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The End of the Gas Guzzler
Hugh Pickens writes "Michael Grunwald reports that President Obama will announce today a near-doubling of fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, and the Big Three automakers — GM, Ford and Chrysler — will support it in a final deal that will require vehicle fleets to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, which will reduce fuel consumption by 40% and carbon emissions by 50%. Although environmentalists had pushed for 60 mpg and the White House had floated a compromise of 56.2, 54.5 is pretty close, considering that last year's standards were only 28.3. 'I might point out that the same auto industry that ran attack ads about how 56.2 would destroy their businesses and force everyone to drive electric cars has embraced 54.5 as an achievable target,' writes Grunwald. 'It almost makes you wonder if the automakers may have exaggerated the costs of compliance, the way they always do.'"
It almost makes you wonder if the automakers may have exaggerated the costs of compliance, the way they always do.
I mean really. Was there ever anyone who actually thought that 25mpg was really the best a small sedan could muster?
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Chevy Volts will GM have to sell per Suburban to remain within the new CAFE standard?
Ken
It almost makes you wonder if the automakers may have exaggerated the costs of compliance, the way they always do.
I think it is more don't buy the hand that feeds you.
Time to offend someone
If it's the way they always do, why does Grunwald wonder?
I have voiced this before, but what about those of us who have, enjoy, and can afford vehicles that don't get great fuel econ, go fast as hell, and are generally fun to drive? I can afford my premium fuel, I only get ~20mpg, and my car does what I like my car to do: handle well and go fast.
Why should I be forced into an EV, which takes a month and a half to hit 60mph? It kind of reminds me of iRobot, where he has the bike kept in a storage unit, and the girl is confused because it runs on... wait for it... gas!
Something witty.
It won't reduce consumption. People will just drive more and we'll still use the same amount of fuel. All-be-it with more drivers.
Maybe you could, you know, let people buy the vehicles they want to buy and then if gas is expensive most won't buy gas guzzlers?
In this case I'm guessing the auto makers are salivating at the prospect of being 'forced' to load up cars with hybrid crap that will allow them to push up prices and make more profit.
I like that this is the direction we are headed; gov't telling private companies how it's done......
However, I would like to point out a glaring omission. These new 'rules' reports tend to forget that these numbers are for NEW vehicles. Not necessarily including vehicles already manufactured, selling, and being used day-to-day by people.
So that means the 'average' of 54.5MPG will not be reached by including the vehicles already on the road, even in 2025, most likely. They will only count the ones that are made from a certain arbitrary date, and average out certain classes of vehicle, etc, etc.
Just like now, the current 28.3MPG is only for new vehicles, though I do not know the details of that set of standards; whether they apply only to new cars, or to the whole 'fleet' of cars by auto maker x......
The real question is will the market bear the new regulations? Americans as a nation have obviously NOT demanded higher MPG ratings from their cars or there would be no need for the regulation. How much more will each vehicle cost to use the higher technology needed to achieve the standards? By setting the standards the government may have artificially increased the market price and will thus affect supply and demand. I'm all for environmental policies, but outside of the academic towers, the real world still intervenes and economics will affect well intentioned government mandates.
"The White House originally pushed for a 56.2-mpg standard, but automakers demanded a carve-out for pickup trucks"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/obama-administration-auto-industry-strike-deal-on-vehicle-fuel-efficiency/2011/07/27/gIQA72mKdI_story.html?hpid=z10
This doesn't mean that you'll actually see cars that get 50-60mpg sold in the U.S. The automakers get credits on mpg for adding things that have nothing to do with fuel efficiency (like LED headlights and crap). So you might have a vehicle with a bunch of addons that only gets 35mpg, but the automaker gets credit for a vehicle that gets 50mpg (because they get 15mpg worth of fuel efficiency credits). Not to mention it's an average. If the automaker sells one vehicle that gets 20mpg for $25,000 and one vehicle that gets 100mpg for $60,000, they have a fleet average of 60mpg. It doesn't matter that they sell 10,000 of the 20mpg units and only 500 of the 100mpg units. And trucks get completely different (and drastically lower) standards than cars. It's amazing what you can classify as a "truck" these days.
CAFE is a joke.
This ain't about environment. This ain't about using fewer resources.
This is about "what standards can our manufacturers meet while the Chinese can't and we can keep them from flooding our market with dirt cheap cars".
Or did you think the safety requirements are there because anyone cares whether you eat your steering wheel when you hit a truck?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You might want to reread that summary chief. They aren't requiring all cars to meet x mpg, they are requiring a manufacturers fleet to average at least x mpg. You can still buy a big car but now it's going to be more efficient. I can't possibly guess why anyone would complain about that.
I don't understand what you're saying.
You say that the government is punishing automakers that make large cars and got into significant financial trouble because they lost their market, then you say that the market wants large cars. Then you say that foreign car makers will clean our clocks because they already make lots of small cars...
From my perspective, American automakers got drunk on selling cheap-to-make vehicles expensively. Trucks, classically, cost less than cars. There also were no luxury trucks, as they were designed for utility , not luxury. Granted, a one-ton truck would cost more than a 3/4, and that would cost more than a 1/2, and it's even possible that the heavier-rated trucks would cost a little more than the cheapest cars, but by and large, a half-ton truck was not expensive, until the domestic automakers decided to gussy up their trucks and engage in a clever marketing strategy.
Unfortunately, gas prices caught up with them and the market never recovered, but they still haven't lowered the prices of trucks. Consequently, people now are willing to look at what other countries would consider to be mid-size cars, which we consider small.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
On the other hand you can certainly make an argument that
1) Low MPG vehicles hurt our national defense.
2) Pollution in general leads to false externalization that has to be paid for in some manor.
3) There currently aren't 56 mpg cars that was reasonably prices, if automakers are agreeing to this, they know that in the future they will be able to do and produce enough cars over that mark to average with the large cars under that mark, that they can appeal to all requirements.
Also new automated driving that will be here soon, will significantly increase the MPG that the typical person can achieve.
I can't believe the Obama administration think there remains some economic trade off with CAFE standards. They should just mandate a 100 MPG CAFE standard for 2013. Heck, that gives car manufacturers over a year to invent new technology and implement it, or just stop selling gasoline cars and sell electrical ones, and overload the electrical grid. (And if you think I'm trolling, you didn't read the post summary.)
The big problem i see is weight the more ya got the more the fuel you use, hence this means there's gonna be a lot of very lite cars on the road, when it's 5 below 0 F,8" of snow how's an electric car weighing under 2,000 gonna handel the weather? Pray it doesn't meat a loaded 18 wheeler , because all the air bags in the world will not help.
Who believes auto makers, ask the UAW as they try to collect their pensions.
Since Obama is doing this and all the tree huggers want it, how is this screwing me?
Why doesn't Obama require Intel to release the 10 GHz Chip? Apparently the only thing stopping progress is there isn't any legislation mandating it, right? So why stop at 60mpg? Why not 1000 mpg? We should also mandate flying cars and a PONY for EVERYONE!!!
What is up with this imaginary thinking?
Do people really believe everything they think?
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Why would the Eurasian automakers benefit if, as you say, consumers don't want the small cars they make? If there was a market for vials of mercury that people wanted to dump into waterways, would you support that?
Get a Scooter, or small Motor bike.
My AWD vehicle only gets about 28 MPG, but I drive it just one day per week for 15 miles round trip, and bicycle the rest of the time. So yes it gets shitty mileage, but overall I'm using less gas that that Prius driver who drives 10X as much as I do.
Why wasn't this done *before* giving GM billions of dollars to build all those 6 MPG THUNDRAS?
The real way to tackle this problem is with gas taxes. Raise the cost of gas up to 6 dollars a gallon, and the fleet average will go up, from consumer demand.
If I recall we were going to be off oil by 2015 or somthing like that. Wonderful
"Massive subsidies and massive excise taxes"? Seriously?! Who do you think is in charge in Washington?
Ken
I just need to say that a fuel efficient vehicle doesn't have to be a small vehicle. Science can solve that problem. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see a resurgence of big cars as we switch over to electric vehicles. After all, a bigger car means more room for batteries. Its only during these awkward transition periods, when the technology is still immature, that we have this bizarre need to sacrifice what we want to achieve what we must. Frankly I look forward to driving around an electric monster truck sans the expense or stigma that I would have to endure now.
Owing to the rate at which the number of automobiles is increasing, they could reach this goal of lower emissions and better fuel economy, and we'd still be polluting more and using more fuel than we are now.
Granted, it's better that than no improvements at all, but if kept the same end-goal requirements, but shortened that vision to... oh, say 2015 or so... then they might have a chance at actually really helping... otherwise, it's just postponing the inevitable.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
But it sure as shit means we'll be asked to bailout the auto makers again when our champagne wishes and caviar dreams don't match with what buyers are willing to pay for an auto.
Ever hear of market failure and externalities? I guess the market is right next to God in its omniscient reckoning of true value. When Jesus upset the moneylenders in the temple, he was interfering with legitimate market demand and economy driving job creation. That must be why he is idolized as the retarded market-destroying son of God.
The market does noes not pay the real cost. In economics, the term is externals. When you buy gasoline, you don't pay the cost of cleaning up the CO2 and NOx produced by the car. You also don't pay the price to send troops to Irag to get the gasoline. If you did, the price of gasoline would be a lot higher. The problem is the government is paying these costs and society will pay these costs. By legislating higher fuel efficiency, the government is trying to reduce the cost problem.
