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White House Proposal Rolls Back Fuel Economy Standards, No Exception For California (npr.org)
The Trump administration has proposed a rollback of Obama-era fuel efficiency and emissions standards, while simultaneously taking aim at California's unique ability to set more stringent rules. From a report: Under the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency called for the fuel economy standards for new vehicles to ratchet up over time. The increasingly strict standards were designed to combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. On Thursday, the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a new proposed rule that would instead freeze the standards at their 2020 levels for six years. "Cars and trucks are just part of the basic fiber of the American economy and the American experience, so we take what we're doing very, very seriously," Bill Wehrum, EPA assistant administrator, told reporters on Thursday. The agencies say that increasing fuel efficiency requirements contributes to an increase in the cost of new cars and trucks, which may discourage consumers from buying new vehicles. Because newer vehicles have advanced safety features, the administration argues, increasing fuel economy requirements therefore harms highway safety, as well as having economic effects.
"...and oil wells."
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Modern safety features like stability control, auto-braking, and collision warning add minimum weight and don't affect economy. This is a 1980s way of thinking -- build a safety-box that takes a hit well but doesn't prevent crashes.
"Because newer vehicles have advanced safety features, the administration argues, increasing fuel economy requirements therefore harms highway safety, as well as having economic effects."
Really now ?
Enjoy your world burning to death stupid Earthicans!
oh. wait. crap...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The quest for better fuel economy ultimately comes down to physics.
To get even more economy, you need to reduce weight. Take away weight and you ultimately take away strength (unless you can afford a $500,000 carbon composite car.
while simultaneously taking aim at California's unique ability to set more stringent rules
Trump, his Republican cronies, and their voters, are such a collection of hypocrites.
For decades, all Republicans do is bleat "STATES' RIGHTS!" - But when those states actually exercise those rights (emissions / drug policy / guns) the Republicans do everything in their power to stomp all over them.
World standards do not follow US standards. All vehicle makers have to conform to worldwide standards, not just the US. Besides, California standards are not the most strict when compared to international standards. Also California standards have been ratified by 12 other states. Since this is a proposed bill, it will not get out of committee without providing states the ability to set their own limits.
Soon the US could be building gas guzzlers nobody outside the US wants to buy...and then when gas prices go back up, nobody inside the US will want to buy them either...remember how awesome it was last time that happened around the OPEC oil crisis? #MAGA!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If everyone would just buy a Tesla we would solve two problems: Tesla's balance sheet and the emissions problem. Solution: buy a Tesla.
When the first round of CAFE standards took effect, car makers managed to increase efficiency by improving engine efficiency.
When the second round happened, they started shrinking cars down to reduce weight. This is why a mid-size sedan from the early 2000's is about the same size, or larger, than most full size luxury cars these days.
Now car companies are skimping on seat fill, or leaving out spare tires, or using glue to hold components together instead of heavier rivets, to shave every possible ounce of weight off of a car to get the MPG up.
There isn't much left to do. Electric cars are great for short haul, but sometimes people need to drive farther. Small cars are fine for a lot of people, but try jamming a rear-facing car seat in one and you'll find the front seat is nearly unusable.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
if the extra air pollution that it will cause would, somehow, be kept within the borders of the USA. It does not: it follows the winds and ends up harming the rest of us. If it did stay within the USA then those who caused it would suffer the consequences; but pollution is a global problem, not a national one - so it upsets me to see those who seemingly put, what they see, as their interests first and do not act in global interests.
Please do not take this as an attack of most who live in the USA, I have friends who live there. Most are good guys who want to behave in a responsible way. It is unfortunate that your current president does not care about the planet, only making money for those who support him.
... when lawn mowers, leaf blowers, construction vehicles, etc, all spew out a lot more pollutants per minute than the hugest SUV or pickup truck.
