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US To Require That New Cars Get 42 MPG By 2016
Hugh Pickens writes "New cars and trucks will have to get 30 percent better mileage starting in 2016 under an Obama administration move to curb emissions tied to smog and global warming. While the 30 percent increase would be an average for both cars and light trucks, the percentage increase in cars would be much greater, rising from the current 27.5 mpg standard to 42 mpg. Environmentalists praised the move. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, called it 'one of the most significant efforts undertaken by any president, ever, to end our addiction to oil and seriously slash our global warming emissions.' Obama's plan also would effectively end litigation between states and automakers that had opposed state-specific rules, arguing that having to meet several state standards would be much more expensive for them than just one federal rule. The Detroit News reported that automakers were on board with the new rule and had worked with the administration on creating a timeline for the transition." There's a case to be made that raising the CAFE won't save oil or reduce greenhouse gases.
Of course automakers are "on board"! They're now pawns of the government, just like the banks. Do you think they could really go against anything the administration wants?
Basically now Obama can do whatever he wants. He's playing all the hands himself.
There's a case to be made that raising the CAFE won't save oil or reduce greenhouse gases.
The link is really light on the math. In most systems that obey similar behavior, demand does increase, but the increase in demand does not completely erase the benefit of the increase in efficiency. In this case it can't completely erase the benefit, because if it did the end result would be a net increase in the price - and that was the original basis for the argument, that the drop in price would spur consumption. So the increase in demand has to fall short of that point.
So in the end, demand will be somewhere higher than it is now, and the price somewhat lower, all else being equal. Where on the supply/demand curve things ultimately lie will depend on the relative elasticity of supply vs. elasticity of demand.
Why do administrations always set timetables beyond their terms? Remember Bush's "man on Mars"?
As a fellow inhabitant of the planet, I wish you had bought a Golf TDI, which has practically the same dimensions and performance, gets superior mileage in average driving, and which doesn't have all those batteries in it. They also have better visibility.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My car gets 42mpg average right now. That's the EPA estimate and is actually what I seem to be getting in the real world.
Honda Civic Hybrid. I love it. But frankly I'd like them to be WELL up into 100 seven years from now.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Because the states created the federal government to handle particular tasks.
The goal of our federalist system is not efficiency, it is freedom. A country where the government's primary goal is to ensure the efficiency of its subjects is certainly NOT one where I'd like to live.
Only if the goal is to set prices, not to improve quality. Is it collusion when computer manufacturers meet to make hardware standards, or software companies to standardize APIs and protocols?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
If we want people to use less gas, why not just raise the darn price?
There are times and places for government regulation, but requiring a minimum fuel efficiency? If the goal is to reduce greenhouse gases, then fuel efficiency is just a half-assed proxy for fuel consumption.
42 mpg x 20 mile commute each day is a lot more fuel consumptive than 20 mpg x occasional grocery trip.
And what qualifies as a "car" and what as a "light truck" and "SUV," all of which have their separate regulations? What a mess.
People respond to their pocketbooks. In this case, it's easy to align people's incentives with the goals we want to achieve: Make gas expensive.
Milage standards haven't worked before and they will continue to fail. Forcing car companies to make vehicles that people don't want to buy isn't going to do anybody any good.
Pretty much every economist knows that the way to achieve the stated goals is to dramatically increase gasoline taxes. After that, the market will work its magic. People will buy more efficient cars, or seek alternative transportation. When looking at where to live, the cost of commuting will play a bigger role in families' decisions. And we get to make a little dent in the whopping federal deficit.
Of course no politician will even hint at endorsing what is clearly the economically rational thing to do. So instead, we'll spend money on subsidizing bio-fuels and other not-all-that-bright ideas.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Actually, what that study showed is that if you get 200,000 miles out of a Prius and a Hummer, they'll have similar energy costs. How likely is a Prius to run more than 200,000 miles? It has a teensy tiny little high-performance (for what it is) engine in it. Granted, only Diesel Hummers are likely to make more than 200k, and they are in the minority. Either way, if you're buying a new car to save the planet you're a dipshit :D
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There's nothing to do with interoperability here.
And the goal here isn't to improve quality, it's to lower it. People don't want these cars. They only way they can get away with making them is if they're the only cars people can buy.
Using a 4500 lb. box to carry a 180 lb. person was always a stupid idea. Like you said, good riddance.