Obama is also looking ahead and trying to advert a problem before it happens and cost the US economy even more. As gas gets more expensive, the demand for more efficient vehicles goes up. The Big Three are not responding, When gas prices last spiked, the market for gas guzzles plumeted and the big three took a big hit. This hurt the US economy. Now that gas prices have dropped these automakers don't see a point in making efficient vehicles. If they keep looking at the next quarter, they won't see a point in make efficient vehicles until it is too late. Gas prices will rise as China nd India use more gas, demand for gas guzzlers will drop as people cannot afford to drive them, the big three will not have a sellable product, and the US economy will take another nose dive.
With the various new technology like better hybrids and fully electric vehicles this doesn't seem unreasonable. Even a fully gasoline powered vehicle that seats 4 could do this. There is a cost to consider in achieving this such that vehicles will need to be much lighter or more all electrics. Both of these cost more than you standard steel framed and skinned standard gasoline engine. Apart from making vehicles lighter you could also make them less powerful but people like zippy cars. Another thing that could be done is increasing the engine efficiency such as by using the Atkinson cycle increasing the compression (this would make it so people would need to use 89 or 91 octane instead of 87), or surface coatings to decrease internal friction. Additionally people are going to have to get use to seeing and using 0 weight oils (I have heard discussions of going to negative weight oil as well) instead of the standard 5w30. I am sure we are going to see some postings here about the magic devices that Detroit is sitting on that would produce 100+MPG on a big pig car, crap that is similar to fuel line magnets, or the infamous water power car.
Time to offend someone
Thinking ahead that is. Something capitalist enterprises have shown themselves ill-equipped to accomplish. Everything in life is not about what's going on at this moment in time. That's the thinking of a cat, or bacteria, or an executive or CEO thinking about their bonus. Thinking ahead is what's needed here.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Won't you just be moving the energy inefficiency to a new fuel? Electricity has to come from someplace after all (unless you can get it all from the sun).
which is why I think a somewhat lesser goal set for a shorter timeframe, then ramping up to this in 2025, would have been better.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The technology for atomization of the fuel prior to mixing it with air and prior to ignition has been known for more than three decades. For one man driving a Lincoln Contenental back in the late 70s or early 80s (you can research this) who made this modification, it meant 80mpg for his savings. Why has the industry been dragging their asses so long?
The difference between 54.5mph and 60mpg really was not worth fighting over. The Obama Administration would've been idiots to go to the mat over that. Sure, when you're talking about badly designed tanks that get 20mpg, another 5.5mpg is a substantial difference, but once you start getting up to actually efficient numbers like these standards are talking about, that difference doesn't make that big a deal.
As my main vehicle, I ride a motorbike that gets 90mpg. I started fretting about it when it wasn't running quite so well and it was getting 80mpg or less, but then I did the math and realized how little difference that meant. I still got it fixed (some basic maintenance was all it needed), but that was because I also wasn't getting the speed I wanted.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
When you buy your gas-guzzling SUV, it'll come with an EV, so the average of the two makes 55mpg. Maybe the SUV will even be able to launch the EV.Think the original Optimus Prime and Roller.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Now if only i could get some inverters for my soon-to-be electric car company.
Which are great in some areas. But in other places, like the Great American Fly Over I live in they don't work in January.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It just means everyone who wants a vehicle with balls will buy something not covered by CAFE.
It also means that sports cars will do tricky things like take off in 6th, just to post good EPA numbers. Or, you'll have two keys, like the Laguna Seca mustang, and the red key wakes the car up.
I got 12mpg on my way to work today. Deal with it. If I'm willing to pay the price of fuel, let me decide. If I want to save money and move to something more efficient, let me decide. This is America.
Um, impeach for what, moron?
Many peopleare under the false belief that big cars are necessarily less fuel efficient by a considerable factor. This is not true. Only two factors effect the gas millage of a large car vs a small car: weight and aerodynamics. On the first count, a large car is mostly large by the fact that there is more space within the car. Space doesn't weight anything. So the added weight to a larger car is not proportional to its' size, but is considerably smaller. To the second count, the design of the car has more baring on aerodynamics than the actual size. That car makers refuse to put wheel well covers on their cars and are marketing square boxes on wheels as "cool", tells you are you need to know about their considerations of fuel economy.
To sum up, it is not difficult for car makers to produce huge cars "that people want" that get 60mpg. The tech is there and the additional cost marginal. The problem lies with executives seeking every last penny in savings to pad their outrageous bonuses and oil companies that influence decisions across company boards that have no interest whatsoever in better mpgs.
We can expect these new standards to be overturned by the Republic President. And they know it.
:T:R:A:N:S:
There should be a BS emissions cap on what comes out of a politicians mouth. There should also be a law against teaching kids "kick the can"; they may grow up to be politicians.
54.5 is pretty close
Compared to how the White House usually negotiates, that's amazing. I'm surprised they didn't do what they usually do: Give up concessions early, then compromise on everything the other side wants.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
But this regulation would actually punish the automakers for making and selling cars that their MARKET wants from them.
Yeah, the market wanted all of those big American cars so badly that Japan had to bailout both Toyota and Honda. Oh, wait...
Sorry for the sarcasm, but I don't get your point. The American car companies produced cars for the high-end large vehicle market and then the market completely vanished. The government had to bail out two of them.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
burning oil for electricity, transporting that electricity to a battery-power car, leads to more miles per gallon than burning the oil in a car. That's because the ICE is horribly inefficient, it gets at most 25% off the energy in the oil into kinetic energy. burning oil in a power plant gives you 40% or more energy from the oil converted into electricity, the losses in transmission, storing in a battery and taking it out of the battery again doesn't compensate for the loss the ICE makes.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
You say that the government is punishing automakers that make large cars and got into significant financial trouble because they lost their market
- not Ford, the car company that didn't get into financial trouble, wasn't bailed out and is producing cars people actually want to buy.
then you say that the market wants large cars. Then you say that foreign car makers will clean our clocks because they already make lots of small cars...
- Obviously. What is NOT obvious to you?
The public obviously wants to buy large vehicles. The foreign manufacturers obviously have the leg up. The government is going to punish the domestic manufacturers for selling what the public wants, but the regulation would prevent the foreign manufacturers from importing large vehicles as well. Obviously the domestic manufacturers will not be able to compete without huge subsidies from the government, because they don't produce the cars that are mandated.
The MANDATE will force the domestic manufacturers to start producing some smaller cars, but they won't be able to compete with companies who already make those cars, they have production lines, they are in business of making smaller cars. What's not clear?
Mandates will force the domestic manufacturers to produce smaller cars, a niche, that foreign manufacturers have covered. Good luck competing there.
You can't handle the truth.
It's really quite simple. Without regulation the automakers will wind up in another race to the bottom (mpg wise) for the heavier SUV-style vehicles consumers still love. The problem with that is that the 2008 crash showed that doing that is suicide and the gasoline price point that puts you into suicide territory is $4-5 (which we are blasted close to already). Only a regulation-imposed bottom can actually allow the automakers to compete with each other in a more comfortable mpg zone.
For lighter vehicles the automakers are terrified not only about a possible double-dip recession but also any spike in fuel prices ripping the bottom out of their other markets. They know they need a viable high mpg product for consumers to shift to when those spikes occur. Without regulation these products will simply not have good enough profit margins due to competition against lower-mpg products during periods where gasoline prices are lower.
Basically, they've seen the light, but nobody should be fooled into thinking that the automakers have suddenly become environmentally conscious. There's a reason why Japanese vehicles almost destroyed American-made vehicles in the U.S. market post-crash-2008. Japanese automakers already had to contend with a large non-US consumer base desiring fuel efficiency so they had the products ready to go when the American market for gas guzzlers cratered. The American auto makers can't compete with the Japanese without regulation! It may sound ass-backwards but this is a case where regulation will actually improve margins for the automakers. It's that simple.
-Matt
'I might point out that the same auto industry that ran attack ads about how 56.2 would destroy their businesses and force everyone to drive electric cars has embraced 54.5 as an achievable target,' writes Grunwald. 'It almost makes you wonder if the automakers may have exaggerated the costs of compliance, the way they always do.'"
Or it indicates that they had little leverage at the negotiating table, and this was the best they were going to get so they try and save a little face. I for simply don't understand why we are raising standards at all, in the current economic environment.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I'm not an American, but as a social and economic conservative I feel sorry that Obama administration is destroying the great country of yours with his social-democratic policies. I can only hope that in 2012 a true tsunami of conservative anger will push him and his cronies from Washington D.C. Then America once again become a magnet for people all over the world seeking true economic freedom (and not government handouts for the idle).
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
They did not HAVE to bail out the failed companies, including the car manufacturers. The fact that they failed was enough of the proof that those companies did not need to exist. Those companies failed because they were engaged in BANKING that's my point. They were doing the same thing that mortgage lenders were doing, but GM was doing it with car loans. Beside that they had unsurmountable issues with their pension obligations.
My point is that gov't is going to cause more economic problems with its policies yet again. They should never have bailed out any company, any bank, they should never have regulated any business or taxed any income or subsidized anybody, business or person. But we are where we are, and it is what it is, and I am not sure I'll be able to post here again, it's all moded into oblivion, so I am probably on the so called 'daily limit' of 25 comments on my account and I don't post as AC.
You can't handle the truth.
This is just a continuation of CAFE, which killed the full size station wagon and replaced it with the SUV. Prior to CAFE (forced fuel mileage regulations, or pay heafty fines and taxes), people who needed large vehicles or the capability to tow light to moderate loads (small boats, campers, etc.) bought full size station wagons. Plenty of room, big safe vehicles, engine options from small blocks to big blocks, and to top it off they got mid-high teens for MPG in the 60s and up to mid 20s for MPG in the 80s when SUVs replaced them due to CAFE standards.