True... but how long do you run your leaf blower for? Purely in terms of hours per week, most cars run longer than the leaf blower by a huge factor.
spew out a lot more pollutants per minute than the hugest SUV or pickup truck.
Don't forget that the big transition from cars to SUV's was a direct response to fuel economy standard increases, because they effectively banned family station wagons but "light trucks" were in a different class, so people who needed station wagons now needed SUV's, which got worse mileage.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
How many leaf blowers, lawn mowers, construction vehicles, etc. are running simultaneously vs. cars/trucks?
Since the answer is orders of magnitude more, a 0.1% reduction in car emissions is much better for the total environment then if all emissions were eliminated from leaf blowers, lawn mowers, construction vehicles, etc.
A slight bit of critical thinking would do you a world of good.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
Roll back fuel standards, - what it could mean? Will we witness 5 tons SUVs instead of 3 tons? 700 hp motors instead of current 500 hp? 400 km/h speedometers instead of 300 km/h?
I mean, - could it be even worse standards than we had all these years, and which led to these monsters on the roads.
The top income bracket (the 1%) pulls in about $2 trillion dollars. 0.001% of that gets you $20 million. On an average year, Americans purchase about 17 million vehicles, so your tax will save approximately $1.18 on the sticker price of each vehicle.
Now, if we expand to, say, the top 25% we get a figure of $6.7 trillion. 0.001% of that gets you $67 million, or about $3.94 per car.
"Screw that," you say, "I was just throwing out a number. Increase the tax by 1%". Now we're talking real numbers! A 1% surtax on the top 1% could (theoretically) pull in $20 billion dollars! Split among cars and you get... $1,180 per car. The average car in January 2018 was $36,270, so you would drop that to $35,090.
Whoo hoo! That makes the car only... $180 more than the same car in January 2017. And that's not including the cost to hit the new emissions and safety targets your tax was supposed to cover.
There are flaws in every single one of your estimates, and all of your calculations. I'm German and apparently understand your tax code better than you do. Your top bracket only applies to income within that bracket, over the previous one. That brings the amount to even less, but the demand isn't for every car/vehicle. It applies only to those where efficiency is better meaning pollution is removed by replacing older equipment. The Trump crony claim was that incentive is created by not improving fuel efficiency and the marginal costs that involves. The tax proposed need only cover that marginal difference.
Note that the electric vehicle market - led by Tesla Motors - has taken off in the wake of Trump's election. If (and this is a big if) one of the primary factors in this is consumer reaction against Trump's pro-fossil fuel policies, this could accelerate that trend, perhaps to the point where it starts to take a real bite out of the oil market.
Finding God in a Dog
Go right ahead, Trump, play into the hands of the Dominionists if you like. But it won't have the long term effect you think it will. You think you can just roll back the calendar to the 1940's or something? LOL, you're living in a fantasy world, Trump.
Businesses and corporations, even in the energy sector, are already embracing solar and other renewables. You can't halt that without interfering in the free-market economy.
Meanwhile plug-in electric cars and hybrids are gaining more and more of a foothold in the United States, and they're becoming more affordable. More and more infrastructure to support them is being invested in and installed.
Oil prices won't stay low forever. They'll spike up, and driving gas-guzzlers around will become prohibitively expensive. Electrics will become more and more attractive in the face of that.
Clearly and objectively we need to move away from fossil fuel use anyway and everyone except apparently the Trump Administration sees this. Making ICEs less efficient will just help make electrics and renewables more attractive.
Many car companies subsidize their small cars and make more profit on large vehicles. They do this to meet the fleet efficiency. If you reduce the required efficiency standards then they will be able to meet the efficiency standards with large vehicles and will stop subsidizing small vehicles. This will result in more bigger vehicles on the road. It will cause chain reaction since once you reach critical mass of big vehicles, people in small vehicles will feel less safe. A collision between two vehicles is more deadly than collision between two small vehicles. Collision between large and small vehicle is more deadly to small vehicle. Already America is lagging behind Europe in road fatality because it has more percentage of large vehicles. This will make it even worse.
breath of fresh air
And now they're working on fixing that.
