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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.
42 you say?
There's a case to be made that raising the CAFE won't save oil or reduce greenhouse gases.
The link is really light on the math. In most systems that obey similar behavior, demand does increase, but the increase in demand does not completely erase the benefit of the increase in efficiency. In this case it can't completely erase the benefit, because if it did the end result would be a net increase in the price - and that was the original basis for the argument, that the drop in price would spur consumption. So the increase in demand has to fall short of that point.
So in the end, demand will be somewhere higher than it is now, and the price somewhat lower, all else being equal. Where on the supply/demand curve things ultimately lie will depend on the relative elasticity of supply vs. elasticity of demand.
Why do administrations always set timetables beyond their terms? Remember Bush's "man on Mars"?
That's called "collusion", when the government isn't involved.
<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>
As a fellow inhabitant of the planet, I wish you had bought a Golf TDI, which has practically the same dimensions and performance, gets superior mileage in average driving, and which doesn't have all those batteries in it. They also have better visibility.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My car gets 42mpg average right now. That's the EPA estimate and is actually what I seem to be getting in the real world.
Honda Civic Hybrid. I love it. But frankly I'd like them to be WELL up into 100 seven years from now.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Because the states created the federal government to handle particular tasks.
The goal of our federalist system is not efficiency, it is freedom. A country where the government's primary goal is to ensure the efficiency of its subjects is certainly NOT one where I'd like to live.
If we want people to use less gas, why not just raise the darn price?
There are times and places for government regulation, but requiring a minimum fuel efficiency? If the goal is to reduce greenhouse gases, then fuel efficiency is just a half-assed proxy for fuel consumption.
42 mpg x 20 mile commute each day is a lot more fuel consumptive than 20 mpg x occasional grocery trip.
And what qualifies as a "car" and what as a "light truck" and "SUV," all of which have their separate regulations? What a mess.
People respond to their pocketbooks. In this case, it's easy to align people's incentives with the goals we want to achieve: Make gas expensive.
Milage standards haven't worked before and they will continue to fail. Forcing car companies to make vehicles that people don't want to buy isn't going to do anybody any good.
Pretty much every economist knows that the way to achieve the stated goals is to dramatically increase gasoline taxes. After that, the market will work its magic. People will buy more efficient cars, or seek alternative transportation. When looking at where to live, the cost of commuting will play a bigger role in families' decisions. And we get to make a little dent in the whopping federal deficit.
Of course no politician will even hint at endorsing what is clearly the economically rational thing to do. So instead, we'll spend money on subsidizing bio-fuels and other not-all-that-bright ideas.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Using a 4500 lb. box to carry a 180 lb. person was always a stupid idea. Like you said, good riddance.
Oh yeah, ask southern blacks all about the wondrous freedoms of states' rights.
It'd be interesting to see what the average and top mileage cars have been getting over the past 20-30 years or so. Up until 1990, I had a car with a small displacement 6-cylinder (instead of a 4-cyl, cuz I wanted air conditioning), manual 5-speed transmission, and cruise control that routinely got me above 40 mpg on the highway. If the weather cooperated and I wasn't driving into a headwind the entire way, more often than not I was able to make a trip from S. Ohio home to Chicago on a single tank of gas. Then, for some reason, it was almost impossible to find a car that got better than the low 30s. Once SUVs became popular, availability of high mileage cars dropped even further. If one were to plot mileage over the years, I'd bet that we'll finally be getting back to what should have been commonplace in the mid/late '90s. Fifteen years or more of progress totally wasted. Pity. And the managers of American auto makers wonder why their companies are in the toilet.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
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).
Are you nuts? That would require a 100 gallon gas tank!
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.
Because of the cube square ratio small cylinders lose too much heat into the engine block. You are better off reducing the number of cylinders.
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I see your Golf TDI and raise you a Bluemotion Polo.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
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.
I bought a Civic Hybrid (we need a back seat for the baby's car seat). It gets pretty good mileage - 37 city, 42 highway, in my experience (not quite what the EPA estimates were, at 40 city, 45 highway, but who expects that?).
