I believe mandating fuel efficiency standards for cars is silly.

Great Debates
41

Improving fuel efficiency is not very green.
To understand why this is so, simply imagine that an inexpensive vehicle could be brought to market which gets unlimited mileage and does not pollute.

What happens? More people have cars and drive them more. A lot more. More roads. More pavement. More consumption of resources manufacturing cars. There is a lot of developing world that can’t wait to pave over their wetlands and forests so they can drive these new fuel efficient vehicles.

I do not personally take much of a position on all of this, but I’m underwhelmed by the idea that fuel efficiency is going to solve anything. Since we don’t yet have perfectly efficient non-polluting vehicles, making the current fleet more efficient will simply expand the car culture…

Economically, oil prices right now (60-70 dollars a barrel) are enough to make other sources of oil financially viable. Those sources will be developed if prices maintain their current level.

In the long run gasoline prices are not going to go much higher, even though they may in the short run. We are going to have to decide if we want to encourage driving or not by some means other than the natural price of gas. To a substantial extent more efficient cars simply lower the effective price of gasoline and do nothing except make even more cars available to more people.

42

[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
Eight? My half-ton V10 truck gets better than that when I’m pulling a trailer full of horses!

[/QUOTE]

You would do better if you just rode the damn horses. There they are, perfectly good stock animals to do your bidding, and you’re chauffeuring them around town. :wink:

[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]

I can see you carefully read my post before replying. Even during the season when riding a bike is a reasonable thing to do in Montana, I’m not going to ride it on a highway with no shoulders and cars whizzing by at 70 mph. That’s the only way into town.

[/QUOTE]

Well, that’s because gas taxes to date are used mainly to make more roads for cars. If some of that money were used to make bike paths or even reasonable bike lanes along the roads, then you would have an alternative to driving. Instead of doing something reasonable with the tax money over the last few decades, you are now stuck paying higher gas prices now with no reasonable alternative.

43

What is the problem you’re trying to solve here? Global Warming? If so, you can forget it. Sure, you could increase fuel efficiency in the U.S. by mandating more efficient cars. Which will do nothing for Global Warming, because oil is a fungible commodity, and a restriction on demand in the U.S. will just cause the price to fall and stimulate demand for the stuff everywhere else in the world. Unless you can get a global agreement that includes China and India, there’s nothing you can do to keep all that oil from coming out of the ground, and to keep on coming out of the ground until it is no longer cost-effective to do so.

That’s the bottom line. You can’t stop oil from being burned - all you can do is change the distribution patterns of consumption around the world.

But assuming there is some other reason to make vehicles more efficient, a gasoline tax is the only way to go. The tax is closest to the thing you actually want to tax - the amount of pollutant a person puts into the air - rather than being at best a poor intermediary. For example, if you simply put a new CAFE standard on cars, you make the cars cheaper to drive per mile but more expensive to purchase - this has the effect of increasing the number of miles people will drive with their vehicles. In addition, if high CAFE standards result in cars that are less desirable than the ones people own now, your unintended consequence is that more people will tend to keep their older, even thirstier vehicles who might have otherwise traded up for something modestly more efficient while retaining appeal. Finally, CAFE standard changes take years to have an effect - the auto fleet is about 10-11 years old on average, so new Cafe standards passed today would only be in place in half the cars or less in the next decade.

What you really want to do is punish people for burning petroleum. The easiest and most economically efficient way to do that is to simply tax petroleum.

But maybe the smarter thing to do is to let petroleum find its own price, let it get burned, and spend the time, energy, and money working on alternative fuel sources to attempt to price petroleum out of the market, and to work on technologies for sequestering carbon and/or counteracting its effects in other ways (iron seeding in the ocean, etc).

44

Eventually, yes. But it might slow the process down somewhat. Yes, a thirsty China and India rapidly increasing their oil consumption will eventually extract whatever there is to extract, even if the US goes on a strict low-petroleum diet. But it will probably happen even faster if the US continues its full-throttle gas guzzling. (I’m skeptical that the higher gas prices from unlimited US consumption would have enough of a braking effect on Chinese and Indian consumption to offset the extra US consumption in full-throttle guzzle mode as opposed to low-petroleum diet mode.)

Of course, the time we might buy ourselves by postponing some of our global greenhouse-gas emissions in this way might not be enough to make a significant difference in coping with global warming. On the other hand, it might. It seems to be worth investing in some conservation and emissions-reduction strategies in addition to boosting R&D for new-technology solutions.

45

[QUOTE=Kimstu]
Eventually, yes. But it might slow the process down somewhat. Yes, a thirsty China and India rapidly increasing their oil consumption will eventually extract whatever there is to extract, even if the US goes on a strict low-petroleum diet. But it will probably happen even faster if the US continues its full-throttle gas guzzling. (I’m skeptical that the higher gas prices from unlimited US consumption would have enough of a braking effect on Chinese and Indian consumption to offset the extra US consumption in full-throttle guzzle mode as opposed to low-petroleum diet mode.)

