EPA's Gasoline Efficiency Tests Provide No Valid Information At All (hotair.com)

schwit1 writes from a report via Behind The Black: The tests the EPA uses to establish the fuel efficiency of cars are unreliable, and likely provide no valid information at all about the fuel efficiency of the cars tested. Robert Zimmerman reports from Behind The Black: "The law requiring cars to meet these fuel efficiency tests was written in the 1970s, and specifically sets standards based on the technology then. Worse, the EPA doesn't know exactly how its CAFE testing correlates with actual results, because it has never done a comprehensive study of real-world fuel economy. Nor does anyone else. The best available data comes from consumers who report it to the DOT (WARNING: Source may be paywalled) -- hardly a scientific sampling. Other than that, everything is fine. Companies are forced to spend billions on this regulation, the costs of which they immediately pass on to consumers, all based on fantasy and a badly-written law. Gee, I'm sure glad we never tried this with healthcare!"

Comments

this is stupid

[goombah99]

first, we all know there's a reasnonable correlation between epa estimates and our observed results. It's quite good. Second there's been lots of tests on other standards to show they perfrom good real world estimates. The author is nit picking that a specific set of linear combinations of tests hasn't been correlated. That is if you have 5 test that are correlated with real world measurements and you average them it is true that the average has not been tested but logically we can estimate it's error from the other tests.

who writes this crap

Re:this is stupid

[Ol Olsoc]

first, we all know there's a reasnonable correlation between epa estimates and our observed results. It's quite good.

I've always thought so. You have some manner of baseline, and you go from there.

And the concept of some sort of magick number of miles per gallon is silly anyhow. Is it for me, who tends to drive like a granny, and who gets very near the EPA figure, or is it for the person with a lead foot that leaves their vehicle idle when they go places, never shutting it off.

My old Jeep Grand Cherokee, got around 5 miles per gallon better gas mileage when I drove it than when my wife did. She's much more agressive a driver than I am, and drives faster overall.

My new Jeep and her present Jeep are almost identical, but once again, I get better gas mileage in mine.

So when you have people complaining that they don't get anywhere near the sticker MPG, its usually a good clue that they aren't driving in an economical fashion And then for the folks that think the ratings are bad, who is right? Am I wrong because I get very much the mileage the sticker say, and my better half is right, because she doesn't?

Re:"Breaking news from a conservative viewpoint"

[Nethemas the Great]

BeauHD seems to like his hyperbole, and is still quite wet behind the ears. His naivete is amusing at times, but it'd be nice if he did a bit of background work and moderated the tone before posting all these "New law will shore up the USPS by taxing emails" type submissions.