Exactly, it’s sort of like giving smokers “low tar” smokes, they just smoke twice as many. Until/unless we are willing to raise prices by 100 - 200%, this is all political BS. Most americans (including myself) simply don’t notice an extra $10 to fill up their tank. We might notice an extra $50, maybe.
Craig, you just reiterated a new economic term, the “efficiency paradox”. If you make something twice as efficient, people tend to use twice as much. Economists and government planners are now using this on a routine basis as a planning tool. When super efficient furnaces and well insulated houses made their debut, house size increased to what the owner could afford to buy, not what he really needed. As posted previously, foreign countries caught on to this many years ago, and priced gasoline at the level to discourage needless consumption and spur manufacturers to produce efficient vehicles, while giving public transit a fair chance in urban areas.
I had never heard the term before, but the concept does make sense.
A few conspiracy theories are true. Most are crackpot ideas, but you’re both too extreme. Electric cars aren’t zero emission and you need nowhere near 10 acres of photovoltaics (maybe .01 ac). While it’s true the free market is why we can’t get a new car with under 100hp (I drove a 55 hp car as a kid), most EVs (from the 90’s) were recalled and crushed. I know a guy who still has his with over 200,000 miles and his biggest repair has been a blinker bulb. How can a car company (or it’s union) make money on a car that lasts forever? Of course, car companies always want to sell more expensive cars (Ie SUVs) so they’ll never come out with a $10-15k basic electric (which is all we need for a commuter car).
Federal Mandate…Humbug!! The federal gov’t. is blind in one eye & can’t see out of the other. Just because they have the power to enact a mandate doesn’t mean that that is the best answer. What I’m waiting to see will likely be invented by a 12 year old electronic whiz kid. Why doesn’t the gov’t. give a grant to someone to design traffic signals that can better read traffic flow? I cannot count the times I’ve been idling at a traffic signal seeing traffic backed up in three (or four) different directions and no body is moving simply because the signal is on a timer or some other mechanism that controls when it will change. Then multiply that by how many traffic signals are across the width and breadth of America and how many vehicles are getting zero MPG at any one time throughout a 24 hour day?
One more thing…when I was a teenager in the late 1950’s, in Klamath Falls, OR, there were traffic “signals set for 28 MPH” and signs hanging on the signals announcing that. I’d like to think that in 50 years of state of the art technology that we’d have something equivalent, or better than that today. In my own home town the main drag speed limit is 35 MPH, but you can’t hit each successive traffic signal on green unless you are going 10 MPH over the speed limit.
Go Figure!!
There is no doubt that the marketplace and obviously the consumer, need to be the real decision makers here and not let the government stick their nose where it doesn’t belong! It has been said that people dig their own graves all too often and that is the case when buying an automobile! We all hae bought an automobile from a dealership and know what gas stations are typically close to the dealer. Therefore, we all can do a little research to see what type of expected, comparative mileage we can expect from the vehicle in question to purchase and then do the simple elementary level math, to see what the vehicle may cost us to drive! It’s simple! People just need to stop buying by their egos and buy using their brains! It’s just that simple! The government needs to go into no more issues and dealve into what they already have to deal with!
I had a 1986 Taurus MT5, with the 2.5 liter 90 HP engine and 5-speed stick shift. It was rated at 32 mpg highway, but I routinely got 40. That wasn’t a small car! Or very peppy, but it didn’t need to be. You can only accelerate so fast in the suburbs of Chicago.
They could make a comfortable high-mileage car 20 years ago. What changed?
If the only way the the manufacturers will make high mileage vehicles is with a government mandate, then so be it. Anybody have a feel for what the maximum mpg one could realistically get for a 3000-pound car, with current energy technology?
Yes, I remember renting one of those. It was not a big seller, and Ford dicontinued it. As Tom & Ray point out, most US cars have far more power than they need, especially in view of the very low speed limits in the US compared to elswhere.
In the early 1990s the federal government launched the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) to get manufacturers to build standard family cars that go 3X the mileage. Ford actually built a Taurus that got 80mpg!! It was an aluminum hybrid with a diesel-electric arrangement similar to the Prius layout. It was expensive, but so is all new technology initially!
So, yes we can have decent size cars that get really good gas mileage. Most Chrysler minivans in Europe have 4 cyl diesel engines and 5 speed manual transmission. They are built in Austria by the Canadian parts giant
Magna International.
80 mpg, huh? I wouldn’t have thought that possible, but it’s way cool. I’m looking at diesel for my next ride. Wonder if they’ll start importing the minivans now that we have clean diesel fuel.
I assume someone will sell a diesel mini-van in the U.S., but I wouldn’t bet on Chrysler doing much of anything.
So, you think I am stupid about math and can’t understand averages? And you think I am lying about having multiple college degrees and experience? Where is your evidence of that?
So what degrees do you have. You obviously don’t understand how statistics and statisticaly averages work.
So, you think I am stupid about math and can’t understand averages? And you think I am lying about having multiple college degrees and experience? Where is your evidence of that?
You’ve started out attacking people…by basically stating that anyone who doens’t think like you do is stupid…So try again.
I serisouly doubt you’ve ever gone to college…You seem to have taken the Rush Limbaugh Junk Science courses.