Of course, the time we might buy ourselves by postponing some of our global greenhouse-gas emissions in this way might not be enough to make a significant difference in coping with global warming. On the other hand, it might. It seems to be worth investing in some conservation and emissions-reduction strategies in addition to boosting R&D for new-technology solutions.
[/QUOTE]

The problem is that it costs a lot of money to reduce demand - basically, the U.S. will wind up paying higher energy prices, and the lowered demand for petroleum will give U.S. competitors lower energy prices.

What’s worse, by restricting demand you also keep prices lower, which reduces investment in alternative fuels and the desire to conserve in other ways. It’s certainly not clear to me that wholesale meddling in the energy markets is going to A) cause a delay in the onset of warming, B) have enough of an effect to make a measurable difference, and C) not be counter-productive by essentially artificially holding the price of petroleum down, making competitors to petroleum less profitable.

46

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
What is the problem you’re trying to solve here?
[/quote]
Automobile fuel inefficiency sits at the nexus of several problems.

  1. Pollution generally. Cars pollute, and the extent to which they pollute is related to the amount of fuel they consume.
  2. Energy dependence. There’s no way to make the U.S. completely independent of a certain unstable and semi-hostile region halfway around the world, but we can at least reduce that dependence.
  3. Global warming. Like it or not, all we can do is control the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere, and hope that others do the same. Hey, maybe we should work up and sign some international treaties to that end. :slight_smile:
  4. The strictures caused by dealing with global warming or peak oil, whichever gets here first. Getting started on squeezing more benefit of whatever sort - heating, cooling, transportation, etc. - out of the same barrel of oil, gallon of gas, ton of coal, kilowatt of electricity, whatever - is and will continue to be advantageous to us. I don’t know about you, but in the course of saving the world, I would prefer to improve rather than diminish my lifestyle. Devising means of getting more lifestyle benefits from less in the way of raw material inputs is the route to that goal.

Then **you **figure out how to get one through Congress.

Like it or not, comparing CAFE standards with the pony you can’t have is a worthless exercise, unless you can show how you can produce the pony.

47

[QUOTE=Dag Otto]
You would do better if you just rode the damn horses. There they are, perfectly good stock animals to do your bidding, and you’re chauffeuring them around town. :wink:
[/QUOTE]
Believe me, if I could just build a corral in the alley behind my bookstore, I’d do it.

[QUOTE=Dag Otto]
Well, that’s because gas taxes to date are used mainly to make more roads for cars. If some of that money were used to make bike paths or even reasonable bike lanes along the roads, then you would have an alternative to driving.
[/QUOTE]
Hear, hear! Sing it, brother!

[QUOTE=xtisme]
I haven’t seen any SUV’s that aren’t at least 5 years old or older that you can get at that price…not here anyway. Maybe where you are from its different.
[/quote]
Well, of course it would be at least five years old. You’re not used to buying used cars on a budget, are you?

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Out of curiosity, what kind of SUV does your wife have? What kind of driving does she do? Is it mostly suburban/highway type driving, or the stop and go driving in a big city?
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Dodge Durango. There’s no such thing as city driving around here. It’s all small towns separated by miles of 60-75mph rural highway.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Unless we are talknig about the rural poor…
[/QUOTE]
Well, that is who I was talking about. Poor folks in the cities don’t have quite the same problems. First of all, they don’t need a car as much, because there’s mass transportation, and you’re much more likely to have a grocery store within walking distance. Secondly, low-income people in a big city aren’t as likely to have a place to park a car anyway.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
…you also have factors like finding a parking place for those monsters.
[/QUOTE]
Another pet peeve of mine. Do I really have to buy another vehicle just for city visits so it will fit into teeny little “compact” parking spaces? And if I do, what will it be? With my 6’4" frame, at least 3/4 of compact cars are too small to sit in comfortably, and if I’m driving into the city, I need a vehicle big enough to carry the whole family plus whatever I’m buying (groceries, 50-pound sacks of dog food, and other potentially large and bulky items). On the rare occasions that I drive an hour to go shopping in my wife’s car, that Durango is full coming home. If I was driving a little compact car, I’d have to rent a trailer or something.

48

Following up on xtisme’s posts upthread, my wife and I drive our primary car about 20,000 miles a year. (We’re really a 1.2 car family, with the .2 car being a 12 year old Saturn that doesn’t get much use.)

