The End of the Gas Guzzler 897
Hugh Pickens writes "Michael Grunwald reports that President Obama will announce today a near-doubling of fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, and the Big Three automakers — GM, Ford and Chrysler — will support it in a final deal that will require vehicle fleets to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, which will reduce fuel consumption by 40% and carbon emissions by 50%. Although environmentalists had pushed for 60 mpg and the White House had floated a compromise of 56.2, 54.5 is pretty close, considering that last year's standards were only 28.3. 'I might point out that the same auto industry that ran attack ads about how 56.2 would destroy their businesses and force everyone to drive electric cars has embraced 54.5 as an achievable target,' writes Grunwald. 'It almost makes you wonder if the automakers may have exaggerated the costs of compliance, the way they always do.'"
Duh. (Score:2)
It almost makes you wonder if the automakers may have exaggerated the costs of compliance, the way they always do.
I mean really. Was there ever anyone who actually thought that 25mpg was really the best a small sedan could muster?
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its the same reason the failed in the first place, totally out of touch and out of their mind
Re:Duh. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the reason this will fail too.
EVERY automaker boss is thinking this right now: "54.5 is only the required average. That means I can still make gas guzzlers so long as there's some shitty little cars somewhere in the books that can do 100mpg. "
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the reason this will fail too.
EVERY automaker boss is thinking this right now: "54.5 is only the required average. That means I can still make gas guzzlers so long as there's some shitty little cars somewhere in the books that can do 100mpg. "
No, every automaker boss in thinking, "this is more than 10 years from now, I will be retired with a golden parachute long before we even worry about this."
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Yes, I've met those people. The way I understand it, the easiest way to get that level of efficiency is to make cars out of carbon fiber instead of metal. The problem currently holding such a proposal back is that there aren't any mass-manufacturing technologies for fiber parts, like there is metal. There's no fast-and-easy smelt, mold, weld way to make pieces and stick them together. We'll see how that goes.
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Aluminum would beg to differ. It also does not rust.
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Wash the car really well before salting begins, and wax it really well with best wax you can get. Then just rinse it weekly, rarely better washing. Will help stopping the "public face" rusting very well.
Underneath the car apply whole bottom sprayable scratch/chipping protection (black stuff which makes hard surface). On top of that 5+mm thick underbody mass (recommended is min. 3mm thick). It's gooeye stuff, supposed never to dry 100%, black. Usually contains bitumen, pitch etc. Add to both a little bit of
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Honda insight first edition was aluminum and dented if you looked at it funny.
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That may be due to dissimilar metals. The aluminum exhaust heatshield on my Saturn fell loose because they used steel screws to mount it without using fiber washers at the contact points. They all corroded neatly around each screw head.
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Aluminum doesn't rust, and it doesn't react with salt. They wouldn't make pans out of it if it did.
It corrodes. The reason why it's often not a problem is the way it corrodes - it produces a layer of Al2O3 (sapphire dust) that prevents the corrosion from going any deeper. But there are exceptions.
Contact with certain other metals with different electric potentials causes galvanic corrosion. An iron screw in an aluminium pan will cause it to corrode around the screw.
And every cook knows not to cover salty food made in an iron or steel pan with aluminium foil, because the galvanic differential combined
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It doesn't rust but it can corrode.
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Honda Insight [wikipedia.org]
BMW 3.0CSL [wikipedia.org]
I could probably find some more for you but those are two that I know of off the top of my head.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
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When they figured out that bribes to politicians were cheaper than innovation? Just a guess.
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An excellent guess. Tucker was innovative but the big 3 stomped it out by leveraging their government servants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Tucker_Sedan [wikipedia.org]
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When we as a culture decided we'd rather focus our lives on trying to become sports stars, American Idols, or Hollywood stars rather than go into challenging technical careers.
It didn't help that the corporations took advantage of those who did go into technical careers with never-ending "crunch times", salary compression, unpaid overtime, etc.
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I seem to remember some mass market minivan that had a fibreglass body... It's not an insurmountable problem.
Yes, they'll need to spend money to do it, but how is that different from any other R&D to advance your product? There are also other ways to improve efficiency, although they may not necessarily be cheaper. Hybrids, for example. There are also different kinds of hybrids. I believe some pickup truck models were using mechanical storage to recover energy from breaking or going downhill to improve
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I think they call that "having an MBA" around here.
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Or you stop considering 2.6 litre engines to be the smallest anyone should put up with.
