - "Stupid cars for stupider people."
Nuclear fuel is abundant and clean enough that it ought to count as renewable. Even if, in a thousand years, we run out of thorium and uranium on land, we can extract the stuff from seawater.
1. The bus is mass transit, and it's by-and-large reliable. It's true that not every city/metro area has great transit in terms of coverage or reliability, but the sheer number of people who live within 1 mile of mass transit in NYC, Chicago, DC, LA, Boston, Philly, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, and SF [I don't know much about TX or SoCal transit] is enormous -- and each one of those areas contains a significant number of poor, as defined by the census... and many of them don't own cars. P.S. a car doesn't "fit" CAFE standards, as the CAFE standards apply to fleets (hence the F) of autos sold.
/. not a think tank.
2. Sudden changes in the market [including taxes] do not result in efficient behavior, nor fair or safe behavior, for all parties. For a rational transition, entities need time to formulate a plan, to make changes in their capital investment policies, adequately adjust their labor vs. capital expenditures, adjust their supply chains appropriately, deal with inventory already on hand, etc.
So, you either signal the change far enough in advance so that entities begin to plan and adjust their behavior ahead of time, or you ramp up the tax so that not only do you get the same behavior from rational forward-thinking entities, but you stimulate the same behavior from entities which aren't behaving quite as rationally. Is a penny a month the right slope? I have no freaking idea. It seems sufficiently slow so that it doesn't bring us to the problematic situation described above, and this is
3. "The Market" is not capable of good public policy by itself. Transit networks are necessary public goods, and therefore require public investment. Cap and trading carbon won't be as effective if people don't have effective lower-carbon choices like HOV lanes, safe bike trails, or mass transit. None of those things will magically materialize due to a free market, but are all things that would help the region generate less carbon emissions.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
35mpg is sort of behind the times. Ever since oil peaked in 2005, consumption has averaged over 35mpg even if GM didn't make the cars.
... I welcome this. I have owned 5 cars in my life thus far, and never anything with more than 2 doors. I will be driving sports cars for the rest of my life. My next purchase (second car) will probably be a big V8 sedan that gets poor mileage.
But I welcome this legislation.
Why? Yeah, it's not as good as a more market-based approach such as higher fuel taxes, and the fact that it is a fleet average leads to what you might think are loopholes. But what it does is force automakers to invest in and create technology that improves efficiency for ALL vehicles. If they find a way to make a 50mpg uber-car, that technology can be used in the gas guzzlers I'll always drive, thus improving their mileage as well. I don't mind paying a bit extra to subsidize the research, and this way we won't be forced to all buy cars that meet that standard.
In the US, is it required to take a slippery driving course to get a drivers' license?
No, there is no course at all required to get a drivers' license in the United States, as long as you're over 18. You just have to pass a "written" test, which covers material from a booklet like this one, and there's a driving test. Neither one is very difficult, as I'm sure everybody who has ever driven in America can tell.
For example, the written test in my state is 25 multiple choice questions; a score of 20 or higher is passing. One of them showed a red octagonal sign, and asked what it meant, with choices like "Pull over and wait for help to arrive". The person ahead of me when I tested got 18, and was trying to argue with the examiner that it should count as a pass. (Uh, no, sorry. First, you can't win an argument with an examiner, and second, if you can't get 20 right, you're a friggin' moron and shouldn't be on the road.)
The driving test is rather brief. There's no inclement weather, and not even any freeway driving (I remember being scared the first time I merged onto the interstate). It's also on a point system, and I don't remember the scoring exactly, but you can miss a couple major sections and still pass. I don't know anybody who passed the parallel parking section.
Another thing which we don't have (but I think some other countries do) are license qualifications for transmissions. It's perfectly legal to test in an automatic, and then go out on the road and try to drive a standard. In fact, since most people here have automatics, that's how their kids learn (and test). I don't think the high school courses even teach standards any more. Most people I know learned to drive stick by practicing in a friend's car in a parking lot for a few minutes, and then going out on the roads and learning by trial-and-error. Fun for all.
Or is it up to the individual states?
Pretty much everything is up to the individual states. There's no national drivers' license in the United States.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is a perfect example of something that the federal government should just stay out of. Were it left to local jurisdictions, it would be much fairer.
Why should I, living out in a rural area in the middle of no where, pay more for may vehicle when it presents no environmental problem whatsoever in my region, just because the same vehicle is a problem for people on the other side of the country living in a city like sardines in a can?
Let those states or jurisdictions worry about how they want to keep their own air clean within their own jurisdictions, and stop putting artificial controls on the market in my jurisdiction that drive up the cost of transportation for me. If that means they won't let me take my car into their state, or want me to pay a toll at the border, so be it, I'm out here precisely because I don't want to be impacted by large urban center in the first place.
