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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.
Why?
It doesn't matter, what ever might be on the books now will certainly change before they get enacted.
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..
US traffic injuries and fatalities will increase sharply in 2016, and again in 2025.
Not in 2025.. The oil would have run out by then.
Force all new cars to use some alternatve fuel, one that doesnt just move the pollution and I will be happier.
Silence is a state of mime.
Hypothetically because smaller cars are less safe. Not that I subscribe to that theory.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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.
That someone has the balls and foresight to come up with something more like "As of 2015, vehicles of all types sold, operated and licensed in the US may not be powered directly or indirectly by a non-renewable energy resource.". Engineers..... GO!
Karma: Neutered
This time by about $2500-$3000. What a shame, really.
Except the price for gas will be so high by then that even with the increased efficiency it will be much more expensive to travel that it is today.
Would lack of any regulations do a better job for road safety or fuel efficiency?
What exactly is wrong with letting individuals decide how safe and economical they want their vehicles to be?
Do you really want to be hit by a truck while driving a Fiat 500?
It doesn't matter that these stricter fuel consumption standards will be in place in 13 years, because by then there will be so many more cars on the road than there are now, that we will *STILL* be consuming and polluting far more than we are today.
These standards need to be made to keep *AHEAD* of the curve, and account for the fact that the number of vehicles being used daily is continually rising. Instead of coming up with these standards for 13 years in the future, they should be making them for 3. If automobile manufacturers can't pull it off with all new cars by then, then it means less automobiles on the road anyways.... so it's win-win!
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
Would lack of any regulations do a better job for road safety or fuel efficiency?
What exactly is wrong with letting individuals decide how safe and economical they want their vehicles to be?
Do you really want to be hit by a truck while driving a Fiat 500?
Well no, I'd rather be hit be a similarly sized 2500lb (1000kg) car. But if everyone else is driving 6000lb (2500kg) Ford Expeditions, then I'm forced to buy a larger car to compensate. So why should I be forced to pay more money for a larger, less fuel efficient car just to keep up with everyone else?
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
Too bad the vehicles will cost $16,000 more (unadjusted for inflation).
[citation needed]
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"?
I got rid of my car about 1 year ago, and have never looked back.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Hypothetically because smaller cars are less safe. Not that I subscribe to that theory.
Lighter cars are less safe in collisions with heavier ones. It's basic physics. And if you suddenly reduce the weight of all new cars, any time they collide with older, heavier cars, they're going to be at a disadvantage. Thus, injuries and fatalities would increase sharply in 2016 and 2025 if sudden drastic weight differentials are created (They won't, but that's the theory he's operating under, so I'll go with it).
What isn't mentioned, however, is the long and constant downward slope that would follow both those sudden, hypothetical increases...
Short answer, heavier cars have lower fuel efficiency (more energy to drive a larger mass) but are safer than lighter cars (more mass to play with to add additional safety features – and mass does provided safety) – it’s a known trade off.
They have more mass and (generally) more volume so the impact and deformation of the crash can be spread out over more time.
If a heavy car hits a light car the light car is going to move further. If a heavy car hits a light pole, the longer hood will dissipate more of the energy.
Now lighter cars are getting pretty innovated in safety features – but you can almost always apply those features to larger vehicle.
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?
Or make the fuel more expensive? Gas is dirt cheap in the US compared to most of the industrialized world. If you tax it, it will be more expensive to travel in wasteful ways and consumption will decrease.
The cost of gas and the amount consumed are two different issues. If you need gas to travel to and from work, you have no choice but to spend the money. This is where subsidization comes into play, an amount which is probably enough to maintain a stable economy. Then you have the issue of actual consumption per mile, which is affected by how much oil the US is able to secure and for how long it is able to secure it. There is a finite amount of oil and if the government knows exactly how much oil it has in its reserves, how much oil it consumes and how much oil it can import based on projected geo-political situations in oil producing countries, one factor in reducing dependance is to force car companies to increase fuel efficiency.
It will save nothing because of the exotic lightweight materials and processes required to make an 80mpg car (CAFE is an average!) that meets current safety standards. This will drive the cost of the car up so far that it will more than balance any savings in fuel/energy. Not to mention that road use taxes of various sorts will have to be invented and implemented to compensate for the "loss" of fuel tax revenues by the government. The net change in cost of driving is very unlikely to favor the consumer in this setup.
Why?
Because the easiest way to improve gas mileage is to reduce the weight of the vehicle, meaning less steel protecting you in an accident.
by 2025. Hybrids are a hot commodity now, and gas extended electrics are just beginning. Soon there will be a point where a gas engine will cost a lot more to build then electric... (In an engineering standpoint, the drivetrain of a petrol car is way more complex then electric. We're just waiting for battery packaging/recharge/swap technology to catch up, and once that's done they'll be no turning back to petrol except for edge cases.
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.
Just got back from a trip to GenCon on my motorcycle (Hayabusa). According to the bike (likely off by a little due to the stupid bike things), I averaged at least 50mpg for the entire 2,500 mile trip. Since the mpg indicator doesn't go higher than 50mpg, it could be even higher.
My wife had a smaller 250cc bike (Ninja) and was getting upwards of 100mpg and 75ish on her 650cc bike (Ninja).
I'd love to see more folks on bikes. Have motorcycle only lanes just like there are bike only lanes; split a current full sized lane into two dedicated motorcycle lanes :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Invest in Horses and Hay now!
Wait Apple will introduce a new hay that has rounded corners and will be rectangular. You will also have to be linked to an ITunes subscription to get more hay.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Some families are larger than others and need a vehicle that can hold several people. Busses exists. Tractor-trailers exists. Some people need larger vehicles to haul boats and toys, haul work equipment, haul [insert large object here]. You will always have large and small vehicles on the road. It's a fact that most of the increase in fuel economy over the last few yeas is attributed to smaller and lighter cars, thinner sheet metal, plastic parts, etc. Hybrids, electricity, the air-powered cars in India, and other mileage-increasing technologies typically just move the carbon-generating from the vehicle itself to somewhere miles away.
Yea, I would much rather be driving a Fiat 500 than an F150. The Fiat can get out of the way or stop much faster than an F150. Just being able to avoid an accident beats size way more often.
The fact that people have given up avoiding accidents is a sad description of the state of driver education in the US.
This is just an effort to get the greenies to reelect the big O. It's also an unconstitutional mandate of private individuals in what they can purchase, and businesses in what they can produce.
We're nothing but peasants and serfs, here to serve the government, who apparently can take care of us better than we can ourselves.
You drive a Volvo, don't you?
/I will be in an accident, so I must have a safe car
Support my political activism on Patreon.
NHTSA said back in the eighties* that smaller cars are safer b/c they are less likely to hit something or be hit b/c of their size. It makes sense that when you are hit, it's a greater catastrophe but you'd be hit less often.
~S
*I had a Toyota Corolla, a very small car then, now have a Prius. It consistenly gets 45 mpg or better and is a mid size car.
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.
Its a politician's job to tell lies. But tell a better one, like we're going back to the moon in a decade, or we're getting out of the middle east, or we're closing the concentration camp in Cuba, or going to mars in two decades or whatever BS. Its not even a good lie, its darn near believable, they should have made it 250 mpg. As far as lies go, this one was no good.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The Tata Nano gets 55.5 mpg, and costs around $3000. Of course, the US would have to eliminate all safety standards before it could be imported, although it appears to be safer than one might guess at that price.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Not intended just for you, but for anyone who says "bigger cars are safer".
Here's what 50 years of automotive engineering has done. The driver of the '59 would have been dead. The '09 driver would have injured their knee.
A few hundred pounds lighter, almost triple the MPG (13 mpg vs 29 mpg), and is way safer.
To keep saying "bigger cars are safer, thus don't work on smaller cars" is not really thinking this through.
That's completely untrue. Larger vehicles with more mass, all other things being equal, would be safer when you crash into almost anything—trees, guard rails, etc.—because more mass = more inertia, which means it can more easily overcome the resting inertia of whatever it hits. Mind you, none of this helps if you hit a bridge abutment, but most of the things you might hit are not nearly that solid.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
....when the only tool you have is a sledgehammer....
Does it still apply if everybody has a heavy car? Or then everybody will need to buy even-heavier-car to be secure? And after that ...
Forcing these standards onto an industry that is ill-equipped to provide them (American automakers have shown time and again that they are very bad at efficiency and reliability) will only drive up prices on used vehicles that the restrictions do not apply to. Who thinks up such short-sighted crap? Don't they see that this will just drive people away from buying new cars when we just barely coddled the American auto industry back to life again?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
Well, I think he is telling you two things... 1) he feels you should buy a second vehicle for driving to the grocery and 2) he would rather have a head-on collision in his Smart car with another Smart car than with a 3 ton truck... the second is reasonable but the first is not really.
But, the Paradox does cover situations where more efficiency actually means more consumption.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
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.
Personally I would prefer to be driving the Fiat 500 in any case, but it really has nothing to do with potential accidents :D
So it's not going to happen but 90% of the auto industry are on board with it? Somebody's not telling me something ...
1. Not agreeing would mean no more bailouts.
2. The people agreeing today probably don't expect to be in their jobs by 2025. By then it will be someone else's problems.
This is like expressing surprise if auto companies agreed to have all cars averaging 100,000 mpg by 2100. Sure, sounds good, not my problem.
Why?
Because the easiest way to improve gas mileage is to reduce the weight of the vehicle, meaning less steel protecting you in an accident.
You know, this is something that amazes me about auto manufacturers and, to an extent, the government -
We all know that race car drivers enjoy a fairly low fatality rate due to 2 key safety devices: The roll cage, and the multi-point restraint system. With modern alloys, building a rollcage into the frame of every car off the line should be a trivial matter, right? So why, then, are cars filled with all manner of airbags and other expensive (especially in terms of power:weight ratios) "safety" features, when the 2 methods proven to keep a person alive even after launching into the air and flipping multiple times are completely ignored by the commercial auto business.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
Too bad the vehicles will cost $16,000 more (unadjusted for inflation).
Do you have a source for this?
2012 Prius C (53/46mpg) - $19,000
2012 Toyota Matrix (21/29mpg) - $19,000
2012 Camry Hybrid (43/39mpg) - $26550
2012 Camry conventional (25/35mpg) - $22155
Toyota is already selling hybrids today that are close to meeting the new standard for a few thousand dollars more than (or the same price as ) a conventional car.
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.