My car's got a 1.8 litre engine and by UK standards, that's pretty big. The average is more like 1.6; 1.3 and 1.0 engines are commonplace.
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I mean really. Was there ever anyone who actually thought that 25mpg was really the best a small sedan could muster?
No, probably not. But this isn't a mandate for small sedans to get 50+ MPG; it's a mandate for the vehicle fleet to have an average MPG of 50+ MPG. Depending on how "vehicle fleet" is defined, that could be more challenging. IIRC there's a specific exemption for pickup trucks, I don't know about SUVs.
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It also means that if they get exemptions for trucks/SUVs, that it will be largely meaningless.
They are getting the exemption; hence why Detroit loves this and several foreign manufacturers are calling it crap.
Re:Duh. (Score:4, Funny)
More importantly, look at the deadline: 2025. Plenty of time to repeal or reduce the fleet average to a more approachable target, like 24mpg.
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New 300 HP luxury sedans are getting 29 MPG now. 54 MPG in 10 years should not be that hard.
The thing to realize is that going from 10 MPG to 20 MPG saves twice as much as going from 20 to 40.
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The thing to realize is that going from 10 MPG to 20 MPG saves twice as much as going from 20 to 40.
That's a good point - it's better in general to use the inverse measure. It is blatantly obvious that going from 10 gallon/100miles to 5 gallon/100miles saves twice as much as going from 5 gallon/100miles to 2.5 gallon/100miles. In the first case the difference is 5 gallons and in the second it is 2.5 gallons - any fool can see it. This is the way they compare in Europe, and unlike pointless discussions about the metric system I think it is a much better standard for general use.
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Do a test on a few coworkers. Don't ask an engineer who is going to write stuff on paper :)
Tell them to pretend that they have a pickup truck that gets 10MPG and a sedan that gets 20MPG. Ask them whether they are better off getting a high-efficiency 20MPG pickup or a 40MPG hybrid sedan to replace one or the other. Most people will pick the 40MPG sedan even though they'd save a lot more money by getting the new pickup.
If you phrase it as a 10GPHM pickup and a 5GPHM sedan upgrading to a 5GPHM pickup or a 2.5G
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Hell, 20 years ago, a 1983 VW rabbit could get 54 mpg.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Informative)
Express it in amount per distance, it's easier to deal with. (It's also easier in daily life. People want to know how much fuel / money it will take to drive a certain distance, rather than how far they can drive with $20 of fuel.)
I'll use L/100km, as that's the normal measurement in metric countries (and what I'm more familiar with).
10 (miles per US gallon) = 24 litres per (100 km)
20 (miles per US gallon) = 12 litres per (100 km)
30 (miles per US gallon) = 8 litres per (100 km)
40 (miles per US gallon) = 6 litres per (100 km)
I think it's now clear. From 20mpg to 40mpg saves 6L, but from 10mpg to 20mpg saved 12L.
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But in my head 20-40 also seems like twice as much.
The easy way to see is to pick a number of miles and see how many gallons it takes. So, for 12,000 miles, we have:
So, a jump from 10mpg to 20mpg save 600 gallons per year, while moving from 20mpg to 40mpg only saves 300 gallons. This assumes that miles traveled remain the same, but they don't. The number of miles traveled tends to increase when the fuel cost for a given trip is reduced, so actual savings won't be as much.
I
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http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/07/21/072111-opinions-column-cafe-dalmia-1-2/ [thedaily.com]
"But to the extent that carmakers have complied with CAFE, it is less through radical innovation and more by simply slashing vehicle weight. In the 15 years after CAFE standards were first introduced in 1974, vehicle weight diminished by 23 percent. But every 100-pound weight reduction results in a 4.7 to 5.6 percent increase in the fatality rate. A 2002 National Academy of Sciences study concluded that CAFE's downsizing effec
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It almost makes you wonder if the automakers may have exaggerated the costs of compliance, the way they always do.
I mean really. Was there ever anyone who actually thought that 25mpg was really the best a small sedan could muster?
In 1978, the American roads were filled with a little car, that did 50 EMPG. The Datsun B-210.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datsun_B210#B210_series [wikipedia.org]
In 1984, I rode in the back of one with three other passengers, knees-under chin. We went 425 miles to San Francisco, well under a single-tank. Our actual MPG was better than 55, with all that load.
