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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.'"
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.
Yes, I've met those people. The way I understand it, the easiest way to get that level of efficiency is to make cars out of carbon fiber instead of metal. The problem currently holding such a proposal back is that there aren't any mass-manufacturing technologies for fiber parts, like there is metal. There's no fast-and-easy smelt, mold, weld way to make pieces and stick them together. We'll see how that goes.
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.
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?
In 1978, the American roads were filled with a little car, that did 50 EMPG. The Datsun B-210.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datsun_B210#B210_series
In 1984, I rode in the back of one with three other passengers, knees-under chin. We went 425 miles to San Francisco, well under a single-tank. Our actual MPG was better than 55, with all that load.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Uhm, techniques like resin transfer molding using pre-laid or pre-woven fiber structures are scaling well lately - from what I hear out of the business, several German car makers are scaling it for mass production right now. They've been researching the topic like mad in the last couple of years.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I've already found a black market for gasoline in Chicago, Houston, Portland and Newark. As the government taxes gas more, the black market for gas will just get bigger.
The way the current black market for gasoline works is through stolen credit or debit cards, or copied credit cards that were skimmed. The black marketeer then just goes to any pay-at-the-pump station, fills up a secondary gas tank (typically around 20-24 gallons per fillup) and resells it for lower than the typical retail price.
In Chicago when gas prices hit $5 per gallon (not that long ago), the black market guys were selling gas for 10 gallons for $40 cash.
I can only imagine how big this market will get when government raise prices higher.
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.
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Hell, 20 years ago, a 1983 VW rabbit could get 54 mpg.
And it was a miserable little tin can powered by an asthmatic diesel motor that could barely get out of its own way, much less keep up on busy interstates. The average American consumer doesn't want that.