I don't get it.
Want to solve all the world's problems? The governments of the world's major nations should form a working group, with funding from all the nations, to develop alternate ways to generate energy. Much of the research should focus on generating electricity from water, a process that has been known to exist for many decades. They simply need to figure out how to fit it into an automobile. There is no reason to use fossil fuels for transportation. This will solve major problems: Smog; Diminishing fossil fuels; Global warming (if you believe in that crock of bullshit and ignore the fact that temperatures on Mars have increased the same amount as temperatures on Earth, because warming is related to distance from the sun and fluctuates over a 50 or so year period) and the most important one, that the world's current addiction to gasoline is funding the world's most dangerous terrorists and tyrants. Get rid of the need for so much fuel and you won't have more events like 9/11, the trains in Spain, the subway in London, the whole world on fire in Paris, embassies blowing up in Africa, rockets being launched into Israel, and all the other wonderful things that we finance when we go to a gas station.
From http://www.nader.org/interest/041104.html :
"In 1981 Joan Claybrook, . . . the Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) . . . advanced a NHTSA notice that called for fuel efficiency standards to reach 48 mpg by 1995. Interestingly the notice pointed out that the auto industry itself said it could reach in excess of 30 mpg fuel economy by 1985 with GM saying it could do 33 mpg."
So... by 2020, we will finally get cars that are about as efficient as what GM said they could provide by 1985.
Of course, you don't *have* to wait 12 years in the hope of getting a fuel efficient vehicle. You don't have to spend tons for a hybrid, or deal with a diesel. You could just buy a Toyota... made by a company that actually seems to realize that efficient vehicles are a good thing.
(They'd be even better if they started bringing over the wonderful, 6-year-old diesel version of the Yaris, that gets 63MPG.)
While Toyota gets a lot of press for their quality and the Prius, their corporate fleet fuel economy isn't actually better than the rest of them. Ever heard of a Toyota Tundra? The US automakers are catching up in quality while Toyota is slipping (possibly a temporary thing for them). Ford has licensed hybrid tech from Toyota, but that was patented in America almost 40 years ago. GM is putting out hybrid SUVs using their 2-mode system that should offer better benefits than the Toyota system - granted they are putting it in SUVs but that's because those are what people buy. In fact I saw a recent SAE paper where Toyota is putting a couple hydraulic clutches in their Lexus hybrid (2 EVT ratios, but still no fixed gears) - so THEY are playing catchup. There is plenty of innovation in Detroit - it's the public that needs to change. The public wants to continue buying huge vehicles and they want someone else to improve the mileage - it's always someone else's problem right? So that's what's happening. And lastly, let's not say they're just catching up with Europe - diesel engines are hard to make clean, that's why we don't have many of them here.
Actually my reply is more to the general discussion than the parent post. He doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. There is innovation in Detroit. There are updates to manufacturing happening all the time. There are great new drive trains being developed, and new engine technology, etc. And lastly, GMs largest shareholder is it's employees - they generally don't respond to wall street from what I've seen (look at the recent stock price).
Typical slashdot - ramble on about things it knows nothing about.
So...in 12 (TWELVE) years automakers will be required to raise fuel-economy by 7.5 MPG? Ridiculous.
Cars have been getting between 22 and 28 MPG for 30 years. Millions and millions are spent on automotive R&D every year, but fuel economy doesn't really change. In fact for my family's Honda Accords...fuel economy has actually decreased through the year's models since 1990. Make any sense?
Do we really think that there isn't some oil-company prompting to this particular feature of vehicles?
...and it's got 275K miles on it!
Goes it's 3-5K miles between oil changes without having to add oil to boot. These standards are totally doable.
If that level of performance was possible then, we really should be seeing ~50 or so MPG now. I don't buy cars all that often. My next one won't be American, just like the last one wasn't. Producing shitty cars does more to harm the environment than anything else we do with cars does.
All this crying and whining about regulations is exactly why almost nothing but American Standard toilets is made in the US anymore.
Depressing really.
Blogging because I can...
The best way to improve efficiency is market forces.
That's what fuel efficiency standards do: they raise the cost of producing gas guzzlers, since manufacturers need to adjust the prices of fuel efficient vehicles downwards to make the mix work out.
It's a great free market approach and preferable to simply increasing the price of gas further, which is regressive.
Apparently once again the 35MPG is a "fleet" standard, so not every vehicle has to meet it as long as the fleet as a whole does.
That's a good thing: it doesn't outright outlaw gas guzzlers (which people may need or want for all sorts of reasons), it just uses the market to price gas guzzlers correctly. If there is a high demand for gas guzzlers, then companies need to almost give away the economy models in order ot meet overall standards.