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The key words here are FLEET and AVERAGE. None of the car companies are saying they have a problem with 25mpg on a 4cyl econocrap. What they are having a problem with is having a F150, F250 and F350 also average in to that FLEET with that 35mpg focus, and still keep the average up. Sure, not everyone needs and SUV, but many business do need an F250 to pull some heavy equipment.
And companies like nissan have proven you don't have to get 12mpg
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Of course not... when my '93 Civic sedan manual was getting an average of over 35MPG (combined), what it makes you wonder is why it takes a hybrid to get that mileage now.
How many... (Score:2)
Chevy Volts will GM have to sell per Suburban to remain within the new CAFE standard?
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too bad they killed the EV-1
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And their hydrogen-fueled cars...
Re:How many... (Score:5, Informative)
The "Hydrogen Economy" is a scam. The cheapest way to make hydrogen is via hydrocarbon fractionation. Both green houses gasses will not be affected or reliance on fossil fuels.
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Honda is working on a home hydrogen fuel station that connects to your water main and somehow generates hydrogen from the water mains. Not sure how that is accomplished.
It's called electrolysis, it's not difficult to do. I was able to electrolyze water into oxygen and hydrogen in high school with some wire, a lantern battery, a discarded jelly jar, and some other odd items. The hard part is making it efficient and safe. Storing hydrogen is difficult on it's own. Because of these issues I don't expect this to become a household item for a very long time, if ever.
Here's an idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe you could, you know, let people buy the vehicles they want to buy and then if gas is expensive most won't buy gas guzzlers?
In this case I'm guessing the auto makers are salivating at the prospect of being 'forced' to load up cars with hybrid crap that will allow them to push up prices and make more profit.
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Gasoline is a limited natural resource, so people who use a lot drive up the price for everybody else. This efficiency standard will do far more to relieve gas prices than drilling in ANWR ever would.
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To fund prevention of misbehavior (Score:3)
Laws/regulations are meant to control behavior. Taxes are meant to fund the government
Taxes can also fund government-sponsored efforts to discourage misbehavior. For example, taxing emissions funds clean air research. Taxing road use by individuals funds public transit infrastructure and research into telecommuting and remote monitoring. Taxing energy use funds efficiency research. Taxing energy imports funds wars to secure a friendly government where energy sources are mined (e.g. mid-east oil). When energy sources used by citizens are foreign, research into reducing energy use reduces fore
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You probably should read some of my other comments (not just in this thread) before you get too excited about my "social engineering".
Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
except that the change is not quick. If suddenly the price of gas jumps it may be months or years before a person can afford to buy a better car. Not to mention the time it takes for the car companies to tool up to meet demand for fuel efficient cars. Buying a car is not like buying laundry detergent. You just can't switch over to a new car rapidly enough to adapt to rapid changes in the price of fuel.
Yet another situation where the failures of market economics is laid bare. This is a situation where only government has the ability to do the correct thing for the public good.
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except that the change is not quick. If suddenly the price of gas jumps it may be months or years before a person can afford to buy a better car. Not to mention the time it takes for the car companies to tool up to meet demand for fuel efficient cars. Buying a car is not like buying laundry detergent. You just can't switch over to a new car rapidly enough to adapt to rapid changes in the price of fuel.
Yet another situation where the failures of market economics is laid bare. This is a situation where only government has the ability to do the correct thing for the public good.
Well personal responsibility is hard. Performing a lot of research on different vehicles and evaluating the pro's and con's of different options and performance characteristics is a lot of work. It is a lot easier just to go to the dealership and buy whatever they say you will look good in. So I can see how someone might be surprised when the price of gas suddenly rises after they have purchased a gas guzzling vehicle, because that hasn’t ever really happened before.
Thank goodness there are people
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Bull-fucking-shit. If it was that simple I wouldn't be seeing mommy SUVs speeding down the highway anymore, because gas is so expensive.
See also: commons, tragedy of the.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:4, Informative)
Bull-fucking-shit. If it was that simple I wouldn't be seeing mommy SUVs speeding down the highway anymore, because gas is so expensive.
Oh dear. It seems you don't quite understand how a free market works.
You see the determination of whether or not a good/service is "worth it" is not made by a person or a group of people for the whole economy -- instead, it's made on an individual, purchaser-by-purchaser basis.
Yes, it might not make sense to you to pay the cost of an SUV's fill-up. And indeed you might not have an SUV for that very reason. But some people have decided that it is worth it -- and those are the people who drive those "mommy SUVs" that you're talking about.
