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White House Finalizes 54.5 MPG Fuel Efficiency Standard
The Obama Administration announced today it has finalized new fuel efficiency standards that will require new cars and light-duty trucks to have an average efficiency of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. This adds to the requirement that 2016's new cars must average 35.5 miles per gallon. "The final standards were developed by DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and EPA following extensive engagement with automakers, the United Auto Workers, consumer groups, environmental and energy experts, states, and the public. Last year, 13 major automakers, which together account for more than 90 percent of all vehicles sold in the United States, announced their support for the new standards." According to the administration, the standards will reduce dependence on foreign oil, save money at the pump, protect the environment, and everything else that sounds good in an election year.
At some point you just have to account for the laws of physics.
Pushing a vehicle at 80MPH down the highway is going to be hard to do and get 54.5 MPG. No matter how "hybrid" the car is, no matter how good your regenerative breaking.. once you're at highway speeds, air resistance becomes insurmountable.
This adds to the requirement that 2016's new cars must average 35.5 miles per gallon.
I hope they mean AT LEAST 35.5 miles per gallon, or my 60 miles per gallon super-car is doomed..
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
Force all new cars to use some alternatve fuel, one that doesnt just move the pollution and I will be happier.
To be fair, they might as well say 'all cars will run on magic moonbeams by 2025', because it's about as likely to happen.
We should just stop subsidizing the oil and car industries. Stop subsidizing refineries. Stop giving tax brakes to oil companies. Stop subsidizing road development out of regular taxes. Gas will hit $10/gal and the problem will take care of itself.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
If the truck you're hit by is an 18-wheeler transport truck it won't matter if you're driving a Fiat or an F150. If you only have a standard driver's license then you're nowhere near the biggest thing on the road, and should probably learn how to drive defensively rather than depending on the size of your vehicle to save you in a crash.
He's got the wrong target. The most efficient vehicles are the ones that aren't on the road at all. Further proof that "if you can measure it, you can mismanage it".
The most efficient "car" I ever drove was a condo in the city. I even went without a car for a while. Driving was OPTIONAL there.
I have a car now, but still live close to commuter rail and within walking distance of many shops.
Policy makers should focus on making development more walkable. It wouldn't be bad for the economy either. You would get construction stimulus from building residences in commercial areas, and commercial buildings in areas such as the vast residential tract that I grew up in. With these spaces encouraging people to walk, ride bicycles, and drive less there would be knock-on benefits in health.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
soccer mom texting in her gas guzzling behemoth, when wrecking with a subcompact, tends to survive better than the poor guy in the subcompact
Sort of like survival of the unfittest.
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!
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.
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.
soccer mom texting in her gas guzzling behemoth, when wrecking with a subcompact, tends to survive better than the poor guy in the subcompact
Simply not true. The behemoth is safer in a head-on collision, sure, but that's only a tiny percentage of accidents.
In almost all other types of collisions the SUV will roll over and kill everybody inside.
(After wrecking everything else in the area with all that kinetic energy...)
No sig today...
Sure, if you take a big car with no safety features and compare it to a smaller car with safety features, the smaller car is going to be safer. That goes without saying. That said, a modern big car with equivalent safety features would be safer than a modern small car. You have to compare apples to apples.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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
In the town of Dimock, Pennsylvania, 13 water wells were contaminated with methane (one of them blew up). Arsenic, barium, DEHP, glycol compounds, manganese, phenol, and sodium were also found in unacceptable levels in the wells.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_hydraulic_fracturing_in_the_United_States
When I can't drink my own water because it combusts out of the tap next to a flame, I don't really give a fuck how fracking drives down natural gas prices.
It's always the fittest who survive, you're just unhappy about who that turns out to be.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
(After wrecking everything else in the area with all that kinetic energy...)
I've always said we need to tie liability insurance rates to vehicle mass. Pick a reasonable number for the denominator, like 3000lb or so (mid-size sedan territory), and use the actual vehicle weight as the numerator. Multiply the final insurance rate by the resulting fraction. Want to buy an 8000lb truck because you think it'll keep your precious brand new driver safe? Well, you'll be paying $5k+ a year to insure it.
Give them small car, and save on gas *and* insurance.
A horse.
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.