Free Republic

The next generation of the Toyota Camry, the best-selling sedan in the U.S. market, will come with only a gas-electric hybrid powertrain, the boldest move yet by the Japanese automaker to push hybrid technology into the heart of the U.S. market. The 2025 Camry will combine a 2.5-liter gasoline engine with an electric drive system tuned to deliver more power in both front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive versions of the car, Toyota said. Compliance with tougher U.S. fuel economy rules was a factor in Toyota’s decision to make the new Camry an all-hybrid vehicle line, dropping four- and six-cylinder combustion...

Public comments submitted to the NHTSA warn that combined with other proposed rules, the new fuel efficiency standards will have the effect of banning gas-powered cars. Other arguments against the proposed rules include concerns about increased reliance on electric vehicles placing a burdensome demand on the national electric grid. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Adeluge of comments were dropped on the Biden administration concerning its proposed fuel economy standards, many of them saying that the rules exceed statutory authority, won’t save consumers money, will hurt the automotive industry, and could impact national security. By the time the comment period closed this fall, the National...

Buying a new car is almost always a daunting task, with salespeople trying to sell that extra warranty or undercarriage rustproofing. And, to add insult to the process of buying a new car, federal bureaucrats regularly tack on rules that jack up prices for consumers. In fact, average prices for new cars are nearing $40,000. But, that staggering high amount may soon fall due to the Trump administration’s ambitious drive to roll back onerous rules. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of freezing, or at least slowing, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for cars, unshackling vehicles...

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on Monday formally scrapped a key piece of the Obama administration’s fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light-duty trucks, throwing the future of the program into doubt. In a statement, Mr. Pruitt said the program, known as the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE standards, fell victim to politics during the final days of the Obama administration. He said his predecessors at the EPA rushed through rules governing fuel economy for model years 2022 through 2025, and that those rules simply aren’t realistic. “The Obama Administration’s determination was wrong,” he said. “Obama’s EPA cut the midterm evaluation...

Central Planning: Recent sales data show that consumers don't want electric cars. Too bad, since President Obama has put in place regulations that will effectively force the public to buy them in the not-too-distant future.

Regulations: Are automakers designing cars for drivers — or federal bureaucrats? It's worth asking. Tests found that some top-rated cars performed far worse in the real world than they did in official EPA mileage tests. Consumer Reports, the widely respected consumer product testing magazine, set out to determine whether those fuel mileage stickers the government requires on all cars are realistic. So it tested 315 cars against their official EPA ratings and came up with an interesting finding. While most cars came close to the government's fuel economy rating, two categories didn't — hybrids and cars with small, turbocharged engines....

I recently came across a report written by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) which estimated the cost to taxpayers for "federal policies to promote (aka subsidize) the manufacture and purchase of electric vehicles (EVs)." The piece also predicts the short-term benefits of the subsidies and includes the effects of rising federal requirements for fuel economy (known as CAFE) standards. The outlook is that federal subsidies will cost taxpayers $7.5 billion over the next few years for little or no benefit (even when including the impact of CAFE) to total gas consumption or emissions. The CBO is a non-partisan federal agency...

Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) codified their war on American drivers by finalizing new car mileage mandates, otherwise known as CAFÉ standards. Increasing the cost of new cars by thousands of dollars, new CAFÉ rules will require cars built in 2025 to get at least 54.5 miles per gallon. With current 2011 cars averaging 28.6 miles per gallon, the EPA is going to require automotive manufacturers to nearly double fuel economy standards in a little more than a decade. While the Obama administration has made the 2009 Auto-Bailout one of the center-pieces of...

The Obama Administration’s new fuel economy standards will result in the retail price of average motor vehicles to increase over $11,000, according to a study conducted by the Center for Automotive Research. --------------------------------------------------------- The Obama administration’s new fuel economy standards would require automakers to produce cars and light trucks with an average fuel economy of 54.5 mpg by 2025. The Center for Automotive Research says their study is “the result of 11 months of effort and investigation by researchers at CAR in 2010-2011.”

There is a vacuum on the left.  It’s where logic should be, but isn’t.  Seeing nature abhors a vacuum, it has been filled…with lunacy. For a prime example, I give you Keith Olbermann. According to Olbermann's logic, since 45,000 people a year die from a lack of health insurance and Boortz is against the current “reform” of health care,  Boortz therefore approves of the death of 45,000 Americans. While that is flawed logic, let’s use it. 

Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs "to put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a congressional investigation of Browner's conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, that Browner "intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent new CAFE standards." Federal law requires officials to preserve documents concerning significant policy decisions, so instructing participants in...

House Republicans Darrell Issa and James Sensenbrenner are calling for an investigation of whether Obama climate czar Carol Browner’s secrecy in developing Obama’s CAFE standards and EPA’s CO2 endangerment finding was a “deliberate and willful violation” of the Presidential Records Act. According to the letter, ~~~ … Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), revealed to the New York Times that the White House held a series of secret meetings with select special interests as they were crafting the new CAFE standards. Nichols was a key player in these negotiations because of California’s determined efforts to...

The Obama administration’s proposed mileage standards that will be announced today may kill more Americans at a faster rate than the Iraq War, his signature issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. Obama’s standards will require automakers to meet a 35 miles-per-gallon standard by 2016, four years earlier than the same standard imposed by the Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007. The only way for carmakers to meet these standard is to make smaller, lighter -- and deadlier cars. The National Academy of Sciences has linked mileage standards with about 2,000 deaths per year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration...

At the end of his Rose Garden explanation yesterday of the new U.S. fuel-efficiency standards, President Obama remarked on the good that can be accomplished when we are "working together." The President may be getting ahead of himself. Watching the unlikely coalition arrayed behind him as Mr. Obama committed the U.S. to an astonishing passenger-car mileage average of 39 miles per gallon by 2016, it looks truer to say we are merely standing together in this adventure, for better or worse. Mr. Obama's fleet-mileage partners yesterday included the two auto companies that have fallen into his arms, Chrysler and GM,...

With his latest installment of ever-higher fuel mileage requirements for the auto industry, Barack Obama embraces a momentary, crisis-spawned expansion of the art of the possible, unleavened by any art of the rationally desirable. Detroit is dependent on Washington loans for survival. The industry's lobbyists and its congressional allies have collapsed in a heap, offering no resistance. So why not go for broke? If you're alone in front of the shrimp buffet, why not eat all the shrimp -- even if it makes you barf later? Defenders of the Obama administration's Chrysler bankruptcy finagle misguidedly argue that, if not for...

Beats the hell out of "Bush lied, people died," if you ask me. Plus it has the added bonus of actually being accurate. The following idea is as sound as the glorified riding-lawnmowers to which we will be bound. President Barack Obama is proposing on Tuesday the highest auto fuel efficiency standards ever attempted in the United States... If the proposal is enacted, by 2016 the fleet average requirement would be 35.5 miles per gallon, said the official, who declined to be named. Currently the CAFE standard is 27.5 mpg for cars and 24 mpg for light trucks. We've already...

The new fuel economy rules announced by the government are more than a challenge; they could end our era of cheap transportation. If they can be met, and that is questionable without some cheating on the rulemaking, cars will be small and expensive--or larger and very expensive. The word coming from Washington is that a 35.5 mile average per gallon requirement will be set for vehicles by 2016, meaning something like 43 miles per gallon for cars and 26 miles per gallon for trucks. Rules are easy to make. Companies like General Motors ( GM - news - people )...

Maybe it’s my inner rebellious child, but it bugs me to be told what I want. And if there’s anyone I don’t want telling me that, it’s some do-gooder from the government. So when Carol Browner made the morning show rounds today, claiming that Pres. Obama’s new, higher MPG standards are “giving Americans the cars they want,” it really got under my skin. Oh, and then of course there’s the little thing about what she said being . . . demonstrably false. View video here.

In a galaxy all too present, all too friggin’ near… President b. Hussein: My dear friends. Today, the United States of America turns a new page in the fight against Anthropogenic Global Warming. We stand on the precipice of either moving forward toward curbing fictional deadly greenhouse gases, the mere mention of which lines the pockets of great patriots such as Al Gore and George Soros and myself with triple-laundered twenties and fifties, or plummeting into great impending planetary doom (which would lead anyone in his right mind who takes 10 minutes to do some research to conclude: Hmm…those AGW...

President Obama on Monday will direct federal regulators to move swiftly to grant California and 13 other states the right to set strict automobile emissions and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday evening.