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No more gas hogs in LaLa Land
Waco Tribune-Herald ^ | Rowland Nethaway

Posted on 08/12/2002 8:16:08 AM PDT by dubyagee

No gas hogs in LaLa Land
ROWLAND NETHAWAY Senior editor

Californians are strutting about congratulating themselves for their new state law requiring higher automobile fuel efficiency.

They believe that California's new state law will force car manufacturers to stop producing gas-guzzling vehicles responsible for global warming.

The logic behind the new law requiring greater fuel efficiency from car manufacturers is a faith-based belief that the automobile industry is involved in a giant conspiracy to deny the public fuel-efficient cars.

Ford, General Motors and the other car manufacturers, according to these anti-big business addicts, have the secret to 300-miles-per-gallon internal combustion engines locked away in a safe somewhere. The car industries make immoral profits by keeping this information from the public.

These urban-myth conspiracy theories have been around since the invention of automobiles.

Since I was a boy I've heard stories about the invention of new spark plugs, carburetors or fuel additives that could allow cars to run for hundreds of miles on a gallon of gas.

Generally, the stories included specific details about how the inventors of these miracles had been paid off and threatened to keep their mouths shut, if not simply murdered. Their supposed inventions were guarded more closely than the Coca-Cola recipe.

Same conspiracies, different era

Fifty years ago, these fanciful tales were voiced by run-of-the-mill drug store and pool hall conspiracy buffs.

In recent years, it has been the greenies, environmental groups, anti-globalists and Californians who think that government laws can force General Motors et al to finally release these secret fuel-efficient technologies.

It was cockamamie nonsense in 1952 and it remains just as harebrained today.

Car manufacturers wouldn't have to offer zero percent interest rates to sell cars if they could build cars with the size and power that buyers want and also get hundreds of miles per gallon.

Every car, SUV and truck owner in the nation would line up to buy such a vehicle.

The oil industry might not be pleased with 300-miles-per-gallon cars and trucks, but, hey, that's the breaks. There will always be uses for oil.

Since no knowledgeable person expects revolutionary efficiency breakthroughs on the venerable internal combustion engine, about the only way to increase fuel efficiency is to decrease safety by making cars and trucks smaller and lighter.

Anti-SUV acolytes may want to see everyone in scooter cars and public buses, but that's a hard sell to motorists who don't feel better about themselves driving around in lightweight, cramped, underpowered vehicles.

The last I heard, the car manufacturers said they would contest the new California fuel-efficiency law.

I suggest that the automobile industry simply ignore the California law.

Californians think their state law will force the car industry worldwide to build cars to California's standards.

Instead, car manufacturers should notify all the car dealers in California that they will be out of business on the day the state's new fuel efficiency standards go into effect.

If Californians want to own a new car, they will have to move to another state.

After a while, California would look like Havana, Cuba, where the cars are caught in a 1950s time warp.

Californians want the rest of the nation to pay to subsidize their lifestyles, which includes a gluttonous appetite for oil, electricity and water taken from other states.

There will be a lot less self-righteous strutting in LaLa Land if the auto industry simply ignores California's new fuel-efficiency law.

Rowland Nethaway's columns appear on Wednesdays and Fridays. E-mail: RNethaway@wacotrib.com


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS: calgov2002; enviromentalists; gasguzzlers; kalifornia
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To: dubyagee
Stop buying the gas hogs, and the manufacturers will stop making them. Buy up the econo-boxes, as an alternative, and the manufacturers will make more and more of them. Of course, you would have to buy only the models that are all tricked out, so the manufacturers may maintain a decent profit level, and continue to subsidize the sale of their low-volume lines. You can have economy, but it won't be cheap. You will pay in dollars, you will pay in additional numbers that will die in small light-weight vehicles, you will pay in an overall drop in productivity. But you, too, may do your bit to end the "threat" of SUVs.
41 posted on 08/12/2002 9:01:52 AM PDT by alloysteel
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To: medved
There are legitimate uses for vans and SUVs, and occasionally you see somebody using one in a rational manner. The guy who uses a van or SUV to commute or drive around in, which, near as I can tell, is 90% of van and SUV owners, is a pig. That guy and california deserve eachother.

