Legislators and regulators need to observe a fundamental Golden Rule: Do not implement new laws if you have not considered or cannot control important unintended consequences. Posted on 08/08/2012 5:37:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
Legislators and regulators need to observe a fundamental Golden Rule: Do not implement new laws if you have not considered or cannot control important unintended consequences.
A perfect example is the Obama Administration’s plan to increase new car mileage standards, from the currently legislated requirement of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016 to 54.5 mpg by 2025, as an average across each automaker’s complete line of cars and light trucks.
Carmakers reluctantly agreed to the new requirements, to avoid even more onerous standards, or different standards in different states. But the deal does nothing to alter the harsh realities of such a requirement.
First, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) analyses indicate that the mileage standards will add $3,000 to $4,800 to the average price of new vehicles for models from now until 2025. Moreover, this price increase does not include the $2,000 to $6,000 in total interest charges that many borrowers would have to pay over the life of a 36-60 month loan.
The consequence: 6 million to 11 million low-income drivers will be unable to afford new vehicles during this 13-year period, according to the National Auto Dealers Association (NADA). These drivers will essentially be eliminated from the new vehicle market, because they cannot afford even the least expensive new cars without a loan – and many cannot meet minimal lending standards to get that loan.
These drivers will be forced into the used car market. However, far fewer used cars are available today, because the $3-billion “cash for clunkers” program destroyed 690,000 perfectly drivable cars and trucks that otherwise would have ended up in used car lots. In addition, the poor economy is causing many families to hold onto their older cars longer than ever before.
Exacerbating the situation, the average price of used cars and trucks shot from $8,150 in December 2008 to $11,850 three years later, say the NADA and Wall Street Journal. With interest rates of 5-10% (depending on the bank, its lending standards and a borrower’s financial profile), even used cars are unaffordable for many poor families, if they can find one.
All this forces many poor families to buy “hoopties,” pieces of junk that cost much more to operate than a decent low-mileage used car. These higher operating costs can cripple families in borderline poverty situations.
The compounded financial impact is a “regressive” tax and a war on the poor.
Another, far worse consequence of the skyrocketing mileage requirements is that many cars will need to be made smaller, lighter, and with thinner metal and more plastic, to achieve the new “corporate average fleet economy” (CAFÉ) standards.
These vehicles – even with seatbelts, air bags and expensive vehicle modifications – will not be as safe as they would be if mileage weren’t a major consideration. They will have less “armor” to protect drivers and passengers, and less space between vehicle occupants and whatever car, truck, bus, wall, tree or embankment their car might hit.
The NHTSA, Brookings Institution, Harvard School of Public Health, National Academy of Sciences and USA Today discovered a shocking reality. Even past and current mileage standards have resulted in thousands of additional fatalities, and tens of thousands of serious injuries, every year – above what would have happened if the government had not imposed those standards.
They also learned that drivers in lightweight cars were up to twelve times more likely to die in a crash – and far more likely to suffer serious injury and permanent disabilities.
Increasing mileage requirements by a whopping 19 mpg above current rules will make nearly all cars even less safe than they are today.
For obvious reasons, most legislators, regulators and environmental activists have not wanted to discuss these issues. But they need to do so, before existing mileage requirements are made even more stringent.
These affordability and safety problems may be unintended. However, no government officials – elected or unelected – can claim they are unaware of them.
Finally, the asserted goals of CAFÉ standards may once have been somewhat persuasive. The standards were necessary, it was argued, to preserve US oil reserves that were rapidly being depleted, reduce oil imports from unstable parts of the world, and prevent dangerous global warming. However, the rationales used to justify these onerous, unfair, injurious and lethal mileage standards are no longer persuasive.
New seismic, drilling and production technologies have dramatically increased our nation’s oil and natural gas reserves. Opening some of the publicly owned lands that are currently off limits would increase reserves even more. Using government and industry data, the Institute for Energy Research has calculated that the USA, Canada and Mexico alone have 1.7 trillion barrels of recoverable oil reserves – enough to meet current US needs for another 250 years – and another 175 years of natural gas.
As to global warming, even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is now backing away from previous claims about alarming changes in global temperatures, sea levels, polar ice caps and major storms, due to greenhouse gas emissions.
All of us should conserve energy and be responsible stewards of the Earth and its bounties, which God has given us. However, to ignore the unpleasant realities of existing and proposed mileage mandates is unethical, immoral and unjust.
We must not emphasize fuel savings at the cost of excluding poor families from the automobile market – and putting people at greater risk of serious injury or death.