I don’t think that Federally mandated MPG standards are necessary. All they have to mandate is a screen or gauge on the dash that shows immediate and constant MPGs that your car is getting as you drive. I bought a Prius last year, and because of the screen on the dashboard that shows my current MPG and my overall MPG as I drive, I have completely changed my driving habits to maximize the MPGs that I am getting. It was excrutiatingly painful to see my gas use shrink to 15 MPG during a jackrabbit start, when a slow and smooth excelleration could reap an improved and efficient 30 MPG. I no longer cruise down the freeway doing a cool 75 MPH at 40 MPG, and instead sail along at 60 MPH getting a cool 50 MPG. It more than makes up for the ticket that I got for driving too slow on the freeway.
Nancy, if everyone was as observant and concientious as you, we would save a lot of gas, and may not need the 35mpg standard. Unfortunately, the car size, power and driving habits of the average citizen are very wateful to say the least, and like a good parent, the government has to set some strict rules of behavior.
Merry Christmas!
I believe that the government should mandate the mpgs of a car because of the cost of oil and how the company are just taking our moeny because they can. so i would naturally support the bill passed by congress recently that requires auto makers to have all vehicles get at least 30mpg city and 35 mpg highway mileage by 2020. so i don think marketplace should rule it todays world in the oil department everrything else the government needs to butt out.
“I’m From The Government…I’m Here to Help”; never true! In the ‘energy crisis’ of the early 70’s government ‘help’ created lines and panic and artifical scarcity. In 2007, with gasoline selling at 5x as much as the 70’s, there is no scarcity, panic or problem. A healthy market place, only restrained by the rule of minimal, reasonable law and order, always wins out. Karl Marx was Wrong, people! There are lots of really cool '54 chevys in Cuba…but that’s all they’ve got. The EPA?! They practically ruined California in the '80s with mandated polution controls until so many businesses abandoned the state that the declining tax revenues helped create a recession, whiched helped them ‘see the light’. The market will (an already is) helping ‘manage’ gasoline usage. Have you ordered you Preius yet?
There seems to be so many high tech gimmicks that get no where while overlooking whatever allows trucks with a frontal area of 8’ x 13’6", weighing nearly 90,000 lbs with 18 wheels of rolling resistance to travel 5 miles on a gallon of fuel at 70mph. A half ton Chevy pickup should get 100 mpg if it used a scaled down Freightliner power train.
And with all the advertising hype over horsepower the buying public is clueless just how useless the horsepower is. The last diesel truck that I worked on regularly had 318 hp and could pull a gross weight of 75,000 lb at 70+ mph at about 4.5 mpg with the technology of the late 60s.
Very true, my wife’s primary car is a '83 240D with a 2.4 diesel engine and about 70 HP in a 3500 pound car. It’s not fast, but it actually has adequate power for anything up to about 70 mph (then it’s a challenge). With the correct gearing, you do not need very much power for day-to-day driving. Having 300 HP in a car is fun, but not really necessary.
“The marketplace should be the decision maker”.
The marketplace did not create the foundation for our current predicament. The Interstate roadway system, mandated during the Eisenhower administration, is the culprit. Since the 1950’s there has been relatively nothing done to incent the consumer to buy ligther, more fuel efficient vehicles. Ten foot wide lanes and no segregation of heavy and light vehicles continues to promote a “biger is safer” attitude among motorists. Divide the exiting roadways into two weight segments, reduce the size of the light vehicle lanes into eight foot lanes,and limit light vehicles to a maximum of five feet in width (current width restrction is 8 1/2 feet). Provide the Federal and State Departments of Transportation and the current Congress with a crainial/gluteal resection to make this happen and then the free market will fill in the vaccuum with wonderful new fuel efficient products. Tom and Ray, Your letter to Congress is brilliant and courageous. Let’s make it a chain letter.
Personally, I object to how our government would penalize “gas guzzlers”. My '01 Jeep Cherokee is getting 23 mpg combined. That’s great for an suv that is rated at 16 Hwy. and 14 City. How would this “penalization” process be conducted? Would it be done in the same manner as the EPA Estimated ratings which have been flawed from the start. Would the owner be mandated to prove they’re improving the mileage of their vehicle? If so, How? In most places I’ve been that have emissions checks and safety inspections, they’re a sick joke. In Arizona I had the man testing the emissions on my '74 Triumph Bonneville put his gloved hands up against the muffler outlets to increase the retention of exhaust around the testing wand. When the engine began to sputter, I revved it to keep it from dying. The testing person was really upset that I gunned the engine. I was even MORE upset. I didn’t tune it that way and he wasn’t going to test it that way. He explained to the manager who came over to settle the dispute, that “There was no way that this bike could have such low emissions”.
Likewise, here in Texas, we have a “Safety Inspection” which is mandated by Texas law, and administered by businesses. I’ve seen more rolling wrecks on the road with “valid” inspection stickers than a dozen demo derbies run back to back. Not to mention the 18 year old “Experts”, one of which was going to fail my '63 Studebaker Champ pickup because the parking lights went out when the headlights came on. I explained that Stude reasoned that “PARKING” lamps were SUPPOSED to go out when the “DRIVING” lights came on because you didn’t NEED both sets of lights in an “either/or” situation. My Stude was older than the idiot doing the inspection.
In short, keep the government out of it and let people who want better gas mileage do what they can to get better mileage and less emissions. Let our government prosecute the scam artists and let it go at that.