At 30 miles a gallon, that’s 667 gallons/year. At 15 miles a gallon, we’d double that consumption. At $3.25/gallon, which is what it costs locally, that’s a differential of $2167/year, with the likelihood of increasing in the short term. Just to make the numbers easier, let’s assume that fuel prices only increase enough to keep unchanged the present value of the future differential. So someone in our situation buying a used car with a 5-year expected remaining reliable lifetime could afford to pay $10,833 more for the energy-efficient used car, minus the additional financing costs. So paying an extra $5000 for that used Toyota Echo rather than the used Ford Expedition would be a bargain.

I think gas prices will have to go through the roof before people pay that much of a premium for the 5 year old Toyota Echo over the 5 year old Ford Expedition, but I could be wrong. I don’t see the latter being cheaper than the former at all at even $5/gallon. But we’ll see.

49

[QUOTE=T_SQUARE]
With record high gas prices and lots of talk about climate change of late, I have heard lots of claims that the government should tighten fuel efficiency standards for auto makers.

If the goal of the policy makers is to reduce CO2 emissions and/or reduce fuel demand, mandated fuel efficiency standards are the wrong way to go about it. Gasoline taxes would work quicker, be easier to implement, and accomplish the underlying goal more effectively.

First, a tax could be implemented immediately and reduce gasoline demand right away. Fuel efficiency talk has at least a lead time of several years. And a tax is easily adjustable.
[/quote]
Well, prices have jumped considerably in the last six months and demand hasn’t slacked off. The price jump is just the same as adding a 50 cent/gallon tax.

The aircraft manufacturers’ customers are large and sophisticated economic entities who are well organized. The automakers’ costomers are an amorphous mass of unsophisticted, and unorganized individuals.

We’ll see. There was a lot of interest in smaller and more efficient vehicles during the fuel shortages of the Carter administration. However, as soon as that was over the public went back to reading ads about how fast the car would go from zero to 60.

It appears to me that poor and middle income people, if they have a car at all, buy it on the basis of whether they can make the payments.

Maybe. It does seem to me that the free-enterprise system encourages producers to do the bare minimum anyway.

Yes, gasoline taxes would reduce people’s standard of living, but high prices for any reason would do the same. One advantage of taxes would be that the money would go to the government instead of oil producers’ profits. I guess maybe that would be desirable.

Maybe policy makers would rather have a continuous pressure on auto producers to improve gas mileage, since greenhouses gasses are a serious problem, rather than rely on the vagaries of the market which are a result of many other things besides environmental effects.

50

Some have suggested that a wholesale switch to diesel-engined cars would solve the situation-this is not clear to me. since diesel fuel contains about 30% more energy (than an equivilent quantity of gasoline), it seems to me, that switching the refineries from gasoline to diesel would create shortages. And, the same amount of crude oil would be required. So long-term, we must bite the bullet and move to smaller cars-12 MPG SUVs just won’t be useable.
What I’ve often wondered; if the American drive could accept lousy acceleration, you could run a large car with a fairly small engine-a 2500 lb. car can cruise at 55 MPH (no hills) witha about a 45 HP engine. if you could have a boost device (to help with acceleration-some kind of energy storage device), we could drive cars with much smaller engines-those big V-8s would not be necessary.

51

Is there any reason to believe that the masses would be able to pressure automakers to make more fuel-efficient cars anyway? We don’t exactly have a union to speak for us. And we’re not like an airline, where relatively little collusion is required to have a large percentage of the customers in the same park.

I think if we raised gas taxes and removed environmental controls, the government would make more money, the consumers would spend more, and carmakers would save a little cost by abandoning research into improving efficiency and reducing pollution, and the environment would make up the difference.

52

Of course the masses can pressure auto makers into making more fuel-efficient cars. They can just stop buying the cars that aren’t fuel efficient. That’ll do it.

53

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Is there any reason to believe that the masses would be able to pressure automakers to make more fuel-efficient cars anyway? We don’t exactly have a union to speak for us.
[/QUOTE]
Those of us that live in representative democracies do. It’s called “government.”

54

Question: why are the rich allowed to drive gas eating mosters?
Take the following vehicles:
Rolls-Royce/Bently: 11 MPH
MASERATI Quattroporte-13 MPG
M-B MAYBACH (500 HP)- 9 MPG
Shouldn’t such veicles be banned?

55

[QUOTE=ralph124c]
Question: why are the rich allowed to drive gas eating mosters?
Take the following vehicles:
Rolls-Royce/Bently: 11 MPH
MASERATI Quattroporte-13 MPG
M-B MAYBACH (500 HP)- 9 MPG
Shouldn’t such veicles be banned?
[/QUOTE]
Poor people are allowed to drive gas eating monsters, too. What do you suppose the gas mileage is on the oil-cloud-spewing 30-year-old Ford Fairlane I was following on the freeway the other day?