Oh yeah, ask southern blacks all about the wondrous freedoms of states' rights.
It'd be interesting to see what the average and top mileage cars have been getting over the past 20-30 years or so. Up until 1990, I had a car with a small displacement 6-cylinder (instead of a 4-cyl, cuz I wanted air conditioning), manual 5-speed transmission, and cruise control that routinely got me above 40 mpg on the highway. If the weather cooperated and I wasn't driving into a headwind the entire way, more often than not I was able to make a trip from S. Ohio home to Chicago on a single tank of gas. Then, for some reason, it was almost impossible to find a car that got better than the low 30s. Once SUVs became popular, availability of high mileage cars dropped even further. If one were to plot mileage over the years, I'd bet that we'll finally be getting back to what should have been commonplace in the mid/late '90s. Fifteen years or more of progress totally wasted. Pity. And the managers of American auto makers wonder why their companies are in the toilet.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If people don't want fuel-efficient cars, why do I see so many Minis and Smart FourTwos on the road?
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
"Actually, what that study showed is that if you get 200,000 miles out of a Prius and a Hummer, they'll have similar energy costs."
Huh? Considering that the Prius gets over twice the mileage of a Hummer, I find that hard to believe. Having said that I certainly wouldn't trade my used car for a Prius-doesn't make enconomic sense.
And the Prius will certainly use LESS energy. Most of the energy associated with vehicles comes from driving.
"Either way, if you're buying a new car to save the planet you're a dipshit :D"
True. About as useful as calling a large house in the suburbs "green". :)
Because the people where you live have too much money, and like showing off how virtuously eco-huggy they are.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Because of the cube square ratio small cylinders lose too much heat into the engine block. You are better off reducing the number of cylinders.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I see your Golf TDI and raise you a Bluemotion Polo.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
And the goal here isn't to improve quality, it's to lower it.
Yes damnit! I want my car to be seriously fuel inefficient. Imagine, I'll be spending less on gas, and I'll be polluting less too! HOW DARE THEY!!!!!!
Is it only me, or is party politcal tribalism a possible new DSM classification?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
There should be a Godwin corollary for comments like yours.
... seems we already have such a monstrosity.
As for the substance of your comment, just because some states did bad stuff means we should scrap the principles on which America was founded? Where are we going to be when the Feds control everything and do bad stuff? With 50 different styles, at least some are going to be better, but with a homogeneous government, the chance that it is bad everywhere is much greater. Oh wait
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Use a plastic coke bottle. Its lighter, and in an emergency, you can crush it and get most of your acceleration back, so it is safer. Just remember to drink the coke first! :)
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
Imagine, I'll be spending less on gas, and I'll be polluting less too! HOW DARE THEY!!!!!!
Why is it that everyone thinks that the most fuel efficient is also the least polluting? There are basically three ways to tune a car.
1. For the most power
2. For the best fuel efficiency
3. For the lowest emissions
If 1 is done correctly, the emissions shouldn't be much worse than in the case of 2, just different. That is unless you are running a pair of big ass carburetors on top of a tunnel ram.
In the case of 2, you get the most mileage out of the fuel, however it's harder on the engine and doesn't burn the fuel as well causing more pollution Than 3.
3 releases the least amount of bad stuff from the tailpipe, however at the cost of both 1 and 2.
It all has to do with choosing the air-to-fuel ratio that is the best compromise for what you want. If you favor one over the others, in this case fuel economy, then you will sacrifice power and increase pollution.
Personally I think it's past due for someone to start regulating commercial diesel trucks. Have you seen the amount of crap that comes out of some of the dump trucks and 18-wheelers? I bet one commercial diesel vehicle dumps more crap into the air than 100 cars/SUVs. Unfortunately that industry seems to have paid off the right people to keep it quiet while in plain view.
You're both right. For every conscientious person, there's an asshole that follows his animal instinct to perpetually consume as much as he possibly can.
