Say, can we stay on topic here about auto milage standards?
Fascinating as it may be to others, it’s not really interesting to me to talk about years of politically-minded posters disagreeing - perhaps a different thread?
I think the government already decided to do that with the auto bailouts, that’s a different issue than what our fuel economy standards are.
Except that the divisions of those same companies do this when they market in other countries, don’t they? Maybe Ford needs to bring some of the marketing expertise from its European or Asian operations back to the US. They’ll still need to explore new marketing turf since American culture is not universal, but I don’t see this as a good argument in favor of lax fuel efficiency standards.
As the cover of National Geographic a couple years ago famously observed, we’re at the end of cheap oil anyway.
The political will to place such a tax in the United States does not exist, therefore politicians choose the easier method of CAFE standards as an alternative. I don’t understand how you think the political will can magically appear if they’ve already tacitly admitted they don’t have it by using CAFE standards as a substitute.
Again, raising the fuel standards means that cars will on average use less gasoline in the future. Gas prices will have to rise from some other factor, as decreasing demand* does not raise prices.
*Effectively only decreasing the rate at which demand rises, in practical terms.
You seem to be conflating things that are not closely related:
Raising CAFE standards does not commit the government to additional bailouts of auto companies. Read the text of the law, if you like, it’s not in there. Besides, the government already bails out auto companies without raising CAFE - see December 2008, December 1979.
Raising CAFE standards does not commit the government to additional fuel taxes. Read the text of the law, again, it’s not in there. Instead, CAFE standards are in the U.S., a substitute policy since we lack the political ability to impose the kinds of fuel taxes Europe and Japan have.
The cost of driving will not be lower because fuel taxes will increase to match miles driven. If we have a parity of fuel tax to miles driven then the increase of the price of the car will make it more expensive.
The other factor in this equation is the price of diesel fuel. Currently it cost more per gallon than gasoline. American cars will gravitate toward diesels because of the load demands. Luxury cars will all be turbo-diesels as well as light trucks and soccer mom van/station wagons. We’re already starting to see the changes now from VW and Honda.
Public demand for diesel fuel will spur on bio-diesel technology and if that occurs we will have energy independence.
While some lighter cars have worse safety than heavier cars, this isn’t a necessary correlation. There are plenty of fuel efficient cars with five-star safety. They do tend to be more expensive. So I think it’s probably the case that some safety will be sacrificed for fuel efficiency around the margins.
But the question is the cost-benefit analysis. About the same number of people die premature deaths each year because of transportation-related pollution (around 30,000) as because of traffic accidents (37,000). Of course, the aggregate figures don’t tell you the result of marginal changes resulting from sacrificing bulk for fuel efficiency, but it is a pretty safe guess that more lives will be saved–and it is a sure thing if you add into consideration the human cost of dependency on foreign oil and climate change.
In short, decreasing the amount of oil burnt in the US in a no-brainer, even if it results in more traffic fatalities. It would be MUCH preferable to do this by a carbon tax that is kicked back to small businesses and poor consumers. But like I said, the GOP has killed that possibility.
Perhaps I’m letting my anger in the “It’s about safety” argument get in the way of making my point.
Person A says he wants a safe car, so he gets a Ford Large Protective Cage. Person B is now surrounded by Ford LPCs, so he gets a Toyota Hulking Behemoth, which is 10% larger and therefore safer. Person C is now surrounded by Behemoths, so he gets an Abrams Tank.
Short of the Abrams, none of them are going to do a bit of good against a semi.
Meanwhile, if all of them were driving a Camry, they’d all be reasonably safe.
Think about where the electricity comes from to power the power steering and A/C compressor. Unless you have a really long cord that goes to the nearest hydro-electric plant the electricity will be generated onboard the car by the alternator which gets its energy from the crankshaft via a pulley which gets its energy from burning gasoline.
Now since the conversion from mechanical to electrical is not 100% efficient there will be losses inherent in the system.