That's not necessarily true... we COULD build cars out of lighter yet stronger materials if we wanted to spend a lot more on our cars... unfortunately, since we seem to build most consumer vehicles out of the same materials, they keep getting heavier as we add more reinforcement and equipment for safety. Still, weight alone is not a measure of safety. There is a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g) showing an old car hitting a new one. The new one wins even though it's probably close to a ton lighter. Just because you have inertia on your side, doesn't mean you can take the hit you will be handing out better. So, in conclusion, we need to find ways to lesson production costs on lighter, stronger materials and not just reduce the size of vehicles.
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.
Then again, I'm in a bit of a pissy mood today (despite my sig), so I'm probably just looking for the negative (sorry).
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I'm trademarking iCart and iKart
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...
You drive a Volvo, don't you?
/I will be in an accident, so I must have a safe car
Naa, my primary "car" is a bicycle (which will fare equally poorly whether I'm run over by a Fiat or an Expedition), but when I do drive, I drive a 10 year old Outback station wagon (which I chose because of the the AWD for driving to the mountains during ski season).
Hypothetically because smaller cars are less safe. Not that I subscribe to that theory.
I think it might be "lighter cars" are less safe. Usually, it's the same, but hybrid cars do better in crashes with their higher weight compared to non-hybrid versions. And I'm assuming some of these cars are going to be hybrids.
Of course "smart cars" are both small and light! A perfect choice over a certain age.
Keith Hennesey is an economic policy expert who worked for President George W. Bush. He wrote a very informative blog post about President Obama's CAFE announcement in 2009.
http://keithhennessey.com/2009/05/19/understanding-the-presidents-cafe-announcement/
If you accept that President Obama is a true believer in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, then it makes perfect sense that he would require the highest efficiency numbers he possibly could. (President Bush, not so much a CAGW believer, chose the "maximum net societal benefits" baseline.)
I am wondering how this new announcement compares with the "technology exhaustion" baseline.
I'm also wondering how a 54.5 MPG standard will impact prices and what the result will be. When new cars are more expensive, people try harder to keep old junker cars going, so if you make new cars more expensive you may keep people from upgrading to newer and more fuel-efficient cars. Making new cars as expensive as possible may reduce overall fuel efficiency of the cars actually in use.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
27% of pickup owners have *never* hauled anything in the bed. 78% do so once a month or less. [1] Face it, the average pickup truck driver is some suburban cowboy poser who is commuting to his office park. If we're serious about oil consumption, we're going have to move about 50% of pickup buyers back to cars.
[1]Polk Pickup Truck Usage Study (sorry no url)
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.
Unlike the EPA, the CAFE MPG calculation hasn't changed in decades.
CAFE 54.5 MPG is more like EPA 35 MPG.
*I had a Toyota Corolla, a very small car then, now have a Prius. It consistenly gets 45 mpg or better and is a mid size car.
Coincidentally, is a mid size vagina as well.
Actually, if a heavier car hits an immovable object, that car is going to be subjected to more destructive force, while a lighter car will have less inertia and thus, there will be less force exerted back into the car. As long as we can lighten cars by using new, lighter materials that are just as strong, we should still be able to build larger vehicles that simply weigh less.
GM to idle Michigan Volt plant for four weeks
That is despite $15,000 in dealership subsidies as well as local governments getting grants to buy them as well.
This may or may not be correct but ...this is not flamebait. The op is saying that lighter cars will be less durable in an accident. You can argue that this is an acceptable drawback or that well we can just offset this by using more expensive materials. You can even argue that he is wrong but this isn't flamebait. Setting an agressive mpg goal will result in lighter cars and the need to stay competitive may mean that 14-20K cars will be less safe. I don't know that you can build a carbon fiber and aluminum car for for 12-14k...
There was a collision on a local interstate where two 18-wheelers sandwiches an F-150 and basically crushed the pickup and it's occupant, so your assessment has been proven. If the collision is big enough it won't matter what you drive. As far as simple head-on collisions between two cars however, as long as you have enough crumple space in your car, a lighter car will also help reduce the force of the accident.
Anecdotally, I have found that the worst drivers tend to use their huge vehicles as a safety blanket. They don't pay attention to traffic and anticipate upcoming maneuvers, they don't know how to react to unexpected actions by other drivers, and most importantly they *can't* react because their vehicle is too unwieldly. When something comes up, the best they can do is slam on the brakes and hope that their momentum doesn't carry them into an accident. It's a form of learned helplessness. People who know how to drive have no fear of piloting a normal-sized vehicle.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
We're pretty much at peak point now. Actually, the most oil pumped was 2005 iirc. So the price will just continue to climb and the supply will continue to dwindle down. More and and more consumers will demand better mpg anyway. There are even reports that car sales are declining everywhere but China:
http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/79493/demise-car
Will they ever learn that congress cannot legislate scientific discovery or innovation by merely passing more laws? The physical laws of the universe will trump congressional law every time.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
But there will be more cars on the road, and fuel will be more expensive, all this does is probably keep pace.
Face it, the average pickup truck driver is some suburban cowboy poser who is commuting to his office park.
Ironically, a lot of pickup/SUV owners aren't necessarily "cowboy posers", but just people who think that if they ever do get in an accident, they'd rather be driving the bigger car when it happens. So smaller cars are more dangerous because there are so many big trucks on the road because so many people are afraid of getting hit by big trucks, thus perpetuating the problem.
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
I use my dodge ram (with Duallies, thats what we call them)... to help friends move...
Are you a real friend?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Larger vehicles with more mass, all other things being equal, would be safer when you crash into almost anything—trees, guard rails, etc.—because more mass = more inertia, which means it can more easily overcome the resting inertia of whatever it hits. Mind you, none of this helps if you hit a bridge abutment, but most of the things you might hit are not nearly that solid.
I agree. Pedestrians, for example, are really quite soft. And smaller cars, bikes, houses, animals, they too are not nearly that solid so you needn't worry about hitting them. You'll walk away just fine, and the rest is someone else's problem.
The last time the gov't raised CAFE standards in such a way, manufacturers just cheated their way into compliance by stretching the roofs on their subcompact sedans, and labeling them as light trucks, thus increasing the average mileage of their lines just enough to meet the new standard.
What gives anyone the idea that they won't use the exact same workaround this time?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I think you're being unrealistically negative. By 13 years from now we won't completely equate traveling with gasoline. Electric cars do exist, and they work fine for city driving. In another 5-10 years their sticker prices won't be so bad. This will keep gasoline prices more reasonable for longer trips.
Unfortunately, you will also end up driving more if you have a more fuel efficient car. It won't be a 1 to 1 increase but generally when things get cheaper people don't pocket the savings and live with what they had before, they use the savings to get more of the stuff. That doesn't invalidate your point, just another thing to add to the equation.
And here's a youtube of a Range Rover t-boning a Civic.
:wq
Who's going to track how many accidents _don't happen_? Who should I have called to report that guy who _almost_ rear-ended me the other day?
One thing I can say for sure -- I have a relatively small and powerful car (The 3.5L V6 Pontiac G6) and I haven't been in an accident yet, but I HAVE been in a couple circumstances that were close, where it very well may have been avoided thanks to the maneuverability of either my car or theirs. But of course I can't say for certain, there's no possible way for me to know what would have happened had I been in, say, a Hummer.
while driving a Fiat 500.
In a collision you're generally better off if both parties are driving a small vehicle than if both are driving a large vehicle. The overall energy is less.
Fitting a roll cage without the occupants wearing helmets would be counterproductive. That's pretty well known in the off-roading world. Too easy to bash your head in on a rollbar.
:wq
That's not a realistic worry. The gargantuan share of all trips is people to the office or stores. All of these cars are going to be sufficiently large to make all of those trips without need for repetition.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Um, a sportbike isn't going to do much damage. That's obvious. Mass matters. If you're using your truck for what it's intended, good on you. But I see far too many trucks that have never hauled or pulled, and Landrovers and the like that have never been more off-road than the lawn. It's simply because in the US we have a lot of income to dispose on vehicles, and we use them as much symbolically as practically.
I work at a university, and between watching the parade of SUVs come into the garage every day and watching other cars on the way into work I would be generous to say that 10% of the SUVs have more than one passenger. Probably it's closer to 5%.
The SUV is a status symbol and masturbation of the ego. That's all it's good for. If you have a family then get a mini-van.
1) Yes, NEWSFLASH, technology has improved a lot in 50 years. Of course, not all light cars are more dangerous than heavier cars. However, if you take otherwise identical cars with the same level of technology, the heavier one is going to offer more protection in a collision (and/or is able to include more safety features within its weight limit).
:)
It all depends on HOW you improve gas mileage. Faced with an arbitrary mandate like this, if car manufacturers are unable to meet these limits with new breakthroughs, they will most likely either reduce vehicle weight (with potential safety consequences) or create a few token expensive car models which will not really sell, but that have sufficiently improved gas mileage to bring up their average so that they don't have to change the majority of the fleet.
2) I wouldn't call 2.23x the MPG, 'almost triple'.
now some other dude is putting his kids in a larger behemoth to survive a wreck with you, at your expense. the larger and more ridiculous gas guzzlers only affordable to those richer than you. which is the whole point of this nonsense: it is not about survival of the fittest, but about survival of the richest
at some point the american people will give up this ridiculous social darwinist religion and understand that you need to curtail the excess abuses of a social system where those with money win more money and everyone else scrapes by with less and less every year
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Don't know who makes Outback, but Audi and Subaru both have the best AWD of all time. Subaru is actually kicking ass. I drive a Mazda, I tend to light rail, I bicycle less now because I'm lazy but I envy a Trek 2.3 Apex.
Sorry, I should have been more specific -- it's a Subaru Outback. I've been quite happy with both the AWD and reliability of the car.
You are completely ignoring important other factors such as crash avoidance. Small cars are much easier to control, especially in emergencies. The safest car is a car that never gets in an accident. Granted that's one impossible extreme. :)
Yes and No.
Yes, in the sense that both of the larger cars should have larger crumble zones.
No, you don’t get “small car bounces, big car wins”.
So the answer is that everybody should drive semis or armored personal carriers.... (There are trade offs in life.)
Care to show evidence that vehicle prices are increasing due to regulatory compliance? And if they are, then I see it as a way of "internalizing the externalities"--that is, making car owners pay for the costs of reducing their effects on everyone else.
We have one compact car in the family, I bike when I can. I think gas should be double the current cost like it is in Europe. Carbon-base fuels are currently way too cheap, there's no incentive to conserve.