Uh, if you don't mind me asking, what state do you reside in?

42 posted on 08/12/2002 9:03:42 AM PDT by Joe Hadenuf
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To: dubyagee
It's no wonder people believe this conspiracy theories . . . anyone remember when the car makers bought up the trolly companies and tore up the tracks?

I would not mind paying more tax on my pickup's gas, if I could trust the feds to spend it on good transportation programs. Dream on self, dream on.

The government, do we fix it or replace it?
43 posted on 08/12/2002 9:04:02 AM PDT by Born to Conserve
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To: medved
Another left-wing socialist telling people what they need.
44 posted on 08/12/2002 9:06:24 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic
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To: dubyagee
The hubris of these IDIOTS in the Democratic Party of California never, ever ceases to amaze me.
45 posted on 08/12/2002 9:06:25 AM PDT by RightOnline
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To: cogitator
Nice double-play in that report. One the one hand, mandate fuel economy standards that will raise the cost of vehicles even more, and also increase the gas price (presumably through taxes - no point in giving the oil companies any 'windfall profits'). Sounds like exactly what the Democrats would like for us.
46 posted on 08/12/2002 9:06:42 AM PDT by John Jorsett
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To: alloysteel
Did you read the article?
47 posted on 08/12/2002 9:07:26 AM PDT by dubyagee
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To: dubyagee
Does this mean my top-of-the-line 2000 California emissions Ford Windstar is going to start going up value?
48 posted on 08/12/2002 9:09:35 AM PDT by Henchster
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To: zhabotinsky
Isn't this law the classic 'Unreasonable burden on interstate commerce' and therefore by definition unconstitutional?

Maybe. However, I think the car company approach is going to be to argue to the courts that only the feds have the power to mandate fuel economy standards. Personally, I think they should have financed an initiative so that the voters of California could have slapped this idiotic law down. And they would have.

49 posted on 08/12/2002 9:10:17 AM PDT by John Jorsett
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To: John Jorsett
Love your profile page!
50 posted on 08/12/2002 9:13:54 AM PDT by dubyagee
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To: NorseWood
"What am I to do with my motocycle when it snows or rains (as it does even in California . . occasionally), and I am wearing a business suit, and have a briefcase full of papers, or have a client to drive around town?"

Spare me your excuses, pillager of the earth. Wear a poncho and strap the briefcase onto the back of the cycle. Rent a car on the days when you need to drive around clients. As for snow and rain, who cares? Sure, a four-wheeled vehicle would be marginally safer for you, but it wouled be substantially more dangerous to everyone else on the road. If the accident rates for four-wheeled vehicles factored in the fatalities they cause, then it would be seen that motorcycles are vastly safer for society.

Nope, the bottom line is that anyone who can get by with a sedan could get by with a motorcycle just as well. I myself, of course, am not such a person—my lifestyle requires both an SUV and a minivan. But I operate on a higher moral plane where I can make such decisions dispassionately. Everyone else scuttling around below me in those rice-burning econoboxes had better have a good excuse for needing four seats and a roof, or else they ought to be driving motorcycles.

Is that enough, or do I actually have to put in the </sarcasm> tag?

51 posted on 08/12/2002 9:15:07 AM PDT by Fabozz
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To: dubyagee
DUMP DAVIS ping
52 posted on 08/12/2002 9:15:41 AM PDT by Saundra Duffy
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To: China Clipper
Please keep your decisions to yourself and your like friends, and don't try to force them on me.

Basically, you read these stories about innocent Christians being bombed in Bosnia three days after the Saudis ink some huge contract for American military aircraft, i.e. you begin to get the idea of how some of this money sent off to the islamic world for oil comes back to this country, and the conclusion you start to draw is that SUVs kill Christians.

I mean, if the choice is between feeling sorry for you and your SUV or for those Bosnian Serbs, guess what?

That's aside from me no longer being able to ever see further than the stinking SUV or van one or two cars in front of me in traffic of course, or the fact that all SUV and van drivers appear to attend the same driving school, i.e. "tailgating isn't everything, it's the only thing", and their lights coming in straight on top of people in ordinary cars.

Again, somebody using one of these things the way they're intended to be used, for business, hunting/camping trips etc. etc. causes me no problems; the guy who drives around in traffic in one of them, which appears to be 90% of their owners, should be taxed into tommorrow.

One delightful possibility for a happy ending to the American love affair with the SUV: the same insurance companies which got rid of the "muscle cars" of the mid and late 60s might finally get the message on vans and SUVs and get rid of them for us.

53 posted on 08/12/2002 9:19:56 AM PDT by medved
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To: dubyagee
Ford, General Motors and the other car manufacturers, according to these anti-big business addicts, have the secret to 300-miles-per-gallon internal combustion engines locked away in a safe somewhere.

I have the secret right here:

Suppose you want to do 300 mpg, in a vehicle that goes 60 mph. Then a gallon's journey, 300 miles, takes 5 hours. A gallon of gas contains 115000 btu of energy, or about 121 megajoules. This energy is burned in 5 hours, for a rate of 24 MJ/hr, or about .00667 MJ/sec = 6.6 kJ/s =6.6 kW. One horsepower is about 750 Watts, so a 100% efficient 6.6 kW engine would be about 9 hp - about the actual power delivered by a small riding lawnmower.

Now lets consider a man on a bicycle. 10 mph is not too hard to sustain for a rider, about 200 W output. Air resistance goes as the cube of velocity, so going 60 mph would require 63, 216, times the power. 200 x 216 = 43200 W or 43.2 kW. Our hypthetical vehicle needing only 6.6 kW do 60 would have to be about a sixth as hard to push as a man on a bike. Have you ever pushed your car?

The "secret" to such a vehicle is that it would have to have less air resistance than a man on a bike, and not much heavier. Such a vehicle would be extremely light, fragile, and especially unsafe at highway speeds, and would be blown off the road in a good crosswind.

This is the secret that the Big Three have locked up in their safes ... that a vehicle with a lawnmower engine weighing less than a moped and with much less air resistance than a man on a bike, will get 300 mpg.

54 posted on 08/12/2002 9:21:25 AM PDT by coloradan
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To: medved
The guy who uses a van or SUV to commute or drive around in, which, near as I can tell, is 90% of van and SUV owners, is a pig. .................
They can have my SUV when they pry my cold dead fingers off the steerting wheel.
55 posted on 08/12/2002 9:22:24 AM PDT by YOMO
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To: hopespringseternal
unless you ride a bicycle to work, you are a hypocrite.

My bicycle has a 750cc motor on it and gets 50mpg, and it's very unlikely your SUV would keep up with it.

56 posted on 08/12/2002 9:22:32 AM PDT by medved
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To: medved
the guy who drives around in traffic in one of them, which appears to be 90% of their owners, should be taxed into tommorrow.

Wrong answer.

57 posted on 08/12/2002 9:23:06 AM PDT by dubyagee
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To: Fabozz
Very nicely done. You sound a lot like the people pushing light rail.

Do agree that we need a rail system to make traffic lighter?

"Yeah, that's a grea idea".

Would you use it? "No" Why not? "I would have to leave earlier. It isn't close enough to my building. I have to drop off the kids at school. I have to run errands during lunch or on my way home. It's faster to drive." Or any other multitude of reasons, that other people should get off the road, but not them.

58 posted on 08/12/2002 9:25:31 AM PDT by Betty Jane
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To: dubyagee; medved
Even in the rain, sleet, ice, and snow, medved's bike is the way to go. And watch out for that SUV bearing down on you!


59 posted on 08/12/2002 9:26:08 AM PDT by robertpaulsen
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To: coloradan
I'll take your word for it. Algebra's as far as I got...
and I can only count to ten in it. ; * )
60 posted on 08/12/2002 9:29:16 AM PDT by dubyagee
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