Here the Obama Administration KNOWS that this mandate is for 2025, 13 years from now and long after he has departed from office. How many of the policies made in the Clinton years do we blame him for? (Well I do but then I have a working memory!)
The statists want to push most of us into little 2-seat cars, while they go around in huge SUVs and Limos.
“I would rather drive an older Peterbilt than a new GM econfoilmobile.”
Peterbilt? Uh, no he didn’t! ;-)
Leftists know that. Innovative technology is one way the right fights the left. They do not want us to succeed with new technology, they want us to fail.
Their real problem is larger cars and trucks cause them painful feelings of size envy. Their objective is to force everyone into visibly smaller automobiles in an attempt to reduce their personal pain. They are convinced they can never be happy until no neighbor has anything visibly larger than they do.
That 54.5 mpg objective by 2025 is not attainable with existing electro-mechanical technologies and we can’t expect to see cold fusion reactors running Chevy Volts in the near future.
So the government will work with the industry to employ Smoke and Mirrors.
Rather than adjust the mandatory CAFE mileage to something actually attainable, they will manipulate the data (as the govt. now does with the unemployment data), and employ caefully crafted loopholes to make it appear they have accomplished the impossible.
“I don’t believe increasing the fleet gas mileage necessarily increases the cost of the car.”
It most certainly does. A parts manufacturer gets hit in 2 ways. First, the lighter commodities (aluminum, magnesium, etc) are more expensive than rolled steel. Second, those materials are more difficult to manipulate in manufacturing while maintaining the same craftmanship or durability. The first drives up their cost per part and the second lowers the number of parts produced hourly, which then increases the allocation of fixed costs per part produced.
Now extrapolate that to a car or truck that consists of 10-12,000 tier 1 parts, then go backwards over 3-4 subtiers in the supply chain.
Don’t worry tho, when the prices go up as a result of the governmented directed policies, then those utopians will just be able to shift the blame to the evil corporations. The ignorant masses will eat it up!
Interesting - Ford produces a car in the USA - right now - that gets about 70 MPG. It is made for export only.
Why? - The EPA says it emits too much CO2 per gallon of gas burned, by about 10%.
Even if CO2 emissions were a problem (which they are not) this rule is completely stupid.
Because...The CO2 this car emits per mile travelled is well below other cars, because of its great fuel economy.
True - and you can personally verify the car’s existence s on the Ford europe web site.
That is the stupidity of the Obama administration.
Which Ford vehicle are you talking about?
It is called the Ka in the UK.
“Environment and sustainability
Each of the engines available is low-carbon, emitting less than 120 g/km CO2. Choose from the responsive and economical 1.2 litre Duratec petrol engine and the advanced 1.3 litre Duratorq TDCi diesel. The Ka is also impressively economical when it comes to making your fuel go far – achieving 67.3 mpg combined.”
“First, the lighter commodities (aluminum, magnesium, etc) are more expensive”
My idea is to use steel and other cheap stuff, but smaller amounts of it. We end up with smaller, cheezier, cheaper cars that get high gas mileage.
If buyers want more exotic, expensive cars that get high gas mileage then make some of those also. Maybe that’s all the new car buyers want. In that case forget the cheap cars.
They do not produce the Ka in the US. In fact, they don’t even produce the Fiesta in the US. I’d wager that particular car is manufactured in Colone, Germany, but that is just a guess....
The smallest car that they make in the US is the Focus (C-Platform.)
i believe the engine is made here in the USA.
What you envision is potentially realistic, however that type of car would not meet the other government mandated requirements. A very small car, made from very cheap materials would not have the architecture to meet all of the safety requirements, i.e. multiple air bags, front end structure integrity that can withstand a crash but still has the ability to collapse when in a pedestrian crash.
The problem is that the government has mandated requirements that add hundreds of lbs to a car, harming its fuel efficiency, then think they can change the laws of physics to magically increase efficiency.
It’s not. There is no way that they are going to produce an engine here unless they vast majority of them are used in vehicle production here. The cost of freight is to expensive and the risk of having them on the sea for 6 weeks minimum is to great.
They will produce vehicles here for export if the receiving country has similar regulations that do not require to many alterations, however if the regulations drive to high of a “uniqueness” to the car or engine, then they will make it in a region of the world that can accomodate the production more uniformly.
ok then -
I saw that they 1.2 liter duratec and 1.3 liter duratorq (diesel) were produced in Michigan and in mexico.
Show me what you found for the manufacturing location.
My point is still that the Obama administration (EPA) is stupid for not encouraging much less preventing these vehicles from being sold in the USA.
OOps. Skipped that paragraph.
It ain’t about cars...
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