I've already trademarked iPoop and iShovel
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Pushing a vehicle at 80MPH down the highway is going to be hard to do and get 54.5 MPG.
The EPA test which is used to determine the official mileage of vehicles sold in the US does not include any driving at 80mph.
Additionally there are only a handful of places in the US where driving 80mph is legal.
-- QED
Anecdotally I've found that the worst drivers are those driving those smaller sportier cars who tend to think they can just zip through traffic without warning or signals using their speed and small size as a safety blanket, They don't flow with traffic but try to force their way through it but often fail to anticipate upcoming traffic or turns. They don't worry about reacting to unexpected actions by other drivers because they are the ones making the unexpected actions. Most importantly they think they can react faster than they actually can, but do usually manage to escape the accidents they cause by cutting off other vehicles, forcing the other drivers to slam on their brakes and thus causing accidents. People who know how to drive know to they need to fear the idiots in small cars who can't obey the rules of the road. --Dirk
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
this is a thread on slashdot, not a political plank. i will leave the carefully chosen words that actually have more venom than mine to the professional politicians. who apparently you will follow, because you seem to be the type who prefers serene lies over ugly truths
the problem according to you is word choice, not rationale. this is why we have the kind of snake tongued leaders we have in the world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why do people so grossly underestimate trees? In car versus tree, the tree wins every time unless it's a dead rotten hollow trunk. Even an 18-wheeler isn't going to fare well against a healthy adult tree. If you hit a tree with a compact car or a giant pickup truck, the end result will be the same: you will end up with lots of metal wrapped around a tree. For all practical purposes, trees are considered as immovable as a bridge abutments.
Man made roadside objects on the other hand, like guard trails, utility poles, fire hydrants etc are designed to break or absorb energy. Whether you hit them with a giant truck or with a compact, the end result will be the same: the rail/pole/hydrant will break, your vehicle will be badly damaged but there's a very good chance you'll walk away completely unharmed.
It's because folks don't always use seat belts. That's why we have airbags, to protect the lesser portion of the gene pool from being reaped by Darwin.
Not in 2025.. The oil would have run out by then.
No. The US is sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world. We aren't taping them due to regulation and environmental concern (really stategic interest, don't be fooled). IF foriegn reserves were to run out then (and they won't, foriegn reserves are estimated to be good well passed this century) congress would demand our reserves be opened up which would carry us way into the next. I believe current thinking is that we'll have figured out a way off of oil by then.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Exactly. I can't tell you the number of times I've wondered what the heck I would do if we didn't have a Honda Pilot or something of a similar/larger size. We routinely use all the seats and/or storage capacity, tow stuff, etc. I prefer driving smaller cars, but you can't beat the utility of something like an SUV or pickup.
Actually, this is a good time for a question. For those of you who only have compacts or subcompacts, what do you do in situations where you need to haul stuff? Or is my family just an outlier in that we actually use our SUV for its intended purpose?
If you can't convince them, convict them.
The car industry will delay and then claim it will cost too much and at some point they will have a favorable government or a recession they can throw at it to say that it would hurt the economy and make the US cars uncompetitive, blah blah. Never going to happen. Alternative powered vehicles will take market share before the average gas powered car hits this standard would be my guess. The average car might get more than 54.5mpg but not by increasing gas powered tech.
...status conscious assholes...
You will be much happier if you come over to the dark side. Together we can rule the galaxy.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Too bad Tony Stark isn't real. I want a resilient repulsor powered car. http://images.wikia.com/marveldatabase/images/c/c6/Stark_Resilient's_Repulsor_Car.JPG
As long as we're gonna be legislating technical advances into existence, I'd like to request that congress passes legislation requiring a warp drive is developed by 2020.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
genetic survival is being determined by memetics
that is, the social policy of a society is determined by the beliefs of a society. well, if those beliefs create enough unhappiness, as you allude to, this becomes a pressure to change the beliefs of the society, which in turns changes the selective genetic pressures again
memetics: the competition of ideas, is becoming more important than genetics in homo sapiens
genetics is now second fiddle to the real story of evolution within homo sapiens. we are now vessels for ideas in our heads, rather than vessels for genes in our cells, and the competition merely moves to a new battlefield
take french society before the french revolution: if a rich aristocrat runs over poor boy, oh well. you are implying the unhappiness resulting from that has no meaning. but it does: the french revolution happens
likewise, with the russian revolution, the arab spring, etc.
the usa is entering a cycle. we had the labor unrests of a century ago resulting in a society with more concern for social welfare. now the venal types who say how much money you have in your bank should determine all, and screw everyone else, their beliefs are gaining traction. either that, or the idealistic naive types who think the marketplace is clean and perfect, and not prone to abuse, believe in what they believe, when their deluded beliefs actualyl result in those with money getting more money and those without getting less, regardless of hard work or merit or intelligence
classism rises. eventually, after some years, those who are poor not because of their inferior intellect, but just because of how they were born, they gain the upper hand again and we have a second american revolution of the undeserving poor taking over society from the undeserving rich
communism is of course stupid. but i wish society could stay committed to social safety nets and not have to have this endless pointless cycle between haves and havenots. that the haves admit they have to give more back to society because the fact they have more cash is not divine right, but just luck of the draw and because they were born in a society that gives them so much to start with. and those who havenot remain eternally vigilant about the encroachment of bad ideas that ensure they get even more poor
an ideal society is 90% middle class. but as we see in the USA the sea of poor grow in number, and a few with money make even more money, american society is headed along a cycle which result in revolt in the future. it will take time, but history speaks of this story time and time again. i just wish some of the idiots out there who believe in the perfect marketplace and don't trust their own democratic govt, see how the power of the rich and corporations is pointed in the USA right now against the health of the middle class
the choice is not between the perfect market and authoritarian govt. the choice is between the monopoly of YOUR democratic govt, and the oligopoly of corporations that corrupts your government and removes your livelihood and your rights. wake up, stop believing in fairy tales about some mythic pure marketplace that never existed and never will
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I prefer my wife to drive an SUV. The added mass just makes more sense in an accident. I want a ton of metal between my wife and kids and other vehicles. If twits want to drive the cheapest piece of junk out there fine. But I'm not going to compromise on the safety of my wife and kids because someone wants a smaller vehicle with a bumper under the stand car grill line. Trucks didn't just raise their bumpers off the ground all of a sudden. Car makers have been slowly lowering the height of bumpers for quite a while now. Trucks have just never lowered their height due to the need for ground clearance.
I ask because the increase in CAFE standards has been mirrored by an increase in truck sales vs. car sales (light trucks fall under a lower CAFE requirement, so can be built bigger, or rather, be built as big as cars of yesteryear). If you do a few calcs on the spreadsheet, you see the percentage of truck sales holds fairly steady from 1930-1970 at 15%-20%.
Then right around the time when CAFE was implemented (1975) truck sales start picking up, to where they now comprise about half or more of all personal vehicle sales. It's possible this shift in vehicle buying habits (I'm guessing due to CAFE causing cars to become smaller/lighter, though it's certainly debatable) could completely offset any benefit to CAFE. All the historical stats I find seem to list average MPG for cars, not average MPG for cars + trucks.
Year - trucks as % of all vehicle sales
2010 - 52.13%
2009 - 49.05%
2008 - 49.83%
2007 - 54.06%
2006 - 54.47%
2005 - 56.09%
2004 - 56.74%
2003 - 55.47%
2002 - 53.08%
2001 - 52.20%
2000 - 50.72%
1999 - 50.40%
1998 - 49.37%
1997 - 46.98%
1996 - 45.14%
1995 - 42.97%
1994 - 41.66%
1993 - 40.01%
1992 - 37.39%
1991 - 34.78%
1981 - 21.24%
1971 - 16.99%
1961 - 13.64%
1951 - 17.71%
1941 - 19.34%
1931 - 14.70%
we COULD build cars out of lighter yet stronger materials
Why would you do that if you want to make them safer? I thought that most of the safety of modern safe cars is caused by proper use of deformation zones and by avoiding serious design faults such as the deformed car pushing the steering column into your face and stuff. If you merely make a car construction stronger, you'll just make the driver decelerate over a shorter trajectory and that's bad in my book.
Ezekiel 23:20
Across the street from my house, a lady pulled out of her driveway in her little Audi, passed out behind the wheel, and after driving about 150 yards, slammed into a little birch tree about 5 inches in diameter. The tree was mostly unhurt; the engine compartment was wrapped around the trunk like a pair of pliers around a wire. Tree 1, car 0. The idiot driver broke an ankle
And you probably overbought on your computer purchase. What's your point?
If you drive a big truck as a status symbol and you let your superior mass and inertia go to your head, you ARE a bigger danger.
Not unlike how in the wild, the strong prevail and the weak either run away or get eaten.
Being a big bad-ass is good for you, and bad for everyone else.
i realize that the law, and so this discussion, needs to use the EPA figures so that we are comparing like to like (apples to apples). I'd just like to say that our new 2012 Prius C substantially beats its EPA city figure of 53 MPG. We've yet to see a tank/substantial trip under 60 MPG. It just points out that a change in the EPA test cycle could make the 2025 goal a lot easier for the automakers to reach.
Of course, we drive prudently so YMMV.
I think this is a job for Diesel's. MY VW passat does better than 54.5US gallons when in the hwy. My friend has a ford fiesta diesel that gets even better mileage around 70mpg (US gallons). And I am sure a diesel hybrid should be even better. I can't go back to driving gasoline autos. The torque in a diesel vehicle is just awesome. Trident is coming out with a diesel sports car that will do 0-60mph in 3.7 seconds and a fuel economy of 57.4mpg and that car's engine is built by GM.
Um, a sportbike isn't going to do much damage. That's obvious. Mass matters.
Velocity does too and hurling down the road at 120 mph makes up for a lot of mass
Um, actually most airbags are designed to be used in conjunction with seat belts. An airbag without a seatbelt is worse than nothing at all, because without a seatbelt that soft pillow for your face becomes a 200mph punch to the skull.
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.
And what happens when inconvenient organic material, like, say a deer, comes in front of the lead car?
Instead of a 2s buffer between cars, you've got 5 feet. So you've got 2 miles of cars crashing into each other.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
true but building a car that has a frame with the same capabilities of a roll cage should not be a problem and should be integrated as standard on all vehicles. As well engine compartment fire suppression systems and a harness system that works.