When manufacturers no longer made full size station wagons, people who bought them started buying SUVs, trucks that were utilitarian from the 60s through the early 80s but with the government forced demise of the station wagon were made into more comfortable and luxurious family vehicles as the 80s progressed. So instead of buying the 20-25 highway MPG station wagons, people bought 10-15 MPG trucks instead.
What we need here is less regulation, or preferably to eliminate it altogether. Let people buy what they value in a vehicle. Personally I do this by driving nothing newer than the 80s, as government regulations (fuel economy, emissions, and safety) have eliminated the types of vehicles that I find attractive and useful.
And apparently you like paying ungodly sums for a car. I'll take the $5000 car and expensive gas please.
I think it's time for everyone to stop driving and ride a goddamned bike. Hell, it would probably do most slashdotters a lot of good health-wise.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
If there was a market for vials of mercury that people wanted to dump into waterways, would you support that?
Based on past posts of his that I've read, I'm pretty sure he would.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I can totally believe you people are for this, but what ever happened to freedom? Wait this will have very bad consequences. What children on this site.
By 2025 the economy will be in such bad shape that only a very few will be able to afford new cars; everyone else will drive their old gas guzzlers--when they can afford to drive at all.
Can't we just let the invisible magical mystery hand of the market sort it out like Jayzus told us to do in the Bible? If people really want more fuel efficient cars, they'll buy them. From Japan. Just like last time.
What's the worse that could happen, the US auto industry could collapse, leaving Detroit a apocalyptic burned-out wasteland and we'd have to throw trillions of dollars at them to prop up executive bonuses? oh, wait, we already did that. Thanks US automakers!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Your argument is upside down, the US auto makers are protected from foreign (European and Japanese) competition with exemptions to safety standards. Higher technical standards help foreign manufacturers, not US. You are right that they don't give a Tiger Woods if you die horribly in an otherwise minor accident but that is because the SUV is not subject to passenger vehicle safety standards. This allows the US auto makers to carry on churning out cheap crap that is unsaleable in the rest of the world and therefore has little competition from nice, won't kill you instantly when you swerve on the freeway by rolling over and pancaking the roof, efficient cars the rest of us enjoy.
putting the power plant into the car makes it a series-hybrid. (wheels are driven only by the electric engines)
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Nice back-of-the-envelope analysis from Tom Murphy at UCSD: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/100-mpg-on-gasoline/
Vision with execution is hallucination.
Understood! not so good in the rain too.
But add a fairing and two more wheels and you do not get a lot of car.
I also know that we can do a lot more with the internal combustion engine. the ones we use today are hardly efficient. It will be a while before we can replace petroleum.
Then there are that have two problems.
One - Storing a mobile energy source. perhaps Hydrogen for use in a fuel cell.
Two - getting the energy in the first place. I think Nuclear power, perhaps green/safe/unmaned Thorium reactors, will help us split water onto hydrogen.
But all of this is a long way off. And will require a force to get it started. If only the government had any foresight.
You've completely changed the topic. Your opinions about government interference in the economy are completely valid, even if I don't completely agree.
I was specifically commenting on your assertion that the market was demanding big cars, when in fact that market evaporated even before the economic crises.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
> I might point out that the same auto industry that ran attack ads about how 56.2 would destroy their businesses and force everyone to drive electric cars has embraced 54.5 as an achievable target
That might be a bit disingenuous. How much time has lapsed between the first and second parts of that statement? And what technologies have been developed in the intervening gap?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If you are correct that there is no market for the gas guzzlers, than what the hell with the regulations forcing something, when in fact there is no point in them, if there is no demand for gas guzzlers?
But that's just not the case. In fact the government in US caused a massive increase of gas guzzler purchases, because it was subsidizing them with special tax incentives.
Either there is market for large vehicles or there isn't. If there isn't, there is no need for the legislation. If there is, then the gov't is getting in the way of the choices people make in the market, and thus causing more imbalance in the market.
You can't handle the truth.
That is all.
The small airplane industry went through excessive legislation and lawsuits. The result was that people who wanted to fly an affordable small plane had to build their own.
It's not illegal to build your own car yet (most places). So people who want to drive a genuinely fun car with actual power and only 15 MPG will order a truckload of parts delivered. Several weekends with an air wrench and they'll have whatever they want.
An electric motor can have as more torque then a 440 Hemi. And the electric motor will have a lot less mass.
Guess he heard about the Global Warming scientists being investigated for Scientific Misconduct and the NASA data that debunks all current Global Warming models (see Remote Sensing). Guess when all you have is your bluff all you can do is double down when called.
People like you were probably heckling the Wright brothers, saying that heavier than air flight wasn't possible. Some things may not be "possible" today (like 1000mpg; if that ain't hyperbolie, I don't know what is), but 60mpg is well within the realm of possibility in the next 20 years.
I'm all for reducing government meddling (like repealing drug laws), but self-regulation is a myth in this day an age. Take the history of phosphates in detergents. When the government (rightly) forbid phosphates in laundry soap, many said that it was meddling, despite the fact that ground water was being polluted. Moving the goalposts, people then claimed it was impossible to make an effective laundry detergent without phosphates. Yet here we sit with clean clothes and clean groundwater. Wash, rinse, repeat (pun intended) for banning phosphates in dishwasher detergents.
The only thing stopping progress is big business, big money and entrenched interests. I have hope that human ingenuity (in the form of scientists and engineers; yes, educated people) will overcome. The day we really have to fear is when longevity allows regressive throwbacks to live forever and allows them to keep abusing control over those with less power than them.
Nathan's blog
If the rational choice model was perfectly accurate representation of human behavior rather than a sometimes useful model with serious problems in certain areas, this would be true; in the real world, because of the way people discount future costs, standards that create immediate incentive to purchase or sell more efficient vehicles are better at improving fleet efficiency than gas taxes, since the future costs represented by gas taxes are discounted when people buy vehicles.
Obama states this will create jobs. Will it create enough jobs to cover the death of the RV industry (and the related industries) this will cause?
Honestly, there is no way from "here to there" when it comes to fuel efficiency from an ICE. We are hovering around ~30% efficiency for modern mid-sized automobiles. Some estimates put that at a lower figure. The maximum efficiency theoretically possible is limited by the Carnot cycle, and I think it's ~60% if IIRC. There are two other factors you can play with: weight and energy recovery. As far as weight goes, heavier cars are actually MORE efficient (weight to fuel wise). It's why buses are more efficient than cars. Believe it or not, a tractor trailer getting ~4-6mpg is way more efficient than a Honda Accord. It's carrying 80,000 lbs and the Honda is only moving about 3000 lbs. This argument doesn't hold much water though when you simply talking about people moving. The tendency in the US is for everyone to drive their own car. Therefore, the person-miles/gallon is fairly low but this is really about weight efficiency. If I move a 200 lbs object with a 3000 lbs one, my weight efficiency ratio is less than 1:10. Adding people just raises that ratio. The other option is to lower the weight of the transportation. This is tough to do, and keep cars safe. Most increases in automobile safety has come from: collapsible steering wheels, seat belts, and crumple zones. Don't expect that other "industrial" vehicles will go down in weight though. They may make the vehicle lighter, but the load will just go up. It will still be 80,000 lbs tractor trailers vs 3000 lbs vehicles. There is a point at which no amount of crumple zones will save you when these two things collide. A fix for this side effect might be self driving cars that nearly never crash. Though, in this scenario you make crashes less likely, but increase their rate of fatality. As for energy recovery it seems that the mechanical/electrical cycle provided by batteries is one of the best, but don't expect it to improve highway figures by much. Around town there still could be some improvement, as wind resistance is low as so is friction. The highway is a different matter, and that is evidenced by the current figures from existing hybrids. The only way to improve those numbers is to reduce friction and wind resistance. One is materials science (friction) and I'm sure it's possible but pricey. Options there must be carefully weighed to ensure that what ever new near friction-less material is sustainable and doesn't cause more CO2 just to make it compared to the fuel savings. A second option (wind resistance) is largely based on aesthetics. Will people buy cars that look funny? Hard to answer that one as tastes change.
If there was a market for vials of mercury that people wanted to dump into waterways, would you support that?
- those are 2 separate questions.
1. If there was a market for vials of mercury, then the people should be able buy those vials of mercury.
2. If somebody decided to dump the mercury into waterways, then it would be a separate issue. The waterways should all be private property, and anybody affected by the actions of dumping the mercury there would have to take those people to court to seek damages.
You can't handle the truth.
Um, impeach for what, moron?
"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."
So maybe next week.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
My 5.7 litre V8 Hemi is faaaantastic. OK, I live in a major oil producing country...
What about air resistance and vehicle weight? These two things would expand our MPGs, right?
to create the loopholes that will allow them to continue as they have, dodging the intent while complying with the letter of the law for many years.
SUV are not cars, they are "light trucks", so their crappy mileage wasn't factored into their car fleet mileage ratings under the old law.
Now the auto makers have until 2025 to convince people to drive heavy trucks or some other not yet invented classification of vehicle whose poor fuel economy ratings will fall outside this agreement/law defining fleet mileage to include cars and light trucks. I predict that by 2025 most people will be driving something other than the "cars" and "light trucks" defined under this new law.
Laws/regulations are meant to control behavior. Taxes are meant to fund the government
Taxes can also fund government-sponsored efforts to discourage misbehavior. For example, taxing emissions funds clean air research. Taxing road use by individuals funds public transit infrastructure and research into telecommuting and remote monitoring. Taxing energy use funds efficiency research. Taxing energy imports funds wars to secure a friendly government where energy sources are mined (e.g. mid-east oil). When energy sources used by citizens are foreign, research into reducing energy use reduces foreign coercion of the citizens, something I guess even a libertarian might be able to get behind.