I think you have articulated the solution to the problem. It's a folly to mandate fuel efficiency since people will try to find a way around the regulations. Your post shows that when you increase the price of fuel, there is a powerful incentive to get better mileage. Here in Switzerland we don't have CAFE but almost everyone drives small fuel efficient cars. Fuel is the equivalent of about $6.00 a gallon. Problem solved. All we need is a carbon tax or fuel tax and people will reduce CO2 emissions.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Diesels? Dream on. You've got a cartel of 5 envirowacko states with pollution standards in excess of Europe's, which are essentially keeping most diesels out of the country now. The unreasonably-stringent anti-sulphur emissions standards are only capable of being met with some advanced anti-pollution equipment involving a reservoir of urea to process the exhaust to meet the emission standards of these 5 states. Most manufacturers deem this too great a burden to bring their (62 mpg) cars into the USA, so only VW and Merceedes do so, and forgo sales in those 5 states. 42 mpg average by 2016? Guffaw! It isn't going to happen. Between the safety Nazis making cars weigh more, and more, and more so they can crash at Star Trek's Warp 9 and have everybody walk away without a scratch, and the envirowackos trying to get the exhaust to be cleaner than the air that is ingested by the engine, we're soon going to have _no_ cars bigger than a breadbox that can be purchased in this country.
That, my friend, is the whole point... It may cost a lot of money to fix or replace a car that has been so crushed, but ultimately cars are expendable, people are not.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm 6'5" with most of my height in my back. My brother at 6'2" has the same leg length. My chiro thinks I'm 6'7" because of the length of my back. I don't get this leg length thing.
In almost *every* vehicle I've driven, I crank the seat almost as far forward as it will go, then tip the seat back until my head doesn't hit the roof. If I stretch out my legs at the same time, my shoulders end up in the back seat, and I can barely reach the wheel. People who complain about leg room have never suffered insufficient head room. On an aircraft with my knees jammed into the seat in front of me, if I tip my head back, it's a 90 degree bend before my head rests on the seat top. I'm nose to the air vents.
Long ago on trans Atlantic flights I learned to rip the seat cushion off the aluminum air frame (usually velcro) if I wanted to sleep for a couple of hours. Talk about hard and cold, but it beats sleeping in the chin on sternum position.
One time sitting in the aisle seat I managed to corkscrew myself sideways far enough to sleep with my ear on the headrest. The flight attendant rammed the beer cart of Lilliputian portions into my kneecap as hard as she could three times before I managed to regain consciousness, determine the source of the red flashes (oh, that's my pain system), and complete the origami move to remove my knee from the battering path. I've never slept well on a plane since.
Trucks, SUVs, whatever, they all lack headroom. Thirty years ago I had an Austin America where I could sit up straight. This is because the top of the seat cushion was about 4" off the floor boards. Loved it. If they add comfort, I'm screwed, no matter how much hulking metal they mold around it.
These days I'm getting 8.8 liters/100km (27 U.S. MPG according to Google calc.) in a 1991 Toyota pickup with a heavy, indestructible, yet somewhat underpowered engine (50% city, 50% highway, by minutes operated). If you goose it a bit on the flat, it'll happily do 140kph up an 8 percent grade in the BC interior (two occupants, no load). However, if you fall below 110kph, you're unlikely to recover without taking 3rd gear into jet engine territory. The engine is plenty adequate if you plan ahead, not so adequate for whims and impulses.
The real problem here is people purchasing enough engine displacement to carry a Bigfoot camper while towing a 30 foot boat across the Rockies, and then using it half the time to drive down the street to fetch a six pack.
There's no way to idle a huge displacement engine efficiently. I've long suspected that the trick of turning off two cylinders only gets you half the benefit of not having those two extra cylinders in the first place.
The other thing is that I'm moderately heavy on the gas pedal, light on the brake pedal. (I've read that peak fuel conversion efficiency typically corresponds 2/3rds of max. engine output.) Light on the brake pedal requires more traffic anticipation than the average person can muster while talking on a cell phone. I can usually detect these people pretty quickly. They're the ones riding up my ass while I coast up to a red light (or one that is about to become red long before I get there), make an abrupt lane change to pass me, then come to an abrupt halt when the light actually turns red.
MPG figures are pretty much useless if they aren't evaluated in terms of the actual driver and typical trip conditions (e.g. three mile round trip of road range while talking on a cell phone to fetch a six pack).
You make a good case for making the gas tax revenue-neutral. If the average person uses 400 gallons of gas per year and the tax is $1.00 per gallon, then with a revenue-neutral gas tax, the government would mail everyone a $100 check every 3 months. If you're poor, that $100 could go a long way paying for groceries.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
This sounds like a great idea, but I fear it. You know why? Because something always happens that nobody properly predicts.