There will always be pathological cases such as yours that skew the findings. The average American drives 13,500 miles per year. Lets assume a worst-case scenario where one person drives a different car and you don't have multiple people sharing a single car (and thereby putting more than the average number of miles on it). Your numbers would indicate that you get about 24MPG. Into 13,500 miles, that gives $2,250 per year in fuel costs per person. At 35.5MPG, that would be $1,520. I appreciate the time value of money, and enjoy spend $730 a year less of it.
That all assumes that gas prices never go European. At the UK average price of $10/gallon, your car would cost the average drive $5,625 a year in fuel. A car meeting the proposed standard would cost $3,802, or $1823 a year less.
In your perfect world, your clunker is cheaper to drive (even though it's dumping 27% more pollutants into the air per mile and making the air suckier for everyone). In the real world, 35.5MPG cars are cheaper for the average driver.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
So in the worst case, you get more use and enjoyment out of the exact same capital investment. I'm not really seeing a downside to this. :-)
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Given the new average fuel efficiency goals, how far away are the auto manufacturers are from meeting those goals? Seems to me we're currently not close to those goals right now...
Which would be perfect.
Throw in some incentives by taxing gas for pollution and you get the best of both worlds.
Or just use fucking diesel. You can buy a Ford Fiesta diesel TODAY that will do over 70MPG, but they won't sell it on this side of the ocean.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I thought all car makers pretty much just lied through their teeth when stating what the MPG was for one of their cars...
They could make the 2025 target tomorrow.
You may notice just prior to the target the EPA takes a big layoff hit in an effort save money or something. "Well we would go test all those cars, but we have no money, so we just take them at face value"
This simply isn't true. Do the math - there are two things that can kill you here, momentum change and energy change. To make it simpler, let's use the elephant and flea car, which are, of course, perfectly elastic:
setup: Elephant and flea car approach each other, both going 50 meters/second.
collision
aftermath: Elephant car continues at the same velocity and direction. Flea car now has doubled velocity and reversed direction.
Velocity change for elephant car: approximately 0 meters/second
Velocity change for flea car: 150 meters/second - hitting a brick wall would be far better, at only 50 m/s
Energy change of elephant car: approximately 0 J
Energy change of flea car: approximately 22,500 * mass J
size matters!
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
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.
I perfectly understand your having a duallie for work and recreation, but not for around town errands. You should have something economical for those trips as well as any long trips you take without your boat. Gas at $4/gallon must hurt when you go to fill up, do the math over a year and see how much you feed that thing. I started with a big V8, but have gone to progressively more efficient vehicles as I'm less than thrilled to be putting half my disposable income (after housing, food, utilities, insurance, etc.) into a gas tank. I like my car, but think even at 30 MPG is sucking a lot of money out of my pocket and when gas gets up to $5 or $6 per gallon I'll be looking at it as a recreational vehicle and driving a 50+ MPG runabout for commute, errands and trips which don't require the power of the 30 MPG car.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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.
My motorcycle gets 44MPG and will smoke every Prius or other zero emissions vehicle available to the general public (maybe not a Tesla, but I'd still take one on).
I'll bet they're a lot happier than you when the weather is rainy, snowy or hot as hell, though. Most of us have to drive out of necessity every day and only on the iPhone is it always 73 and Sunny.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
A lot of that bumper lowering is to cause less damage to pedestrians when they're involved in the accident. So that's double on you.
You realize the guard rail is there to keep you from an even more dangerous situation, right? Good luck to you when you plunge over the side of a steep drop, hit a tree or cross over into oncoming traffic.
I hit a guard rail from an 80mph incident in my wife's VW Beetle and walked away with a slightly scuffed knee (didn't even draw blood).
You are not the average pickup/SUV driver. You have a legitimate need for the extra capabilities.
You're reasonably safe as long as you're not one of those selfish jackasses who put lift kits on their trucks and then don't lower the bumpers back down to a safe level. Great way to decapitate car occupants in a wreck.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Furthermore, 29 is not "almost" three times as much. It is just barely over twice as much (26 vs 29...come on). I hate when people do that. I know this is irrelevant but damn it...stop doing that.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
Bumper cars are the only solution with the morons on most roads. I know I would feel safer. All electric to boot.
Also, larger vehicle = larger cab = tends to crumple easier in a collision or rollover.
lol. Couldn't hit one of those Lotus Elises if I tried. Those things could drive under a truck.
"And here's a youtube [youtube.com] of a Range Rover t-boning a Civic."
Mitsubishi Shogun (Pajero) actually, and the video wasn't making the case that the 4x4 was the better choice, and in fact the segment was about the compatibility problem of having these lumbering beasts sharing the roads with normal cars since the chassis height is wrong for the safety design of the regular car. Also, the tendency for 4x4s to roll over makes them a very dangerous choice despite their size. Sure, you can flatten other cars on the road, but once you start rolling you're in trouble and a 4x4 can roll when there isn't anything else on the road.
Size isn't everything and it would be better if all cars were built to a safety standard and of similar size. SUVs on the road requires everyone to drive them which is pretty much what you see in many places.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
1) Airbags work in conjunction with seat belts, not opposition to.
2) That still doesn't explain why roll cages and multi-point harnesses aren't standard equipment.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
true but building a car that has a frame with the same capabilities of a roll cage should not be a problem and should be integrated as standard on all vehicles.
This, which I assumed was a given, considering we're talking about commercial street cars, not custom off-road crawlers.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You want the cabin itself to be as strong as possible. I think that's what he's referring to.
Pickups can also haul stuff by towing behind said pickup.
SUVS and pickups are not hip as they were in the 1990s. Most people buying them today have a reason. Some (but limited to) are:
They have something to tow behind the pickup.
They are used for work.
They like the ground clearance of the truck/SUV over a car.
They like being able to see the road better when they drive the truck/SUV.*
They feel safer in the truck/SUV then a car.**
*This one surprised me since most of the people who said it were on the short (5'-2" and under) side.
**Usually happens once they have been a truck/SUV for a while. Which why many people once they get a truck or SUV do not want to go back to a car.
As far as your urban cowboy thing, the only people who really need a pickup in New York City are the construction workers. The wall street people do not need it for their daily ride to work. That is unless they also have a boat to tow and the truck is their only vehicle.
Recharging 10 gallons worth of electric is always going to take a lot longer than filling my car up with gas
There is a world market for at most five computers.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I can attest to that. Put the gas pedal all the way down to the floor on my f150 and you should hit 60mph in idk... 15 minutes. Keep it there for another 15 and you might get up to 75.
27% of pickup owners have *never* hauled anything in the bed. 78% do so once a month or less. [1] Face it, the average pickup truck driver is some suburban cowboy poser who is commuting to his office park. If we're serious about oil consumption, we're going have to move about 50% of pickup buyers back to cars.
[1]Polk Pickup Truck Usage Study (sorry no url)
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2005/fcvt_fotw404.html Notice who paid for this study. Pickup Truck Usage Study, prepared for Environmental Defense, September 2005
"Remember, politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason."
The airbag operates much quicker than that. Originally, airbags were introduced because Americans would not belt up which is why they were not included in British (and I assume the rest of Europe) vehicles for a long time. Of course, auxiliary airbags like side-impact are a whole other matter.
mod this up because my pick up is all beat up from hauling on a daily basis.
"Remember, politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason."
And right now, the coolest American muscle cars ever made are being produced. Camaro ZR1, Boss Mustang, Challenger, etc... I drive V-8 cars because I enjoy them. I don't drive a lot, maybe 5,000 miles a year in V-8s (rest of the time in on a motorcycle getting 50MPG) but I love those 5,000 miles and I love cruising in a large comfortable vehicle with plenty of power. Does that make me a bad person? Is the government really going to take my cars/SUVs away?
I'm being serious...
By that time we'll all be using Dr. Fusion engines!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Tow bar. Or on the rare occasion, there are rental places around that will charge me for a days rental the difference in a couple of days worth of gas compared to a bigger vehicle.
The "downside" is that it doesn't end up reducing environmental impact, gasoline consumption, or the net cost of owning the vehicle by as much as it otherwise would. It is still a good thing but it doesn't do as much towards reaching the intended goals of setting MPG requirements in the first place.
And by this logic, why should anyone buy "a small tiny econobox" because you want to be safe. If you're going to try and legislate everyone drive a small car because it would make you happier, then you open yourself to being told you must buy a large car because it would make someone else happier if the votes go the other way. Freedom is all about people driving what they want. A contractor is not going to get much use out of fiat 500, just as you might have no use for an F350.
As for you not feeling safe in a small car, that's one of the trade offs you have when you made your choice for a small car, just like gas-millage was the trade off for people who chose the large car. Not recognizing there are things more important to some people than gas millage (for example: like the ability to tow things up hills, carry more passengers, more cargo room, or whatever else) and desiring to make them unhappy by legislation is the problem here. Given 2 otherwise identical choices where the only difference is fuel economy, I think you'd find buyers pretty unified in what they'd choose to buy. Problem is the choices are not equal.
That's why I'd rather see taxes and fees used to drive car sizes and efficiency rather than regulation.
Since road wear increases with the 4th power of the car's axle weight, a 6000 lb Expedition should pay 81 times higher registration fees than a 2000 lb Smart Car. So if the smart car owner pays a $100 annual registration fee, the Expedition owner should pay $8100. A higher gas tax can also help encourage fuel efficient cars (and can help isolate us from volatility in fuel prices since the gas tax can be variable to help absorb large price fluctuations - which seems much better than tapping the strategic fuel reserve to help even out price fluctuations)
With higher taxes, the wealthy will still be able to buy any size car they want, but they may find it less useful when cities change infrastructure to accomodate the smaller cars (lane widths, parking space sizes, etc).
And you probably overbought on your computer purchase. What's your point?
Overbuying on a computer purchase doesn't have anywhere near the negative externalities that unnecessarily buying a giant pickup or SUV does.
Smaller cars carry less payload and mandating them may backfire if you have to take more trips to compensate.
Not necessarily. The Honda Fit is a small car, but it has tons of cargo capacity if you're willing to temporarily sacrifice the back seat. Some large sedans don't hold as much.
Because the easiest way to improve gas mileage is to reduce the weight of the vehicle, meaning less steel protecting you in an accident.
Apparently you haven't heard of crumple zones. Or airbags.
Cutting subsidies to oil companies feels like a given. But taxing it at the lowest level risks damaging the economy. Subsidies probably have to be removed slowly. A tax at the pump wouldn't hurt the economy as much.