The parent's point still stands: eventually, gas will get expensive enough that most people don't think it's worth it to drive inefficient cars anymore.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:4, Informative)
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Hasn't worked to date... How much more expensive would gas have to be before we stop seeing one-person-occupied SUVs? $5/gal? $10/gal? And how many people would lose their jobs and livelihood if we did that? All so the one-man-in-an-SUV commuters can barrel along at 80mph getting 7mpg.
Put more generally, why should everybody else get their wallets eviscerated to save the environment when the problem isn't the price gas but that we manufacture cars that get shitty mileage? Since next years model is automatic
Re:Here's an idea (Score:4)
but after numerous re-reads of the constitution, I can't actually find that right anywhere in there.
This is just a nit-pick but obviously you glossed over the 10th amendment - "powers not granted to the federal government nor prohibited to the states by the Constitution are reserved, respectively, to the states or the people.". Meaning that just because an individual right is not enumerated in the Constitution doesn't mean you don't have it - in fact it usually means that you do.
Will Consumers Pay? (Score:2, Insightful)
The real question is will the market bear the new regulations? Americans as a nation have obviously NOT demanded higher MPG ratings from their cars or there would be no need for the regulation. How much more will each vehicle cost to use the higher technology needed to achieve the standards? By setting the standards the government may have artificially increased the market price and will thus affect supply and demand. I'm all for environmental policies, but outside of the academic towers, the real world
Re:Will Consumers Pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
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So using some very rough math, the Prius has sold about 100,000 cars a year compared to the 8 million total sold per year, or about 1.25% of the total cars. Unfortunately i have no idea if that's a high or a low number for a single model of c
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I would predict that a slew of crappy little unsafe cars. As this include light trucks we might see a hybrid truck, they have the potential to be great for a lot of towing (electric is great for getting it going) but I realy wonder if you can make a truck that can tow 6 tons lighter than the current 2.5 tons and/or more fuel efficient when empty while retaining durability. Using a hybrid truck as a gen set on site looks rather interesting, inverter off the battery and float charge the batteries when/if ne
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You mean, would they pay the price of a Prius? They're on back order.
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The real question is will the market bear the new regulations? Americans as a nation have obviously NOT demanded higher MPG ratings from their cars or there would be no need for the regulation. How much more will each vehicle cost to use the higher technology needed to achieve the standards? By setting the standards the government may have artificially increased the market price and will thus affect supply and demand. I'm all for environmental policies, but outside of the academic towers, the real world still intervenes and economics will affect well intentioned government mandates.
This doesn't have to cost much at all, quite the opposite.
Your mileage depends on many things: The efficiency of the engine, the weight of the vehicle, how much energy is wasted on accelerating and braking, how much is wasted due to going at an inefficient (high) speed or due to choosing the wrong gear. A huge factor is weight. Some people think a heavier car is safer. It isn't; the only thing that is safer in an accident is having a car that is heavier than the other car. Halve the weight of every car,
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The real question is will the market bear the new regulations? Americans as a nation have obviously NOT demanded higher MPG ratings from their cars or there would be no need for the regulation.
No, the buyers have not demanded more fuel efficient vehicles. However, the government has several other constraints that must be met. One of which is national security. Whenever oil prices spike, it becomes more expensive to project our influence in the world. Oil prices spike because of increased demand. As such, r
Just a game (Score:4, Insightful)
This doesn't mean that you'll actually see cars that get 50-60mpg sold in the U.S. The automakers get credits on mpg for adding things that have nothing to do with fuel efficiency (like LED headlights and crap). So you might have a vehicle with a bunch of addons that only gets 35mpg, but the automaker gets credit for a vehicle that gets 50mpg (because they get 15mpg worth of fuel efficiency credits). Not to mention it's an average. If the automaker sells one vehicle that gets 20mpg for $25,000 and one vehicle that gets 100mpg for $60,000, they have a fleet average of 60mpg. It doesn't matter that they sell 10,000 of the 20mpg units and only 500 of the 100mpg units. And trucks get completely different (and drastically lower) standards than cars. It's amazing what you can classify as a "truck" these days.
CAFE is a joke.
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It doesn't matter that they sell 10,000 of the 20mpg units and only 500 of the 100mpg units.
Actually, CAFE doesn't make that mistake.
Re:Just a game (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. From http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview.htm [nhtsa.gov] : "Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) is the sales weighted average fuel economy [snip] " Scroll down to "How is a manufacturer’s CAFE determined for a given model year?" for more details.