Unfairly punishing those who need to drive for work
Increasing road tax would lead to a rise in use of public transit and telecommuting.
For example, in my job I travel ~1/3 of the time, visiting sites all across the region to inspect the power system.
Increasing road tax would lead to a rise in use of remote monitoring.
They won't absorb the new tax, the consumers will.
Consumers will choose competing producers whose processes use less energy.
This means that urban and suburban areas will face increased food prices, for example, because there isn't enough farmland close to most cities.
The problem here isn't transport energy costs as much as zoning regulations that ban home gardening.
They use the sales-weighted harmonic mean rather than the arithmetic mean-- so the CAFE average for the two hypothetical cars is 2 / (1/20 + 1/100), or 33.3mpg, not 60mpg. This is so that the average represents an equal number of miles driven per car, rather than an equal number of gallons burned per car. And since it's sales-weighted, it quite definitely *does* matter how many of each type of car is sold.
See the section titled "How is a manufacturer’s CAFE determined for a given model year?" and take note of how the formula is essentially a harmonic mean weighted by number of cars sold.
I will agree that the light truck exemption is stupid, but let's at least get the facts right before we start complaining about it.
Do you mean "everybody" working as inner-city burger flippers, or "everybody" as middle-class burbians with a three car garage and a 60 mile round-trip commute?
In the theory of economics, wages adjust to reflect the cost of living. This is why wages are higher in NY city than Butte Rock, Montana.
The structural problem of living out on the burbs far, far away from where the jobs are is another matter. There would need to be some structural readjustment.
See? This fellow agrees with me. The market always adjusts.
Structural adjustment takes time. Mommy is competing for a promotion at work, so has to stay late to chat the boss; but Bobby is turning six this year, and if he's late for advancement class, he'll never pass his future MCATs. Give and take is where the rubber meets the road.
The governing dynamic in this debate is musical chairs. Many people are locked into short term incentives. No one about to vest wants to tell a sorry story and depress the market just before they cash their chips. As soon as one person cashes out, the next person on a short vest takes their place. I think velocity is a proxy for leverage. And the powerful do love their leverage.
The idea of a CEO of a big three car company telling the truth to the public about the future price of oil ("think twice before buying in subsubsuburb") and being sued by present day shareholders is a telling one. Most often, the present shareholder sells to a future shareholder. A high price benefits the former. A low price benefits the later. In either case, you've made one shareholder happy, yet the legal system prioritizes the next guy in line to cash out. He can sue the CEO if the share price falls due to unnecessary disclosure of accurate and depressing information; the purchaser is governed by caveat emptor. But like conservation of mass, you've got conservation of shareholders. One is an electron, the other is a positron.
(The case where the company buys back its own shares is a different one, where there is clearly conflict of interest in accurate disclosure, in this case concerning understated lucrative upside.)
If the price of gas had been put on a path of consistent and moderate increase since 1980, we wouldn't now have nearly so much structural liability. But waiting for the last minute to tell bad news is so much better for executives cashing out on short term bonus incentives that the obvious forewarnings are rarely heard.
Getting that kind of MPG is actually pretty easy given today's technology -- I don't see what the auto manufacturers (or even you slashdotters) are complaining about.
Consider Smokey Yunik's "Hot Vapor" engine; See:
http://www.legendarycollectorcars.com/featured-vehicles/other-feature-cars/smokey-yunicks-hot-vapor-fiero-51-mpg-and-0-60-in-less-than-6-seconds-see-and-hear-it-run-in-our-exclusive-video/
This is not some sham, this is not some backyard engineer, Look up Smokey in Wikipedia, he was a real engineer who consulted for GM, worked for NASCAR, etc., and his Fiero project gets 51mpg and goes like a bat out of hell in terms of speed, and that was all done with 1980's technology.
Now, combine that with Direct Injection (not to be confused with EFI) more efficient (automatic) transmission technologies such as CVT, turbocharging, etc., and somewhere in all that, there's a balance which will take a Toyota Camry and make it go 100mph while getting 55mpg.
And if you want to go extreme, VW claims to have a car that goes 100miles per gallon (of Diesel), and many car manufacturers already have vehicles where 40+ mpg is common (mostly in Europe).
Frankly, I don't see what the problem is. And like it or not, automakers are going to have to contend with $5 or more a gallon for gas, which means the days of the Hummer are numbered.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Just what I need, something else to worry about.... like scrap thieves running off with my fenders.
When you burn gas you get mostly carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides, with smaller amounts of volatile organic compounds, ozone, particulate matter, etc.
When you burn hydrogen in air you get water and a small amount of nitrogen oxides.
Realistically, however, hydrogen is not really a fuel. It's more of a replacement for a battery.
Even if you bring in the tax at 100%, it takes years for it to have a significant effect because the vehicles on the road will stay on the road until they cost so much to run that it's more economical to buy a new vehicle.
That said, if we jacked up the gas tax now I'm fairly sure it would have an effect by 2025. :)
...the whole supply/demand thing.
"which will reduce fuel consumption by 40% and carbon emissions by 50%"
No, it won't. If anything has been shown the last few years, it's that the amount of driving people do varies widely with the cost of operating a car. Gas gets more expensive, people drive less. Gas gets cheaper, people drive more.
Making cars radically more fuel efficient may reduce the fuel consumed per mile by about 40%, but total consumption may not drop significantly and could even go up (Cars now are far more efficient than in the 1950s. Has our gas consumption dropped at all?)
One more nail in the coffin of thus country.
541 days until we can fire barry and hopefully get someone in who isn't actually trying to run everyone into bankruptcy.
> I was specifically commenting on your assertion that the market was demanding big cars,
> when in fact that market evaporated even before the economic crises.
Unless you count export markets for American cars. When somebody in Japan, Australia, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Mexico, or elsewhere in the world buys an imported American car, it's NOT going to be an American-made Ford Focus or Chevy Aveo... it's going to be a Mustang, a Corvette, an Escalade, or maybe even a big F-150 truck. *THOSE* are the American cars with viable export markets. If they were eliminated, America would basically cease to have cars anybody in a foreign country would be interested in buying. They have plenty of domestic econoboxes to choose from.
American automakers know what their niche market is, and it's a niche they understand well. Pre-bankruptcy, Chrysler developed a very cool hybrid turbo-electric drivetrain that used the electric traction motor with PID feedback to compensate for turbo lag. Slam the pedal to the floor, and the electric motor kicks in to add a few dozen horsepower while the turbine is spinning up. The net result is a sports car that gets ~20-24mpg instead of the usual 12-18mpg, and basically lets you have your cake & eat it too.
but what does the govn't have to do with the whole efficiency farce. It is the oil resource (and maybe CO2 emission) that has externalities. Tax those, but leave the fxxking trucks be.
Either there is market for large vehicles or there isn't.
It's heavily correlated to gas prices - so sometimes there's a market and sometimes there isn't.
While I tend to agree that government regulation is not great for business, sometimes other things trump an efficient market. For instance, I can argue for lighter cars for reasons of public safety and for reasons of national security. In the case of safety, it is almost always safer to drive the heaviest car available. If the heaviest car available is lighter, than someone who is safety conscious doesn't need to get in an arms race to drive a big-ass car. In the case of national security, we spend billions securing our oil supply from a highly unstable region. We need to make stopping the import of oil from the middle east a national goal, even at the expense of an ideal market economy.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I hope they exclude trucks from this new average requirement, or automakers are going to be in a real pinch. A four wheel drive one-ton work truck capable of towing equipment or fuel wouldn't get 30mpg on gas or diesel even if it ran at 100% efficiency. Those vehicles still need to exist unless you think you can build roads and houses with your Prius. The old trucks won't last forever.
And what about all wheel drive cars? For more than half the year here, I absolutely need one to get to work, and I'm certainly not an exception. That's not an area the US manufacturers are behind on, either. Nobody makes one that gets better than 30MPG in town. Regulations aren't going to magically make it so.
Just how tiny are they going to have to make the front wheel drive commuters to balance against the cars that are actually useful?
My SAAB 2004 2.1ltr Diesel Estate is not a small car. I've just returned from a trip from England to the Cevennes in France. (Nimes is 40Km SE). from Calais to Calais and 2100Km of driving some on the Autoroute and a lot up and down the hills in the Cevennes with a load of building materials in the back(I'm restoring a house) I averaged 54.4mpg (UK).
The Engine is an old GM Diesel. There are plenty of more efficient ones available today so getting to 60+mpg should not be that hard.
A few months ago I was in N.H. I rented a car at Boston Logan. I was frankly shocked at how bad it's fuel economy was.
both cars had Air con. Mine is a manual the rental was an Automatic.
I'd really like for someone to tell me why US made cars are frankly crap. My SAAB is a lot more solidly built. I can testify for that given that I put it in a ditch last winter and it emerged with hardly any damage. One time I was in an accident in Mancherster NH. I hit another car at less than 10mph. My car was a write-off. Eh? Wtf? Yes folks, US cars are crap, made of 1mm thick tin.
Pah.
I hope that GM, Ford & Chrysler go to the wall when they can't meet these targets. Highly unlikely though. GM will pull a few strings in DC.
I'm not some irregular visitor to the US. I worked just outside Boston (20mi up rte 2) for more than 15years in the 1980's & 90's. I'm also married to a fantastic woman from Nashua NH.
The IEA dumps sixty million barrels on the market, and the price of crude is barely dented for a day... that's not supply and demand.
