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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.
It appears SUVs will continue to have pretty horrible gas mileage.
Diesel lovers have known this for ages. Hell my '86 got this. As does my '98.
Of course this is going to be full of 'loopholes'. Just like SUVs are 'trucks' and exempt from laws for cars.
[i]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[/i]
Of course, if Obama didn't like what they said, he'd just fire them all.
42 you say?
As a Prius owner, I look forward to the day when I look at the cars on the road around me and say, "man, I wish I was driving one of those - they get serious mileage."
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.
Place a brick underneath the gas pedal.
Why do administrations always set timetables beyond their terms? Remember Bush's "man on Mars"?
If people wanted smaller cars they'd be buying them... depriving them of this liberty under the guise of helping the environment (which this won't do) is a mistake.
For the record, I am somewhat skeptical about the climate change hype - which I think is over-exaggerated. But even if I accept CO2 as a negative externality (which I don't), then the correct response is a carbon tax. Cost the stuff appropriately and let the market decide - don't legislate inefficient results. Don't let the government "pick winners" and definitely not a cap and trade, which is too open to corruption.
That's called "collusion", when the government isn't involved.
... that meteorological ship will have already sailed....
<sarcasm>
I think it was established as a well known fact that driving a Hummer is many times more environmentally friendly than a little Prius. If Obama was truly interested in saving the planet he would mandate that every commuter drives a Hummer and we scrap these pointless high MPG cars.
</sarcasm>
Vehicles have simply gotten too heavy of late for this to be feasible without a big change in the way vehicles are powered... if we could join the efficiency of modern engines with the weight of vehicles from the early to mid 1980's, we would could meet this goal using existing technology.
This will be the death knell for trucks and SUVs based upon them... the laws of physics mean there just not going to reach these goals cheaply (or perhaps at all), and they will die for all non-necessary purposes.
Good riddance... maybe I'll be able to see traffic lights again without being buried amongst an oversized mob of excessively tall vehicles, or blinded by headlights that are at the same elevation at the roof of my car.
I will miss multi-cylinder engines, though... every manufacturer is focusing on smaller engines now, implying the death knell for the V8. Americans seems to think that a V8 has to have at least 4 liters capacity... why not just decrease the engine volume? Sure, it's got more internal friction, but the sound and smoothness more than make up for that.
It's an uncertain time for car enthusiasts.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
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.
hate to say it but my motorcycle doesn't get much better millage. motorcycles in general don't, little concern for aerodynamics on cruisers at least and no room for emission control but the most detrimental element to my millage is my throttle hand its so light and accelerates so easily that i just can hold back that and the baffles are out i need a new ecu to take into account lower back pressure.
So the Hummer will soon be illegal to have in the states?
"I don't see the sense of arguing that MPG should be regulated on a state-by-state basis (and neither does Obama, I suppose)."
In that case, maybe you could point out where exactly in the Constitution the Feds are given the power to prohibit auto manufacturers from building cars which don't meet some arbitrary MPG figure?
The Constitution deliberately put most of the law-making powers in the hands of the states with minimal powers for the Feds: that's why America took a civil war and a century of 'progressive' destruction of constitutional protections to get where it is today.
"I have little in common with someone on the opposite side of my state. No more than someone on the opposite side of the country."
And yet you believe that people on the other side of the country who have little in common with you should tell you what kind of car you can buy? Have you even considered how inconsistent your position is?
This might be a bit off-topic, but how do these efficiency increases actually *end* our addiction to oil/gas. We're still using cars powered by gasoline, after all (even hybrids have a gas engine that runs at higer speeds). It seems that to end our addiction we need another way to power our cars entirely.
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.
are they going to run on fish or tea? Improbable I tell you...
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
Instead of seeing it jump directly to it, I would rather that the fleet be required to increase to that on a straight line yearly. IOW, it is better to require that the fleet average increases ~2mpg each year. If we wait until 2016 to increase it, then the incoming admin will destroy it as being bad for the economy. In addition, over the next 8 years, America will buy the OLD standard cars and they will remain for 10-20 years.
Hopefully, the dems will grow a pair and do what is right.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Here's my fuel log.
The 1992-1995 Civic VX has a special 5-wire oxygen sensor. When conditions are right, it goes into a 'lean burn' mode, where it operates sort of like a diesel.
Lean Burn is somewhat dirty, and the car emits more nitrous oxides than other Hondas. The 5spd Honda Insight had lean burn, whereas the CVT version did not. Honda developed a catalyst for the nitrous oxides, so the Civic hybrids (2001 or so?) are able to use lean-burn too.
Kinda sad that my 15 year old Honda w/ 171,000 miles gets fuel economy equivalent to today's best hybrids...
I'm hoping that the MYT engine lives up to its promise as a retrofit engine - I'll probably need a replacement powertrain in the next 50-100,000 miles. (Watch the videos on YouTube, include a January 2009 prototype demonstration [with compressed air] at SJSU. Even if it doesn't take off as an engine, the MYT design would still save megawatt-hours of energy as a air/liquid pump.)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
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
It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Smaller, lighter cars are fine in a crash with other smaller, lighter cars. But in the US the average vehicle is so heavy that the minority of people in the small cars would get squished like a pancake. Plus US drivers seem to spend proportionately more time going at higher (highway) speeds (commutes in most other countries generally involve less highway).
In Europe and Japan and other places where smaller cars are the norm, I don't think they are perceived as unsafe at all. Particularly when they are generally used for city driving at speeds = 60 km/h anyway, you simply aren't likely to have any massively high energy impacts. As the parent said, they are also a lot more agile on the road and stop a lot quicker so can avoid accidents in more cases.
A lot of families I know have two cars. A city car (e.g. a Mazda 121 or other ultra-small vehicle), and a normal sedan. The city car gets used every day. The larger car is used for the weekend roadtrip (since it's undeniable that large vehicles are nicer for long trips, and larger engines are better for highway cruising ... and not that bad efficiency-wise if you put the cruise control on 110 km/h and leave it there).
To require this will result in extremely UNSAFE cars that no one wants to buy.
That's simply not true. Cars can be built better and smarter. Now they're just big and dumb. True, you may not be able to buy a Ford Exploder anymore, but most people didn't need those things, anyway. What makes driving unsafe is all of those crappy built, multi-ton monstrosities, and those will go the way of tailfins, anyway.
I drive a small car... I hear the whole 'squished like a pancake' thing all the time, but despite hearing it and seeing lots of even major car accidents on the Los Angeles freeways, I see a lot of people take hits in small cars and not only survive, but their cars are still working well enough to drive them away from the scene. American car safety standards are among the most rigorous in the world. Even small cars are pretty safe here.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
On the otherhand a early 1980's civic got 41mpg city and mid 50's highway, but it weighed roughly 1000lbs less.
I am curious how the fuel economy would be if we put a modern powertrain into an older much lighter body.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Allow me to translate that:
US gallon = 3.78 liters
UK gallon = 4.54 litres
Therefore it would be 50 mpg in UK... good luck with that!
Can I put a spell on those who can't spell?
Your wheels are loose and they're losing their grip, good you're there.
Ask the gays about the freedom of states' rights as they gain the right to marry one state at a time, even though the federal government refuses to recognize them.
Most of the problems of racism have constitutional solutions that supersede states' rights claims. Gays are catching up now, and it's the ability for states to experiment that is allowing it.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
"Where in the Constitution does it say that the Fed cannot prohibit auto manufacturers from building cars which don't meet some arbitrary MPG figure?"
Have you actually read the Constitution? Because you clearly don't seem to understand it.
"I understand your point, but it is a fairly weak one."
The fact that the law is blatantly unconstitutional is a 'a fairly weak point'? You must be a 'progressive'.
"Also, couldn't the Fed pull out the interstate commerce clause for any car maker that makes cars to be sold in more than one state?"
No. I see you don't understand the interstate commerce clause either.
Seriously, you might want to actually read the Constitution -- and, better yet, what the people who wrote it said about it -- before posting.
I'm not an expert, but haven't cars that get better than 42MPG been on the road for years? I'd like to see a law prohibiting the use of gasoline powered cars by 2016. The industry will adjust.
My 1980 Golf GTI and 1981 Scirocco GTI could do that doing +180 clicks on the Autobahn, my 2008 Mazda 3 diesel can do 47 MPG. I used to go to Uni in Germany and we did car pooling and we drove Golfs and one Fiesta. All of those cars got below the 8.5L/100KM with 4 adults in the car in the early 80's. I now live in Australia where we have a speed limit of 100Km/h on the freeways. I cannot understand why people still buy cars that are V6, V8 or SVU or use more petrol than 8L/100km.
to code or not to code, that is the question.
Allow me to translate that: US gallon = 3.78 liters
And you can stop right there! Since 1 Jan 2000 the gallon is no longer a legal measure in the UK. Get with the program.
They're not prohibiting anyone from producing any kind of car. GM can go back to original Humvees if they want to. They'll go under even faster, but they're allowed to do so.