Re:Just a game (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. Also 54 seemed kinda high so I looked into it and it looks like CAFE still uses outdated MPG ratings which are different from what goes on the current EPA sticker rating. Turns out the way they are rating MPG for CAFE standards is about 20% over current consumer EPA ratings [time.com].
So while CAFE will be 54mpg, for the rating system consumers see will probably be closer to 54 * 0.80 = 43mpg.
In my opinion, the current EPA rating is still a little optimistic so real world drivers will probably only see 35-40mpg with current driving habits.
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It's weird that most posters (not to mention the author of the TFA) seem totally unaware that the 56-mpg figure does not mean what anyone thinks it does.
Obama, Detroit, and the press are doing a good job of glossing over the details.
This ain't about you or what you want (Score:2)
This ain't about environment. This ain't about using fewer resources.
This is about "what standards can our manufacturers meet while the Chinese can't and we can keep them from flooding our market with dirt cheap cars".
Or did you think the safety requirements are there because anyone cares whether you eat your steering wheel when you hit a truck?
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And while they're at it - they should... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why doesn't Obama require Intel to release the 10 GHz Chip? Apparently the only thing stopping progress is there isn't any legislation mandating it, right? So why stop at 60mpg? Why not 1000 mpg? We should also mandate flying cars and a PONY for EVERYONE!!!
What is up with this imaginary thinking?
Do people really believe everything they think?
Re:And while they're at it - they should... (Score:5, Informative)
Also notice how GM, Ford and Chrystler are the ones who recommended 54.5 mpg as opposed to the 56.2 that the administration wanted and the 60 that environmentalists wanted. Oh wait, that must mean that GM, Ford and Chrystler are part of the hated Obama administration! Source of all evil! The truth is out there, man!
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Luckily, the real Europeans (not the Brits ;)) got rid of those ancient units quite some time ago, so it's l/100km, everywhere, with every kind of liter...
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A European liter is the same as an American liter, though.
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Because for some reason, people hate the gas tax even more than CAFE standards. I never understand why.
Heavier than air flight will never work (Score:3, Interesting)
People like you were probably heckling the Wright brothers, saying that heavier than air flight wasn't possible. Some things may not be "possible" today (like 1000mpg;
So you want to get 60 mpg. (Score:2)
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Which are great in some areas. But in other places, like the Great American Fly Over I live in they don't work in January.
CAFE is the gutless choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:CAFE is the gutless choice (Score:4, Insightful)
and/or stop subsidizing the oil companies. But that initiative just failed in the House a few months ago.
Re:CAFE is the gutless choice (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand the need to get people away from gas guzzlers...I do...but how is raising taxes to make it prohibitively expensive to drive at all any different from using the government to just mandate better mileage from the auto makers? Honestly, either way the government is forcing someone's hand, so shouldn't it be the car companies rather than all of us? It must be great to preach this from your armchair there, but this kind of sentiment really pisses me off. Take a look around at the real world. Things don't quite work out as neatly as some of you seem to think. Shit sucks sometimes and punishing people for this kind of bullshit isn't doing anyone any favors.
Yeah, cars might get more expensive, but I think you paying more for a new car is considerably better than being immediately screwed by gas prices doubling. Especially right now...we're in a recession (yes, I know, it's getting old, but it is true). Do you really think raising the price on something you have no choice but to buy is really going to help? If they raised the price to 6 dollars today, you know what I'd do? I'd have to pay 6 dollars a gallon. And you know what's even better about that? It would be even harder for me to save for a new car. Lol. Great plan! Yes, I find this situation distasteful as well, but give me a break. This "solution" is ridiculous.
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how is raising taxes to make it prohibitively expensive to drive at all any different from using the government to just mandate better mileage from the auto makers?
A gas tax aligns the cost/incentive with the amount of damage you are doing to the environment (not to mention the precarious position the country is put into by its reliance on foreign oil). If you drive a lot of miles, you have a large incentive to choose a fuel-efficient car. If you drive very few miles, the gas tax has little impact on you, which is appropriate because the car a low-mileage driver chooses to drive has very little impact on the the environment.
...better than being immediately screwed by gas prices doubling. Especially right now...we're in a recession
I don't think anyone is advocating an imm
Second order effects (Score:3)
I understand the need to get people away from gas guzzlers...I do...but how is raising taxes to make it prohibitively expensive to drive at all any different from using the government to just mandate better mileage from the auto makers?
