Posted on 01/14/2015 5:27:38 AM PST by thackney
Auto makers are on a collision course with U.S. regulators over the timetable to achieve stringent fuel-economy standards as cheap gasoline sends consumers flocking to less-efficient pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles.
Car companies are laying the groundwork to seek some relief when the targets come up for review by regulators in 2017, executives said at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. They are in some cases already canvassing the White House, Capitol Hill and regulatory agencies to start lobbying for possible changes to fuel economy standards that take effect in 2022.
The mileage targets, known as corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, call for auto makers to sell a portfolio of light-duty cars and trucks averaging 54.5 miles a gallon by 2025. The fleetwide standard for cars and trucks rises in 2016 to 37.8 mpg and 28.8 mpg, respectively.
But with gas prices dipping below $2 a gallon in some parts of the country for the first time in six years, auto makers are confronted with consumers pining for larger trucks and SUVs that get worse mileage than cars. Auto manufacturers, attracted by profits on each truck that often exceed those on cars by thousands of dollars, are increasing production of the bigger vehicles.
Car companies plan vehicles years in advance, leaving them vulnerable to big swings in commodity costs, especially the price of oil, and the subsequent price at the pump. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV sold more than 449,000 Ram pickups in 2014—the best of which now gets 23 miles a gallon with a diesel engine—up 24% from a year earlier. Regulators in 2017 will review mileage targets for 2022-2025.
“All of us are going to toward a relaxation of the timeline,” ...said in an interview on Tuesday. “The question is the rate of change...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
“Big” is a relative term and I will say this: as long as I have to drive on the highways along with double trailer big eighteens whose drivers are high on speed and on tight time schedules, I am driving an SUV and not some tin can.
Can you believe it? Americans are displaying the unmitigated gall to purchase vehicles that actually meet their transportation needs. Disgusting (/s)
SUV’s and their ilk are the modern substitute for the (by ME) missed STATION WAGON. The venerable wagon was the automobile that could fit all the kids, their carriages, sporting equipment and the stuff the parents had to carry with them. Try doing that in a lawn-mower engined “Fuel efficient” vehicle.
Also, my sorely missed wagon could take the entire load of stuff I needed down to “the boat” in a SINGLE trip. Friends with little cars with 1 cubic foot “trunks” took several trips to do the same thing. My “gas guzzler”, taking only a single trip, was much less of a gas “user”, accomplishing the task with a single trip.
Only the “elite” should drive safe cars.
The rest should drive “economy vehicles”, if we are allowed to drive at all.
“meet their transportation needs”
It sounds a little whacked, but follow me.
What do requirements for large footprint car seats and high CAFE standards result in?
People adjusting their family “planning” to accommodate smaller vehicles.
Gooberment bow wow knows what’s best for you, now take your medicine.
“...cheap gasoline sends consumers flocking to less-efficient pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles.”
Are people really this gullible? ‘Flocking?’
I LOVE my Ford Escape. I will never own anything smaller, again. I drove a Dodge Colt for 15 years. Great little car - but little. Now that I can SEE EVERYTHING I feel SO much safer and I can power out of situations - of run into, or over, others more safely, LOL!
FUCAFE!
I’m trying hard to envision a way of enforcing fuel efficiency standards that is more fundamentally stupid than CAFE, but I’m not having much luck.
I’m not sure who dreamed up the idea that forcing manufacturers to build what people don’t want to buy would improve efficiency, but it can’t have been anyone who had the slightest connection to the real world.
How DARE the car manufacturers try to sell consumers vehicles that they want to buy? Don’t they understand that Obamanation is a central planned socialist economy?
Five and ten year plans have been written. The just need to follow them.
Get the Hell out of our lives and do your constitutionally legislated jobs!
Its time to get rid of “fuel economy standards.” They are a relic of the Jimmy Carter era and are no longer relevant.
American automakers lose money on all the toy cars they are forced to sell, they have to make up the loss selling trucks/SUVs.
yep, and the requirement to use car seats or boosters with kids also requires a larger (wider) vehicle. I have a MASSIVE suv, and yet even I can actually use all three seats in the back with kids because there is no room for them to latch their seat belt with three boosters back there
Whereas EPA is heavily involved in reducing CO2 emissions from stationary sources such as power plants and cement kilns, they specifically declined to regulate tailpipes only because the rising CAFE standards would reduce CO2 emissions.
So, if the CAFE standards are relaxed, the enviros will be filing numerous lawsuits, and based on the 2007 SCOTUS decision, the enviros will likely win these lawsuits.
Exactly, buying a full size SUV or Pickup will include enough money to subsidize the purchase by someone else of a econocar.
I’m afraid that an SUV won’t do you much more good in an altercation with a semi that a Subaru would.
AT least I have a chance of getting the hell away which I don’t have in something with a lawn mower engine. Anyway, I am not likely to get anything smaller or lower just to please the government
Look ‘between’ the lines.
The Japanese companies can make money off the small cars because that is about the only thing they have ever made, and what they sell worldwide. Their business model is built around tiny cars.
The Escape is a great little SUV, available with 4x4 and a V-6 that will tow a moderate sized boat.
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