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White House Issues New Gas Mileage Standards
Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that the Obama administration has signed off on the nation's first rules on greenhouse gas emissions and set new fuel standards to meet a fleet-wide average of 35.5 mpg that will raise current standards by nearly 10 mpg by the 2016 model year. Although the new requirements would add an estimated $434 per vehicle in the 2012 model year and $926 per vehicle by 2016, drivers could save as much as $3,000 over the life of a vehicle through better gas mileage, according to a government statement. 'We will be helping American motorists save money at the pump, while putting less pollution in the air,' says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Dave McCurdy, leader of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing 11 automakers, says the industry supports a single national standard for future vehicles. 'Today, the federal government has laid out a course of action through 2016, and now we need to work on 2017 and beyond.' As the auto industry seeks to emerge from ashes, many manufacturers already are trying for the right mix of approaches, experts say. Some will try to sell more hybrids. Others are introducing not-so-gas-guzzling SUVs. They may also push slightly downsized and small cars, such as the Ford Fiesta."
Won't this just make people buy new cars less often?
For survivability you don't want "sturdyness", you want the car to be crumply. The crumpling absorbs the crash energy so the occupants don't. Lighter cars also means lower crash energies. Lighter cars are less likely to crash in the first place owing to better handling and manuverablilty.
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If you read through it, you'll notice they allow all-electric cars to count as zero-emission vehicles, when in actual practice, the emissions depend on where you get the energy from.
So, each manufacturer gets an allotment with a cap for any electric cars they churn out.
But someone in a state which makes electricity from coal - like Wisconsin - creates more emissions pollution using the same all-electric Chevy Volt car than someone in a state using hydroelectric, nuclear fission, solar, wind, and tidal like Washington State.
In Seattle, our utility is carbon-neutral - no emissions. In Madison it's carbon-heavy - coal.
Another thing to notice is that the mpg requirements vary based on the footprint of the vehicle.
So if you made a very thin batmobile you could get sucky mileage and be "better" than a car with twice the mpg that has a small footprint like a Smart Car.
Of course, none of this will prevent somebody installing an industrial electric turbine in their batmobile to go 0 to 60 in 0.9 seconds - cause all-electric dragsters outrace even the best gasoline or diesel vehicle. Unless you use jet fuel.
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Ultra-Lightweight cars were attempted before.
You crash, you die.
No, not at all. Indy cars, for example, are vastly lighter than any standard American cars, and they crash at extremely high speeds with very few fatalities, and often without even injuries to the driver. Lightweight cars can be made quite safe. If I were designing cars from a safety point of view alone, I'd go with styrofoam as the main structural element. You crash it-- well, go and spend the ten bucks and buy a new shell to replace the one you broke.
The problem is that vastly overweight cars are dangerous to other cars on the road. To the extent that fuel economy makes all the cars on the road lighter, it doesn't hurt safety, and likely improves it.
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Fuel economy standards are actually a stupid way to reduce petroleum usage. A far more effective way to do this would be to put a hefty tax on gasoline, and then the market can decide what the optimum trade is for fuel efficiency. Unfortunately, tax is such an incredibly dirty word in politics that this is just flat out impossible; anybody trying to do such a thing would not merely be voted out of office, they'd very likely be lynched.
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Until those who are driving around overweight behemoths are made to pay for their huge negative externalities. E.g. with mandatory sentences for manslaughter every time they bump into a smaller car and kill someone, increased taxes, etc. It's hardly fair that those who do the responsible thing are penalized.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Mod This up! I have a hard time looking at the stats on new cars and see nothing but HP improvements, not MPG improvements. For example, I had a '89 Mustang GT with 225 HP, and it was fast enough to be dangerous. I could shift out of 2nd gear at 75 mpg, and spin the tires in 3 gears. It got (for the time) decent mileage, namely 18 in the city, close to 25 on the highway. Fast forward 20 years, and the new mustangs get THE SAME MILEAGE, but have 300+ horsepower. The government can mandate all they want, but until people's attitudes change, horsepower sells more cars than MPG.
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Now we come to the heart of the matter.
America is about consumption. Whether it's oil, food, bling or large-screen TVs, we are taught from childhood to buy, to use, to waste. Everything has to be supersized and extra sauce on the side and there is no such thing as "enough". In fact, continuous and endless consumption is institutionalized here to the point where our very economic existence depends on it. When people stop buying for a few months, things start to fall apart and our economy is like a cancer patient, sucking smoke through their tracheotomy hole. It's just not in our social vocabulary to economical or for that matter, rational.
It wasn't always so. Ben Franklin and Henry David Thoreau very eloquently expressed a thriftiness that was uniquely American. It went hand in hand with self-reliance. When I see the over-fed, demanding, soft, food-stamp using Americans of 2010 who are claiming to champion a return to "every man for himself", I wonder how long they would last if any one of them were to actually be expected to pull their own not inconsiderable weight.
No. Americans aren't going to like the new fuel-efficiency standards, because they believe the world owes them whatever amount of fuel it will take to power their personal locomotives down the federally-funded highway, so they can waddle into the all-you-can-eat buffet. Like one of the porcine princesses we see on television, telling Maury Povich how she's going to "do what I want!" we're not going to even consider being more efficient with fuel until we suffer a shock to the system. They're not going to slow down slurping down the Colonel's Special Gravy until they get that massive cardiac arrest and they need a pair of high-voltage paddles to the chest.
And maybe not even then.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You've been taken by the oldest ploy in politics. They are telling you "these regulations aren't for you, but are for someone else". All government regulations are for you. The government is only capable of passing regulations on people and the burden of any government action will ultimately fall on your shoulders.
Think about it this way, will these new regulations affect your ability to buy the car of your choosing? Yes, it will because manufacturers will need to balance the number of low mileage vehicles they sell with the number of high mileage vehicles to maintain an average that meets the regulations. That means they will change their line-up and may charge higher prices to dissuade customers from buying the lower mileage vehicles. Ultimately, that means that low mileage vehicles will either not be offered, or will be offered at a price that some will not be able to afford.
Does this bother manufacturers? You bet, because the resulting line-up will be less appealing, and that means fewer sales. Should you be bothered as well? Most certainly absolutely yes! You may no longer be able to buy/afford a vehicle that meets your needs once these regulations take effect.
The income gap is frightening, and it's getting worse. The most disturbing trend is that most of those people made their fortunes by simply manipulating money in creative and novel ways, finding new schemes and techniques to move funds around in different ways for a profit. They produce nothing of value, contribute nothing to society, and are actually actively working to make the world a worse place for the majority of the population. The perpetuate debt-slavery, kick people out of their homes, and ship jobs overseas all in the name of short term profits. The free market breaks down when there is no regulation because people cannot and will not consider long term stability and sustainability over short term pleasure and gains. It's a flaw of humanity, but it IS one that we can overcome--and we must to survive.
The majority of what happens on Wall Street should be illegal. It's not only unproductive, it's harmful, it's toxic, it kills and drives millions into poverty and wage-slavery to perpetuate a system that benefits 1% of the population at the expense of everyone else. When the 99% wake up and realize they are getting a raw deal, then we'll see real change but right now too many people are convinced of the lie that if they work hard enough and sacrifice more and more that some day they will be part of that 1%.
When they realize the American Dream they've been sold is a lie, that the top 1% have created a system that ensures they'll never get ahead, then we'll see real change.
And not soon enough will it come.
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