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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."
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.
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.
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"Different engines have drastically different amounts of CO2/Gallon emissions"
No they don't. All the carbon in the fuel ends up as carbon, carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide. CO is oxidised to CO2 in the cat, and C will be oxidised in the cats of 2010 diesel engines. C (soot) is not a problem in current gasoline engines.
"They are weakly correlated to be sure"
They are strongly correlated. >>0.9
Stop talking out your arse.
I come from Norway. We drive normal cars, including lots of Japanese compacts, even when the snow is meter high, because we've actually heard of things like ploughs, and winter-tyres, combined with chains for the wheels if things get extreme. Somehow it's never a problem, so that's a pitiful excuse.
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.
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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 $6700 are exaggerated and that your car will run 150k miles, I don't see the big deal. The costs are about the same, with the additional benefit of wasting less fuel. If you don't buy a bigger car than what you actually need, you might even save some money.
Regulating fuel consumption (and exempting the really big guzzlers) is just the wrong way to manage technology. All it does is tell the industry to get up to current standard (in 13 years) and not to innovate any more than needed.
The best way to improve efficiency is market forces. Once gas is expensive enough to be a real consideration when buying a vehicle, people might actually see past the marketing hype and realize they don't need that huge StupidUglyVehicle after all.
Yes, gas got expensive enough to get people to complain. But for most families it's still less than their cable bill. Clearly not something that would change habits.
Another major component in reducing fuel consumption or CO2 emissions is modifying our behavior: number of trips, distances traveled, and god help us car-pools and public transport. Raising the mileage standard does nothing on any of these fronts. Increasing gas prices gives a strong incentive to reduce consumption in any way possible.
I live in Quebec, CANADA.
As you may know, we aren't as rich as the US and cars/SUV/Trucks are more costly than the US. If you come here, you'll see that the compact cars are very popular. Trucks and SUV is something you don't see often, except in construction. For the same truck, we can see a difference of 15 000$ US, some time more, between you and us, even if our dollar is near or at parity with the US dollar since two years.
Honda Civic, Pontiac Sunfire, Chevrolet Cavalier are best-selling cars right here, especially Civic. For your, the USA, those kind of car are sh*t. I went to the USA and it's very rare that I see those cars...
That being said, our winter is same or even worse than in the North of the US, and still, we manage to drive in the roads even in the big snow storm with the small car. You don't need a SUV if you know how to drive in that kind of conditions. For sure, it helps a lot, but did you know that among the accidents that happens because of the snow, it's the SUV that are often out of the roads, upside down. I'm not exaggerating, it's in the statistics of the Surete du Quebec (Our "state police").
The main reason (this is my own opinion) is that the driver is feeling too confident because he have a SUV. It's big, it has four wheel drives and the driver think he is better than the small cars, you know, those small sh*t that are having a hard time in the storm.
If you know how to drive with your car in all conditions, you won't have any issue even in severe snow storm, car or SUV or Truck, no matter what. Been there, done that. I sometime drive in those conditions, it's not easy (you know, that kind of server snow storm in the night that you cannot see more than 1 feed ahead of you with almost 10 inch of snow on the roads) but if you adapt your driving ability in all conditions, you will go everywhere with your car. Of course, I did it because I didn't have choice, otherwise I would stayed home.
We never put chains on our wheels, it's forbidden by the Law because it breaks the roads.
It's all the driver, not the vehicle.
Thank you very much. I have this argument monthly with PRius and other hybrid owners that hate it when you pierce their cloud. I drive Suzuki cars. I have a Suzuki 4WD SUV that get's 32mpg, and a Suzuki(geo) car that regularly get's 44mpg both achieving "hybrid" mileage with far lower technology engine and drivetrain systems. My point in regular car milage debates is that we have had the tech to get high mileage for decades, it's that the car makers in the USA refuse to make them. My first car a VW TDI pickup truck (well a VW rabbit with a pickup rear-end) got over 45mpg all the time and it was made in 1982. The BMW Iseta got over 50mpg, and many cars in europe do this daily.
The favored argument is that the 40mpg their prius is getting is better for the air than my 44mpg I get with my Geo Metro.
As a side observation: why do they buy a hybrid and then continue to drive it like idiots destroying the MPG capabilities of the car? They still drive at 90mph, drag race to the next stop light, etc...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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That's not a loophole. That's an intelligent, effective solution. In order to meet the standards, car companies can either improve all cars to X MPG (very expensive) or subsidise high-MPG vehicles, thus allowing people to get large vehicles if they really want and making it easier for low-income people to get fuel-efficient vehicles. Both solutions have the same effect on emissions, yet the latter does so without taking away people's freedom to drive a ridiculously massive SUV and with the added bonus of rewarding people for buying fuel-efficient vehicles.
I do think the E85 part should be removed.