If there was a federal tax of say $4 per gallon, that would go a long way when it comes to financing medical programs (That have expenses from traffic related injuries), as well as giving incentives to buy good mpg cars (Which, by the way, are already available in the old world, even in full size models http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/volvo/v70/first-drives/volvo-v70-1.6d-drive-se).
Unfortunately Americans are incapable of:
a) Realising that you don't drive a diesel like petrol
b) Driving anything with a manual transmission
Americans can do both just fine.
But there are hardly any diesel cars to buy (just trucks) and hardly any manuals sold to us either - things like the Juke for example, only come with an automatic when you want AWD.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
there is this technology called high speed trains. In real countries like China they go more than 200 mph.
Is that fast enough for you, or do you want to stick your head out of the window?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I dont see how they'll achieve this by 2025 unless they average in alot of this 99-mpg electrics. A Republican administrationin the meantime will moderate this regulation.
Some families are larger than others and need a vehicle that can hold several people.
If that was the primary motivation, then you'd see more minivans and fewer SUVs and pickup trucks.
My cousin, who also lives in Seattle, pays about 1/20th what it costs in gasoline to go the same distance with a plug-in electric car with a gas assist.
Maybe you should stop using coal or oil to make electricity with, and switch to something better?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Car rentals.
If you're moving, rent a van.
If you're towing, rent a truck.
The reason was this: all company leasning cars should fulfill the standards to be eligible for large tax breaks. All government/state/county/authority/etc. vehicles and so on, should all fulfill the emission standards.
So while it would seem ridiculous that the manufacturers could just take a standard, and "bend" physics to cut consumption in half, it looks like it did. BMW, Audi, VW, Volvo and all the rest are now making full size cars that are making 50-55mpg. Because of regulations. And everyone is pleased to pay less at the pump.
I have a four seater with a three cylinder engine. A Daewoo Matiz. 796cc of raw throbbing power.
Fold down the seats, and you can get a fridge in the back. It does better than the bosses great big BMW for carrying presentation boards to corporate meetings. And it drinks about half of the fuel. And you can buy four of them for one of his.
We had a fuel shortage (due to striking tanker drivers) a few years ago. Boss man announces to us that he knows a station with some fuel today. I say "Oh, that's OK, I have enough for a month in the tank" (to be fair, it was a short drive home).
It's not going to win any performance prizes. But it's entirely adequate for doing even the heaviest grocery shopping. If I need a truck, I'll hire one for a day out of all the money I'm saving on not buying a truck and not burning fuel hauling around what is mostly just a few tons of truck.
You are roughly 1/2 as likely to die in an accident if you are in a SUV compared to a compact car. The rollover problems that were prevalent in early model SUVs (see 1990s) were mostly alleviated with traction control systems that were implemented industry wide through the 2000s. http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/09/autos/suv_rollover/index.htm
You can also split variable energy - wind, solar, tidal, etc - into Hydrogen by splitting water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. Or storing it in fuel cells. They have even run entire trains in Canada that have fuel cells for power plants - on that scale it's cheaper than many fuel sources.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Average efficiency? Is this some thing where the manufacturers have to sell x efficient vehicles in order to sell y inefficient but profitable models?
If I follow that correctly, no wonder "Thirteen major automakers, including General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, have endorsed the new standards." 13 major automakers basically have the low and middle market all sown up - the efficient vehicle market. It's implausible to begin competing in that market, where scale economics is so strong. Any niche or boutique auto maker, they're stuffed.
The UK approach is to vary the annual road tax based on emissions. I had figured it would be a net tax hike, but it's actually pretty easy to be paying quite a lot less even with a midrange car with fairly basic eco credentials. There's a couple of reasons it works even more effectively than you would think, given that the road tax is actually a pretty small part of an annual car costs.
So consumers want high mpg cars anyway, the road tax is just another small reason. But in business, it's more significant. The road tax savings maybe do not add up to a lot in the context of the entire business, maybe not a lot to each car operator, maybe not a lot to the shareholders, but typically there's one guy who manages all the cars, and to him all those savings really do add up. This is the guy who makes the fleet purchasing decision. That in itself is significant, but the auto makers love the guy who makes the fleet purchasing decision more than all their other customers and they tailor any fleet-compatible type of car to what the fleet buyer wants.
Oh and the co2 approach flows through for tax aswell. If you are given a company car in UK you are taxed on it's value as if it were cash (roughly). But they changed it to co2, so now those getting more efficient vehicles are making a tax saving. Everybody agrees with the fleet buyer what a great job he's done this year.
If you're going to manipulate the market, use economics and apply it to the demand side.
The greenest solution is to own one vehicle and keep it as long as possible.
The cost of the 2nd vehicle plus the environmental costs of the production of that vehicle can not be covered by the improved fuel efficiency of that mythical vehicle.
If someone has a legitimate reason to own a pickup truck, expecting them to own another vehicle for they daily errands is not environmentally friendly.
Exactly, and when the truck is raised even higher with larger wheels and fitted with bull bars it's even less of your problem.
Nullius in verba
This mileage goal sounds more drastic than it really is. According to Edmonds:
If you go by the official literature, window stickers, real-world experience, and so forth, it's easy to think "they'll never be able to hit an average of 54.5 MPG, that's asking too much." But those aren't the numbers that CAFE relies upon. In 2016, the CAFE standard will nominally require a 35.5 MPG average, but that corresponds to an EPA window-sticker rating of just 27 MPG.
And it still will have nothing to do with CAFE standards.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Highway death rates per mile driven have steadily fallen since the car was introduced and are now at their lowest rates in history, as are overall highway deaths. The fact of the matter is that both public and private pressures are responsible. Increased safety standards, enforcement of laws (e.g. DUI laws) and pressure from insurance companies have significantly increased the safety of driving in the USA. All this happened while fleet MPG increased and Americans drove more.
Read it and (don't) weep.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/09/AR2010090902511.html
Any supposed correlation between CAFE standards and highway fatalities is pure drivel.
look at poor T.Rex...
Ebola is one of the deadliest viruses known, but its TOO deadly. It kills to efficiency and quickly and therefore has little chance to propagate far and wide.
When a strong organism dominates too effectively, it may have no one or thing left to support its dominance.
I see where I made my mistake. I was simply talking in terms of vehicular damage, or energy exerted on the vehicles, which would be the same, thus a larger crumple zone or longer front end would help in the collision. In terms of what energy is exerted on the passengers, the lighter vehicle would indeed be more dangerous as they would have far greater forces exerted on them as they are stopped and thrust backwards.
I never liked that video. Try putting the weighty engine and transmission back into that 1959 before the test, then crash them head-on and square (not quarter panel to quarter panel).
Let me add, head-on collisions however would be different. The damage to the cars themselves may be the same, but the occupants of the lighter car would have more force exerted on them, and thus be subject to a higher injury risk.
Either you're going 80, or you're going 20*.
* Ok, really 70-75 and 25-30, but typically either traffic is blazing along or else it's jammed up and slow. I don't usually see traffic going at the speed limit unless there's construction or there are cops around. I'm mostly on 101, 680, or 280; 237 does tend to go 40-50 at rush hour in the reverse-commute directions, though sometimes the sheep are going faster than the cars.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I did some trawling of the Wayback Machine and this seems to be the study that the GP is referring to: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/83383916/4873_PickupSurveyReport.pdf
Found at http://web.archive.org/web/20070713221433/http://www.edf.org/documents/4873_PickupSurveyReport.pdf
The stats are what he claims, and I don't have a spin on them. Decide for yourself.
One problem with the light-weight high-mileage cars is that while they're fairly safe if they're only going to collide with other light-weight cars, they're not made to survive collisions with SUVs. So until a lot of the low-mileage cars age off of US highways, we won't be seeing a lot of the smaller cars around. Sure, Priuses will do ok, but things like the Smart Car just don't offer enough protection. (The Smart Car's also a lot lamer and less cost-effective than you'd expect. I priced them last year, gas mileage was only about 35-40, and you had to spend about $17K to get an automatic transmission and air conditioning, vs. the bare-bones model. If I lived in San Francisco I'd have considered it anyway, because of parking convenience, but just downsizing from a full-sized van to a smaller car makes a huge difference.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes, but the time it takes the earn enough money to buy those 10 gallons worth of gas might change the equation a bit.
And when you start looking at the external costs involved in "filling my car up with gas", it changes yet again.
There really isn't any reasonable argument left for why we need 6000 lb personal vehicles that run on gasoline. And truly, the world will go on after this 19th century technology is finally supplanted.
You are welcome on my lawn.
For starters, you talk about making grille openings smaller? On many vehicles, the grille openings are functional. The radiator (or even the air intake piping) may be placed behind it, so it needs to have good airflow. I'm not sure your idea provides a net benefit in many situations, and that's why you aren't seeing it done.
As for weight savings, I agree to a point. Some of this is the result of "old school" thinking and preferences of a generation who believed a big, heavy car had a better feel on the road and was safer. But you're seeing a shift away from those ideas, even with companies like Cadillac with their new ATS sport sedan. It's far lighter weight than the CTS sedan that came before it. But suggestions like using carbon fiber in place of sheet metal for more weight savings are probably largely ignored by the auto industry because it lacks durability. Anyone who "mods" their sports car with aftermarket parts for looks/styling can tell you, carbon fiber side-skirts or "ground f/x" tend to break off in pieces and develop nasty stress cracks with time. The material works a bit better for a component like a hood, where it won't take as much abuse from flying pebbles/rocks while driving, or accidentally scraping it on a curb. But still, saying carbon fiber is "stronger" than aluminum doesn't tell the whole story. Metal body parts absorb impacts by denting or creasing. That can be popped back out (such as you see with paintless dent removal places) pretty inexpensively. Carbon fiber just chips, cracks or snaps. A sheet of glass has a lot of strength too. (Try pulling it apart to "tear' it in two.) Doesn't mean it's not liable to shatter when stressed in a different way.
As for the auto transmission torque converters, what alternatives are you suggesting? I used to drive a Jeep Patriot with a continuously variable transmission (CVT). Pretty slick in concept, but not at all durable in reality. Most Patriot owners I knew had a CVT die of an internal bearing failure after 70K miles or so on the road. Plus, it was WAY more expensive to have fixed than a standard automatic transmission. Even the fluid it took was a special, very costly type since it had to have certain friction properties that changed with temperature.