That's liquidity, defined at the top of this Wikipedia article as "an asset's ability to be sold without causing a significant movement in the price and with minimum loss of value."
Gas prices and petroleum prices are vastly inflated by speculation
Yet the speculators provide a service to the market, namely liquidity.
The National Security argument is moot, since it was US government that created the problem of oil dependence in the first place, by subsidizing auto-makers via the highway building project.
Also it is safer to drive a bigger vehicle, but there is a subset of market that wants that safety, not everybody wants to drive a tank. However if I want a tank, I am going to get a tank regardless of the regulations. The only thing that these regulations will do to me if I want a tank, they will make it more expensive to own one, but they won't stop me from owning one, but the economy will suffer again, because there was no reason to make this more expensive to buy a bigger car, which always creates inefficiency in the market, by mis-allocating resources to something that shouldn't cost as much as it costs with government intervention.
You can't handle the truth.
Aluminum frame, fiberglass body, 1,650 pounds, under $30,000. It also got great gas mileage for a sports car that could do 0-60 in 5.7 seconds.
Wel, that was the first European version, before they redesigned the second generation to meet US federal regulations. Now it's over 2,000 pounds and costs over $40,000, and it's still operating on a federal waiver.
How about this: Lower regulations so manufacturers have a fighting chance at building efficient, affordable cars.
The National Security argument is moot, since it was US government that created the problem of oil dependence in the first place, by subsidizing auto-makers via the highway building project.
How is it moot? The highways exist, like it or not. Even if we shut off subsidy to highways, they would still exist for a long, long time. Most would probably live on as toll roads. Turning off the highway subsidy will not reduce oil consumption in the short term.
The only thing that these regulations will do to me if I want a tank, they will make it more expensive to own one
Which will preclude certain people from owning tanks.
but the economy will suffer again, because there was no reason to make this more expensive to buy a bigger car, which always creates inefficiency in the market, by mis-allocating resources to something that shouldn't cost as much as it costs with government intervention.
How can you pronounce that without including the cost to the economy that all of the death and injury from automobile accidents causes? That's a limitation of the free market - it will never tie the cost of a car to the costs of the effects of driving a car. There is no feedback mechanism unless the government interferes. Dead and maimed people cost the economy billions in health care, lost productivity, and wasted education and experience.
Pollution is another example of this. A car that emits fewer smog gasses is more expensive than a car that pollutes. There is no economic reason for anyone to spend the extra money on the cleaner car. So without government intrusion, smog is an intractable problem.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
In 2025 we'll see $10-$20 a gallon gasoline or even more expensive. That makes me wonder why government introduces a regulation that will be useless at that point. I cannot think of anything other than handing out more bailouts due to "high costs of compliance". As if we did not pour enough gigadollars into GM and other "too big to fail" car manufacturers.
How about we let the market decide instead of dictating fuel efficiency. It almost sounds like the freaking government actually kind of owns some of the auto companies.... oh wait....
Please dear God get this lunatic out of office soon.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
Gentlemen, would you please bother to supply normal units from now on? Namely l/100 km - this weird "mpg" mumbo-jumbo says nothing to 95% of the world population.
There are three non-metric countries in the world, Myanmar (Burma), Liberia and the United States. In good company, indeed.
The problem was not the size of the American cars, but the lack of quality
DONT complain, if in a few years, the death rates start going up, because they will reduce the weight even more, on vehicles, to achieve the fuel standards.
That's a limitation of the free market - it will never tie the cost of a car to the costs of the effects of driving a car. There is no feedback mechanism unless the government interferes. Dead and maimed people cost the economy billions in health care, lost productivity, and wasted education and experience.
- that's a misunderstanding. There are 2 ways to get liability
1. Private insurance.
2. Court system.
That's all it takes, and it doesn't even require government involvement (and I think all of it would be better without government involvement.)
The feedback mechanism is through the court system, the costs should be covered by private insurance.
As to air pollution - nobody wants to breath polluted air, but only wealthy economies can take care of pollution. So the poorer the economy is, the less likely it is to take care of any pollution, air, water, ground, it doesn't matter, all of it doesn't matter if people don't have the food. The wealthier the economy becomes, the more likely it is to start bothering with the conditions of the surrounding environment, and of-course none of the assets should be owned by the government, because we all know how 'good' governments are at owning stuff. They are not owners, they don't care. That's why there were liability caps on deep water oil drilling set at around 70Million dollars, which is ridiculous and shouldn't have ever existed.
How is it moot? The highways exist, like it or not. Even if we shut off subsidy to highways, they would still exist for a long, long time. Most would probably live on as toll roads. Turning off the highway subsidy will not reduce oil consumption in the short term.
- if you shut down the highway subsidies right now, sell the assets to private companies and have ACTUAL costs of operation be transfered to the users of the highways, you will start seeing reduction in usage immediately. People would start moving in closer to city centers, leaving their suburban sprawls, moving closer to places were they work if they actually have to pay for they use of that impossible infrastructure.
That's why free market works as opposed to government subsidies, because free market doesn't create the crazy resource mis-allocations that cause massive pollution and oil dependence, which means wars, and impossible to pay for privately infrastructure in the first place.
You can't handle the truth.
A lot of the limousine liberals don't think ordinary people should own cars anyway. They believe everyone shoudl etl somone else do the driving - a bus driver or light rail operator, for example. It works for them: they don't drive their limo themselves, or their Learjet.
So forcing the cost of cars up is always a win in their view, and better gas mileage is as good an excuse as any.
Around here there is practically no public transportation, and to build it would be impractical (not enough people to support the massive investment). Almost everybody has to drive to work, many of them not all that well off, and many of them not financially capable of buying a new ultra-efficient car.
Basically you propose a regressive tax, taxing the poor far more heavily than the rich in proportion to income. That rich dentist in town can still afford his 10 mpg Hummer H1. The extra several hundred dollars a month in gas is a drop in the bucket for him, but the thousands of people with their financial heads barely above water can't afford the extra couple hundred their cheap old cars will cost them to run.
You're exactly right, this standard will only apply to new vehicles, so that guy with the late-80's buick that leaves a cloud of smoke every time he pulls away from a traffic light will still burn more fuel and dump more unburned hydrocarbons into the air than any five new cars.
The GP claims his car will last another 20 years, which would be impressive, and carries an implication that he will keep the car maintained (in order for it to last that long). However, unless he's a very fastidious vehicle owner, the fuel economy of that awesome car will start to decline, and emissions will degrade. And then, even though it was a great car when it was newer, it will be an environmental disaster. Bit-rot may be a myth, but exhaust-system rot is very, very real.
How would a private individual go about investigating who dumped the mercury? What if they didn't have the resources to even detect the cause of whatever damage they suffered? What if multiple private interconnected waterways were involved? What if another waterway owner was responsible for the dumping? The cost of resolving this privately in civil courts would be astronomical, and the difficulty in securing evidence would probably dissuade many from pursuing it. This lack of action would encourage those responsible to continue their actions and cause damage to others. The kind of system you propose gives an obvious advantage to powerful organisations. In a fair society I believe individuals deserve collective protection and representation from exactly these sorts of problems, especially when from a macroscopic perspective such protection serves society as a whole.
It seems to me like non-political, government-sponsored social agents (the police and criminal courts, for example) are a pretty good solution.
Amnesty International
Every car has its optimum speed for conditions. In general, a very aerodynamic gas-powered car will likely get better mileage at 70 mph than at 50 mph, especially if you're using the air conditioning. Now, these aerodynamic bricks we call SUVs, same story, just lower speeds all around.
From the summary: "reduce fuel consumption by 40% and carbon emissions by 50%."
How can reducing fuel consumption decrease carbon emissions by a *greater* fraction than the reduction of the fuel consumed?
I could see the carbon emission being reduced by *less than* the fuel consumption reduction (if, e.g. fuel consumption accounts for less than 100% of total carbon emissions), but I can see no way, mathematically, that the reduction in carbon could be *greater* than the reduction in fuel? That suggests that 100% of fuel consumption accounts for *greater than 100%* (which is, of course, mathematically impossible) of carbon emissions?
Can you explain to me how you are supposed to deal with all of the same exact problem you listed when there is government and regulations, how exactly does it make it ANY easier to find out what happened exactly, who dumped what where, if it was done on purpose by somebody to spoil your water?
What, does government have a magic power to pinpoint who exactly decided to be the 'terrorist' this time around? Because if history shows anything, it's that government is very terrible at this sort of thing, first, figuring out who did what, second actually coming up with a sensible way of dealing with it.
No, having private competing owners would be much better in this case, because more people with property, and thus something to lose would be involved.
You can't handle the truth.
It is normal for people to perceive regulation they personally don't like as meddling, and all other regulation as helpful. The problem is, others see it quite differently than you. Your reasonable regulation is another person's meddling that could cost him his livelihood.
I tried a suggestion once, put a little sodium triphosphate in my laundry along with the soap. WOW! I haven't seen clothes that clean since I was a kid, and phosphates were allowed. Turns out the alternatives are not quite as good. After regulation we've simply changed our standard for "clean" to something not quite so clean.
Phosphates don't "dirty" groundwater as a pollutant in themselves. They are not toxic, mutagenic or carcinogenic. They are simply a fertilizer, and thus can promote algae growth to the extent that local bodies of water can't handle if they are not filtered or neutralized before being allowed back into the environment.
One of those entrenched interests being government. Politicians can make careers on feel-good demagoguery.