However, they face significant penalties for doing so if they attempt to sell so much as one outside of Michigan. Once their trade crosses state borders, it becomes interstate, and subject to federal regulation.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The 2006 Honda Civic almost reaches this level. It has the top rating in every IIHS crash test. The manufacturer is routinely rated at or near the top of the industry in reliability. The Civic's price is comparable to a typical American car. The 2009 Civic Hybrid already tops these standards under recently tightened milage measurements. There is no reason a 42mpg car has to be unsafe, unreliable, or overly expensive.
The history of slavery in the US is the largest imaginable contradiction to your argument. You should at least address it directly. And whoever modded that observation flaimbait doesn't have a clue.
I am in favor of higher gas taxes. However, this needs to be coupled with fuel efficiency regulations. You cannot just use one or the other.
Better fuel efficiency means less fuel used and more miles driven.
Taxes mean less fuel used and less miles driven.
The first one sounds a lot better! So, we should not just use taxes.
OTOH, of course better fuel efficiency can have the perverse effect of making people want to buy even more gas because they can get so much use out of it. (Think RV's.) For this reason, we cannot just increase fuel efficiency, we must also use taxes.
Ah but I believe what you guys call a small vehicle is not what I call a small vehicle. For instance, the Mazda 121 is a very common car here, but I heard it can't even be sold in the US because it was too small to pass the very safety standards you mentioned.
But yes - small cars can be perfectly safe :)
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
Are you talking about the southern states where there was slavery, or the northern states where it was simply illegal to be black? Or the politicians who wanted to preserve the new territories for whites-only?
I drove from New York to Florida and at time was hitting 90mph on some of the states south of D.C.
For stretches of several hours on flat highways in 5th gear (averaging around 75mph) I was clocking 28mpg, dropping to a low of 19 through towns.
Not bad for a 300hp / 320ft lbs torque car that can go 0-60 in 5.1 seconds.
My Honda Civic got at the most, 32mpg.
That's scary.
According to that one website, the most recent model of Mazda 121 was a Ford Fiesta clone. Fiestas are legal in the U.S. There definitely are small cars that are not legal in the U.S., but it's not the size, it's the lack of safety features like side-impact airbags.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
I drive a small car... I hear the whole 'squished like a pancake' thing all the time, but despite hearing it and seeing lots of even major car accidents on the Los Angeles freeways, I see a lot of people take hits in small cars and not only survive, but their cars are still working well enough to drive them away from the scene.
maybe that's because the average commute speeds in LA are so low (5-11 mph average in the sepulveda pass). :P
There's a case to be made that raising the CAFE won't save oil or reduce greenhouse gases.
So true. If my car got 8 million miles per gallon, I'd totally drive 8 million times as much.
Obama better get himself reelected then. Because, you can bet if he loses to the Republicans the deadline for compliance to the 42 mpg average will be pushed back to the year 2167 lickity split.
And I don't mean that to sound partisan, because I hate both major political parties. But in my opinion, history has shown that the Republicans are definitely in bed with the oil companies. The Democrats might be too, but they keep it on the DL.
So, A single bug in the law takes effect in all 50 states instead of a single one. Democracy is an experiment some times it is nice to see what happens with slightly different laws. For example, I would NOT want the federal government to take over educational till DC schools are above average in the USA. Tim S
How does a gallon of diesel compare with a gallon of gasoline in terms of emmissions from burning it and in the amount of oil you need for raw material?
Hmmm...good question. Some options:
1. You could just raise income/sales taxes in general to cover the shortfall. However that is quite a radical depature from the 'user pays' system of fuel tax --> roads (those that drive more on the roads, pay more to maintain them ... makes sense). So this would be an unpopular move.
2. Add the tax to the cost of other driving-related expenses. The most obvious one is your car registration/licence plate fee. Now admittedly registering your car doesn't cost a different amount depending on how much you drive it. But you could adjust the tax depending on vehicle weight, which would, on average, end up somewhat like a user pays system (heavier vehicles damage roads quicker, and pay more tax). So your annual registration fee might be ten times higher or so (dunno the exact numbers). Americans would initially find this unpalatable but some other countries already do this (including my own ... I pay close to $700/year to register my vehicle, whereas in the US I understand the fee is much, much, much less).
I realize that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I have to agree with the parent post. I drive a couple small cars, one of which being a 1995 Honda del Sol. Two seater t-top convertible. I've seen pictures of what happens when one gets a Suburban in the ass at a 60mph differential in speed. The driver got out and, while being slightly confused from being nailed by the airbag, was otherwise fine.
Small cars, if properly engineered, are very survivable in nasty accidents. The difference is that they're usually severely damaged by any accident, unlike bigger vehicles like real SUVs and trucks. I've had at least one full sized GM SUV or trucks most of my life, and minor accidents can almost always be fixed by unbolting a panel or a bumper and putting on a new one (correctly pre-painted, of course...) Not so with the little Honda, where a minor fender bender required pretty massive repairs (and about a $2500 bill).
Oh, and my car already makes nearly 40mpg without any terribly exotic technologies, and I like it that way. Though since it's approaching 300k miles, it's going to need a new engine one of these days.
So what are they going to be making cars out of to make this happen?
Plastic?
Balsa Wood?
I was recently in an auto accident in my 1996 Buick Century. This car is made out of steel. Collision speed was probably about 25 MPH
My bumper was bent in a little-bit. Total cost of repairs: $0 (why repair it? its just bent in a little)
The other guys car was DEMOLISHED because his car was fiberglass and plastic. Yeah, those crumple zones worked to save him.. but they also meant that his car sustained severe very clostly damage.
"His name was James Damore."
There's a case to be made that raising the CAFE won't save oil or reduce greenhouse gases.
Which references the following passage:
Why? Because improvements in fuel economy effectively make fuel less expensive, and when costs fall, demand tends to rise. As driving has grown cheaper in recent decades, people have done more of it - choosing to drive to work instead of taking the bus, for example, or buying a second car, or moving to a house with a longer commute, or sending the kids to college with cars of their own. Between 1983 and 2001, data from the Energy Information Administration show, the annual amount of driving by the average American household rose from 16,800 vehicle-miles to more than 23,000.
This is known as a variant of Jevon's Paradox.
Jevons is ONLY correct if the supply of energy resource is A: available and B: steady or increasing in availability. This is true because with steady or increasing availability, price remains stable or decreases. However, if the availability is not steady and/or decreasing, then conservation is the only possible route for economic growth, as one must reduce one's consumption *below* the depletion curve in order for "extra" resource to be put into expanded production.
This also eventually fails. Energetic resources (oil, coal, gas, uranium, the gallium in solar cells, etc.) eventually give out, and are never uniformly distributed. What happens is you run up against asymmetries and granularities. The asymmetries result in cartels, and testing the granularities results in Very Bad Things like revolutions.
So, basically, the article is essentially correct, if we were living in the 1990s. But we are not. We are either at or very near peak oil production, and from here (or the very near future) it is a constant down slope in energy availability. Unfortunately Solar/Wind/Nuclear etc. is not ramping up fast enough and is ill suited to many basic applications and materials (such as carbon fibre, plastics, and fertiliser) and it seems very likely that we will get "caught out" in the mid 20teens, making the 2020s a rather dire time.
According to the ,a href="http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf">Hirsh Report it takes 20 years of expensive conversion efforts to shift society to a new energy paradigm. 10 years is a bare minimum and likely to be difficult. We're still talking about trying to save the Happy Motoring Culture, which is another way of saying, we're caught with our pants down.
Make plans or have them made for you.
And remember, Mother Nature's plans do not include your survival, much less comfort.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I lol'd. :) It's posts like that one that make me keep my threshold at -1. Funny stuff comes up on /., and I don't want to miss it. :D
BTW, does posting Anon save my karma, or does it just hide my name?
It also saves our Karma. And I \o/'d too :)
Welcome to the 1990's USA. I've never even seen a car in my lifetime that did worse than that in Europe.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/17/autos/honda_civic_hf/index.htm
I understand that safety is now a major concern and safety drags down mileage. But the numbers are not far fetched.
from the article
"The CRX HF got an Environmental Protection Agency-estimated 57 mpg gallon in highway driving. Today, the most fuel-efficient non-hybrid Civic you can buy gets an EPA-estimated 34 mpg on the highway. Even today's Honda Civic Hybrid can't match it, achieving EPA-estimated highway mileage of just 45 mpg. The Toyota Prius, today's fuel mileage champ, gets 46 mpg on the highway."
some peoples moderation does not include weed
The powers [of the federal government] included in the THIRD class are those which provide for the harmony and proper intercourse among the States. ...to wit: to regulate commerce among the several States and the Indian tribes; to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin; to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the current coin and secureties of the United States; to fix the standard of weights and measures; to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws of bankruptcy, to prescribe the manner in which the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of each State shall be proved, and the effect they shall have in other States; and to establish post offices and post roads.
I haven't read the Federalist papers in a bit, but what historical evidence have you found that makes you believe that the primary goal was liberty from regulations?
With ULS Diesel (Ultra-Low Sulphur), the only harmful thing that comes out of the tailpipe is CO2. And as BioDiesel is VERY easy to make (from used vegetable oil of any kind), the amount of oil needed is thoeretically nil.
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.