56

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Of course the masses can pressure auto makers into making more fuel-efficient cars. They can just stop buying the cars that aren’t fuel efficient. That’ll do it.
[/QUOTE]
Of course without coordination, no individual person will think that their boycotting of cars will pressure the automakers, because a single person’s boycott actually doesn’t have an effect. So, since no such coordination exists or is likely ever to, “the masses” cannot exert pressure on the carmakers this way, since the individual members of the mass accurately don’t believe it can work, and so won’t do it.

If ever the public repugnance against inefficienct and/or polluting cars rises to the level that most persons will individually decide that it is better to go without a car than to own a gas-guzzling monstrosity, then indeed pressure will be put on the automakers. I’m incapable of imagining a scenario where this occurs and the problem hasn’t become too severe to compensate for by merely improving the cars, though.

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Those of us that live in representative democracies do. It’s called “government.”
[/QUOTE]
Okay, I stand corrected. We don’t exactly have a union whose leading members aren’t being paid off by the opposition to speak for us.

Better?

57

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Of course without coordination, no individual person will think that their boycotting of cars will pressure the automakers, because a single person’s boycott actually doesn’t have an effect. So, since no such coordination exists or is likely ever to, “the masses” cannot exert pressure on the carmakers this way, since the individual members of the mass accurately don’t believe it can work, and so won’t do it.

If ever the public repugnance against inefficienct and/or polluting cars rises to the level that most persons will individually decide that it is better to go without a car than to own a gas-guzzling monstrosity, then indeed pressure will be put on the automakers. I’m incapable of imagining a scenario where this occurs and the problem hasn’t become too severe to compensate for by merely improving the cars, though.

[/QUOTE]

Not only that, but I think there are certain items that are a virtual necessity for most people. A home, a telephone, food, water, electricity, transportation, and possibly other things. I suppose you could survive without being able to communicate or move around, but you would be severely restricted in your career choices, and most people would be unable to make a living. In my career as a free-lance musician, it would be impossible for me to make a living without a car. The type of public transportation I would need simply does not exist here. If I decided to go without a car to protest the manufacturers’ policies, I would quickly become destitute, and then wouldn’t be able to afford a car.

As I pointed out earlier, the fact that the most fuel-efficient cars have been selling for thousands of dollars over the sticker price, and requiring people to be on waiting lists, while dealers are offering incentives like free gasoline to move the gas-guzzlers off the lots, indicates to me that manufacturers aren’t very good at getting the message from consumers and acting on it.

58

[QUOTE=lowbrass]
As I pointed out earlier, the fact that the most fuel-efficient cars have been selling for thousands of dollars over the sticker price, and requiring people to be on waiting lists, while dealers are offering incentives like free gasoline to move the gas-guzzlers off the lots, indicates to me that manufacturers aren’t very good at getting the message from consumers and acting on it.
[/QUOTE]
Automobile manufacturers aren’t nimble creatures, they can’t shift their entire manufacturing profile in 6 months to take advantage of the latest rage that may very well change in 6 more months when prices come back down. I can absolutely guarantee that if we knew for a fact that gas prices would be from $3 to $3.50 permanently, we would have vastly different choices on the lots within 2 years.

Frankly the idea that consumers don’t drive what the manufacturers offer is laughable. The car makers would kill to know what you all wanted in cars, because the makers who aren’t making what consumers want are the ones losing billions of dollars a year, while the ones that are (Toyota) are kicking ass and taking names.

59

[QUOTE=Cheesesteak]
Automobile manufacturers aren’t nimble creatures, they can’t shift their entire manufacturing profile in 6 months to take advantage of the latest rage that may very well change in 6 more months when prices come back down. I can absolutely guarantee that if we knew for a fact that gas prices would be from $3 to $3.50 permanently, we would have vastly different choices on the lots within 2 years.

Frankly the idea that consumers don’t drive what the manufacturers offer is laughable. The car makers would kill to know what you all wanted in cars, because the makers who aren’t making what consumers want are the ones losing billions of dollars a year, while the ones that are (Toyota) are kicking ass and taking names.
[/QUOTE]

You would think. But then to this day, Ford’s most efficient car doesn’t even get half the gas-mileage of Toyota’s best. And it’s not like people just started expressing interest last week. This has been going on for several years. If it’s true that car makers are waiting to see if gas prices come down before taking action, it just underscores how sluggish they are to react to the market.

60

[QUOTE=ralph124c]
…if you could have a boost device (to help with acceleration-some kind of energy storage device), we could drive cars with much smaller engines-those big V-8s would not be necessary.
[/QUOTE]
This is precisely what hybrid cars do: the batteries and electric motor provide the boost device. This allows a smaller petro-fueled engine to work with the electric motor to provide the same performace as a larger petro engine alone, even with the additional weight and complexity of the batteries and eklectrical controller.