Regular gas engines do better WITHOUT ethanol - I would say it was actually worse for the environment due to decreased efficiency and decreased life-span of other parts in regular gas engines. Also, gas doesn't keep as long with Ethanol. I have a big gas can for my lawn mower, I use it for a couple of months, then dump what's left in my car and go fill it up again. If it were just plain gas I could just keep it until I emptied it through the lawn mower - could take a couple of years.
I recently rented a flex-fuel vehicle, and I ran it with both E15 and E85. That vehicle probably did produce less pollution running E85, enough to justify the decrease in efficiency, but making us run it in our normal gas engines isn't helping anyone but the corn lobby.
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It was unclear from your very seat-of-the-pants estimates whether you meant top income tax bracket (currently 37%, only collected at income above $500/600K single/married) or the top income bracket.
Fortunately, they are pretty much one and the same - approximately 1% of taxpayers reach the top tax bracket. And you were talking about a surtax - a tax on top of what they already pay.
I gave numbers for total income received by both the top 1% and top 25% - this is before deductions or other modifiers to a taxable amount. So my numbers were super conservative - I was essentially allowing 100% of their income to be subject to your 0.001% surtax. And it pulled in nothing.
Even bumping your percentage 1000 times over came up with numbers that barely move the needle when it comes to new cars. Under a higher CAFE standard, every average new car is better than any average old car, so nearly all cars would be subject to your refund.
I know quite a bit about tax law and income distribution in the US - maybe Germans aren't quite as knowledgeable. At any rate, a 0.001% estimate proves basic innumeracy.
California gets a waiver from the fed so they can create their own standards and not use the national standard, which is lower. From what I read they would no longer get this waiver and be forced to follow the national standard. The reason they got the waiver in the first place was because of environmental issues they were having in places like LA. It forced them to have a higher standard then the rest of the nation.
Unless the claimed cost overhead is less than $3.94 per vehicle, no version of your 0.001% surtax does a damn thing. The EPA and NHTSA estimated it would cost about $2,000 per vehicle, which is... a lot more than $3.94. This is super-basic math, here - your vaunted doctoral degree is meaningless and you have your own political bias blinder on.
FWIW, I am for higher CAFE standards or some sort of carbon tax. I'm not against fuel economy - I"m against innumeracy, which you have in spades.
Bawack Ubama Isn't godking anymore. That may come as a shock to California.
California had its own emissions standards before Obama. That may come as a shock to racists looking for a way to pin all America's problems on him.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A 1998 basic civic got you 107 hp and 103 lb ft of torque. A 2018 basic civic gets you 158 hp and 138 lb ft of torque. The 2018 does push around a heavier can and the result of almost 50% better power and a slightly bigger and heavier car is the same fuel economy. For the most part we've made HUGE gains in fuel economy. We've just wasted them on more power and bigger cars.
about $2,000 per vehicle, which is...
... what ...
The EPA and NHTSA estimated it would cost
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
...a 0.1% reduction in car emissions is much better for the total environment then if all emissions were eliminated from leaf blowers, lawn mowers, construction vehicles, etc.
A slight bit of critical thinking would do you a world of good.
A slight bit of researching the issue is also a great idea.
Motor scooters with 2-stroke engines pollute about three orders of magnitude more than a modern gasoline car. There are enough of these scooters that in many cities they are now a worse problem than gasoline cars yet they remain barely regulated.
Two-stroke scooters are a dominant source of air pollution in many cities
Scooters: Europe's Pollution Machines
If the scooters by themselves are enough to be a problem, it can only be worse if we add up all the 2-stroke engines of all sorts.