Mythbusters added dimples (like on a golf ball) to a car and got a rather noticeable (iirc, about 10%) improvement in gas mileage. I would be interested to see if that could be implemented on a production car.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
You have larger size for a reason, to put more into it. If you put more into it, that means more weight, unless you ship balloons or teddy bears around. More weight means more strength in the vehicle to handle that weight. You achieve more strength by either using more of your same material, adding weight to the car, or by using more exotic materials, which makes the car too expensive to buy.
Door dings can just be bumped out. Carbon fiber will crack. Ask anyone who does body work on some of the newer cars.
Just great... Just what I wanted... All I needed was a car that had more sensors and electronic control devices. Sure it looks good on paper, but it's screw over the consumer time when those sensors and electronics start to malfunction and have to be diagnosed and replaced. I think I'll stay with my older 70's era cars. Sure the mileage isn't that great - but you can't beat their brick like construction for safety. And you definitely can't top their ease of replacing parts.... Hey look - a car that doesn't have a computer in it... and it works... what a concept.
This regulation is complete BULLSHIT. The chance of meeting this arbitrary requirement, based on pure hash smoking and Kumbaya singing, are precisely ZERO. It would require completely stamping out production of serious pickups and vans and full family SUVs. If pickups and vans and full family SUVs have a bullshit exclusion, then the figure is absolutely meaningless because 60% of buyers will just opt for the excluded vehicles.
And no, I'm not saying this because I am gluttonous selfish bastard. I've been averaging 46 mpg over the last 11 years. It's just realism.
Some cars today are sold without spare tires to meet unrealistic mileage numbers. And they're being made lighter and out of weaker materials - leading certainly to some number of deaths from accidents that otherwise would have been survivable.
*No* car today (last I checked) meets what they're insisting that the *average* MPG be in thirteen years. Not the two-seat Smart car, not the Prius. To think that an order of magnitude of efficiency can be squeezed out of the sky is plain old stupid.
Want to discourage fuel use? Triple the gas tax. That's far less onerous than current proposals (this one, or GPS-tracking everyone's miles).
I find it disheartening to see all the comments where people say all we need to do is raise the gas tax to $6.00 or more. It is a poor idea to suddenly almost double the price of gas in a recession where most middle to low income families are struggling just to keep the lights on in the house and to keep food on the table. You'll only ever notice that the ones calling for such a tax hike are the ones who can afford to fill their tanks every month and have extra change to spare. It's only when wife, two kids and a mortgage later when those people will change their tune.
Price hikes are never the answer to solve an issue that is the foundation of the economy. You must look at the overall effects of a price hike. If gas goes up... everything else goes up. So not only are we loading a hefty tax onto the gas that lower and middle income people need to get to work and take their kids to school, we've basically added a tag to every other items and service imaginable.
The solution is not to raise gas prices. The solution is to find viable alternatives to fossil fuels and make them cheaper and more readily available than fossil fuels. If you make an electric car cheaper to buy and cheaper to run than a gasoline counterpart people will flock to it. It's all a matter of getting the technology in place to do it. It's happening faster than people think.
how strange, Murphy adds loads of kinetic energy to the air and when he's done driving, it still all stands still.
what murphy forgot was that whatever energy you put in getting the air to move you partially get back when it's behind you and comes to a standstill. the entirety of his argument does not hold water.
disclaimer: ianaa (i am not an aerodynamicist)
Is there some law that allows the President to do this?
If not, what gives the President the authority to do this unilaterally? We don't live in a dictatorship and I find the ability of the President to issue fiat orders more troubling than gas guzzlers.
The ends don't justify the means. Sadly, for most people, the ends do justify the means.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Raise it by ten cents or double it, it's still a regressive tax, it WILL hurt the poor more than the rich.
But I take it you're not in the poor category, so why should you care?
A government has more resources than a single individual. As well as being able to pay for things like trained investigators (essential in pretty much any kind of criminal investigation, from road accidents to murders) and labs to do chemical analysis, they could levy special investigative and punitive rights. For example, a criminal court can award search warrants for police to execute in order to collect evidence, and then impose a custodial penalty upon successful conviction. By ensuring that amateurs are not involved in the investigation and prosecution, this branch of government (theoretically) adheres to standards high enough to warrant them being given the kind of rights that allow them to suspend the freedom of those who break laws.
The government would also be able to address these problems without requiring private individuals to drop everything they're doing and start acting as investigators and lawyers. Even small civil cases take a LONG time to litigate (never mind investigate), especially if you aren't a specialist. As a software engineer, do you really expect me to drop my day job while I poke around a neighbour's private property to collect evidence of mercury poisoning I had to pay an expensive lab to uncover? I regard that kind of act to be a crime against society (like murder or drunk driving) and thus deem the onus of investigation/prosecution to be on society's collective representative - the executive and judicial branches of government.
Amnesty International
No luxury trucks? Are you kidding me? Have you looked inside a King Ranch F250? They don't call them Country Cadillacs for no reason.
Seriously, rail is much more efficient for moving freight. Cost of fuel goes up, rail becomes more competitive, and I-5 ceases to be one long parade o' semis. Sounds good to me. Plus fewer trucks means less wear and tear on the roads, more win.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
There are only so many units of energy (BTU's) in a gallon of fuel. After you hit a certain efficiency level you have to look elsewhere for improvements. There is no free lunch. You can lighten the load only so much and maintain safety. No decent sized vehicle is going to get 60mpg.
Lightness allows for a relatively small engine, less fuel used.
Amazingly Ford managed to continue making money while producing Big Trucks and Muscle Cars. GM and Chrysler should have been allowed to fail. They are both grossly mismanaged. The government went into direct competition with Ford, if they hadn't propped up the other two then Ford would be the only US automaker and could easily compete with foreign car companies. There is a market for both traditional American cars and smaller foreign autos. Government interference in the market causes all kind of problems, much more than it helps.
Cars today are not lighter and made from weaker materials. Government crash standards are much more stringent than they were a couple decades ago, and cars are much heavier than comparably sized cars were in the 70s and 80s, partly due to safety requirements. One example: a modern Mustang starts at about 3400 pounds, a 1965 mustang started nearly a thousand pounds lighter.
I do agree that a gas tax is the better way to go, and the mpg numbers they're kicking around seem unrealistic, but I wouldn't say they're unreachable.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
- that's a misunderstanding. There are 2 ways to get liability
1. Private insurance.
2. Court system.
The court system IS government interference - as is the concept of a corporation (which is necessary for insurance on a large scale... though some kind of partnership could probably work), which does not exist in anything but a government charter. And I think we have plenty of evidence that a large number of people will not have private insurance unless the government forces it.
And anyway, how good for the economy is it to have a bunch of lawyers producing nothing? Are you sure that lawsuits are more efficient than EPA mandates?
you will start seeing reduction in usage immediately. People would start moving in closer to city centers, leaving their suburban sprawls, moving closer to places were they work if they actually have to pay for they use of that impossible infrastructure.
I disagree. Those people are already paying for those roads in the form of gas taxes. You'd have to drop the gas tax if you stopped funding the roads. This could easily make up for the tolls. Anyway, you'd also have to force the states to stop funding roads - not just the feds.
But most of all, your solution is completely non-practical from a political point-of-view. You have to work within the current system.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Why not a regular car?
I have no idea what the US deal is but in Europe it's pretty much the norm to get cars that get 4-6L/100km (60-40 mpg) on the highway and 6-8L/100km (40-30 mpg) in the city, or small town cars that get 3-5L/100km in the city (pushing 80 mpg). Why not in the US?
There's also the alternative fuels. In the US I only hear about gas for automobiles, but in the Europe you can get cars that use Diesel/petrol fuel -- they cost more up front and run slower than the gas variants but usually offer better torque (good in the winter snow), better mileage and lower fuel cost. There's also LPG (liquified petroleum gas) as an alternative to regular gas, which allows you to drop your monthly gas bill by as much as 40% in some places.
Thats what people seem to miss.
You had diesel rabbits in the 50's, geo's in the 50's and civics in the 50's.
They also weighed under 2000lbs. I would imagine if you could magically drop 1000lbs off your typical car sold in the US today you would see a sizable MPG gain.
The BIG three own or are owned by companies that produce high MPG vehicles in europe. its not like they need to do a ton of brand new R&D. Of course getting americans to buy those vehicles may be a bit tougher.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Ford GM and Chrysler all share supply chains. Letting GM and Chrysler fail would have crippled those chains, devastating Ford in the process.
Under your utopian vision, the American auto industry would probably consist of, The Big "0" today.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Nonsense, Ford was in support of the government assistance - the CEO even flew out to Capitol Hill to testify on GM and Chrysler's behalf.
Ford would have gone bankrupt without the GM and Chrysler bailout.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Sometime around 1976, a set of targets were in place to meet mileage standards, which have been circumvented by "light utility trucks" called SUVs.
I heard that the Taconic Highway in Westchester, NY bans "trucks", but SUV's don't count as trucks when it is not convenient. Personally, I believe that SUV's should pay an extra gas fees (and increased tolls) to offset the addition stress on the roads, roads, and infrastructure that they impart. Even extra fees for environmental impact resulting in health deterioration. Shit, my allergic reactions spike during high ozone days.
You might say less taxes, but then tell that to my home owners association, which has fines from everything ranging from acceptable gutter colors to hanging your clothes in the back yard.
BP and Exxon pay a smaller percentage of their revenue for their egregious violations which makes a bigger impact on people than my purple and pink downspouts. People say live elsewhere, but I say how the hell did this shit get on the books in the first place.
Live Free or Dry!
I want to know why you would like to make it worse.
Many people will keep buying gas guzzlers, hurting others, even if the price of gas does go up enough to hurt.
The article is a load of garbage. First off, electric/hybrid vehicles have low global demand. The Leaf has "rocketed" to 10,000 GLOBAL sales. Wow. No one really wants expensive, limited range, limited passenger electric vehicles. Hybrids with two power trains and complex, error-ridden electronic control systems are little better.
What consumers want, globally, is large, powerful, long-range vehicles. Trucks and SUVs sell a lot, a lot more than hybrids or all-electric vehicles or tiny cramped buzz-boxes. No one lusts for a Toyota Scion. Everyone wants a sports car. Or a Truck. Or an SUV. Larger vehicles are safer, have better rides, last longer, and consumers pay more for them. Only clueless folks wanting to mandate yuppie-dom on everyone thinks this is a good idea.
Right now the Auto companies are just waiting out the idiot Obama Administration, figuring the due-date is off long enough that they can get it rescinded. If it actually stuck, Ford would go bankrupt, along with GM and Chrysler AGAIN. Toyota and Nissan and Kia and the rest would simply cease US production and sell globally, their mix of large/luxury vehicles and modestly priced 20-30 MPG econo-boxes.
I'd love to see a vehicle I'd like -- roomy, spacious, SAFE (so I don't die in an accident that would give me minor injuries in a large vehicle), that got great (>40 MPG) gas mileage. I'd love it if every woman looked like a swimsuit model, we had workable jetpacks, and I won the lottery. That is not a strategy. Just wishing.
Yeah, because people are going to just abandon their suddenly un-sellable, valueless homes and default on their mortgages in droves, to move to the closest city. That would be great for the economy, that would fix everything.
grep -iw skynet
Your problem here is that I am not an authoritarian. I'm not inclined to wear funny armbands and tell everybody else what they're supposed to do. I would allow people to turn off their telescreens, or not have one at all if they so desire.
Every bit of meddling comes with unintended consequences. A while back they started enforcing mileage standards, and many died as cars were made lighter and less safe before the technology was available to make them safer. Later they mandated airbags, and many died with broken necks as the bags exploded in their faces.
How about this: Whatever you propose, I propose having a logic bomb in your bank. The second someone slips into poverty because of your policy, all of your funds are withdrawn, your car is repossessed and your home is foreclosed.
We'll also have a loaded gun pointed at your head 24/7. The very second someone dies because of your policy, the trigger gets pulled.
Still feel like meddlling?
While I admire the people-friendly intentions of this law, it achieves so little it is worthless.
Firstly, many people buy a car on price. And a used 6-cylinder car costs less than a used 4-cylinder car. A new-technology car will increase prices all round, at least until the Chinese factories (of all auto marques) re-tool.
Secondly, when petroleum prices rise, people will complain and the USA government will manipulate the market to lower the cost of fuel to their voters. This allows US Americans to keep their gas-guzzlers.
Thirdly, USA car manufacturers will bitch and whine compliance is too difficult and demand concessions against the CAFE rating, which already happens. Or the government will simply delay the enforcement of the new legislation.
Fourthly, When the global supply of small, EPA-compliant cars once again buries the USA auto industry, they will once again demand a bail-out.
Maybe you could, you know, let people buy the vehicles they want to buy and then if gas is expensive most won't buy gas guzzlers?
And how do you propose to get a several dollar per gallon gasoline/diesel tax passed in our current political environment? That is the only way we are going to make gasoline/diesel significantly more expensive in the near future. Until you can figure that out, the next best alternative is to pass regulations requiring better fuel efficiency and punishing those who fail to meet the standard.
Sure, it would be a good thing in many ways if market forces could be brought to bear. Right now NO ONE makes a fuel efficient version of the pickup I need (yes need) as a daily driver. I don't care about horsepower much but I'm not aware of any pickup sold in the US that gets much better than 25mpg highway. It's perfectly possible to make one, but no one does. The only way one is going to get made is with either higher fuel taxes (never will happen) or with higher CAFE standards. I'd prefer the gas tax but I'll take the CAFE standards. What I don't want is for nothing to get done.
The secret societies won't be giving up oil anytime soon for free energy already created by tax payer money in black projects..
I understand the need to get people away from gas guzzlers...I do...but how is raising taxes to make it prohibitively expensive to drive at all any different from using the government to just mandate better mileage from the auto makers?
The short answer is that mandated fuel economy standards mostly just affect automobiles. It doesn't affect consumer behavior in any other positive ways. Gasoline taxes have all sorts of interesting second order effects. For example Europe taxes fuel significantly more than the US does. This has over time resulted in significantly better public transportation (trains especially), less suburban sprawl, and widespread use of smaller more efficient automobiles. Higher gasoline taxes would arguably be among the best things we could possible do for the environment.
If your goal is simply to raise the fuel economy of automobiles, then there is little difference between the two approaches. But a fuel tax would do more and thus is arguably the better policy. To be honest though, it is something of an academic discussion because there is no possible way a gasoline tax of any significant size will be passed in our current political environment.
Government has more resources than a single individual, that is true, however government does not have more interest than any particular individual in any particular thing or property rights or anything, that deals with owning any asset, government is not an owner. A number of private individuals, all of who would suffer some consequences, if their property became poisoned would be a big enough force, especially given absence of government power, which would free up space for competing companies, who'd take the role of solving cases like this one, and the resources could be covered by insurance. So I disagree with your premise that government either can or is interested in dealing with anything of this sort, especially given what we have observed historically from governments.
US saw multiple oil spills, thousands in the Guelph of Mexico and other locations. More dictatorial government, like USSR and China saw huge technological catastrophes. It seems it does not matter what side of spectrum the government is supposedly on, it never finds a way to protect private property of its citizens from being destroyed, so I say forget the government, it's you, who is ultimately responsible for your private property.
And when you say about 'suspending the freedoms of those who break the law', I can't imagine why you would welcome a government doing it.
And again, you don't have to be a specialist farmer to eat greens, why would you have to be a specialist investigator/lawyer/enforcer to deal with these problems?
do you really expect me to drop my day job while I poke around a neighbour's private property to collect evidence of mercury poisoning
- I expect that as a property owner you would be much more concerned about this than any government ever would.
thus deem the onus of investigation/prosecution to be on society's collective representative - the executive and judicial branches of government.
- I disagree. It's your private property that is suffering, and then it's your neighbors private properties, and whoever has personal/business connections to those properties. That's how it has to be solved.
You can't handle the truth.
The problem was government involvement into the entire operation.
Henry Ford paid his assembly line employees 5 dollars a day. That's 25 dollars a week. Given that 20 dollars was equal 1 ounce of gold, that's 1.25 ounces, or about 2000USD in today's prices.
Given that there were no income taxes at the time, those workers were actually getting that money into their pockets, they had stay at home wives and bunch of kids, they could support family on that money and Fords were affordable cars.
How much would a today's assembly line worker be getting as a salary to even come close, to what they were getting at the time?
Sure, they didn't have SS and Medicare, but they had extremely cheap health care, because there was no government money in it. Insurance was mostly for accidents, not for everyday treatments, so it was ridiculously cheap. Making 2000USD/week is about 104,000 USD a year, and without taxes it could be double that easy, probably more than double, considering there were no State income taxes either and houses and food were also extremely cheap.
Of-course those workers weren't part of any unions, but by today's standard, they were paid much more than anybody is in any union. Which union auto-worker makes over 250K today?
You can't handle the truth.
Ridiculous assertion that Ford would have wanted his competitors to be bailed out by the government, no less, with all sorts of consequences arising from that.
If GM was allowed to fail, Ford could have probably cleaned the house, bought the assets at a fire-sale and have the factories operational in no time, probably filled with the same people, but under different conditions.
We are talking about Ford, a company that was paying its employees 5 dollars a day in early 19 hundreds, which means they were getting 25USD/week, or 1.25 ounces of gold, which is equivalent of about 2000USD/week today. That's tax free, as there were no income taxes. That's also in real money, not in today's garbage, so those employees could afford their own medical care, which was awfully cheap at the time, without government involvement, and they could retire on their own.
104000USD take home salary, considering the purchasing power of those dollars, that is definitely more than 200K today, maybe 250K. And that's without unions, without any government assistance, building the best cars in the world at the time.
Yeah, you need government. To steal everything you have.
You can't handle the truth.
You all do realize when the new president takes office in January of 2013, he/she will simply change the rules.
with the President's other efforts to destroy America.
If the purpose of these standards is to reduce fuel usage in the United States and to reduce CO2 emissions, then current laws are suboptimal. Setting requirements for average MPG encourages auto manufacturers to design cars with ever-higher MPG ratings. But the biggest fuel savings come not from putting more high-MPG cars on the road, but from keeping low-MPG cars off the road. Getting people to switch from low MPG cars to cars with even slightly higher MPGs saves WAY more fuel. Here's why:
"When people buy cars, they tend to think that the improvement in fuel consumption between a 10 MPG car and a 15 MPG car is the same as the improvement between a 15 MPG car and a 20 MPG car. This is not true. As MPG increases at a linear rate, the improvements in fuel efficiency decrease at a hyperbolic rate. This means that the greatest gains in fuel efficiency don’t come from building more cars with very high MPG, but by replacing the cars with very low MPG. . . .[T]he fuel savings [over 1,000 miles of driving] from switching from a 10 MPG to a 15 MPG car is 33 gallons. The savings from going from a 20 MPG car to a 25 MPG car is 10 gallons. To save 10 gallons from a 50 MPG car, you’d have to switch to a 100 MPG car. There are rapidly diminishing returns for developing cars with ever-higher MPG. "
Read more here: http://www.theamateurthinker.com/2011/02/more-priuses-wont-make-much-difference-fewer-suburbans-will/
someone will have invented the magic battery that will let cars drive 300 - 400 miles on a single charge and either charge the battery in 2 minutes (wiring the size of your leg to carry that sort of amperage) or there will be a scheme to be able to change discharged batteries in 2 minutes with fully charged batteries. After that, CAFE will be as much of a dinosaur as the internal combustion engine.
