Clash Looms Over Fuel Economy Standard, As Consumers Snap Up Trucks, Big SUVs

Wall Street Journal ^ | Jan. 13, 2015 | MIKE SPECTOR and CHRISTINA ROGERS

[yldstrk]

I have a Honda Pilot which is not small.........

[The Great RJ]

If these CAFE standards prevail US highways will look like Cuban streets with fleets of aged trucks patched together and still running as replacements are not available.

[smokingfrog]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-05/toyota-profit-beats-estimates-on-u-s-suv-sales.html

[thackney]

http://www.nissanusa.com/trucks

http://www.toyota.com/trucks/

http://automobiles.honda.com/pilot/

http://www.acura.com/MDXLanding.aspx?model=MDX

http://www.lexus.com/models/LX

[thackney]

Sales of Heavy Duty trucks, with lower mpg but outside the CAFE requirements, will also go up.

[woodbutcher1963]

Toyota built one of the largest factories in the world outside of San Antonio. All it builds there is pickup trucks.

[RightFighter]

My son, who just turned 17, called me last summer to tell me he'd just been in an accident. He's an awesome young man, and so I've allowed him to drive the 2014 Chevy Silverado while I drove the 2007 Dodge Ram 1500 (which I replaced this past weekend with a 2014 Ram 1500). Anyway, of course I freaked out, worried about him, the insurance, etc. I went to the scene of the accident while he was still there with the officer and the girl who had rear-ended him. I saw her car first. It must have been TERRIFYING for her, as the front of her Honda Fit was crumpled like an aluminum can. I think you'll see in these pics why I am sold on trucks. His bumper did cost around $1500 to replace, which her insurance covered.

[grania]

If people buy vehicles that guzzle more gallons of gas, that will mean the DC backstabbers won’t have any excuse to raise the gas tax, right?

[Beagle8U]

If it doesn’t have a blue oval on the front it isn’t a truck!

[upchuck]

Consider resizing the photos so they will at least fit on a normal monitor screen.

This can help: http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDownload.htm

[Beagle8U]

I’ve known several people that bought a tundra/titan pick-up, they all sold them within 2 years...POS.

[smokingfrog]

.. there is no room for them to latch their seat belt with three boosters back there..

no problem ...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/video-kids-in-open-car-boot-832444

[RightFighter]

I’m really sorry. I was doing this on my phone and didn’t realize that the images were that big until after I posted them.

[2001convSVT]

Give me a Road Runner with a 440 six-pack!

[upchuck]

Things aren’t always as they seem. :)

Cell phones have software that shrinks any photo to cell phone screen size.

Unfortunately, automatic software doesn’t exist in the world outside the cell phone. Virtually all pics have to be reduced to fit on a standard computer monitor or tablet.

[Zhang Fei]

American automakers lose money on all the toy cars they are forced to sell, they have to make up the loss selling trucks/SUVs.

It goes beyond that. They pad truck/SUV margins to subsidize barely-profitable/negative-margin small cars. Without CAFE, large cars would be cheaper, and small cars more expensive.

[KamperKen]

Some years ago Reason Magazine had an article on the tradeoff between increased gas mileage via shrinking the size and mass of the car via the CAFE standards and the savings in petroleum.

As I recall, whatever fuel cost savings were obtained thru greater gas efficiency were offset by a factor of 5 from the increase in the costs due to the greater number of deaths and number and severity of injuries from accidents.

Everything has a cost, a principle so fundamental and simple that it’s beyond the comprehension of politicians.

[Kickass Conservative]

Just a reminder, Hillary wanted the 55 MPH Speed Limit reinstated to protect the planet.

[Kickass Conservative]

I love the way Politicians just make up numbers.

Gas Mileage (make it 1000 MPG), Minimum Wage (make it $1,000 an hour), The Stimulus Package (keep it under a Trillion), Obamacare (it will save you $2,500 a year), makes no difference.

They also take credit for the Engineering needed to achieve their lofty Goals. You know, so it is written, so it shall be done.

I guess they think that is Leadership. I call it Tyranny.

[RightFighter]

Well, in reality, FR should have code that prevents that from happening. When I post the same photo on Facebook, it doesn’t display any larger than any other photo.