I pretty much hate 2-stroke engines. I am in favor of allowing them where nothing else will do, like professional chain saws. But modern battery tech has gotten to a place where an electric scooter ought to be a practical replacement for a 2-stroke scooter and I'd like to see the 2-stroke scooters aggressively taxed or outright banned.
Also, I am now very dubious about the value of additional restrictions on cars. If the goal is to maximize the net benefits to society, then it's better to take old clunkers off the road than to have the new cars pollute 0.1% less.
It's literally true that one old clunker pollutes more than dozens of new cars. (A study found that the worst 25% of cars produce over 90% of pollution!) If you can get clunkers off the road, and their owners start driving anything even remotely modern, it's a huge win for air quality. Making new cars more expensive will only encourage people to keep their clunkers running as long as possible, so I am dubious about anything that makes new cars more expensive. Is it better for new cars to cost $3000 more each but pollute 0.1% less? Or is it better to leave the standards alone, let the car makers get their factories well set up to make cars to that standard, and let the costs of new cars gradually fall over time? My gut instinct says the latter is preferable.
I first started thinking along these lines when I read this essay in 2009: https://keithhennessey.com/2009/05/19/understanding-the-presidents-cafe-announcement/
On the other hand, if the government forces insane emissions standards, the only way to meet them will be electric cars. So companies like GM that make the minimum number of electric cars they can get away with will be forced to make more electric cars. So maybe it's better in the really long run?
Just as I'd like to ban 2-stroke scooters I would like to see aggressive taxes on old clunkers that make them no-longer-affordable to run. However, I am well aware that the burden of those taxes would fall on the poorest people in our society. That's a problem. But it's also a problem that old horribly-polluting clunkers are exempted from emissions standards.
P.S. I don't actually care if the Trump Administration wants to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. If it's the right thing I want to stand back and let it happen. IMHO, leaving standards where they are is the right thing.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Or is it better to leave the standards alone, let the car makers get their factories well set up to make cars to that standard, and let the costs of new cars gradually fall over time?
Just like CD prices came down after all the music companies recouped the cost of switching from making cassettes?
Nope, no sig
Just like CD prices came down after all the music companies recouped the cost of switching from making cassettes?
Why CDs are expensive Hint: the cost of the actual CD technology always was a small fraction of the record company costs.
Also, cars are not the same as CDs. Honda, Nissan, and Ford might all be selling a similar car at a similar price; but if you want the latest music by $ARTIST you don't have a choice of multiple companies selling that music. Only if music consumers said "I'm not loyal to $ARTIST but rather to $GENRE" and shopped on price would the two be comparable. I don't even pay attention to what company makes the CDs of my favorite artists; I buy the specific music I like.
There are some people who are very brand loyal and will buy a particular car brand no matter what, but those are IMHO few when we are talking about the low end of the car market. (It's different with prestige brands like BMW, Mercedes, etc.)
The cost of computers has come down over the years, and cars are more like computers than they are like CDs in terms of competition based on price.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
the huge spike in car costs is largely down to expensive new safety features. Cars don't kill you when they get in a fender bender like the Tsuru did in Mexico. Fuel economy improvements largely paid for themselves on a month to month basis, especially when you take into account that most people have a car loan. Not sure about you, but I factor the cost of gas into my overall car & driver budget.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The real problem is all the loopholes in the definition of "light trucks" that allowed things like the Chrysler PT Cruiser and all those "crossovers" to meet the definition.
http://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/9578/why-are-cars-so-expensive
HTH, HAND.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
>> It was years ago and the data might be obsolete but i suspect that now it is even worse.
Nope .
Average efficiency of a gasoline car is 15% small-tank-to-wheel
Average efficiency of a fossil powered electricity plant feeding EVs through the grid is 35%, big-tank-to-wheel
You burn over two times less fossil fuel by going 100% fossil electricity.
Germany today has 48% of fossil electricity. This figure decreases yearly.
So your typical EV in Germany is responsible today for only 20% of the emissions of the same gasoline powered car.
aaaaaaa