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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?
How amazingly stupid it is, that the government on one hand subsidizes the auto-industry with the roads and even bailing out the bank that GM was (you didn't think they were a car manufacturer, did you?) and now they are setting quotas on mileage, completely disregarding the market that exists for large cars. Yeah, large cars. Cars that are big. Cars that are huge. Cars that people want.
If people want small cars, cars that consume less fuel, they always could buy those smaller vehicles. But this regulation would actually punish the automakers for making and selling cars that their MARKET wants from them. So if their market wants to buy large cars that take more gas, the auto-makers will be punished for this! Great stuff. Wonderful. Why not, punish the producer, as always, punish the employer for employing people, for producing products that people want.
Unless there will be massive subsidies and massive excise taxes, the European and Asian auto-makers will come out on top of this, they already produce huge numbers of small vehicles. But this is just retarded, and I am sure there will be plenty of apologists for yet another way the government is taking over your lives here and destroying the market in the process.
You can't handle the truth.
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.
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.
Get a Scooter, or small Motor bike.
...Obama will announce today...
Obama will announce what? How about he stop being the biggest dbag on the planet and start being pro-U.S. Start by making a public pledge to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America; his past actions and words show otherwise. Then stop being so irresponsible with this more credit and consumption mentality, it won't solve this economic crisis. Kicking the can down the road will make the collapse MUCH worse. Raising the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion is a record, total and percentage wise, and will last ~18 months, just enough until the 2012 Presidential Election occurs. How convenient, Obama wants to be elected, at the expense of many American lives. Time to impeach!
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
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.
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.
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+
Meanwhile, the Zionists in Congress (and their shills) will keep the borders open, and keep the third worlders flooding in, just so that they can try to keep their fractional reserve ponzi scheme afloat for a bit longer, thus completely destroying your country.
Too many people is the problem. If we stopped all the SCUM from reproducing, the planet would only have one tenth of the people it currently has, and we wouldn't have to worry about MPG.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
I guess Grunwald has forgotten that 2 of the 3 were bailed out by taxpayer money or they would be currently out of business. Government regulations are killing the industry. It is just convenient that the same government can take my money and prop that business back up as it pleases. Then, pass more unreasonable regulations to make themselves look good in their own minds.
Will the Tea Party controlled Republican congress pass the changes to the Laws of Thermodynamics necessary to allow improvements to the efficiency of gasoline engines.?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
Lightness allows for a relatively small engine, less fuel used.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
... 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.