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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.
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.
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.
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"?
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.
soccer mom texting in her gas guzzling behemoth, when wrecking with a subcompact, tends to survive better than the poor guy in the subcompact
Simply not true. The behemoth is safer in a head-on collision, sure, but that's only a tiny percentage of accidents.
In almost all other types of collisions the SUV will roll over and kill everybody inside.
(After wrecking everything else in the area with all that kinetic energy...)
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
It's always the fittest who survive, you're just unhappy about who that turns out to be.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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.