I had a 1985 Toyota Tercel wagon, which got about 27mpg when new. Toyota didn't really make an equivalent car last year, and I wanted a wagon or at least a hatchback. Ended up with a Kia Soul.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm sorry, but I'm 6'5" and don't fit in a two door electric hybrid. Not even if I pull out the seats and sit in the back. One Size Fits All is a lie, and government mandates to the same are just more NANNY STATE wannabe Dictators.
You want to effect change, get people to vote on raising gas taxes so that Gas is $10 a pint, and that will drastically cut consumption and drive people to the Chevy Volt (now defunct) like all the lame skinny vegetarian liberals want (for everyone but themselves).
BTW, I drive a Mercury Marquis (Crown Vic style) and use less than 20 Gal a month driving it normally to and from work. I don't want or need a miniature car that is impossible to get into or out of.
No Thank You
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Cargo area != cargo weight. Otherwise a pickup would have infinite cargo capacity (outside of fitting in the bed).
The 2012 Honda Fit has a total capacity of 850 lbs cargo + passengers according to the door sticker on the neighbors' vehicle I just looked at.
With 4 200 lb people, the 2012 Honda Fit has only 50 lbs of cargo weight capacity!
Hell, you couldn't even safely take a small family w/luggage to the airport, or take them grocery shopping in that thing without exceeding the maximum specs!
Hell, a freaking roller skate has more capacity than a 2012 Honda Fit with 4 200 lb passengers!!
Don't be fooled when car makers quote large cargo capacities in area. Check the weight.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
No need for 133t driving skills ... paying attention and being prepared to react will keep you out of more situations than you can imagine. There are very few truly unavoidable accidents, no matter how badly the "other guy" drives. Unfortunately, not only is the GP right about driver education in the US, most people have an inflated self-evaluation of their driving skills, focusing on following the rules of the road and keeping four (two, for the cyclists) tires on the road. That's a good start, but doesn't go nearly far enough to protect oneself and other souls in the vehicle.
My Prius in Canada was spec'd at 4.2L/100km which is 56mpg. Our actual consumption is closer to 5.5L/100km, though.
Subaru makes the Outback.
and I drive my paid for, 16mph Ford F150 just about everywhere. And oh yeah, I haul wood, pull a horse trailer and a 24foot camper. I'll buy a bettery mileage car when I can justify it.
I was driving a Chevy Cobalt EFI (5 speed manual, 2.2L, 30-37mpg) for 3 years but one of my kids is driving it now.
The wife drives a 30+mpg Toyota Avalon.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
That's exactly my point.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
A gallon is the global standard for measuring volume.
They're only more dangerous if every other fucking idiot on the road is going grocery shopping in their fucking Dodge Ram with the two wheels side-by-side rather than a normal human-sized car.
I guess if you already have a Dodge Ram (whatever that is -- probably a car completely non-marketable outside the US) because you need it at times, you wouldn't want to buy a second vehicle just for driving to the grocery store.
It is ridiculous to measure fuel efficiency in miles per gallon. That totally ignores payload moved. My 2004 Ford E-350 Extended Body van is far more efficient than a Prisus or any of those new fangled pseudo-green cars because I transport full loads including back hauling rather than running around with one person in the car for errands or commuting.
The real measure should be pounds moved miles per gallon. PMPG. Except it should be metric.
Does the fleet average include electric vehicles with their mpg-equivalent rating? Cars like the new Tesla sedan (89 MPGe) could bring up the average quite a bit.
Let me show you why that statement doesn't make sense Ironically, a lot of 'gun owners' owners aren't necessarily "cowboy posers", but just people who think that if they ever do get in a 'hostile situation', they'd rather be 'carrying a gun' when it happens. So 'gunless people' are more dangerous because there are so many 'criminals with guns' because so many people are afraid of getting 'shot', thus perpetuating the problem
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
I took my new car in bragging how it was getting 41mpg. My first service they upgraded the EPROM. Guess what my mileage is now?
31.8 mpg after the software upgrade. Auto mfgr's have this under control and big oil is playing the supply side just right. Notice how the gas prices are high for summer?
Actually, thanks to new battery technologies such as dry-electrode lithium-ion batteries and carbon nanotube ultracapacitors, we may see by 2020 electric automobiles about the size of a Volkswagen Golf--with the battery pack the same volume size as the current Golf's gas tank!--go possibly 800 km (497 miles) on a single full charge cycle. If that becomes reality, the age of the gasoline and diesel fueled automobile will come to an end--and everyone in urban areas can breathe a lot easier since we will start seeing lower and lower air pollution as long-range electric cars take over.
If the people were serious about being safe when driving they would insist on the driving test being more difficult to pass, ie, actually test a person's driving ability, and take away the license of people who have proven that they are bad driver much sooner than is done now.
Anarchists never rule
The times I've had to haul things I just rent a truck. It's relatively cheap and certainly a lot cheaper than owning one and paying the higher gas prices all the time. I rent a truck maybe twice a year. It seems that when I do a large portion of the fee is the price of gas to refill it.
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
But they are not legislating technology into existence; the technology is here now. I can go by a non-hybrid car with four seats that get over 60mpg today.
Anarchists never rule
Honda Civics hit that MPG in the 80's, so no wild futuristic tech is needed.
Nooo..it's because like everything else they do heavy ham handed force by the government causes unforeseen consequences!
Ever wonder where the SUV came from, or why small trucks were replaced by monster V8s? Well wonder no more, it came from CAFE standards! You see in the 70s we had these things called "station wagons" as well as light trucks based on cars. These wagons were perfect for your soccer mom types and the car-trucks were perfect for those that just needed to be able to haul a little furniture or lumber on the weekends. Then along came CAFE that made it practically impossible to build those vehicles anymore but guess what? Work trucks had an exemption! See where this is going?
You can't force people to drive what they don't want at the barrel of a gun or the barrel of a pen, its as simple as that. gas goes up? More people that can buy smaller cars, less buy bigger cars, and the market changes to give them what they want. I wish I could find the link to the money matters video where one of the guys from Kelley's Blue Book spent all damned day trying to get something so obvious through the heads of congress critters. he brought charts and graphs and sale figures showing that the American public saw those itty bitty cracker boxes as a DO NOT WANT and were buying vehicles MUCH larger than they needed, simply because the regulations were making sure there was nothing in between. the critters answer? "Well how do we make them take it?" arrgh!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
More unrealistic demands by the government to drive consumer prices up on what is for most the 2nd most expensive purchase of their lives, even more if you consider the lifespan of the average car compared to a home and that in theory a home actually appreciates in value.
But then again, by then there may not be an economy at all, so car prices will be the least of our worries.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How is public transit more time-efficient when someone has to make three connections to get across town? Or when it doesn't run at all for 36 to 60 hours at a time (Saturday night to Monday or Tuesday morning)? Or when it doesn't go within reasonable walking distance of certain places anytime?
Truthfully, one of the most fuel-saving things the government could do would be to encourage work-from-home and telecommuting. That doesn't sound as impressive though.
Especially because several companies (such as Nintendo) would claim that work-from-home poses an unacceptable trade secret disclosure risk.
They'll still be able to get to work or retailers, only they'll take less trips to do it and learn to conserve gas. They'll use the small sedan to go get groceries instead of the giant SUV.
How will that help them take fewer trips? They still need a vehicle big enough to fit all the people and groceries, and they still need to make a trip at least every other week because that's how long milk lasts.
Europeans drive a lot less -- by living closer to where we work and using public transport more.
Is that why stores in the Netherlands are closed on Sundays, to give public transit drivers a day off?
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.
and I haven't read the article linked, but I have read the NHTSA press release.
First of all, the 2025 MPG is augural -- the NHTSA is statutorily prohibited from setting standards more than five model years in the future. Secondly, the numbers of 49mpg is based on their estimate of the maximum achievable fleet-wide technology. The 2025 number is a *projection* of the requirement the NHTSA estimates that they will propose sometime around 2020.
A better link is:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/08/nhtsaepa-20120828.html
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Because with your .05 liter engine you'll be merging into 70 mph traffic at 25 mph.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
Ok, so you don't like big cars because you got a little car? Well, let's say you go into a bar and you got an average face and average body. The people in the bar are "better and bigger" than you. So guess what? Life sucks and you go home by yourself. The bigger/better people get laid, have kids and you don't! And then, you get taxed unfairly and have to pay for the birth and the education of their kids which you didn't have because you "got a little car".
So what do you do? You tell your friendly government officials to even things out. They come up with a great plan, SAFE. Simple Average Fornication Experience. So now you, average and small, get to play with the "big" boys and girls. But what really happens is that while you still don't get laid you are no longer a loser, just average. Yippe, yeah big govenrment!
The cost of the 2nd vehicle plus the environmental costs of the production of that vehicle can not be covered by the improved fuel efficiency of that mythical vehicle.
Unless a few dozen people share that second vehicle through a car rental company.
MPG is usually stated in the units used in the market where the car is sold, which in this case is the UK. Google the passat -- it's 65.2 in U.S. gallons of diesel. Multiply that by a 0.88 GGE for diesel, and it's 57ish MPG.
Someone had to do it.
Extreme counter-point
A friend of mine was driving a one-ton pickup, and got broadsided by some kid on a sport bike. The kid ran a stop sign at a police-estimated 150 mph, and struck the pickup in the rear passenger door (4 door pickup). It blew all the glass out of the passenger side, and the rear glass, put a crease in the roof of the truck, and bent the frame. The remains of the kid were launched across a four-lane divided highway, and almost cleared the whole road. I think the police said the bike mostly exploded on impact. It was probably the bike that got the frame, and the kid that got the roof.
I agree about how we use trucks. We used to use trucks to haul hay, haul livestock, haul stuff to the dump, and there was a car or station wagon to go to the office or on vacation.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
One thing I love about driving in Europe. The majority of the cars are small cars, and not these behomouth suvs.
No, the GP wrote that small cars are only more dangerous than large cars if most of the cars on the road are large. That's not true. They would still be more dangerous even if all of the cars were small or large on any given road.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Exactly how is a woman an idiot because an accident happened after she passed out?
you have effective government, effective regulation
it does begin "we the people" you know. it is supposed to represent you. so make sure it does, remove the corruption
i don't understand people who think government is the source of the problem. the government is corrupted, and ceases to be an effective force against corporate power. it is an EFFECT, not a CAUSE
yet some fools want to weaken government. thereby what? allow the corporations unfettered rapacious profitmaking? do you think they respect your rights and freedoms? so support the ONLY effective means at your disposal to fight the force: your own government
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Fold down the seats, and you can get a fridge in the back. It does better than the bosses great big BMW for carrying presentation boards to corporate meetings. And it drinks about half of the fuel
This is not strictly true. According to the Environment Protection Agency, your car uses 34 mpg for mixed driving. A BMW 528i uses 28 mpg. Half the fuel, you said?