A 4cyl. diesel VW comes close enough. MPG in the 50s. With a tad bit of conversion, you can even make it run off vegetable oil if you don't mind your car smelling like a mobile fast food restaurant.
Right. And what does he have to do with the GOP tantrum that is occurring? Very accurate handle.
Right, but you never get away from the fact that requiring significantly more energy to run one vehicle vs. another is still ultimately a waste.
Ridiculous assertion that Ford would have wanted his competitors to be bailed out by the government, no less, with all sorts of consequences arising from that.
Alan Mually's (Ford's CEO) testimony from November 18, 2008
If you don't feel like reading a grown man beg, here's the relevant statement:
so those employees could afford their own medical care
Pretty sure health care is affordable if you stick to early 1900s standards of care. Good luck healing from an infection or surviving any kind of surgery.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The battery/etc tech we have right now is cheaper than $8/gallon gas. Or to say it another way, if gas were priced at $8/gal people would want electric cars because they were cheaper, not just cooler. Ok, so here's a relatively obvious thing. Every year we get a better at making batteries/etc, so the cost of this goes down. The cost of gas keeps going up. Eventually these will cross. Eventually electric cars WILL be cheaper than gas. When that happens the majority of car buyers will buy electric. 2025, maybe. Who was predicting $4 gas five years ago?
Alan Mually's statement absolutely does not mean that Ford, as a business would have been worse off with GM and Chrysler going bankrupt. While Alan Mually is an excellent CEO for Ford, neither he, nor any business should be in a position to ask government for any money under any circumstances, and government must never be allowed to give money to private businesses, be it banks or otherwise.
Of-course you have what you have and that's why US economy is what it is.
Pretty sure health care is affordable if you stick to early 1900s standards of care. Good luck healing from an infection or surviving any kind of surgery.
- The medical costs are where they are exactly because government money is in it. FDA is the main reason for the prices of medications being so high, and Medicare and Medicaid are the reasons for health insurance prices skyrocketing.
Medical costs would be falling steadily without government money in the industry. Here is a comment, I don't want to repeat, which has data that compares insurance preferences of US consumers prior to 1965.
Nobody can argue that microprocessors are as complex today as they have ever been and they are similar in terms of investment costs to drug manufacturing. The heavy costs are all upfront, and then the product can be made relatively cheaply, the cost are recouped based on mass production. Person computers today are as cheap and as powerful as never before, prices are falling and industry is working on new designs and features, etc.
This should be exactly the case with health industry, but it is not specifically because government money is in it, with all the taxes and regulations and subsidies, the costs cannot go down as the market would have them. Nobody gets a TV subsidy, yet everybody has a TV or 2 or more, and costs are going down while features and quality are increasing.
Basically you can thank your government for terrible health and health insurance costs and low volume of innovation in those areas.
--
Back to Ford: their CEO giving a speech absolutely does not mean that whatever he is saying is economic reality. His reasons for giving speeches are political, as all speeches are, and not economic. From POV of economics, Ford would have gained huge advantage if GM and Chrysler went bankrupt. While Mulally can talk about supply chain that he shares with those 2 companies, he was conveniently forgetting the rest of the car companies that are manufacturing in USA, though they are foreign companies, like Toyota, Honda, VW, BMW, etc., they also have supply chains and if push comes to shove deals can always be made, and Canadian Magna would only be too happy to supply Ford with everything it needs as well.
Ford and other manufacturers would have bought out the failed GM and Chrysler factories for pennies on the dollar and would have restored the capacity in their own vision. The way things are now, the people who got bailed out are unions and the investors got stiffed, US public owes the debt of those companies and those car makers will still go bankrupt anyway, as the reasons behind them going bankrupt are all still there.
You can't handle the truth.
Part of the reason for this is that our dependence on foreign oil is a huge problem for us. It has turned us from net exporter to a net importer. If we don't do something to wean ourselves off of this imported commodity, we will continue to sink into the abyss.
By forcing all the new cars to have reasonable gas mileage, we reduce our need for foreign oil. Sure you could say Drill Baby Drill, but that doesn't give you a long term fix. By pushing for higher standards we get to reap the benefits of the R&D it takes to make create the solution, and we get a long term reduction in our need for oil. The market will price the cars where they are affordable enough for people to buy and as the technology matures it will be found in lots of other cool gadgets.
The medical costs are where they are exactly because government money is in it. FDA is the main reason for the prices of medications being so high [slashdot.org], and Medicare and Medicaid are the reasons for health insurance prices skyrocketing.
A agree that the FDA adds cost, but the payoff is some degree of scientific rigor in the drug market. There was a time in modern history when there was no FDA, and it was a complete disaster. People were selling radium pills, for god's sake. And jackass with a few chemicals and a pitch could sell a "drug" - never mind that it had no efficacy or safety.
Medicare/Medicaid are certainly not helping keep costs down, but they are "the" reasons - the problem is way more multi-dimensional than that. The government subsidizes the cost of insurance through tax breaks to employers, for instance. The government requires emergency rooms to treat patients without any payment whatsoever, passing the costs on to the payers. But besides the government, look at all of the new technology used in medicine: nuclear medicine, MRIs, CAT scans, and a huge array of laboratory tests. Then there are new treatments and surgeries: cancer is in many cases curable and in many other cases just another chronic condition, heart surgery is routine, and organs routinely replaced. Formerly fatal injuries are no longer fatal. All of that costs money. Finally, you have an out-of-control tort system. Doctors are so afraid of lawsuits that they order up the "whole enchilada"... diagnostic tests that are probably unnecessary, but cover the doctor's ass in case there is something else wrong. And the tests are generally harmless, costing "only" money.
So is the government partly responsible for the high costs of health care? Sure. Are they the only driver? No - that ignores the fact that we GET more than we did even 30 years ago. And unlike microprocessors, some of the new technology is still very expensive because it is always brand-new, not something that has been refined over 40 years like semiconductors. Take x-rays... an x-ray doesn't really cost any more today than it ever did, and it doses you with less radiation, has higher resolution, and is available instantly because it is digital. That's exactly like semiconductors. But you can't force a brand new cancer treatment into the microprocessor analogy - microprocessors were also quite expensive when they were first introduced... pretty much limited to government/military and large corporations.
Nobody gets a TV subsidy, yet everybody has a TV or 2 or more, and costs are going down while features and quality are increasing.
How many people had a TV when they first came out? TV is now over 60 years old as a consumer technology. You think the equivalent of an MRI will still cost a small fortune in 60 years? I happen to think it will become as routine as an x-ray. It will never be as cheap as a TV, because you don't want life-critical machinery assembled by illiterate third-world factory workers. If your TV has quality problems, it's not really a big deal. Also, you cannot offshore the doctor - you still have to pay your doctor at first-world rates. What do you think that TV would cost if you had to pay someone $10/hour instead of $1.50/hour to assemble it?
Basically you can thank your government for terrible health and health insurance costs and low volume of innovation in those areas.
Costs are one thing, but where the heck do you get off saying there's a low volume of innovation in health care? Compared to what? LOL! What period in human history has seen such a surge in medical capability?
Ford and other manufacturers would have bought out the failed GM and Chrysler factories for pennies on the dollar and would have restored the capacity in their own vision.
Ford was afraid of running out of cash, and they would not have spent any significant money on GM assets. Hell, Ford was shutting down factories
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
... today's Honda Civic carries almost the exact same fuel mileage spec as its 1984 counterpart. No joke.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/
The pattern is eerily similar to a huge list of other major vehicle makes and models. There's been little to no improvement over the past three decades. Where there is any improvement, it's so small as to be laughably impotent in mitigating fuel costs, never mind the overall impact automobiles have on the Earth as a whole.
But now, just before an election year, these ass clowns suddenly want us to think we'll see meaningful fuel economy two to three times that of the current offerings, and in less than 15 years?
Just because you strap a rocket to a pig does NOT mean it will fly. Or even that it wants to fly ...
There are 50 seat passenger vehicles with better mpg than some of your cars...
The world has changed and it makes me angry that people still demand the right to be so wasteful.
Uh, did you see the "were" in my sentence? From the time the automobile market firmed up to give us specific trucks and specific cars (like, the 1920s), trucks were always lesser than cars in price and in options. This started to change in the eighties and really went full swing by the end of the nineties, and it was at this point that the market got all screwed up.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Ford only averted financial disaster because they pointed to bankruptcies at GM and Chrysler and said to their creditors, "look at what happened to them! Let us pay off our debt at sixty cents on the dollar or else this'll happen to us and you too!"
The Chrysler 200/Chrysler Sebring, which last time I checked is a mid-size by our standards, weighs in at almost 4000lb. The 1967 Chrysler 300 weighs about 300lb more despite being probably half-again as long as half-again as wide.
Good engineering can let there be big cars, and good engineering can let big cars be fairly aerodynamic. The Chrysler Concorde and Dodge Intrepid are examples of good exterior shape in a large car. Trouble is, domestic automakers are, as usual, late to the party. VW had a working, reliable multiport fuel injection in 1979. American automakers didn't even get TBI until the eighties, and didn't generally go EFI or SMPI until the mid nineties. Why? They cited cost. Despite the fact that foreign car makers managed to make it work in an affordable fashion long earlier.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.