Unfortunately, Washington State will not let me register the car (which I purchased in Utah last month before I moved) as a Hybrid. Why? Because, according to the representative I spoke with on the phone, they only consider cars that get 50 mpg city to be hybrids, regardless of whether said car is actually a hybrid.
According to the Toyota website, not even the Prius qualifies under that requirement (getting 48 city, 51 highway), but Washington's DMV lists the Prius and the Honda Insight as eligible hybrids. (Note that the Honda Insight doesn't meet that requirement either, getting 40 city, 43 highway.)
I look forward to when most cars on the road get better gas mileage than me, too; but in the meantime, I would appreciate it if states got their act together.
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
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.
As a past owner of both makes, I'll pick Toyota's quality and reliability over that of Volkswagen every time, thanks.
My last Toyota saw me through more than twice as many miles as the Volkswagen it replaced; and then went off to college for four more years with my son. Both were bought new, by me, so no possibility of neglect by previous owners or such.
The Prius isn't my first choice either. But I'll certianly not by a car again whose VIN doesn't start with a 'J'.
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
Use a plastic coke bottle. Its lighter, and in an emergency, you can crush it and get most of your acceleration back, so it is safer. Just remember to drink the coke first! :)
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
Diesels? Dream on. You've got a cartel of 5 envirowacko states with pollution standards in excess of Europe's, which are essentially keeping most diesels out of the country now. The unreasonably-stringent anti-sulphur emissions standards are only capable of being met with some advanced anti-pollution equipment involving a reservoir of urea to process the exhaust to meet the emission standards of these 5 states. Most manufacturers deem this too great a burden to bring their (62 mpg) cars into the USA, so only VW and Merceedes do so, and forgo sales in those 5 states. 42 mpg average by 2016? Guffaw! It isn't going to happen. Between the safety Nazis making cars weigh more, and more, and more so they can crash at Star Trek's Warp 9 and have everybody walk away without a scratch, and the envirowackos trying to get the exhaust to be cleaner than the air that is ingested by the engine, we're soon going to have _no_ cars bigger than a breadbox that can be purchased in this country.
That, my friend, is the whole point... It may cost a lot of money to fix or replace a car that has been so crushed, but ultimately cars are expendable, people are not.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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
Actually, the crumple zones saved both of them: they dissipated the kinetic energy of the whole impact. This guy was able to walk away from the accident BECAUSE the other guy was driving a car with crumple zones. This is also the reason why the car was demolished instead of simply taking a hit.
If the other guy had been driving a steel car too, he wouldn't be posting on /. today.
Nobox: Only simple products.
Excellent point!
Now you and the other 0.1% of people that actually use their industrial vehicles for their intended purpose can feel free to keep buying them.
In the meantime, freedom isn't free, and if grandma wants an H2 to go grocery shopping, it should cost her proportionally more to do so.
Welcome to 'modern' capitalism.
I for one have no problems with the federal or state governments regulating our markets to educate the populace of the true costs of consumption. People, as a whole, are irrational idiots, and need to be hit upside with a financial brick every once in a while.
You sir are a moron. Those crumble zones saved not only his life but yours as well. A frontal collision at that speed can easily be lethal. The reason you are alive to make your post is that the other car had crumble zones that absorb some of the energy in the impact thereby making it softer for both of you. You should probably have offered him half the cost of a new car because by sacrificing his vehicle both of you coudl walk away from the accident.
If you doubt my word try the following. Drop one egg onto a pillow and put another egg into a metal strongbox that you drop on the floor. I give you one guess which egg is more likely to crack.
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."
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.
If the market can figure out the details, why have the government artificially raise the price of fuel?
Because the market doesn't care about externalities. There are multiple externalities involved with using gasoline, even if you choose not to believe in global climate change, and the auto industry isn't going to care about any of them until it is far too late. By attaching a price to the commodity in the form of taxes it forces the market to respond to the total cost including the externalities (assuming we come up with a reasonably close approximation for the tax,) not just the immediate cost.
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