And that's before taking into account loading. With four people, the BMW undoubtedly uses less fuel than your car, which will have to work much harder.
And what about CO2 emissions? 160 g/km for the 0.8l Chevy Spark (Daewoo Matiz), and 152 g/km for the BMW 528i. Stop polluting my air, cheapskate!
What do you call a Chevy Spark on a hilltop?
A bloody miracle.
and everything else that sounds good in an election year
this isn't just something that sounds good in an election year. this is just common sense.
on the other hand, voting against common sense is not necessarily the best thing to do in an election year. hence the timing.
there's no reason for the US driver to buy so much gas. except, maybe, that that's just how the oil guys like it.
Buy yourself a 1998-2006 VW Beetle TDI. Better headroom than just about anything else (including your Mercury), 40+ MPG, and it can run on biodiesel.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
A family averaging 200 lbs per person is not "small!"
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Because it effects everyone not just themselves. If there were no negative externalities involved by letting people do what they want you might have a point.
Ah, I see. It benefits the collective more, and the individual is less important than the collective.
It would also benefit the collective more if people who were not productive for whatever reason...chronic/severe illness, age, injury, or whatever...were euthanized instead of being allowed to drain wealth and resources from the collective.
I, for one, welcome our "Logan's Run" Overlords.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I think the fact that most normal people don't want triangulated beams criss-crossing the passenger compartment is the problem. Just think of how few cars even have anything similar: the Nissan 3350Z has a strut tower brace (which kills cargo capacity), and certain roadsters have roll hoops, but that's about it.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
More importantly, the US also has huge reserves of coal. Make no mistake: when the oil really runs out, the "alternative fuel of the future" isn't going to be hydrogen or batteries or biofuels or any sort of environmentally sane technology, it's going to be "fuck-the-world-we-need-our-delivery-trucks-to-work" coal gasification.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You sure about that? I've test driven the Fiat 500; it sucked pretty bad. Even my 10-years-older Hyundai Accent was better (it even had more power), let alone my VW Beetle TDI.
Granted, the Abarth (with a manual transmission) might be decent...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
FYI, there's nothing "relatively small" about a Pontiac G6. It was the second-biggest car Pontiac made at the time!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There will almost certainly be a waiver for vehicles over a certain GVW. If a vehicle has a capacity over a certain point it will be exempted and can (and will) be made with fuel consumption around 10-15mpg just as they are today...and people will buy them and claim all the same bullshit reasons (big family, safety, etc). Look...the cars are not the problem. It's the attitude that creates the market for the gas guzzlers that is the problem. People across the pond have been happy to drive smaller and more efficient cars for years. What's our hangup?
Even if the 54.5 m.p.g. goal is reached, most cars and trucks will get lower mileage in real-life driving. Credits for air-conditioning units in vehicles will reduce the average mileage to about 49 m.p.g., and actual driving conditions could reduce it further.
I think he needs legroom more than headroom.
I can just see that. Interstate highways made of steel plate for the ground and covered with an electric roof. You could totally enclose it and drive in your shirt sleeves. Morning rush hour, 10,000 bumper cars all trying to get to the same place. It would be hilarious. We could put solar panels on top for electricity.
That only helps to stop idiots from skidding/flipping when it's snowing (I say "idiots" because SUVs cause people to be overconfident in bad weather - acceleration of 4WDs is still good in slippery conditions, braking and steering, not so much...)
No sig today...
Well, relatively small compared to other cars on the road, not compared to what Pontiac is making. Perhaps the fact that the G6 was their second biggest car was part of the reason they no longer exist? I mean, shit, it's smaller than a Nissan Altima. Not by a ton, but the G6 is considered a Compact, the Altima is Mid-Size. And especially with so many people driving SUVs and such, I'd say that yes, my G6 is relatively small.
When there's just one of you in the vehicle why pay fuel costs and emissions to lug large amounts of steel around. Especially in cities.
Something like this is an awesome commuter vehicle. And when I have spare funds I will be getting one!
http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/
Why is everyone using future tense in this discussion. Here in Europe we have many cars that do 54mp(US)g [About 65mp(UK)g]. Firstly move from petrol to diesel. Even my mid 2000s SUV gets 45mp(UK)g with its 2.0l BMW diesel. Modern cars such as VWs Blue Motion Polo are getting around 85mp(UK)g.
Rent a trailer or borrow a truck. You can even rent an SUV several times per year for far less than the price premium of an SUV over a compact.
On thing I didn't see on your list was 'Medical Reasons'. My grandfather is disabled; he can still walk, but not well. Getting out of a seat is difficult for him. Cars are built too low for him - he buys trucks because he can step into them, and drop out. He can't climb out of a seated position. Mom has a different issue but the same difficulty - can't get out of low seats. She drives a small SUV because of this.
I can't imagine that with our, on average, aging population that these issues are all that rare.
I own a truck for towing/hauling. I do so about twice a week. 90% of the time though, you'd count me as 'has truck, isn't doing anything needing a truck'. Fact is that my truck is fuel efficient enough that I can't justify buying a car to leave the truck home - the extra insurance would cost more than the saved gas.
On being surprised at the short people wanting a taller vehicle to see better - It doesn't surprise me. Shorter body = shorter in the seat, losing critical inches out on the road.
On NYC - one can argue that the construction workers, most of them, don't 'need' trucks either. Their employer needs the trucks.
I don't read AC A human right
Lower the bumpers? Did you really just type that?
Please explain how a device that is directly connected to the truck frame can be lowered below that frame and still maintain the function of said device?
Just to be clear, if one "lowers" the bumpers, even with a triangular frame brace, one is basically removing them as far as safety goes. Bumpers are designed to absorb force, but need a firm backing on the truck frame or they will simply tear off in an accident, creating a wedge under the truck nose that would drive it up even HIGHER over a vehicle it was striking.
Lowering the bumpers would be far MORE dangerous, not less. (Which, incidentally, is why it is illegal in many states to modify the bumpers beyond changing the covering material, or replacing them with an appropriately rated bumper.)
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Ironically, a lot of pickup/SUV owners aren't necessarily "cowboy posers", but just people who think that if they ever do get in an accident, they'd rather be driving the bigger car when it happens.
Yeah, a few years ago there was an article on Slashdot about that. If I remember correctly, someone leaked a Ford internal customer profile that found that SUV purchasers tended to be short, insecure and a bit cowardly. The biggest selling point was how "safe" it felt to tower over everyone else on the road.
So smaller cars are more dangerous because there are so many big trucks on the road because so many people are afraid of getting hit by big trucks, thus perpetuating the problem.
Even worse, SUVs tend to make driving for both the driver and everyone else more dangerous. People in SUVs have a statistically significant greater risk of death from accidents (higher centre of mass means more roll overs) and they deal more damage to other vehicles when involved in accidents (because they are larger, heavier and take more momentum into the accident).
Fanatically anti-fanatical
This isn't exactly good news for the American consumer and our economy. This will add $3,000 dollars to the price of most cars. People won't buy new more fuel-efficient cars, they'll hang on to their old gas guzzlers instead. (I drive a 17 year old Buick that I won't get rid of because new cars aren't as safe.)
"Politicians always tell the truth, when they're calling each other liars."
When I did the math, you only need to have ~2 weeks of usage for the larger vehicle to justify buying it in the first place. The math changes if you can get super-cheap rentals, of course.
I don't read AC A human right
it's going to be "fuck-the-world-we-need-our-delivery-trucks-to-work" coal gasification.
No. It's going to be "...oh, out of oil are you...? Well, we have some right here..."
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Um... no. The US isn't even in the top 10 for reserves. Well over half of all known oil reserves are under the Middle East, with a large portion of that under Saudi Arabia. Venezuela as a country is sitting on more than anyone else.
Maybe you're thinking of coal? Coal, we do have the most, so luckily we'll have something left to sell to China to pay for all our oil.
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
Face it, the average pickup truck driver is some suburban cowboy poser who is commuting to his office park.
Ironically, a lot of pickup/SUV owners aren't necessarily "cowboy posers", but just people who think that if they ever do get in an accident, they'd rather be driving the bigger car when it happens. So smaller cars are more dangerous because there are so many big trucks on the road because so many people are afraid of getting hit by big trucks, thus perpetuating the problem.
Letting stupid people swarm around like sheep have any relation to your own thought process is just perpetuating the stupid! If you actually look at the crash statistics for different types of vehicles, the smaller cars are much safer. For one, they get into less accidents. Would you rather be in a vehicle that is so heavy that you can't turn or brake in an emergency (partly due to their tailgating), or one that can maneuver and avoid the accident. If you think you are going to get into an accident, you probably will. I drive small efficient cars and motorcycles and I don't get into accidents. I guess that is only anecdotal, so it isn't worth much. But the statistics I pointed to sure do.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
No, oil. Anwar.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Let me show you why that statement doesn't make sense:
"Ironically, a lot of 'gun owners' owners aren't necessarily "cowboy posers", but just people who think that if they ever do get in a 'hostile situation', they'd rather be 'carrying a gun' when it happens. So 'gunless people' are more dangerous because there are so many 'criminals with guns' because so many people are afraid of getting 'shot', thus perpetuating the problem"
How is that statement not true, it works perfectly for me. If you reduce the number of guns around (which is probably pretty hard once they are all out there) you reduce the number of current and future criminals with guns.
Don't believe me? Just compare gun ownership and gun related deaths.
So if you feel an SUV is more are dangerous in accidents don't buy an SUV, instead of making the problem worse buy buying one and risking you kill somebody with it. At least when it comes to pedestrian safety SUVs are pretty bad compared to other cars, making SUVs illegal in urban areas will do more to protect your kids then buying one.
And make people retake the driving test, not just pay a fee to renew it before it expires. You should have to re-take the full test every 5 years or lose your license. People would be a lot more cognizant of the actual rules and how to properly drive!
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
Why does more power matter? You're missing the point. It's about weight and agility. Avoiding accidents rarely has anything to do with power. You want to be able to stop quickly to avoid hitting anything. Or turn quickly to avoid an object.
Oh, I thought when you wrote "...it really has nothing to do with potential accidents" it meant we weren't talking just about avoiding accidents anymore. Silly me.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Legroom and headroom are functionally equivalent: you increase legroom (at the expense of headroom) by moving the seat up, back and upright, and you increase headroom by moving the seat down, forward and reclined.