Here's an example. Remember station wagons? Not the things they have now, but those great big monstrosities that used to carry something like eight people or a garage band + equipment. You don't see those around any more. Why? Because they raised the fuel standards and there was no way that station wagons could reach that. Bye bye, big loader.
But just because they disappeared, it does not mean the need for large cars disappeared. Enter the minivan-- which has lighter standards, but still stringent. And most earlier examples of minivans were crap for anything but moving people. (Current models sometimes switch pretty well, but may not have engine capacity.) So then what? Enter the SUV. It falls under the "truck" standards, so it doesn't need to meet as stringent requirements. It seats more than four people, which is important for some people, and it can do things like move furniture. It also doesn't drive like a beached whale.
A lot of the posters at Slashdot don't seem to have considered the family angle. Carseats are freaking HUGE and it's sometimes hard to fit them in a sedan. And of course, you can't do more than two since the front seat is off-limits. So no friends. (Remember field trips where the parents used to drive? Yeah, they can't do that any more either. But that's another rant.) Once again, minivan or SUV. And quite honestly, after being in a hit-and-run accident, I wanted five-star safety rating AND a slightly higher profile. So our vehicle is what's called a crossover-- six seats, so when we have a couple of kids we'll still be able to put some adults in. And incidentally, it gets 24-26 miles to the gallon IN city.
The upshot is that yeah, this sounds great. I'm all for better mileage and I shop for it. BUT there's something else that's going to happen that we haven't predicted. It could be safety issues; it could be price. I don't know. But I'm always afraid of well-intentioned things like this coming back to bite us in the butt.
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
By that definition Nitrogen is a pollutant too, along with, well, any gas but Oxygen.
my UID occurs in pi starting at the 384,199 digit after the decimal point.
But then their manhood will be threatened, for no-one will buy the truck that does that, rather than "V8 TITAN 5.5L SUPERDUTY". You know what's really fucking horrible, seeing that on a pickup, with a four wheel rear axle, no tow hook, internal or external to be seen, and half the time a hood... what exactly do you need that engine for, again?
Actually, the crumple zones saved both of them: they dissipated the kinetic energy of the whole impact. This guy was able to walk away from the accident BECAUSE the other guy was driving a car with crumple zones. This is also the reason why the car was demolished instead of simply taking a hit.
If the other guy had been driving a steel car too, he wouldn't be posting on /. today.
Nobox: Only simple products.
You're speaking of combustion engine tuning. There are many ways to improve all 3 of more power and more efficiency and less emissions. We have a ton of low hanging fruit we're ignoring. Here are 3 of them:
Dump the "slushbox" (the conventional automatic transmission with torque converter). There are so many ways to get the efficiency of the manual with the convenience of the automatic that it's criminal that we aren't doing it. Next, manufacturers choose gear ratios that are good for jack rabbit starts and passing while going uphill and using the air conditioning, but which are terrible for fuel economy. High gear isn't nearly high enough.
Another big one is weight reduction. We use steel because it's cheap, not because it's all that great. We can replace many steel parts with lighter ones that are just as strong or stronger. We could also revamp the safety regulations to keep things just as safe without having to weigh down the car with super strong B pillars and such. Why is it we can ride motorcycles, which are far more dangerous, but we can't bring a car from Mexico to the US because it isn't "safe" enough? We dumped the 5 mph bumper of the 1970s. We need to trim the regulations again.
Then there's aerodynamics. Most vehicles are miserable on that point. Observe that the front grill openings of a typical car are much wider than necessary, extending well beyond the radiator. Why? Because people think it looks better that way. They've thought so for at least 50 years, and the limp noodles in marketing haven't bothered with any reeducation on that point. This purely cosmetic feature unnecessarily scoops a lot of air into the engine compartment, which acts a bit like a drag chute. It takes lots of energy to make air swirl violently around the engine compartment. That air has to go somewhere and it does. Most of it goes under the car, which has the worst aerodynamics of the whole body. But nobody pays attention to the underside of a car, and smoothing that out would cost a little more money, so it isn't done. But shrinking the grill openings would cost nothing. That's right, we waste gas over trivial appearances.
