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White House Finalizes 54.5 MPG Fuel Efficiency Standard
The Obama Administration announced today it has finalized new fuel efficiency standards that will require new cars and light-duty trucks to have an average efficiency of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. This adds to the requirement that 2016's new cars must average 35.5 miles per gallon. "The final standards were developed by DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and EPA following extensive engagement with automakers, the United Auto Workers, consumer groups, environmental and energy experts, states, and the public. Last year, 13 major automakers, which together account for more than 90 percent of all vehicles sold in the United States, announced their support for the new standards." According to the administration, the standards will reduce dependence on foreign oil, save money at the pump, protect the environment, and everything else that sounds good in an election year.
At some point you just have to account for the laws of physics.
Pushing a vehicle at 80MPH down the highway is going to be hard to do and get 54.5 MPG. No matter how "hybrid" the car is, no matter how good your regenerative breaking.. once you're at highway speeds, air resistance becomes insurmountable.
I, for one, am glad to have overlords confident enough to legislate physics.
This adds to the requirement that 2016's new cars must average 35.5 miles per gallon.
I hope they mean AT LEAST 35.5 miles per gallon, or my 60 miles per gallon super-car is doomed..
Force all new cars to use some alternatve fuel, one that doesnt just move the pollution and I will be happier.
To be fair, they might as well say 'all cars will run on magic moonbeams by 2025', because it's about as likely to happen.
Cite or GTFO.
My mother, in her little blue Ford escort, was crushed to death under an oncoming SUV that was gigantic relative to the size of its passenger, and barely controllable on an icy Buffalo-area road in winter. I am, understandably, dubious about this constant "CAFE kills" blurp that occurs in every last conversation of fuel economy. I'm willing to bet that if most people used the same size vehicles, rather than vehicle size being related to income level, everyone would drive more carefully and charitably.
We should just stop subsidizing the oil and car industries. Stop subsidizing refineries. Stop giving tax brakes to oil companies. Stop subsidizing road development out of regular taxes. Gas will hit $10/gal and the problem will take care of itself.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
If the truck you're hit by is an 18-wheeler transport truck it won't matter if you're driving a Fiat or an F150. If you only have a standard driver's license then you're nowhere near the biggest thing on the road, and should probably learn how to drive defensively rather than depending on the size of your vehicle to save you in a crash.
soccer mom texting in her gas guzzling behemoth, when wrecking with a subcompact, tends to survive better than the poor guy in the subcompact
so the real solution is to just get rid of the gas guzzling behemoths
but i guess some people want status conscious assholes driving our energy policy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He's got the wrong target. The most efficient vehicles are the ones that aren't on the road at all. Further proof that "if you can measure it, you can mismanage it".
The most efficient "car" I ever drove was a condo in the city. I even went without a car for a while. Driving was OPTIONAL there.
I have a car now, but still live close to commuter rail and within walking distance of many shops.
Policy makers should focus on making development more walkable. It wouldn't be bad for the economy either. You would get construction stimulus from building residences in commercial areas, and commercial buildings in areas such as the vast residential tract that I grew up in. With these spaces encouraging people to walk, ride bicycles, and drive less there would be knock-on benefits in health.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Suppose there are two cars that irreparably die at exactly 100,000 miles, and that gas stays at its artificially and temporarily low $4 a gallon. If Car A gets 28MPG, and Car B gets 35.5MPG but costs $3000 more, then you'll end up paying the same ($purchase_price + $fuel_price) for each.
If you exactly that to a perfectly reasonable 150,000 miles, then Car A would have to get at least 30.2MPG to make it a better deal. If gas goes to $10 a gallon like it is in UK, then Car A would have to get 33.1MPG to make it cheaper than Car B.
Basically, your math only holds for cars that aren't driven. If you actually use the multi-thousand-dollar vehicle you purchase, better gas mileage directly converts to cheaper per mile to operate.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Sorry, I use my dodge ram (with Duallies, thats what we call them) to go grocery shopping, to pull my boat, to pull a horse trailer, to help friends move. But saying that I'm unsafe because I drive a pickup is pretty narrow minded. I'd imagine that I'm less dangerous than 20somethings with sportbikes or a sports cars. Oh or the soccer-moms texting&driving with a minivan full of kids. Jackass.
Besides that, the fact is that some folks legitimately need vehicles that can carry multiple passengers or cargo. These will be less efficient per mile, so the Nanos of the future will need to not only sell well, but have GREATER than 55 MPG to balance out the 25-40 MPG haulers. Plus, we have the ethanol mandate working against us. Ethanol has lower energy density... frankly, the government could torpedo this themselves with their stupid corn lobby mandate.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You're completely unable to comprehend what you read.
The GP wrote that small cars are unsafe when most other drivers are driving trucks. He is correct. It's not the truck driver he's worried about.
status conscious assholes should not drive our energy policy
You've used that term twice now, I assume because you need to demonize the people whose vehicle choices you disapprove of. Invective isn't much of a convincer.
If a heavy car hits a light car the light car is going to move further.
True, but *after* shoving the little car out of the way the SUV will have enough kinetic energy left to roll over three times and kill the occupants.
Plus ... SUV drivers are more likely to die if they swerve, fall asleep at the wheel, or any of the other accidents which are more common than head-on collisions with other vehicles.
No sig today...
Sure, if you take a big car with no safety features and compare it to a smaller car with safety features, the smaller car is going to be safer. That goes without saying. That said, a modern big car with equivalent safety features would be safer than a modern small car. You have to compare apples to apples.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
just admit that you want energy companies deciding US policy rather than the actual american people
stop with the bullshit nods to the miraculous marketplace, which has no meaning in this conversation. we are just talking about a choice between two different monopolistic modes: energy companies, or the US government. i don't understand people who see so much menace in their own democratic government, and less menace in oligopolistic multinational energy corporations (that corrupt your democratic government). personally, as a resident of a democracy, i'll go with the organization that is entrusted with our willpower, however flawed, than the organization entrusted with making profit by any means necessary
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Strange post given the quote in your signature. So the past 13 years, average fuel economy increased by 5mpg without any mandate from the gov (CAFE has been 27.5 from 1985 to 2010). Meanwhile the weight and size of cars also increased significantly (compare a 1998 camry to a 2012 corolla). I'm thinking cars can't get much bigger or powerful (a 2012 camry is only .5s slower to 60mph than a 1990 Ferrari 348...not to mention >250 HP is unusable in a fwd car) but they can get lighter and more efficient. Especially if thats what manufacturers are now focused on.
What really needs to be done is to cut the tax breaks and subsidies for energy production in this country. The government gives massive handouts to the oil industry making the gas at the pump unrealistically cheap. What you pay is incredibly low because the companies are getting government handouts (in form of subsidies and tax breaks). If we paid the true price of gas at the pump, driving a giant SUV would show its true impact on our wallets. With the government handouts, the true price of fuel is shared among all Americans, so even if you're driving a Chevy volt and you're not spending any money at the pump, you are paying through the nose for the gas that your neighbor puts into his Chevy Suburban. The subsidies and tax breaks are in the billions, and we're all sharing in that burden. If people want to drive giant cars, let them drive giant cars, just don't make me pay for their damn fuel.
True, and that ticks me off. I live on a farm and my less than 2-year-old pickup is beat to hell in the bed and covered with scratches because I USE it.
Seeing lots of pristine, clean pickup trucks driving around is a joke.
So they'll just re-introduce the 55 MPH speed limit, which was done to save energy.
It depends entirely on the design of the car and engine. I get 4 additional miles per gallon (mpg) when cruising at 65 rather than 55. I was surprised and repeated the measurements several times. Verified the onboard computer's reported mpg against the odometer and actually gas consumed (top off at same fuel pump before and after). Perhaps 55 was some sort of average efficiency point for vehicles of the 1970s but I expect a higher efficiency point with today's designs.
Cars used to have only 3 (for automatic) or 4 (for manual) gears. 55 was probably around the speed while in top gear that the engine was in it's most efficient range. Today, cars have 5 or 6 gears (with some luxury automatics having as many as 8). Those top-end overdrive gears allow for driving at higher speed while in the RPM sweet-spot for efficiency.
As an aerospace engineer I will say that from a physics standpoint, momentum conservation means that all the safety standards you see for a vehicle colliding onto a wall either directly or at an angle, merely represents what would happen if that vehicle were to collide with its mirror image. Replace that wall with a vehicle twice its size moving at the same speed and all of a sudden your 'five star' rating doesn't mean too much in the real world.
I say this as a matter of fact, but realistically people are faced with a prisoner's dilemma, purchase a large car for safety because someone you might collide with could choose a larger car, or pick a compact vehicle. Everyone would be better off if we all chose compact vehicles as the nature of our collisions would contain less energy & momentum.