Oh, oops, I actually looked at that chart but didn’t notice that the state numbers already included the federal tax.
There’s a gas station near me that has non-taxed off-road diesel on their price board and I just drove by earlier and currently diesel there is more expensive than regular unleaded even with no tax at all!
On non-Interstate highways, at least in the Midwest, it’s fairly rare to see a speed limit higher than 55 or 60.
In Illinois, the 65mph limit on the Interstates is only in rural (or far suburban) areas…in Chicago and most of the suburbs, it’s only 55. That said, the speed limits are routinely ignored around here, and rarely enforced by the police. I regularly drive on I-88 (the Reagan Tollway), where the limit is 55, but where many (if not most) drivers usually do 65 or 70.
US ratings for the Prius are;
Standard: 51 city, 48 highway
V: 44 city, 40 highway
C: 53 city, 46 highway
Notice how the C gets 2 miles better city, 2 miles worse highway.
I recommend www.fueleconomy.gov if you want to check out any car model for any year.
In Montana (which really ought to be called “midwest,” unlike Chicago, which is in the middle of the EASTERN half of the country), the Interstates are mostly 75 and other highways are either 70 or 65. Lower than that is pretty rare.
But outside of the city, where it can be upwards of a kilometer between stoplights, that '93 Metro is still passing you. 
Funny, I was just reading this article in the Telegraph which says “Official fuel figures are obtained from a series of tests known as the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC). This is supposed to represent typical usage, though in reality it does nothing of the sort”.
70mpg is not possible in that car, and the fuel figures get less reliable each year as the tests get more manipulated.
Well, I can tell you for a fact that a VW Polo does indeed do 70-80 MPG.
The car’s engine is 1.2 L, TDI, 3 cylinders, about 70-80 HP.
The actual reason why the VW is not sold in North America remains a mystery for many of us.
What is also interesting is that the Diesel fuel price is much smaller in Europe than in the US/Canada.
I heard that the governments want to discourage the use of Diesel and favor the use of Gasoline.
They might do this through a legal framework that says Diesel produces too much of a certain type of pollutant, however Diesel Engines are almost always more economical in terms of MPG.
I do not thing the guy has a political Agenda, this thing has been going on for decades in N.A. and it has nothing to do with the “current administration” it is a legacy issue.
alecz20, welcome to the StraightDope.
However, most of the questions you are asking have been answered in this very thread, if you would read it.
The VW Polo 1.2 TDI is very good on fuel, but that comes at a cost of performance. The 0-62mph time is 13.9 seconds, which makes it a hazard to get on and off freeways and highways in the US. It’s just to slow to get up to speed, and that is something most Americans are not interested in. That would be a deal breaker for me, personally, as well as most of the folks I know.
Add in higher fuel cost and the car is essentially unsellable in the US market. Supply and Demand trumps political fervor and wishful thinking every time.
Can it meet the crash safety, and bumper standards? The Honda CRX of the late 80’s did pretty good fuel milage wise, but my understanding is that it couldn’t be made to meet the safety standards of later years.
That’s really not it. The Smart ForTwo sells alright here despite its 18 second 0-60 time. The first-generation Prius took more than 14 seconds to get to 60.
The reason the Polo isn’t sold in the US is simple: it’s too fucking small for Americans. The only reason the Smart is sold here is because Mercedes knew people would buy it for novelty/cool value.
CAFE standards are 54.5 mpg by 2025?
How the hell do they think this could happen?
Force us all to drive 1 seat clown cars with manual transmissions and no A/C?
Make hybrid cars out of lightweight exotic materials so that only the 1% can afford them?
Hope that battery technology, which hasn’t been practical for most of us in the past 100 years, will be practical in the next 10?
In July 2012 there were 780 Smart ForTwos sold in the US compared to over 25,000 for the Honda Civic. Only 4 small cars sold fewer numbers.
I’d be hard pressed to say that the Smart ForTwo sells well in the US market.
It’s really not that small. It’d compete in size against such models (currently available for sale in the US) as the Mazda2, Ford Fiesta, MINI Cooper, Hyundai Accent, Kia Rio, Chevy Aveo, Chevy Spark, Honda Fit, and possibly others that I’m forgetting.
The SMART and Scion iQ are an entire class smaller than the Polo and it’s B-class brethren.
That said, the real reason the Polo isn’t sold here is because it’s too expensive, at least at the moment, and VW doesn’t have a facility to assemble them in North America. In order to compete with the likes of GM, Ford, Honda, and Toyota, VW realized that it must build cars specifically tailored to the American market, and it must build them in North America. Shipping cars across oceans, at least mass-produced models, is a losing proposition. It can work with niche models (low volume, high margin), but it won’t work with, say, a Jetta. Thus, the currently available Jetta was designed and built in North America, and has been, erm, crapified for the US market. In other words, it’s bigger, noisier, and has a cheaper interior than the outgoing model. It’s also substantially less expensive and has been selling like hotcakes. They did the same thing with the Rabbit a few years ago.
If VW wanted to sell the Polo here, they’d have to downgrade the interior and construction quality until it could compete on price with a Kia Rio5, plus they’d have to introduce a whole new assembly line to one of their existing US plants. That’s a tough business case to make for a car that probably wouldn’t come close to Rabbit sales numbers.