Granted, improving fuel economy by 30% over 7 years is better than not at all, but if they want to make a _real_ difference, they should try to improve it it by 20 to 30% *EVERY YEAR*, not every 7. If it was mandatory, either do it or don't sell cars in this country, they'd find a way.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Or you could watch the 5th Gear smash test of a Smart FourTwo into a fixed concrete barrier at 50MPH. It's on Youtube (in several places). Still walk-away-able, though definately not drivable.
Remember kids, the USA is not the only oil-burning country in the world.
As long as it is economically viable for oil to be taken out of the ground and burned, it will be.
Personally, I think it we are better off letting clean burning, catalytic converter equipped big-ass American SUVs burn it up NOW, rather than having China and India waste their time building up a losing-cause-industry to create their own putt-putt gas burners to do it.
Either way, it all ends up in the same air we all share.
The sooner the oil is gone, the sooner we get on to the replacement.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Nothing will happen to sports cars or high performance cars. These vehicles already pay a "gas guzzler" tax as a penalty for not meeting the current standards. I imagine this will continue under the new regulations. If demand warrants it we'll still have vehicles that don't meet these standards. You'll just have to pay more for them.
I am not taking about small crossover suvs, but the real ones, the ones with a truck underneath, say a Tahoe, Escalade or Durango. One of these can crush my normal sized car in a pinch. They make the road unsafe for me and others, and most of them don't have a real reason to exist save for the big egos of their drivers. They also consume stupid amounts of gas needlessly. Most of the people driving these behemots do it because the perceived 'safety' the give to them. Too bad the things are too prone to rollovers. Also, I am not supporting anybody's agenda, least of all the liberal agenda. I just expressed my opinion that driving cars so big is a stupid waste of resources and unsafe to everyone.
Greetings, programs!
Just allow the motherfucking diesel cars to be sold again in all states.
I couldn't find it in the article. But in the Globe article it stated some incredibly stupid "facts." The first was that we import more oil now than we did in 1975. That's because we produce far less oil. US oil production peaked in 1970, as predicted by oil geologist Hubbard. Then it states that we now use more oil than ever. Amazing. I wonder if that has anything to do with the population being larger? Or the fact that there are more cars on the road?
Sorry. Forcing all new cars to have better fuel economy just means when people do trade in, they will be using less gas, and thus less oil. And in 5 years, there's a very good chance they will be plugin electrics with gas generators which use almost no oil and far less oil-dependent components, like belts, transmissions, motor oil, and so on.
Here in the real world, the interstate commerce clause is what the SCOTUS says it is, not what 0123456 wants it to be.
I realise that people in the US are a bit strange, but on what highways are you liable to encounter a car going the other way in your lane of traffic?
That only leaves you getting rear ended, and from what I've heard about US highways, that'll involve a 6 mph fender bender.
As for what happens to your car - if you are involved in a high energy crash, you're much better off if your car is the one that absorbs as much of the energy as possible. Personally I'd rather be able to walk away from a car that can't drive away, than be driven away in a car that I can't walk away from.
Besides - if you are THAT keen on being in the biggest vehicle in a crash, may I introduce you to Mr. Big Rig? Plenty of space for the kids in the cab. No worries about hooking up a trailer if you need it. Best view over traffic you can possibly get. And you can probably crash into an H1 Hummer and tell your friends "I crashed into one of those tiny suburban soccer mom trolleys ... I'm still picking bits out of my grill."
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.
For the first, depends on which emissions. For CO2, it beats gasoline hands down, but it loses in terms of NOx emissions.
As for the latter, that's not completely relevant. Gasoline and diesel come from the same barrel of oil. The main part of the refining process is separating the mix of hydrocarbons that make up crude.
Though to answer the question, 1 barrel (42 US gallons) of oil yields about 19 gallons of gasoline, 10 gallons of diesel, and another 13 gallons of other stuff, such as fuel oil, petroleum feedstocks (for plastic and chemical production), propane, coke (the fuel, not the drink), asphalt, lube oil, and other things.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
All taxes (and social security now) just go into the general fund. It's not direct fuel tax -> roads. It all goes into one big mass which is divvied up in the budget. The necessary funds will simply come from another tax (or more likely several taxes) increased (or not, depending on actual revenues and expenses at this future point) to make up the shortfall.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Well, now CO2 is not an emission? "Emission" comes from Latin "ex" and "mittere", i.e. "from" and "to send", or "to send out". Ergo, CO2 is an emission produced by car engines, just like water is for that sake.
You seem to imply that CO2 is not a polluting emission, and curiously you call people who think it is "indoctrinated"; somewhat ironic, since the scientific consensus is that anthropogenic global warming is as real as science gets. If you are an AGW denier, you are the one indoctrinated by certain interest groups (fortunately mostly confined to the US), so much indoctrinated in fact that you ignore the world-wide consensus of people who know much more than you or I about this issue.
So, if you want to disprove the consensus (which historically has indeed happened a number of times), the only thing you need is to prove it wrong. So do not waste your time posting your wisdom on Slashdot, but submit your theories, measurements and simulations to a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and when the article is accepted we will have something to talk about.
Otherwise, you could simply find a peer-reviewed scientific article (even if only one) that disproves AGW. Good luck with that, since it has been attempted before.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Well thank god we live in America with a free market where companies can make these decisions on their own.
Oh yeah, ask southern blacks all about the wondrous freedoms of states' rights.
As if unitarian states in the same time period didn't practice slavery...
If I ever meet one during the 1800s, I'll let you know.
You'll get paid when we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.
Yup, the Brits dropped that useless system a long time ago. They just film two versions of Top Gear, one for the domestic market using the kilometers and liters and another for BBC America with miles and gallons. Makes sense to me.
And while we are at it, when did stone become an SI unit?
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
"(For example: gay marriage, abortion rights, fuel MPG). I don't see the sense of arguing that MPG should be regulated on a state-by-state basis"
So the things *you* hold hold dear should be enforced on everyone else via the federal government? Gotcha.
Then again if abortion is to be *banned* at the federal level I'm sure you'd sing a different tune. More along the lines of "well in california it's legal! the feds can't override their laws1!!"
If gay marriage is banned at the federal level you'll be happy?
No you just want to use the federal government to force your will onto 200 million people of varying beliefs and ideals.
Be careful though, what goes for the goose goes for the gander and the republicans will gain power again sooner or later, and you might wish you hadn't given *them* (Texas, Alabama, etc) that sort of power over *you*.
The states as individuals created the legal entity know as the US Federal Government. Federalism is designed to protect *you* from people over the hill who think the opposite that you do on many things. It also protects *them* from you. If one side breaks the contract then it's a free for all, and I would have thought that eight years of *them* having power was enough to show you why an ultra powerful federal government isn't a good thing.
If not perhaps the next eight will.
What about F = MA? Doesn't anyone else remember that from high school physics? Any passenger vehicle can have crumple zones, airbags, a monocoque construction, reinforced passenger compartment, etc...so all other things being equal a less massive car, of the type that would enjoy better fuel economy, must be prepared to absorb MORE of the total energy in a collision with a more massive vehicle. This means that for an equal level of technology and equipment the more massive vehicle in the same class (i.e. not the SUV vs the sedan) will always have a safety advantage since it will have to absorb less energy in the impact with the less massive vehicle.
42 miles per gallon = 17.86 kilometers / L
No keyboard detected. Press F1 to continue...
> I realise that people in the US are a bit strange, but on what highways are you liable to encounter a car going the other way in your lane of traffic?
Anywhere you may have a drunk driver or someone unfamiliar with the road (both of which I've seen).
The threat posed by oncoming cars is just one... stationary or other smaller moving objects still pose a great threat (ie walls, trees, animals, lights, poles, dividers, etc).
What are your chances of hitting any of them? Depends on where you live... but on average pretty small... not unlike the chance that you'll need an airbag or seatbelt.
Just as for a time some safety options were optional for those who wanted that added bit of protection... so I drive a slightly larger vehicle just in case I happen to encounter something unexpected on the road.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Allow me to translate that:
US gallon = 3.78 liters
UK gallon = 4.54 litres
Therefore it would be 50 mpg in UK... good luck with that!
It would seem they don't need luck.
Every economist? You can take your social metaphysics and control by fear and shove it wherever you like, but lets just be clear you are talking about ideal high school Keynesian Economics and not real world, grown up Austrian Economics. I am glad you had the capacity to drool over colorful supply and demand graphs, but if you have any additional brain power, try a real book like "The Theory of Money and Credit" or "Keynes the Man" which is contemporary to "The General Theory". And as much as I might like to simply agree with Mesis and Rothbard, I think if Keynes were alive today he would say we were taking all this WAY to far. Keynes advocated for community level collaborative interventionalism, not the head of the Federal government appointing himself CEO and engineer of the next generation of high speed coffins that fart strawberries. Holy Shit!
Strong language is for effect. So long as everyone with the slightest critique is getting modded to hell, I might as well go down all the way.
Oh yeah, and fuck using taxes as moral regulatory tool. What, you run out of Bibles to choke people to death with?
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
42 miles per gallon = 17.8560357 kilometers per liter. According to Google. Sounds very doable. Your average Jap city car these days, already gets that, and more.
My 20 year old VW Golf Diesel goes 22 km/liter (and the motor is pretty worn out), so i really think that new cars should be able to top that. The Mini Cooper Diesel goes 25.6 km/liter in EU mix (thats both urban driving and freeway driving) and it is not slow either.
"I find your lack of faith disturbing"
Oh no! My 20 year old Toyota Corolla Station Wagon only gets 35mpg! :(
I might have to get a new car some day.
I got a chance to drive a BMW 760Li at the Ultimate Drive charity event last year... what a ride! I hope they have one of new (turbocharged!!!) models at this year's event.
*looks on Google* Ah, crap... it's been canceled for this year... :(
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
no point in enforcing smaller cars instead of those ridiculous SUVs when half of the country simply needs a SUV because they are so fat that they don't fit in a normal car anymore.
definition of "normal car": Volkswagen Golf size - or even smaller
I drive a Toyota Yaris with my wife and my 3 months old son and we have no trouble to fit us and quite some luggage into the car while sitting comfortably. The car uses 5-6 liters/100km, depending on where and how I drive. That should be roughly 42 mpg.
So I'm not too impressed by this rule.
Expecting the average car in 7 years to use as much gasoline as a pretty standard car uses now doesn't require too much.
That equals 17.8560357 kilometers per liter according to google.
And that in 2016.
6+ years from now, maybe even 7.
Do I need to laugh? Do I need to cry?
Please have a look at cars outside of your bankrupt nation.
(no personal offence, the oligarchs are doing it)
In 2016 I will be driving a car that does 33 to 50 kilometers per liter. http://evolution.loremo.com/
This car is based on technology that is available NOW.
But those are all diesel cars. They always get better mileage than petrol cars.
Still if you look at this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_May_2008_UK_fuel_economy_ratings
There are several petrol cars that get over 50 mpg.
Why do we need luck? In the UK we already have plenty of cars that achieving that. My car regularly does 55mpg and I've got 66mpg out of it when driving carefully on a long journey. Some smaller cars in the UK are advertising 65 or 75mpg as their standard combined figure.
I haven't checked the current model year, but in the 2001 model year the Dodge Durango had lots of headroom. I'm only mildly tall, but I got the feeling I could sit up straight and wear a big Texas-style hat while driving.
It's typical to get an extra inch of room if you get a trim package that lacks a sunroof/moonroof hole in the top. The mechanism eats up space.
Allow me to translate that:
US gallon = 3.78 liters
UK gallon = 4.54 litres
Therefore it would be 50 mpg in UK... good luck with that!
Why good luck? With my 8 year old AUDI A4 (96kW, 1.9l Diesel) I am able to reach 100km with about 4.7 liters (constant speed of about 140km/h [87mph] at the highway).
That means 60mpg (UK gallons)...so...well...I canÂt see the magic in 50mpg.
They have cars in the UK?
When will we learn that legislation doesn't make things magically happen?
People like to save gas, but you know what people like more?
1. They like to have enough room to comfortably drive their car, and pack there stuff for a trip.
2. They like to know, that when they get into a car wreck, that the car will protect them.
3. They like to know that when they need the power to pull a trailer, or avoid a crash that it is there when they press the pedal.
4. They like to know that they will be able to afford their damn car before they have to worry about gas.
It isn't that car manufactures don't want to produce better mileage cars, but they only have so much money to invest in research. Obviously, if it were simple to eek out more gas mileage, they would. Customers want to save money at the pumps. Results don't magically happen. More gas mileage is a trade off in: cost, power, size, and safety. With car maker struggling already to make it, this is a brutal slap in the face. This bill will do to car manufactures, what all the added security after 9/11 did to airline companies.
It would make more sense to translate that into sane, metric units:
1/27.5 mpg = 8.6 L/100 km
1/42 mpg = 5.6 L/100 km
However, to compare it with EU goals you'll also need to calculate the CO2 emissions:
8.6 L/100 km: 206 g/km (petrol)
5.6 L/100 km: 134 g/km (petrol)
8.6 L/100 km: 232 g/km (diesel)
5.6 L/100 km: 151 g/km (diesel)
Claus
Too bad that the world will end in 2012 :)
On a moped, if you pedal and it's downhill. With a following wind.
Typical subcompacts are around 8l/100km.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Damn ... to early in morning for me
Bikers.....The only people that understand why a dog hangs his head out a car window.
And I could just as easily point out the federal government doing medical marijuana raids in areas that have legalized it or decriminalized it.
*yawn*
The principles on which America was founded were the ability to run a slave farm without having to pay taxes to Britain, and only allowing rich white men to vote. Maybe those principles weren't so great after all.
My 1.6l Ford Fiesta Diesel gets 51 miles per US gallon. The new Fiesta Econetic would officially get something like 60.
My 6 year old family car (here in the uk) averages 42mpg with ease, I can get 48mpg on a long journey with careful driving. The new runabout we have bought for my wife gets 5* on crash safety and does 50-60mpg. Now these are small vehicles but I would never consider, right now, buying a car that did less that 40mpg regardless of how big it was. I'm shocked that anyone considers 42mpg is some sort of great target to achieve!
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
All that from simple increase in gas-mileage?
In Europe we have cars that have mileages that are a lot better than mileages in American cars. And I don't think that our cars are "crappy". In fact, most people would consider those gas-guzzling American cars as the crappy cars....
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
as an indication of what is anywhere else.
For every mini/smart I can show you a dozen of practically any other car, if not more. Hell in many areas I can show you more than a dozen times that in SUVs about anyhwere.
The people who want fuel efficient cars are buying them (fwiw I own a miata (30 avg which I track on fueleconomy.gov) and a R1200RT (49 avg). People vilify SUVs but go look at any luxury car lineup and tell me what you see. I don't see how companies like Infiniti or Lexus can meet the goals unless they roll up under their parents mileage figures. Granted Lexus will have a hybrid sedan soon even it will barely average 34.
Now what would be impressive if Obama and Corp can get small diesels all around. California has been the problem there so are they going to prevent us from getting the high mileage diesels Europe has or did Obama and Corp make a deal with California?
Ford is going to have an issue because their "Eco Boost" is a joke. Instead of truly down sizing the engines offered with this direct injection turbo setup they are offering even higher horsepower and torque. In other words, they have an opportunity to make nice small engines for their midsize cars but chose to just pump up a six while claiming it still beats the other guys eights.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
And you can give your weight to your GP either in kilograms or stones.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
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.
This seems to be the US government forcing US manufacturers to play catch up to most of the rest of the world in aiming for fuel efficiency, somewhere they've been determined not to invest in until they've had their arms twisted.
For decades fuel has been heavily subsidized to the US consumer so driving huge planet destroying gas guzzlers was cheap, so companies like Ford and GM had no need to spend money on R&D to get better mileage, they keep building what they have. When fuel prices rocket up consumers suddenly start to be aware how thirsty they car is and want to trade it in, meanwhile Ford ignore this trend and keep building gas guzzlers which end up glued to forecourts and force Ford to go for a govt hand out due to "unforeseen circumstances".
Manufacturers around the world haven't had the luxury of consumers with subsidized fuel so they've had to become efficient to appeal to consumers. European and especially Asian manufacturers have a market outside their own zones BECAUSE they focus on fuel efficiency. Cars build for the US market don't sell outside the US because they tend to be gas guzzlers which struggle with bends.
This has given the US manufacturers a huge gap to make up just to get to the same level as their competitors. Until their hand has been forced, they've made no efforts to do it themselves. If they complain at how hard it'll be, tell them to look outside the US....yes, believe it or not cars are not just made in the US. There are plenty of examples of how to be fuel efficient, some with better results than others, and all patented by their competitors while they were asleep at the wheel......gotta love that patent system huh? It really helps innovation.
The other way would have been to tax fuel in the US, drive the fuel prices WAAAAAAYYYYY up and see the car manufacturers feel the wrath of their customers. Doing that would likely bankrupt them, driving a lot of people out of work and destroying that sector, not to mention writing off government handouts they already got. The point of any handout to a business is to help tide them over so they can pull out of a bad patch to become stable and profitable again; it's an investment.
Somewhat reasonable, but that's still not going to help you much, when you find yourself encountering Mr. Big Rig comming at you unexpectedly.
I appreciate your conversion, but you left something out: Nobody in the UK uses UK gallons. Not even the car companies.
I can tell you that because my Passat gets 50 mpg in the UK. When I purchase petrol, I do it in litres. I then do a calculation myself, using the standard litre per gallon conversion, and get the same exact mileage that my Passat automatically calculated.
Here's one example, I could find more with a bit more Googling. This one involved a foreign driver who was most likely accustomed to driving on the opposite side of the road, but others have also involved the drunk and the elderly.
Still, the only way to ensure that you're not going to be paste on the dashboard in such a crash is to drive a vehicle significantly bigger than everyone else on the road. A 140mph-combined-speed head-on between two Hummers will produce much the same result as a head-on between two Smart cars.
Thank you for the CO2 numbers. People forget that diesel mileage is not comparable with gasoline mileage... it's a more-dense fuel! It produces more power per unit volume, but also more CO2 and requires more crude to produce. Of course, the engines are a bit more efficient so you get some savings there - but they also are heavier and more expensive, so everything needs to be weighed out carefully. You can't just look at MPG or L/100km.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Although Diesel gives off about 12% more CO2 emissions the energy per volume burned is even better.
According to this study Diesel engined vehicles presently have a 24-33% advantage.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
That's 5.6 liters/100km in Canada. A lot of cars seem to be in the 7-9 range. I wonder - are they going with silly existing measurements? Our family vehicle was rated at 8.8 lt/100km, and after a year or so the real mileage seems to be 13.4 lt/100km. It might get 10 on an extended highway drive at a reasonable speed.
There's already a version of the volkswagon golf that can do 50 mpg. Getting this sort of technology into most cars by 2016 doesn't sound unrealistic to me.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
Googling here and there when we got the Prius, we decided to get snow tires for winter. 42 is about where we've been in winter between dragging those things around and keeping the car warm. Assuming that average is a company average including trucks and vans, I would say 42 mpg is a very "good faith" goal that will have to include some two-seater smart cars and electrics in the mix.
It's mostly a matter of perception:
a) bigger cars aren't necessarily more safe for its occupants (mostly because SUVs are built with 20 year old tech; accidentally, making small cars safer involves much more than simply reselling old tech in new package)
b) it's quite easy to modify big & heavy cars in such a way that smaller cars aren't really at a big disadvantage (properly flexible, properly low bumpers on new big trucks for example - but of course, SUVs wouldn't be as "manly" anymore)
BTW, it many (most?) of european countries city limit is 50 km/h nowadays.
One that hath name thou can not otter
That's something I don't understand. If they are trucks, then why don't they have "B" license plates? In Chicago, there's some roads that you can't drive a pickup truck on (they have a sign saying no trucks, and the police enforce that against anything with a B plate). Yet the SUVs are allowed on them. Not fair.
Yes, that's the answer (to life, the universe and EVERYTHING!)
In some cases of stationary objects that you mention, hitting them would be likely YOUR FRAKKING FAULT, bigtime. Besides, they would probably remain stationary throughout the collision, so the trick of "letting the other car deal with my energy" (like you would have the right...) wouldn't work anyway.
In other cases - the vector / main mass of collision would be one the windshield (unless you're opting to drive something not only large, but ridiculously large)
One that hath name thou can not otter
People who advocate high fuel taxes as a means to improve emissions/fuel efficiency seem to forget about how punitive and regressive such taxes are to people who cannot afford a new vehicle and have no access to public transportation.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
The numbers you quote are for current distillation settings that mirror current demand fractions. The refineries can produce more diesel and less gasoline, for instance, if there were demand for it. They have processes to make heavy hydrocarbons into lighter ones, and vice versa.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Smaller, lighter cars are fine in a crash with other smaller, lighter cars. But in the US the average vehicle is so heavy that the minority of people in the small cars would get squished like a pancake.
That is just nonsense. A small car can be much safer than a larger car, depending on the construction. Modern small cars use all kinds of smart tricks like:
- Putting a bar in front of the engine so a non-100% frontal crash (like most are) will still use the entire front crumple zone.
- Transferring the energy around the cabin, so the parts of the car that are behind you will crumple, while you are safe.
- Moving the engine out of the way. The engine is a very heavy and inflexible part of the car that will get pushed into your lap during a crash. By leading it downward, it will go under you, and can move farther (and can thus be used more effectively for slow/survivable braking).
This is an example of a 'duel' between an big old car and a modern small car which shows the difference in practice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ygYUYia9I
Of course, a modern SUV or truck might be better designed than that old Volvo, although many SUVs and trucks seem to be fairly poorly designed for safety. For example, the most common cause of death when driving a SUV is rollovers (where your head is squished into the pavement), which is much less common in small cars. On the whole, big cars do tend to be a bit safer than small cars, but I doubt that you are much safer in a modern sedan or station wagon when compared to a SUV (when looking at death statistics that encompass all accident types). I wouldn't drive a Smart Fortwo in the US though (but I'm not comfortable driving that car in Europe either).
Plus US drivers seem to spend proportionately more time going at higher (highway) speeds (commutes in most other countries generally involve less highway). Particularly when they are generally used for city driving at speeds = 60 km/h anyway, you simply aren't likely to have any massively high energy impacts.
Europe isn't one big city, you know. There is plenty of highway with mostly 80-120 km/h speed limits and a lot of people use these for their commute. In my country, the roads are very heavily used and it is very hard to expand them because there is little room around them. As a result, the number of lanes available often changes for even the largest highways. So you get a lot of bottlenecks where speeds suddenly drop from 120 km/h to 0 km/h. It's no surprise that a lot of accidents happen at the end of the congestion.
Those roads always have central dividers, so head on collisions are not possible (unless someone goes against the traffic). However, plenty of 80 km/h roads do not have them. These roads usually have a lot of corners, so a badly timed overtake can cause a 160 km/h combined collision (although it probably doesn't matter what car you drive then). A lot of these roads are lined with trees and it's really no fun to drive 80 km/h into a tree.
Because of the heavy traffic and fairly dangerous road situation, there is a fairly big focus on safety. However, most Europeans understand that a small car can be quite safe. They also have to consider parking space, which is more limited in Europe; and fuel costs, which are much higher.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
Unless you're freakishly tall, try Scion Xb. Huge legroom, huge headroom. I don't know about the current model -- drive one from two years back. It'll be cheaper and easier to park, anyway.
I'm sorry, this has nothing to do with ending our dependency on oil or curbing carbon emissions - it's about creating another tax that will be invisible to the consumer.
First of all, it will be nearly impossible to get that kind of fuel mileage for a fleet average in such a short period of time without outright dictating what your customers buy. And yes it is a very short period of time - the next few model years are already slated for production, parts are ordered, and contracts are signed - putting together a production car takes a good amount of time. It will require designing new, lighter frames and more efficient power-trains. They could probably bang out a couple models, but they'd most likely be half-assed and avoided by customers (this is what happened with the last time this came around - anyone remember cars in the late 70's and 80's?).
The main issue, however, is consumers LOVE huge inefficient cars, and auto makers make HUGE profits off of them. It will undoubted be cheaper and easier for them to simply take their time getting to the new restrictions and continue selling their current line-up. The government will slap them with a fine which they'll gladly pay and pass along to the consumer.
In the end, the government has more of your money and your support, and the world isn't any greener.
My 91 Honda Civic gets 45 consistantly, and up to 50 mpg. I always laugh when the new car commercials claim "Amazing 32 mpg!" for a economy sedan.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
If you wait, you're very likely gonna wait for nothing, or wait longer than you expect, or you are going to pay a massive premium for such fuel efficient cars. Obama can't just wave a magic wand and cars get more fuel efficient AND remain the same size and weight. If it were so easy to make vehicles (that people actually want to buy) have such fuel efficiency, Detroit, or Tokyo, or Seoul would have done it long ago.
If you want such a fuel efficient car, you can get them today. They tend to be very small cars, things like Minis, or slightly larger, but still very small. Or you can try going the hybrid route, but you will pay a premium for 'new-technology' fuel efficiency. The problem is, if the Obama administration gets its way, the car makers will all be forced (probably) to sell cars that are so expensive, it'd be cheaper to buy a less efficient 'conventional' car, and just buy more gas! I mean, do you *want* to pay $40,000 for a Chevy Cavalier/Cobalt class of car (which I think usually sell for $20,000)?
You can't just regulate things to be the way you want - if it were possible to cost-effectively increase fuel efficiency standards, the free market really would have taken care of this a long time ago. I know it's become vogue to think the free market model is completely wrong and the source of all the world's problems, but at it's heart, it's really simple - people will find the optimum balance between price and features through negotiation without government butting in. If features are *too damn expensive* they won't pay for them. The government, if it tries to use the power of regulation to force people to pay for features which are too expensive *will* get a nasty surprise - the economy (or at least that part of the economy, like the New Automobile market) will become seriously broken because of the regulations.
Yes, yes, I know the economy is already seriously broken, right now, but mandates like this will not do anything to help fix it.
A huge number of EU cars already do better than that so no luck required with that. You may need luck to translate that success over to America mind you where the extra 20 stone per American person might drag the figures down.
This is about as funny as when China made it a law that the Dalai Lama could not reincarnation with out there expressed permission.
Just because they pass a law does not mean anything will happen. The North American companies will drag there feet and claim it would cost to much money and will need a bailout. Even then they will ways to pocket the money instead of helping the community by saving energy and the environment. Most car manufactures live in a short term finical gain scenario mind set. And if thing go bad in the long term they can expect a bail out by the tax payers.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
...which is less than 1% of the CO2 that a 50MPG car produces while traveling down the highway.
VW polo was tested on an episode of Top Gear, touted a 75 MPG ratio. Where is this in america? Oh yes, it'll never get here because the gas companies would go belly up...
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
With my 8 year old AUDI A4 (96kW, 1.9l Diesel)
Diesel. I'm sure you know the difference, and why your MPG rating doesn't mean anything vs. a gasoline engine's MPG rating.
Because of the 10th ammendment
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Yeah, but you know what they say about mopeds.
Mopeds are like fat chicks, sure, they're both fun to 'ride', but, you don't want your friends to see you on either one of them.
Thank you, I'll be here all week.....try the veal.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Lighten up Francis.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's 35 not 42. http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/05/19/19climatewire-white-house-proposes-new-stricter-national-f-12208.html Helps to do some research.
Being poor come with implicit understanding that your screwed unless your willing to be creative.
This is the key point. Poor people don't have as many choices as rich people. That's pretty much what it means to be poor.
As I've said in other response to this "it hurts the poor" argument, if that is our concern, then give the poor cash so that they can spend it on alternative housing, alternative transport, cheaper running vehicle, or what ever best meets their needs. But using the "it hurts the poor" argument because we, middle-class people, don't want to face the kinds of difficult choices that the poor regularly face seems oddly ironic and a tad hypocritical.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
If the market can figure out the details, why have the government artificially raise the price of fuel?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I'll bet newly printed dollars that none of these Sierra Club boneheads have ever consulted a single engineer to find out if this is possible in a high-volume production environment. Sure, I've seen hand-tuned cars that get 100 MPG but you can't build them with any regularity.
Second, what these boneheads really want is everyone driving a Smart car which I wouldn't be caught dead in...actually, I'd probably end up as Spam-in-a-can. Extrapolate that out and you'll find that electric cars that aren't fuel-cell based require a source of power. That means you can't go too far from a developed area. Charging stations aren't likely to show up anywhere but cities so drivers will be restricted to the confines of a city. The Sierra Club would LOVE that. No more hoards of evil humans polluting their precious national parks. But I digress. The reality is that people will gravitate to buying more and more trucks because they will still have to run on fossil fuels (diesel) because nobody can pull off an electric utility truck or 18-wheeler.
The fact is that small cars are unsafe no matter how many airbags you stick in them, by the sheer fact that they are small. Large cars aren't automatically safe, but small cars automatically are not. When people start talking about fuel efficiency, everyone seems to forget about how dangerous being on the road is - it's the #1 cause of the death for young people like me. I for one am never getting a compact or subcompact sized car - probably going stick to a nice, mid-size, safe car.
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
VW polo was tested on an episode of Top Gear, touted a 75 MPG ratio. Where is this in america? Oh yes, it'll never get here because the gas companies would go belly up...
...or Americans don't buy super-minis. That's a new market for this country. Nice try on your conspiracy theory though. We have some great parting gifts for you.
-Turkey
Typical subcompacts are around 8l/100km.
For a while VW was selling a subcompact - Lupo TDI - that did 3L/100km. (Or ~78MPG in American terms.)
42MPG = 5.6L/100km
50MPG = 4.7L/100km
Allow diesels under 2.0 liters for 10 years into the USA to give them a chance to get popular. But wait, if you were actually thinking that the government would do something sane that allowed 42MPG standard to be achieved then you are a sucker.
...that since trucks only need to improve to 29MPG over the next 7 years, the SUV isn't going away any time soon.
Advice: on VPS providers
The fuel mileage numbers have already been met. CAFE is just a financial incentive to companies to sell more fuel efficient vehicles. It is not a "requirement" (I don't think BMW ever met it, and hasn't tried, it just pays the penalties as a tax and sells whatever it wants). It is a financial incentive to make things more efficient. They aren't requiring any technology. They aren't requiring any changes (other than a cost penalty for any company that doesn't wish to participate). They are just making an incentive to increase mileage.
Learn to love Alaska
Until the automakers realize that using a inefficient battery that barely gets the job done isn't the right way, this isn't going to happen.
I think we need to start by getting more clean diesel vehicles on the road first while new technology is being developed to increase the *power* and *distance* a clean vehicle can accomplish.
I'd like to see a large truck that still has plenty of power (600ft/lbs + torque) and get anywhere near that 42MPG. And don't get me wrong here, that's not sarcastic.
I'm sorry but I'm 6'+ and one of these little "hybrids" which btw can't even pay for themselves in the cost of fuel in less than 10 years. I'm not going to buy one, I'm doing my part by having a RAM 2500 Clean Diesel instead of a gas engine but it still leaves me wondering... are the tall/bigger people going to get screwed by all this?
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but it is a lot of fun to drive and there are spec racing series for them as well.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Maybe he's talking about the period from around 1890 to 1960 when most southern states used their states' rights to prevent blacks from voting or holding office, and to prevent criminal punishment for racially motivated lynchings.
The Polo is not a supermini.
It's a "compact" or whatever your marketing term is, but it's no smaller than a Prius or the actual revamped Mini.
Who gave anyone the right to tell businesses what they can make, or me what I can drive?
The greenies will say it's for the future safety of the planet, but it's all bunk:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/14/magazines/fortune/globalwarming.fortune/index.htm
Why was that moderated Troll?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Did I ever goof... I apologize, somehow I managed to skim over all the imperial notations.
Those aren't bad looking cars, and I wouldn't mind having one, though I think the Renault looks a bit light.
I tried driving a couple of 46mpg cars back last year, but couldn't stand them, the engine whined way too much at highway speeds(most of my driving).
I'd LOVE to see more diesel vehicles over here, unfortuantly our emissions standards weighting makes them more difficult to produce/import, and for a while diesel spiked MUCH higher than gasoline. Oh, and there's the whole mess from back when I was a kid about diesel cars not being powerful/reliable.
I don't read AC A human right
Cars don't kill people, people kill people.
A few solutions:
Make the road test difficult to pass. If more than 75% of people pass, it is too easy.
Get rid of the system that forces companies to give insurance to the highest-risk drivers. If you are so bad that nobody wants to insure you, I sure do not want you on the road with me.
Especially because I spend more time on the road on a bicycle than in a car.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
According to the EIA, average household electricity use is about 10,000 KW-hr and about 1300 gallons of gasoline, which is equivalent to 14,300 KW-hr, though cut that by about half to adjust for electrics being more efficient than gasoline engines.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Pick two;
Cleaner cars
Safer cars
More efficient cars
If the US and the EU would reach a compromise on required emission and safety standards then the US car makers would be better off (not having to make different cars for different markets) and the US public would have a nicer choice of efficient cars.
I was driving in the US yesterday and saw a billboard for a Toyota something, which advertised 50mpg. So... it looks like this isn't some sort of industry busting impossible target. This is great news.
The principles on which America was founded were the ability to run a slave farm without having to pay taxes to Britain, and only allowing rich white men to vote.
Slavery was a source of contention between Northern and Southern states from the beginning. Every state north of Delaware abolished it by 1804. It remained legal in Britain until 1840.
Taxes in the colonies were relatively low.
Neither country guaranteed all women the right to vote until the 1920s. A large minority of British men were disenfranchised by property requirements until after World War I, and a significant number of landowners could vote in multiple districts until 1948.
FTFA:
Really? Not only is it not intuitive, I can't think of any credible argument that would convince anyone that understands basic supply and demand curves (or even what the words "supply" and "demand" mean in economics) that would suggest that increasing fuel efficiency, all other things being equal, would decrease demand. The only thing that would decrease demand would be a change which decreased the marginal utility of consumption of a unit of oil or which increased the marginal utility of subsitutes for oil, and since increasing efficiency increasess the the marginal utility of oil, it should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that increasing efficiency wil, all other things being equal, will increase demand.
What the author here probably wanted to say is that it seems intuitive that increasing efficiency will, all other things being equal, decrease the quantity demanded at the market-clearing price, or, put more simply, total consumption. And, indeed, that is a common and not unreasonable intuition, but one that is sometimes inaccurate.
Of course, as the comments on TFA note, the idea that it is specifically wrong in the case of increased fuel economy is less clear than the author of the editorial tries to make it seem, since average automobile fuel economy actual decreased over the period the author notes that fuel consumption has increased as "evidence" that increasing fuel econonmy increases total fuel consumption.
.
The previous CAFE standard was linked to additional 2000 deaths a year. How many more deaths a year will the new CAFE standard cause? If it saves 2000 lives a year can't we just release more CO2?
"Jap" is a pejorative term. You are either very old and bigoted or very young and stupid.
Actually, if the poster were old and bigoted they would have used the term "Nip" instead of Jap but thanks for playing.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Damn, CAFE is so stupid. What does the average consumer care what the CAFE standard is? How does it affect the person actually using gas? It doesn't. All the user sees is a car that gets X MPG.
If the Feds want people to use less gas... RAISE THE F@#$!ING FEDERAL GAS TAX! You change one number somewhere, and you're done. You can even raise it incrementally, if you like. And as a plus, you get more tax dollars to improve the roads (or maybe waste on some pork project, but one can always hope). Look at what happened when gas broke $4.00/gal. People started buying more fuel efficient cars and driving less. They made these decisions even though the CAFE standard never changed. So what is the point of CAFE?
Of course we are assuming here a wet gallon not a dry gallon. Yaaay four kinds of gallons!
> when you find yourself encountering Mr. Big Rig comming at you unexpectedly
Just as my seat belts and airbags aren't going to protect me if I should drive off a bridge or impact something at 120 miles per hour.
Granted none are very likely, but are simply a form of an insurance where you buy the level of coverage/protection that you think is prudent... knowing full well that it can't protect you from everything.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
My current 2 year old car does 62 (uk)mpg ....
so not only doable but doable now .....
We don't refer to US Cars as gas guzzlers for nothing ....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Gas is expensive here, so there would be no suv's. WRONG. In fact when the prices were a record high last year, suv sales did NOT drop.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Err... Top Gear is a UK programme, so it uses Litres and Miles ....
Metric is what "the continent" uses, we use our own weird hybrid system
The UK, the only country where you can drive 3 miles down the road at 30 mph, fill up with 30 litres of fuel, under a 3m bridge, and go to the pub for a pint .....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
> In some cases of stationary objects that you mention, hitting them would be likely YOUR FRAKKING FAULT, bigtime.
And? I'll tell you a little secret about road accidents... it doesn't matter whose fault it is at the moment of impact. Sure the police and insurance company might care... but physics doesn't.
> Besides, they would probably remain stationary throughout the collision,
Depends on the object, most (short of a thick brick wall) would have some degree of collapse and energy absorption.
> so the trick of "letting the other car deal with my energy" wouldn't work anyway.
I never suggested "letting the other car deal with my energy"... I'm simply am focusing on my side of the collision, the only part I have control over.
> (like you would have the right...)
Again, we are talking about physics here, not legal/ethical rights. While might may not make right... it does make.
No one would claim that fire has the right to burn all available fuel... however if left unchecked it certainly will.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
We buy our petrol in litres, but we still generally talk about fuel economy in miles per gallon rather than litres per 100km.
One of the the primary legal reasons is inheritance law. Without it (or a will), the decedant's property is up for claim by anyone associated with him or her, be they child, wife, girlfriend, parent, sibling, friend, or business partner -- and maybe all of the above. Establishing marriage in law sets a next-of-kin in that situation that is generally not arguable. The percentage of people without a will is far higher than it should probably be.
The other is a court-recognized interest in promoting a stable society. The courts have always been very careful how they phrase this, but the state does have an interest in ensuring that families develop relatively normally, because problematic childhood often leads to problematic adulthood, which must often be addressed by the police, resulting in reduced social structure and increased crime.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
My grandpa called em nips. But then, he'd been carrying some Japanese shrapnel in his brain since '42.
Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
This disaster doesn't take effect until the second term that Obama hopes for is almost over. He can avoid taking blame for the economic meltdown.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I highly recommend that you read Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) so that you understand how regulation of trade amongst the states has been seen to work by the Supreme Court for the last 185 years. The case accepted practices that had been in place since the beginning of the Constitution's power.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
"Envirowhacko cartel", check..."safety Nazis", check...Warp 9 as a car speed, check...engines that clean dirty air, check...all cars the size of a "breadbox" (I assume this is something somewhat larger than a typical loaf of bread, never having seen one in real life), check...
Ok, I think that qualifies you for entry into this year's contest in the Most Rabid Hyperbole In A Slashdot Post category.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
You won't really get that, due to air resistance from your tinfoil hat.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
We're losing automakers to bankruptcy. Do we really want to put restrictions on them so more of them will go bankrupt?
God spoke to me.
Well, if you insist solely on physics - that big car of yours has much worse handling, lower probability of actually avoiding a collision, and much higher probability of rollover. Stats seem to confirm it - percentage of accidents with SUVs is much higher than their share of the market would suggest. Ditto for lethal ones (there goes you safety...)
You activelly, by your own choice, make the road more dangerous, overall.
PS. Immediatelly, from the top of my head, I can name two instances when I probably actively avoided an accident thanks to still having control, though close to the edge (one case of possible high speed spin on the highway (and who knows what afterwards) - need of rapid steering during high speed driving + rain; one which would end up probably on a tree/rolling down small hill - loosing grip on gravel (yeah...wtf?!) on a bend on top of a hill). You need agile car to be actively safe.
One that hath name thou can not otter
>Because none of the problems the GP listed would exist if the market cared about fuel efficiency.
Then what that means is the market is saying that fuel is not a scarce commodity and there is no reason to care about fuel efficiency.
If you want the market to take care of it, let it.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Typical subcompacts are around 8l/100km.
no, typical subcompacts are in the 4 to 6 l/100km. my frickin BMW gets 7 l/100km on the highway.
But we still have things like CVT's. And the GP's point about motorcycles being safe enough... well, it's just like a double standard. Well, no, it IS a double standard. I mean, some states don't even require you to wear a helmet. The point being: the government DOES allow us to locomote on the freeways without all these safety precautions in some conditions; why not others?
I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it's there.
I would guess the aerodynamics thing is true, too. Pretty, wide cars are probably not very aerodynamic.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
That's pretty amazing. My daughters scion got about 35mpg in all around driving. I can't even imagine something smaller than that. I always heard how great the corolla was in mileage. The one I rented got about 30mpg and I thought I was going to die from pain. I keep hearing these fantastic numbers but don't see them in reality. I think gas mileage stories are like fish stories, very exagerated.
Hey, I write 'em to be funny as well as to make a point... might as well have fun reading a post as opposed to dry facts.
Second that. Driving home from work one night, I noticed headlights ahead of me that seemed a bit close to my lane (I was on a four-lane, divided highway - the oncoming lanes were 30 yards to my left).
Shortly thereafter, I went onto the shoulder to avoid the oncoming car in my lane. The nearest place he could have gotten onto the road without driving through a ditch was 15 miles ahead of me...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Paying down the deficit? With what? Our looks (as my high school friends always said, when we looked pretty darn good, especially compared to now...) Yeah, we could do that, but 1e 1st have to recognize what's killing us. Hint: It isn't the unions, and it isn't greedy CEOs, and it isn't most of the common stuff. Its the income tax. And it's especially the corporate taxes. The union is all wigged out right now about GM planning to build more cars overseas and importing them as a way to profitability. Why is that? Everyone blames the unions because they don't want to join the retail workers in poverty just to CEOs can rake in 10's of millions in either salaries or golden parachutes. All that is irrelevant. The bottom line is that the American equation of labor costs plus retiree costs plus health care costs plus taxes far exceeds the foreign sum of labor costs (not a lot different in many places), retiree costs (less because of foreign socialist states benefits,) health care costs (also less because of foreign socialist states benefits,) and taxes (far less in most places, since we are the 2nd-highest corporate-taxing country on the planet. We can't do much about the retirees, and we can't do much about the health care, and we shouldn't be trying to pauperize our workers OR impoverish our executives either, but we could do a whale of a lot about the income taxes. We could eliminate them. The web page for the "fair tax" explains it. Google it. Then get behind it. Quit bleeding our own corporations dry. The rust belt, the loss of our electronics industries, and all the rest... is the result of our lousy tax policy. Fix the basic problem, then tax the rich. The good news is the same as the bad news here, as WE (all) will be "the rich." We have the best workforce, with the best work ethic on the planet, the most productive workforce, and the country is a big cornicopia of mineral and other resources. Its time we did the right thing, and competed with the world without having both hands tied behind our backs.
Have you been to Europe lately? I visit France every year or so, and the pollution problem there is pretty nasty... I can smell the diesel exhaust in every major city, it's much worse than any town in California (except maybe parts of LA with the inversion).
Normally I defend most of the policy tacts that Europe takes over the US: fuel (diesel = better efficency), energy (France's nuclear program), and healthcare (mostly single-payer).
However in this case, I do think the NOX standards in Cali preventing that aweful smell of diesel exhaust has something to it.
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How do you "spend" Social Security? We pay into Social Security, and we get money back out. The question is what our tax dollars are spent on. Including it in a discretionary budget is dishonest at best. Plus, you're lumping in the VA and warfare interest with non-war budgetary items.
If you add the DoD, nuclear arms spending in the DoE, and funding provided to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's one trillion dollars per year, according to official government sources. Also according to official government sources, they can't account for about 25% of that. Donald Rumsfeld stated in 2001 that there was possibly 2.3 trillion dollars that they couldn't account for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
http://www.warresisters.org/federalpiechartdetails
I don't think we can have our cake and eat it too. If diesels get 62 mpg and stink, what's more important? Are we that delicate that we can't put up with what the French put up with? The stink would just be incentive to buy something that doesn't - meanwhile, maybe our country wouldn't be going belly up from the trade deficits and the other economic problems brought on by expensive gasoline and fuel-hogging vehicles. I think I'd trade the smell for 62 mpg, which will put money in my pocket, and maybe save the nation.
I'm assuming you are talking about the newer computer controlled double clutch automatic manuals. like Volkswagon's DSG, and simmilar technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-Shift_Gearbox I believe the GP is referencing common hydraulic automatic transmission design that causes lots of efficiency loss. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_transmission#Hydraulic_automatic_transmissions In the first case, yes i could see where computer colled one could do much better, and as you say they do. The hydraulic system is the very bad one. Not only does it weigh a lot more it also needs to be cooled by the radiator, and has a very high power transmission loss (read: low efficiency). The problem I see with trying to force the DSG style transmissions is that they are more expensive than your standard hydraulic style and more expensive than a normal manual transmission. Find me an base model 4 door sedan in the 15k range that has a "slushbox" as standard. most of those are also 4 speed and not 6 speed. Anyways there is more than 1 type of automatic.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
There is a very simple and very balanced solution to all of this: Tax cars by weight! Make it a very progressive tax, only with moderate exceptions for specialized non-passenger standard road vehicles. Of course, large commercial vehicles like buses and tractor trailer rigs don't count in this.
> that big car of yours has much worse handling
Care to quantify that remark? Especially when you do not know what I drive or how it handles.
> lower probability of actually avoiding a collision
You speak of probability and yet offer no numbers.
> and much higher probability of rollover.
See previous statements (ie lack of numbers and your not knowing what I drive)
> Stats seem to confirm it
Link?
> percentage of accidents with SUVs is much higher than their share of the market would suggest.
Again claims related to numbers but no actual numbers.
More so, that would depend on the type of crash. A top heavy SUV is more likely to roll and cause damage to its occupants... however a lower or wider vehicle is less so.
Rather than try to compare âoeall fatal accidents where the occupants were in an SUVâ to âoeall fatal accidents where the occupants were in a passenger carâ and see which is greater... your time would be better spent comparing like accidents (ie âoeof head on impacts against a solid brick wall, which kind of vehicle are you most likely to survive the impact in?â)
Again... it is up to the buyer/driver to choose how much and of what kind of protection they want... some want height, others want width.
> Ditto for lethal ones (there goes you safety...)
If only you offered something more than just make-believe.
> You activelly, by your own choice, make the road more dangerous, overall.
By that logic... any vehicle with more mass than the average is making the road more dangerous... so even if for the moment we ignore semiâ(TM)s and other larger vehicles which are needed for transportation of goods.
What then... should we ban any such vehicles? Or require all them to be able to better handle an impact with something heavier than itself?
> PS. Immediatelly, from the top of my head, I can name two instances when I probably actively avoided an accident thanks to still having control,
And? I can think of several cases where I in my âbig carâ(TM) of mine have had very close calls where I retained control the entire time.
Neither proves anything.
> You need agile car to be actively safe.
There are degrees of agility, more so no matter how agile of a car you have, unless the driver is able to react in time, the agility is wasted.
Again... should we be banning semi-trucks because they are so large and non-agile? Or should we say... make sure their drivers are trained to drive them safely so as to try to give themselves more room to react to events?
You know... defensive driving?
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Am I the only one who looks at this and thinks we won't get smaller or more efficient cars, just ones that run on higher spec fuel? I don't think the CAFE laws as written say anything about octane or fuel type.
Whether it's 93 octane premium or diesel, either way there is more potential energy per gallon, and GM won't have to dump as many Aveos on the market to sell another Hummer.
A few posters mentioned emissions as a reason efficiency has gone down since the height of the last fuel bust (1980?) and while that's true to a degree, safety regs are a much larger one. Auto makers can't sell you the same 1500lb crackerbox on wheels they used to, it doesn't meet current federal safety standards.
And yet you believe that people on the other side of the country who have little in common with you should tell you what kind of car you can buy? Have you even considered how inconsistent your position is?
Please don't misrepresent me and then berate that misrepresentation.
My argument is that state lines seem arbitrary. I live in a tri-state area, and business is freely conducted and unimpeded when it moves from state to state. However, each of those three states operate under different business laws, and the conflicts between those laws cause unnecessary confusion, bureaucracy, and sluggishness. My honest question is "why do we do that?", yet I am attacked.
"Because it's in the Constitution" isn't really a good answer to me. Why is it in the Constitution, then?
Since when was the last century a "'progressive' destruction of constitutional protections"? We've survived wars, emerged as a world power, discovered and thwarted corruption at the highest levels, ensured rights to our oppressed minorities, and invented the Internet, so I think we're doing pretty good in comparison to much of the world. I think we could do much, much better, but I don't share your sense of self-inflicted, inevitable downfall.
Interesting. So state laws are just a way to "beta-test" for the real thing? I could get behind that!
As to what you get from a barrel of oil, true as far as it goes, but refining processes change the outcome of the natural hydrocarbon mix by "catalytic cracking" which converts less-desirable heavy stuff to lighter gasoline and jet fuel, etc.
BSA: "Would you like a free Software Audit"? me: "No, thanks. My software is all Free".
So the things *you* hold hold dear should be enforced on everyone else via the federal government? Gotcha.
I couldn't give a damn about marriage or abortions, because they don't affect me currently. I just don't understand why the outcome of being gay, or needing an abortion, or setting a car's MPG should be based on a state law as opposed to a federal law. Just because a state has fewer people in it doesn't mean that I'm somehow better represented by the legislators. I'm one out of 12 million instead of one out of 300 million. My vote counts just as much: zero-point-zero-zero-zero-diddly-squat percent.
Then again if abortion is to be *banned* at the federal level I'm sure you'd sing a different tune. More along the lines of "well in california it's legal! the feds can't override their laws1!!"
No, that'd be a stupid argument. I would argue that it shouldn't/should be banned federally because it's moral/immoral, not because California decided it should be one way.
If a state passes a law that bans abortion, then all that's going to do is make a person jump in a car and go to the neighboring state to do it.
(And if all the states ban it, that means she's going look for a hanger, but that's a different argument).
To answer the rest of your arguments:
I don't see the difference between a big state and a big country. One is just bigger than the other by an order or two--they're both still many orders of magnitude bigger than me.
What am I supposed to do to get my views "represented"? Move to a new state? Isolating myself from people I don't agree with is lame. There are no people "over the hill" who think differently than me. I'm surrounded by people who think differently from me, who develop laws that I don't agree with. That doesn't mean I don't tolerate them, or don't like them. If I surrounded myself with people who thought exactly like me--then I'd be in some kind of cult!
So what I guess I'm saying: you get diversity of opinion from larger sample sizes. I wouldn't trust Texas to come up with moral laws about how the the oil industry can conduct business, because the Texas economy has a vested interest in that industry. I would feel much better knowing that members from all 50 states had a say, because it usually affects them too in some way.
I have a hard time coming up with ways that the policies of a single state ONLY affect that state, because we rarely live in a vacuum. But in the case of gas MPG: if we want the auto industry to do better, we need cars to compete with the rest of the world. Of course, there's also that thing about needing to work together to fight global warming, but I expect that argument wouldn't work against many conservatives.
lets see, my datsun, which i traded a broken laptop for, was advertized as getting 41 mpg, with later models claiming 50 mpg. And there is a recent confirmed case of someone achieving 61.53 mpg.
My old 78 scout diesel got in the low 20's MPG, which was pretty damm good for a three ton brick on wheels. I expect my project of dropping a 6.2 diesel into another 78 to get similar results based on the specs of the CUCV pickups
these are all 30-35 year old vehicles.
There are a few modified and custom built vehicles getting decent mileage, but nothing stock.
Let me know when 75 mpg is considered to be terrible. Then I'll start to get excited..
I do wonder why "light trucks" are seeing so little change, unless they're planning to declassify SUVs as light trucks (which NEEDS to happen - these vehicles aren't intended for work, and the original light truck definition, I'm pretty sure, had to do with working vehicles).
I wonder where this leaves motorcycles, since even my relatively small 750 only pulls down an average of 45mpg (mixed driving - it actually does better city than freeway). Unless you're going to a small engine (barely freeway safe), you're not going to get much better than 55mpg, and some of the supersports are notorious for 35mpg economies.
I suppose there's a lot of room for every part of the automotive industry to improve, though I'd prefer to see it where it's needed rather than where it's not.
My 91 Honda Civic gets 45 consistantly, and up to 50 mpg. I always laugh when the new car commercials claim "Amazing 32 mpg!" for a economy sedan.
Lol and you think you had a reason to laugh... my old 81 Honda Civic Wagon averaged 45 mpg. My brother's 83 Honda Civic (not wagon style) averaged 40 mpg. These are both still in the carburetor days! Now, the difference between the two? My brother's was automatic and mine was manual tranny, so my Civic got the slightly larger engine, which meant more efficiency. Not to mention the fact that I could fit a full oak table (leaves and all) into the back of the thing and even easily go up steep hills with that in the back (helped someone move... the next trip was the eight oak chairs).
nono, i make my tinfoil hats like a Yarmulke. Perfectly molded to my head, no resistance :D
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
"At least the mid- and long distance tranportation should replaced by (electrical) trains."
Building that sort of infrastructure would cost a tremendous amount of money.
Your point is?
Bullish Machine Tzar
The only way to get more efficient cars is to have government rules, apparently. The general population and the car manufacturers can't agree on what people want. They say while technology has advanced since the 70's, avg gas mileage is worse b/c people started going for SUVs, etc.
And the Democrats continue with their nanny-state mentality. We are too stupid to choose fuel efficient vehicles, so we must be forced to do so.
With Big Government, you get more laws and less freedom.
I choose to put 5k miles/year on my 15MPG SUV and 10k miles/year on my 45MPG Harley.
But the Democrats are working to eliminate that choice.
I disagree. The Golf/Rabbit is a compact. According to the latest revision of the Wikipedia page, the Polo is a supermini, not a compact.
-Turkey