The short answer is that mandated fuel economy standards mostly just affect automobiles. It doesn't affect consumer behavior in any other positive ways. Gasoline taxes have all sorts of interesting second order effects. For example Europe taxes fuel significantly more than the US does. This has over time resulted in significantly better public transportation (trains especially), less suburban sprawl, and widespread use of smaller more efficient automobiles. Higher gasoline taxes would arguably be among
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Too little. too slow. (Score:3)
Owing to the rate at which the number of automobiles is increasing, they could reach this goal of lower emissions and better fuel economy, and we'd still be polluting more and using more fuel than we are now.
Granted, it's better that than no improvements at all, but if kept the same end-goal requirements, but shortened that vision to... oh, say 2015 or so... then they might have a chance at actually really helping... otherwise, it's just postponing the inevitable.
Better mileage (Score:3)
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I usually get at least 35mpg in severely congested traffic (like roads filled with stop lights) if not >~40mpg on the side streets without too many stops.
My car is not spartan by any measure (electrically adjustab
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I'm not saying that diesel is the ultimate end-game for going green. What I'm saying is that it is a perfectly sensible model for adjusting our posture while we more closely examine alternatives.
A lot of
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I'm not ruling out the alternatives as being worthy areas of research... but I would rather we have people adopt things they can embr
Good deal in comparative terms (Score:3)
54.5 is pretty close
Compared to how the White House usually negotiates, that's amazing. I'm surprised they didn't do what they usually do: Give up concessions early, then compromise on everything the other side wants.
Build your own from a kit (Score:3)
The small airplane industry went through excessive legislation and lawsuits. The result was that people who wanted to fly an affordable small plane had to build their own.
It's not illegal to build your own car yet (most places). So people who want to drive a genuinely fun car with actual power and only 15 MPG will order a truckload of parts delivered. Several weekends with an air wrench and they'll have whatever they want.
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I think it is more don't buy the hand that feeds you.
But buying the hand that feeds you is how politics works.
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Because of that whole destroying the planet and killing millions with that global warming thing?
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Well, since your behavior is punitive to those who can't afford those cars, perhaps you should suffer the consequences?
After all, your behavior is driving the cost of gas up for everyone, not just you. You're overconsuming a limited resource, to the detriment of others who are also dependent on that same resource, but can't afford it as readily as you can.
Is this really that hard to understand?
Of course, the alternative is just to raise the cost of gas. Folks who buy cheaper cars that do better on gas will
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I don't recall anything about a gas-powered bike in I, Robot....
Oh, you mean the filmed raping of Asimov's legacy? Please drop your geek card in the shredder on the way out.
Re:How stupid. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't understand what you're saying.
You say that the government is punishing automakers that make large cars and got into significant financial trouble because they lost their market, then you say that the market wants large cars. Then you say that foreign car makers will clean our clocks because they already make lots of small cars...
From my perspective, American automakers got drunk on selling cheap-to-make vehicles expensively. Trucks, classically, cost less than cars. There also were no luxury trucks, as they were designed for utility , not luxury. Granted, a one-ton truck would cost more than a 3/4, and that would cost more than a 1/2, and it's even possible that the heavier-rated trucks would cost a little more than the cheapest cars, but by and large, a half-ton truck was not expensive, until the domestic automakers decided to gussy up their trucks and engage in a clever marketing strategy.
Unfortunately, gas prices caught up with them and the market never recovered, but they still haven't lowered the prices of trucks. Consequently, people now are willing to look at what other countries would consider to be mid-size cars, which we consider small.
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On the other hand you can certainly make an argument that
1) Low MPG vehicles hurt our national defense.
2) Pollution in general leads to false externalization that has to be paid for in some manor.
3) There currently aren't 56 mpg cars that was reasonably prices, if automakers are agreeing to this, they know that in the future they will be able to do and produce enough cars over that mark to average with the large cars under that mark, that they can appeal to all requirements.
Also new automated driving that w
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"Massive subsidies and massive excise taxes"? Seriously?! Who do you think is in charge in Washington?
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I like that this is the direction we are headed; gov't telling private companies how it's done......
What do you mean "we are headed"? The government has been doing this for decades. In case you didn't realize it, the CAFE standards were first enacted 36 years ago.
Re:America (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm willing to pay the price of fuel, let me decide.
$789,062,132,241 [costofwar.com].
Your invoice is in the mail. When can we expect payment?