Add $50 or so worth of corrosion-resistant fittings and seals to that Chevy Subdivision so it can burn E85, and bingo: that 20MPG land bruiser now gets 30MPG in the eyes of the bill, raising fleet averages considerably.
Well, this may be a problem if the car can continue to be used with gasoline (which it can). If it were E85-only, it would be a great way of getting E85 adopted. But even so, if this manages to make most cars E85 compatible quickly, it's still a good thing.
And which in passing gives yet another sop to the corn/ethanol industry.
And what's wrong with that? We want renewable fuels, and those are the people who deliver it.
The market is just a force that purports its advantage for having no point to readily assail it. I'll take a good helping of regulations to confer lessons over market misdirection(e.g. oil and the jitters that take a huge chunk) to do everything. The marketplace should be a knife fight. Well, markets have you stabbing at shadows. Balanced regulations bring them to the light. I wouldn't be bailing them out or protecting them with tariffs or subsidies if I were King. Then you would be shortly followed by someone who would cement them permanently.
I'd just have given them strengthened regulations that cover any import brand even if they build factories in the US as an import, and to have Taft-Hartley be history. The US need not give up its national sovereignty.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Provide your own planet and maybe I'll accept your argument. As it is, we have to share the same atmosphere and the same global climate, and if you're going to be a prick and ruin it for the rest of us, we're going to bring the hammer down.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Chrysler LLC is currently owned by a New York based private equity firm, Cerebus Capital Management. Its headquarters is in Michigan. How is it not a US automaker?
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
I guess I'm behind. I hadn't known that the deal had gone through. It's back in American hands again, then.
as vehicles that can run on 85 percent ethanol....
has anyone actually seen these in the states?
the only ones I know of are on military bases for government vehicles...
Those who live by the sword, get shot by those who live by the gun...
So the fact that I own a 2000 model year vehicle that runs on diesel and gets 44mpg highway seems to indicate that this technology is already here. And in the 80's there were several models that achieved 50mpg, so why are we creating a standard for 13 years in the future for something that existed 20 years ago?
Why a "combination" when either condition (especially "immature technology") is sufficient to sink the program?
What I realy find strange is that the eropean Ford and GM (called Opel and Vaxhall here) factories produce cars which meed those requronment at ease.
Look at here adverts in the UK:
http://www.vauxhall.co.uk/
http://www.ford.co.uk/
Martin
I read someplace a year or so ago that the fleet average in europe is currently 13 kilometers per litre, while it is 7 km/l in the US. (currently meaning a year or 2 ago, when i read this)
Converted to MPG, that means 30.7 in europe versus 16.5 in the US. So setting a 35mpg standard by 2020 just mean they're giving the country 12 years to reach current first world standards.
Actually in europe we work on 3 l/100km cars and Volkswagen has one on sale. On Wikipedia [1] that's actualy off the chart - which ends at 4 l/100km / 70mpg.
I would say that the millions spent on automotive R&D go to Fort Europe and Saab/Vauxhall/Opel (the european branches of GM).
Martin
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chart_MPG_to_Litre-100km.svg
Electrically-controlled breaks? No way! what happens when a wire is cut? Too dangerous!
OK, I was with you until this part. Electrically-controlled brakes ARE dangerous, and yield pretty much NO advantages over a good hydraulic system.
Oh yeah, as long as I can accelerate off the light to 25 MPH in 1 second flat! Oh, and I might need to go 90 MPH on the freeway too. Oh, and I want to be able to drive 500 miles on on tank of gas. But it's so wrong that it costs me $130 to fill up my tank every day. Someone needs to do something. Oh well, in the end I don't give a damn, I like driving my big, heavy, fast vehicle so I'll just suck it up, pay the higher fuel costs, and go on about my business.
Fixed that for ya.
What part of the Constitution (you know, the one they all swore to uphold, protect, and defend when they took office) allows the federal government to meddle in private industry in this way?
Not all cities are that bad with traffic, and there's no need to stuff the Midwest with cars that cant handle those conditions(and the demands of the drivers). Go shove your knockoff electronics laden 4cyl's somewhere else.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Remember what CAFE does. It requires that the average vehicle have a certain mileage.
No technical changes are required to do this, since cars which beat the new standard already exist.
Instead, we only need to change the mix of cars being sold. We do that with price. People want the SUVs, but will buy econoboxes when the SUVs are too expensive.
It appears that increasing SUV cost by $6700 is exactly what is required to change the purchasing behavior to meet an AVERAGE mileage of 35 MPH. It's possible that the really efficient vehicles will be sold below production cost, subsidized by the SUV sales.