Anyway, I disagree with this sort of ham handed management of fuel economy. Push the gas tax through the roof, and we customers will roast manufacturers who don't give us good fuel economy. We ought to bump the gas tax in the US up by 10 cents per gallon every month until we've added at least $1, then index it to inflation so it doesn't erode away like it has. No need for government fuel economy mandates. Make fuel economy worth having, and let the market figure out the details.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Excellent point!
Now you and the other 0.1% of people that actually use their industrial vehicles for their intended purpose can feel free to keep buying them.
In the meantime, freedom isn't free, and if grandma wants an H2 to go grocery shopping, it should cost her proportionally more to do so.
Welcome to 'modern' capitalism.
I for one have no problems with the federal or state governments regulating our markets to educate the populace of the true costs of consumption. People, as a whole, are irrational idiots, and need to be hit upside with a financial brick every once in a while.
Electric motors make a lot of sense with trains, but not for hauling cargo on the road.
It's the long hauling of cargo on roads, itself, that doesn't make sense.
You sir are a moron. Those crumble zones saved not only his life but yours as well. A frontal collision at that speed can easily be lethal. The reason you are alive to make your post is that the other car had crumble zones that absorb some of the energy in the impact thereby making it softer for both of you. You should probably have offered him half the cost of a new car because by sacrificing his vehicle both of you coudl walk away from the accident.
If you doubt my word try the following. Drop one egg onto a pillow and put another egg into a metal strongbox that you drop on the floor. I give you one guess which egg is more likely to crack.
I just visited that website and reviewed all PDFs in their Glossary. Not once does it explicitly define CO2 as a pollutant.
No, it wouldn't. Technically, I'm not sure I would either.
The issue with CO2 is not pollution per se, it's one of imbalance. We do not generally define exhaled breath as "pollution", nor would we call CO2 from the decay of biomass such.
Where CO2 from fossil fuels becomes an issue is carbon sink depletion. Carbon that was previously sequestered from the atmosphere for millenia as oil or coal is released predominantly be human activities. This throws the existing system out of whack. We don't know by how much - most estimates are pretty pessimistic, though even the optimistic ones aren't exactly reassuring.
The CO2 coming out a vehicles tailpipe doesn't matter. The hydrocarbons going into the fuel tank do. If they're fossil fuel derived, burning them adds to the problem; otherwise, it's carbon-neutral. So, to give a hypothetical example, a heat engine that uses hydrocarbon fuel does not cause any problem if the carbon involved comes from inside the carbon cycle; think a bio-diesel IC engine.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
It's not an asshole instinct, it's a mating instinct.
Women control the womb-space, which means they set the terms of behavior that will be rewarded with mating opportunities. Western women presently pass out such rewards based in large part upon status -- or more precisely: upon status displays. Big ridiculous cars are an approved status display, which means they increase their owners' mating opportunities, which means people buy them.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
because the majority cannot get more efficiency from a manual than what a computer controlled automatic can. I don't know why your bellyaching about something that already has happened. It takes some stupid hyper miler tricks to get many manuals past the best of the automatics. Really, what century are you in? The trick for the last decade in improving highway mileage has been very tall gearing in the last one or two gears of the transmission. The key is that new autos will downshift to pass and resume the tall gear as soon as possible. Throw in cylinder deactivation and you can improve many big vehicles.
Safety regulations, well your out of the loop again. The Feds are implementing even stiffer roll over requirements so that roofs will not collapse if someone has a roll over. Just how are you going to relax safety standards in a nanny state? Comparing car safety to motorcycles is like comparing apples to dogs.
We bring cars made in Mexico here everyday, they are sold under the GM and Chrysler name. Now have you seen crash test of home grown cars from Mexico or China? If your asking us why we don't allow them go ask Europe why they rejected them!
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Here's how I fish:
(1) Grab fishing rod and tackle box.
(2) Dig up a few worms from the garden
(3) Walk to a nearby lake, 15-30 minute walk depending on where I go.
(4) Fish.
(5) Walk home.
If you need to burn 300 gallons of gas to go fishing, you're doing something seriously wrong.
If the market can figure out the details, why have the government artificially raise the price of fuel?
Because the market doesn't care about externalities. There are multiple externalities involved with using gasoline, even if you choose not to believe in global climate change, and the auto industry isn't going to care about any of them until it is far too late. By attaching a price to the commodity in the form of taxes it forces the market to respond to the total cost including the externalities (assuming we come up with a reasonably close approximation for the tax,) not just the immediate cost.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank