Posted on 10/06/2010 6:41:39 AM PDT by facedodge
Want pigs to fly, Brussels sprouts to taste like Twinkies, and Justin Bieber to get a haircut? By the government’s logic, just make a rule mandating that it must be so and…voila! All of a sudden beachfront property can now to be purchased in Kansas!
The Transportation Department and Environmental Protection Agency suggested Friday that by 2025 new vehicle fleets would need to meet a high gas mileage standard of between 47 mpg and 62 mpg. The administration’s plans for the country’s future fuel efficiency standards are extremely aggressive — so aggressive that some experts wonder whether the mandates are even attainable.
Despite panic by some, Charlie Territo, senior director of communications for the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers, says that it is important to keep in mind that the mileage standards are not definite, as Friday’s announcement was merely a preliminary notice of intent.
According to Territo, the rule making process will be a long one, but there will be consequences for the average consumer. “Anytime you add technology to a vehicle you add cost,” he told The Daily Caller. “And the types of technologies that would need to be added to a vehicle to meet those standards could have the potential to price consumers out of the market all together.”
Even without the government’s insistence, auto manufacturers already work exceptionally hard at innovating and improving their products’ capabilities. Spokesman Matthew Russell, for example, told TheDC that since the late 1970s BMW has been working to do just that. “We have a comprehensive program in place already, which is designed to extract the maximum balance of performance and efficiency from several different energy sources, so not just gasoline but diesel, hybrid technology, and even hydrogen where applicable,” Russell said.
An industry observer told TheDC that in order to meet the mileage range the government could demand, people will have little choice but to buy electric cars. “It’s great, it’s a great thought, and we hope we get there, but you have issues of range, you have issues of infrastructure, and you have issues of cost. Now if, if gas stays around the three dollar a gallon range, people are not going to go rush to pay thousands of dollars more per vehicle. It’s going to be very, very difficult,” the industry observer said.
Sam Kasman, the general council for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told TheDC that the goal is far too high to be realistic. “Frankly I think they are in fantasy land,” he said. “To one extent I expect they are placing a very heavy bet on electric vehicles, but it is easy for them to bet because they are betting with our money, not their own.”
Beyond whether a 62 mpg car is fathomable, the fact remains, cars that are able to attain such high gas mileage tend to be lightweight and dangerous. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety spokesman Russ Rader told TheDC that safety is always harmed with ratcheting up a vehicle’s fuel efficiency. “If the rules lead to incentives for people to buy smaller, lighter vehicles, then, we’re trading more crash deaths for better fuel economy. That’s the bottom line,” he said.
Automakers hope to maintain safety and the same wide range of consumer choice Americans currently enjoy, while at the same time meeting the government’s expectations. Territo says that auto manufactures in the past have been able to have their voices heard in the rule making process.
“The goal is to ensure that consumers continue to have a wide variety of vehicles,” said Territo. “And the way that can be done is to give manufacturers the right amount of lead time to do it. The more realistic the standards are the better the chance they have of meeting it with the least possible impact on the consumer.”
The administration hopes to have a proposal by September 2011 and a final rule by July 2012.
The main way to improve gas mileage is to make the vehicle lighter and more unstable, using cheaper plastics and metals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz-s1sIoLhU
Watch the Smart Car crash test and ask yourself “where do my legs go?” in the event of a crash. The CAFE nazis are going to create a country of paraplegics.
Just as ‘safe’ is a political definition, so to ‘pollution’. The reason you don’t have small diesels in the US is because of the EPA. So, you have one group of governmenalitsts pushing for mileage, thus diesels and light weight. Another group of governmentalist pusing for safety, thus weight and cost, and another group of enviormentalists pushing for emissions thus no diesels and lower hp per unit of engine.
And around and around around....
A car the size of a 63 caddy would already be getting this higher mpg. if it were tuned the way they used to tune the ‘’lean burn’’ it’s called, that plus computers on board and catylic converters would do it. Remember how thet used to advertise how good their car did in mileage competition at Daytona? Course it wouldn’t be legal to sell such a car now.
As a kid, I used to be intrigued with Fred Flintstone’s ‘foot power’ car .... the way things are going, real life will soon be looking like the cartoon.
I watched a crash test with a Smart car and a mid-size Toyota at 30 to 35mph. The Smart car went airborne.
Hey, where did you get the latest Democrat campiagn poster?
Get until the speed limit was raised to 65 mph. It would cruise @65mph ( top speed was 75) allday long but the freeways went from 65 to 80mph when the speed limit was lifted.
I feel like everyone was trying to run into me.
Restore it, drive it, restore it again and watch the envious glances from the Useful Idiots driving the little bubble cars that their Progressive Political heroes forced them in to.
It's kind of like Obamacare. The idiots think that they will be sitting next to Nancy Pelosi in the waiting room of the local Health Care Clinic waiting for their free Doctor visit. Fools and more fools, everywhere you look.
They'll tax you by the mile with the mandatory installed GPS. Fedgov is salivating at the prospect of another step along the path to the ultimate survellance state.
I guess I stand corrected...I was not aware they were pulling 62mpg...
The govt will have to force people to buy smaller less powerful cars because they won’t do it on their own.
Its none of the government’s damn business....
Unfortunately the large majority of voters have accepted a govt that makes EVERYTHING its damm business.
We just don't see them here. For example, the Smart diesel does 72 mpg city and highway (it's not aerodynamic, so highway mileage isn't higher) and the VW Polo diesel gets 51 city, 72 hwy. Of course the above 60 combined mileage is generally reserved for smaller cars, but still even a Jetta diesel will get you 41 city, 57 hwy. You can't get any of those highway numbers in a Prius.
I saw a Smart vs. what looked like a 90s VW Polo. The Smart won. Well, the car was hosed, but the relative results for the drivers would have been a headache for the Smart driver and the hospital for the other driver. Turns out Smarts also route crash damage around the drivers compartment, resulting in rear-end damage from a frontal crash.
I also saw a Smart vs. an Opel Corsa both head-on into a concrete barrier at 70 mph. Anyone in either crash would have been dead of course, but what was interesting was that the Smart's passenger compartment retained its shape, and you could even open and close the door afterwards as if there had been no crash.
Well I hope 11-2 is a sea change to that.
Otherwise you are right and we are doomed as a free nation.
So they are not “real” cars...they are cars with enough room for you and your baguette.
The kind where you can take your family to the movies but it would take 2 trips to get them there.
Sorry.
Saw those in Italy. If thats what they are proposing for here...its not worth it. I also saw Vespa’s with cabs on them. They do real well on fuel also. Not sure i would want to take the interstate in one tho.
I see a few “Smart” cars here and the occupants look like the cartoon at the lead of this thread.
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