Factoring in the 50% credit for ethanol, mileage drops from 27.5 to 23.333333...
Nice. Everybody wins: the corn lobby, the corrosion-resistant fittings manufacturers, the American auto industry, big oil, and the people who want to buy SUVs like the Canyonero.
I don't know how this is going to happen. My car get 11 mpg average. Even with my foot off the gas pedal. What's with all this global warming conspiracy stuff ?
Federal regulations regarding infant and child carseats have pushed families into much larger vehicles than they would have needed 20 years ago. Now if you have more than two children, with one of them still in an infant seat, you almost need a vehicle with third-row seating. Given the choice between a 20-mpg minivan or a 17-mpg SUV, is it no wonder that so many families choose SUV's? Turbo-diesels are the perfect power source for SUV's, minivans, pickups, and many sedans and hatchbacks. Yet the federal government and those states following the CARB rules continue to make it as difficult as possible for automakers to offer diesel engines in the US. No new VW TDI has been sold in California since I bought mine in 2003. Unless the government starts to make it possible for automakers to actually produce and sell desirable fuel-efficient vehicles, my next new car will be a used 2002-2003 VW TDI. And for many families, their next new car will also be a used car. I don't think this will be good for domestic or foreign auto brands.
Do you have any proof of this? I'm interested in your reasoning. I can think of a few objections, such as the assumed need for a supply of electricity to make the brakes work, which I has been addressed by those proposing such systems.
On an only distantly related note, electric brakes are set to dramatically increase the safety and reduce the stopping distance for trains. Currently the airbrake system takes many seconds to deploy and react down the length of the train, whereas electric can cause the braking to begin at the same time on each car.
I think the way you're thinking about oil and global warming is a really interesting way to think about it. There's a potential flaw though: coal can be converted to oil, as can tar sands. Neither process is efficient with the carbon fuel or other resources [other energy, water, etc], but it can be done. As the price of oil continues to rise, more tar sand extraction and coal to liquid processes will begin, as will using coal to help convert agriculture to fuel. Therefore, carbon-based fuel isn't just limited to liquid crude, it's also got sand crude and coal. That is a lot more fuel opportunity, lasting maybe another 100 years or more. It's also far more carbon to be released in to the air.
If carbon based transportation relied on oil and there were no substitute goods at any cost, that'd fit the scenario you describe. The reality, though, is that coal is a [more expensive but usable] substitute for oil both directly via F-T and indirectly by fueling plants that convert plants to ethanol or biodiesel.
So... as you point out, how do we stop them from switching to coal? The same way we encourage them to use less oil. Higher MPG and higher cost per mile traveled on fossil fuels relative to lower/non carbon options like mass transit, cycling, walking, and telecommuting, as well as public policies that encourage mixed use zoning so that more people can live close to where they work, play, shop, learn, and heal.
P.S. Slowing down the carbon emissions per year will result in the same amount of carbon when all oil is gone, but it will give the world more time to work on the problem -- to reduce emissions from other sources, to add more biomass sinks by reforesting, etc. It'll buy time for humans to adapt ourselves or our living environment.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
My 2000 Saturn SL (a 4 door sedan) has an EPA highway rating of 40 MPG. My most recent 50,000 miles averaged 43.7 MPG. It has a 1.9 liter engine and 5 speed manual. The car is reasonably peppy, but not hardly a muscle car. The car was not expensive. A lighter car with a smaller engine and a good highway cruise gear yields good economy. Going 65 MPH instead of 70 MPH gives me an extra 9 MPG, for example, on trips (49 MPG).
According to epa.gov, GM no longer sells a car that gets 40 MPG. To replace it (and this one has over 200,000 miles), i'll need to buy a Toyota Corolla. Detroit needs to build them for me to buy them from Detroit. My complaint isn't that Detroit sells gas guzzling SUVs, it's that Detroit stopped selling cheap, reliable and efficient cars. Perhaps this law will eventually inspire a return to old offerings. After all, the Big Three are not so big anymore.
-- Stephen.
The ironic thing is that big SUVs are horrible in snow. Sure, the 4WD is good for getting started, but the large mass makes them really hard to stop on ice.
If you live in an area with snow and ice you're better served by driving a small front wheel drive vehicle than a big SUV or if you're really worried a small AWD vehicle like a Subaru or Toyota RAV4 has all the benefits of the big SUVs for snow driving with few of their liabilities.
SMALLER cars
SMALLER engines
This task is pitifully easy. I look around at the absurd monstrosities Americans are driving around and it is just pathetic.
My car does 45mpg or whem I'm in a mood 50mpg, and no it's not a hybrid.