In other words, you might have to move the seat all the way back, but you will fit in a New Beetle no matter how tall you are. (And normal-sized people could drive one while wearing a top-hat.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The issue is that these higher standards will force car makers to build cars lighter and lighter thus making them unsafe.
Make the cars with smaller engines. Next make the cars smaller. etc...
The point being they want to do away with cars/trucks entirely and force reliance on public transportation.
*I had a Toyota Corolla, a very small car then, now have a Prius. It consistenly gets 45 mpg or better and is a mid size car.
Coincidentally, is a mid size vagina as well.
As a (presumably) hetero male, isn't that exactly what you'd want to get inside of?
:-P
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
You probably aren't using a good viewing spot to determine how many people use their SUVs to transport more than just the driver. If people were using their SUVs to drop off the kids on the way to school, then I would imagine that when the driver got to their final destination the odds of being the only person in the car would be pretty high. Most teachers/adult students, probably wouldn't actually bringing their kids to the university with them, right? My wife frequently goes to the gym after dropping off the kids at school. A lot of people see her with only one person in the car but that one spot doesn't really show all of the ways the car is getting used.
Personally I would prefer to be driving the Fiat 500 in any case, but it really has nothing to do with potential accidents :D
Especially the Fiat 500 Abarth. :)
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
If slamming on your brakes causes an accident, the person behind you is not, in fact, a good driver.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
Automatic transmissions also tend to add about $1000 to the price of a mid-range car, are more likely to have problems and are considerably more expensive to fix when things do go wrong. They also tend to be in the wrong gear when you need them (CVTs may reduce that issue somewhat. I don't know.).
We've got a Prius with a CVT (continuously variable transmission), and another car with a regular automatic transmission. I've been driving both this week. The CVT doesn't have gears, really, so there simply is no wrong gear to be in. CVTs also have smoother acceleration curves, as there is no shifting between gears, so no sudden drop in acceleration as the transmission up-shifts.
There's also the coolness factor -- the first CVT was sketched out by Da Vinci way back in 1490. :)
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
What the troll moderator who modded me down missed is that unless Toyota decides to sell only Priuses, they're going to need a 70-80 MPG car to balance out all the 30 MPG Camrys that they sell every year.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Toyota.com says that the 3rd Gen Prius starts at $24k, not $19k.
That is true, but the 3rd Gen Prius is not the same as the Prius C, which does have a list price of $18,950, according to Toyota: http://www.toyota.com/priusc/
What the troll moderator who modded me down missed is that unless Toyota decides to sell only Priuses, they're going to need a 70-80 MPG car to balance out all the 30 MPG Camrys that they sell every year.
Or, when all manufacturers have the same gas mileage target, Toyota can sell more Camry Hybrids by reducing the price gap between the Hybrid and conventional Camry to boost their fleet mileage, and put a less powerful gas (or diesel) engine in the Camry to bring it closer to the mandated gas mileage target. Then they need to sell fewer Yaris's and Prius's to make up the gap. Right now there's no incentive to reduce the performance of the Camry which would make it underperform the Honda Accord (or Nissan Altima, etc) - many shoppers who compare horsepower, acceleration, etc will chose the more powerful car. But when all manufacturers are under the same constraints, then Toyota can put a smaller, more efficient engine into the Camry since Honda and the rest will have to do the same.
And how long have we been waiting on the battery packaging/recharge/swap technology to catch up? Oh right...
But saying that I'm unsafe because I drive a pickup is pretty narrow minded.
No, you are dumb, but nobody called you unsafe. A crash with you is less safe because you are in a larger/taller/heavier vehicle, but nobody said anything about *you* being unsafe, just the existence of your car on the roads. There's a difference.
I'd imagine that I'm less dangerous than 20somethings with sportbikes
I hear crap like that all the time, but statistically speaking, bikers don't kill anyone. So you are much much less safe to others than a 20 something with a sportbike. Obviously you are too stupid to evaluate risks as well. Maybe you are an unsafe driver.
Learn to love Alaska
The funny thing is that if *everyone* were in a Honda Civic (including your wife), your wife would be safer than if she's in an SUV with everyone else in an SUV.
This is a tragedy of the commons issue with a metal-arms race. If everyone was in a safe small car, everyone would be safer. So buy her a Civic for safety.
Learn to love Alaska
The average gasoline internal combustion engine is only 20% efficient. That is to say, only 20% of the energy present in the fuel-air mix at ignition is reclaimed as mechanical energy by the engine; the rest is lost as heat. A further 90% of the energy harnessed by the engine is used to keep the engine itself running; pumps, belts, fans, and transmissions all take energy to run. That means only 2% of the energy present in the gas tank makes it to spinning the wheels. And that's with the air off! So you can see, there's a lot of room for improvement. Turbo Diesel engines are half again as efficient than a gasoline engine of the same weight. If every gas engine were swapped for a Deisel engine, the US could stop oil imports from all other countries except Canada. And that's just going from 2% efficiency to ~3%. If you were to add gas turbines in the exhaust system to capture some of the waste heat, essentially making a multiple-expansion engine, you could easily tripple or quadruple current mileages. Combine such an engine system with and electric powertrain, like the Chevy Volt, and regenerative braking and you could have a 100MPG car within the decade. All using existant technology. So don't tell me a 54MPG fleet average is unattainable. If it was, the car makers themselves wouldn't have agreed to it.
Oversized grill openings are a styling cue nowadays. Supposedly it makes the car look more aggressive or something like that. I think it's ugly myself, but whatever. However, all you have to do is go back to the early-mid 90's when small grill openings was the in thing to see that you can shrink them down quite a bit with no adverse effects.
If she had some medical condition that she know about, she had no business behind the wheel of any vehicle.
While I'm sure all your points are correct (that's a lie), taping:tapping, foriegn:foreign, passed:past.
What were you rejected for poor spelling? Good luck living in the wasteland that will be left after you've tapped all those rich domestic reserves...
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
I'm sure a lot of gun owners do believe that owning a gun will keep them safer in a hostile situation, thus fueling gun sales. Whether or not it's actually true, I have no doubt that is the logic many gun owners use.
Sounds more like you're not observant enough to see the small car attempting to maneuver near you.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Sinnlos ablehnen.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Hypothetically because smaller cars are less safe. Not that I subscribe to that theory.
Smaller cars get hurt more going up against bigger cars and trucks... not so much against other small cars. If anything, such collisions should be safer, since there is less total energy involved to be transferred to the occupants.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Fold down the seats, and you can get a fridge in the back. It does better than the bosses great big BMW for carrying presentation boards to corporate meetings. And it drinks about half of the fuel
This is not strictly true. According to the Environment Protection Agency, your car uses 34 mpg for mixed driving. A BMW 528i uses 28 mpg. Half the fuel, you said?
Who said the BMW in question is a 528i? It could be a 750iL for all you know, or a classic M1.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Sadly you like myself are probably an outlier. I have a regular sedan for everyday driving, but then I have a Jeep Cherokee for hunting, camping, and hauling. Now granted I don't have to regularly haul really large or bulky stuff so my relatively small (seriously compared to some it is tiny) Jeep can haul it inside, but if I need more room I can go borrow my dad's car trailer that we made sides for if either of us need to haul lots of stuff. The Jeep, when it gets used, mostly is filled with the supplies needed for a week or 2 of hunting or camping. I mostly need it for the high clearance but the 4WD is nice when I screw my self in 2WD I can still get out. Also the 4WD with posi differentials is great in bad weather, but then I don't drive like a retard like it seems every one with AWD does.
Time to offend someone
cc isn't a measure of power, it's a measure of displacement.
I am very sorry about what happened to your mother.
The main reason that any vehicle is barely controllable on icy roads is that stupid Americans don't buy proper winter tires. Having a bunch of AWD vehicles around has only made this problem worse, because with AWD you can get moving even under the most marginal of traction conditions, but then you can't control the vehicle. Also, we let people drive with grossly inadequate training which no doubt contributed to the SUV driver losing control. Your mother was obviously a responsible driver, but the person in the SUV was, as other posters have pointed out, the beneficiary of welfare payments to the oil, etc. industries.
Social Credit would solve everything...
Vehicles that can hold several people do not have to be enormous AWD SUVs. SUV drivers are by and large undertrained morons, for anyone who actually knows how to drive would never use an SUV for daily driving - they are far too dangerous.
Social Credit would solve everything...
Yeah, and I suppose that every winter you change all 6 tires for high quality winter tires so you don't lose control and smash into sane people's cars. BTW, the next time you are watching Fox News and joining in the vitriol over welfare mothers, look in the mirror. (Who do you think subsidizes your gas guzzler?)
Social Credit would solve everything...
Oh I see em, I've yet to hit one because I do see them. I constantly watch for them because so many of them do drive like idiots, thinking their zippy little cars can weave through traffic with impunity. Most smaller cars don't do this but enough do (usually driven by young males) do and thus require maximum attention.
Oh and more importantly you've missed the real point of my post. That the GP's personal anecdote has zero credibility because I can cite one exactly opposite to it.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
I'll believe it when I see it. 54.5 mpg? We have a LONG way to go.
I'm stuck with a long and miserable commute, and I'm highly motivated to maximize my fuel economy. I couldn't afford a hybrid, even with all the incentives, so I got the most fuel efficient conventional car I could lay my hands on at the time. I get 38.0 mpg, which isn't bad, but the difference between this and my last car makes 54.5 mpg look impossibly far away.
This thing weighs 1/3 what my old car did, has fewer cylinders, more than a liter less displacement, it's miserably cramped with no room to haul anything larger than a couple of small duffle bags. For all this sacrifice, I gained about 10 mpg. I don't think I could get the other ~20 in anything that could actually survive driving 100 miles a day through the mountains surrounded by 18-wheelers. This miserable little econobox is plenty torture enough, thanks.
almost triple the MPG (13 mpg vs 29 mpg), and is way safer.
Your math is a little fuzzy, 29 is much better described as a little over double (26) the MPG rather than almost triple (39).
Problem with the argument about family size is that most SUVs have the exact same seating capacity as a sedan. Some have less. My aunt and uncle own a Hummer H2, a ridiculously huge vehicle, and it only seats 5....the same as pretty much any sedan, ever. If you truely need seating for 5+ then get a van.
The Tata Nano gets 55.5 mpg, and costs around $3000.
Wow, papier-mâché is getting expensive!