True last month, not true at the moment. Diesel has been 4-5 cents cheaper than regular unleaded locally. I attribute this partially to our currently soft economy, since trucks, ships and trains all largely run on diesel (planes pretty much do too). In the few years that I have owned diesels, the price usually seems to lag behind gasoline in both its rise and fall, but usually is within 15-20 cents per gallon of regular unleaded. Since diesels usually get about 25% better fuel mileage than a comparable gasoline engine, the price really has to get to 25% more than gasoline for the economics to even out between them. Biodiesel can help keep the price down, but the problems of making fuel from a foodstuff kind of bother me. A non-foodstuff source of it would solve that problem, though.
I am not surprised that the automakers haven’t really complained about this. The tech already exists in Europe. It fits in with Ford’s current strategy of (again) trying to unify their model lineup across the globe. This would be cheaper due to economies of scale at least in the design stage. The tech hurdle of having the engines qualified for EPA acceptance lacks mostly just the act of doing it. The only real hurdle is buyer acceptance. In the past, Americans did not seem to want to drive the vehicles that Europe and Japan drove, at least not enough for American manufacturers to change over wholesale. Gasoline at 4$ a gallon changed a lot of that, and as long as our economy picks up again, it’s likely to head that way in the future.
And I would just like to take this time out to say: Yay turbochargers! You (volumetrically) get a small engine when you need a small engine, and a big engine when you need a big engine. I am on my 4th turbocharged vehicle in a row with no problems. 2 of them already meet the 2016 standards for fuel efficiency. 1 only does that on the freeway, with your foot out of it. The 4th got 30% better mileage than the normally aspirated version, and had more torque. Which was important, since it was a 3/4 ton truck. The technology is already quite available to the car makers.
What do you mean “your current car?” She said in her quote she uses vans, not cars.
I will agree though, if you had a way to get a bunch of water heaters in a small car it would definitely move it. For that matter so would a cart with a horse pulling it. I think for someone dealing with plumbing supplies a bigger issue is that vans can carry more things because there is more cargo space, not that the van is a more powerful vehicle and can thus move more weight.
Anyway, I think ignoring the impact on the commercial sector is definitely short sighted.
Hardly scare mongering. I don’t doubt that there are materials that can cut the weight AND increase safety. But, how long before they are affordable? The CAFE standards are not going to wait until safe, cheap, AND light material is available. Government says “Do it NOW” and the car companies will use lighter materials that are less safe
Ahh, but you are not spinning that extra pulley and extra length of belt when you aren’t using the devices, so you gain from the elimination of some parasitic loss. Unless you are turning the wheel or running the a/c unit, the power steering pump and a/c compressor are not needed. Even in TX, I don’t run the a/c in my car at all for 8 months out of the year, and even when I am the compressor is not working 100% of the time. Plus, you now get to push the car down the road with the extra power.
The AC compressor on my car runs pretty much 100% of the time as it has automatic climate control and as such it is designed like many new cars to run this way.
I agree, I find it distasteful that someone felt the need to get off topic in the very first response to the OP.
I can only assume you are aware that in our society nothing is “self contained.” Do you not understand that every thing has consequences, sometimes good, sometimes bad. I’m not talking about the “strict text” of the legislation, and why would I limit myself thus?
I bring up the bailouts because Detroit will not be able to develop cars to meet these standards without major support from the government. No, nothing in the text mandates it, but if the government actually wants to see it done then I can guarantee you it most certainly does have to help Detroit with this. It may be worth helping Detroit to get higher fuel economy, I’m undecided on that. What I’m not undecided on is the ability of several companies that are either swirling the drain or already down the drain to develop a lot of new fuel efficient cars sufficient to meet these standards sans outside help.
Small, fuel efficient cars don’t sell in Europe because of marketing. They sell because of the economic realities in Europe. Gas taxes keep prices at the pump high, you’d be an idiot to drive a big gas guzzler in Europe–or you’d be rich (or both.)
I’m not making an argument in favor of “lax fuel efficiency standards” I’m simply saying I do not think Ford, GM, or Chrysler will be able to move European-style cars in the United States unless prices at the pump are high enough to motivate Americans to buy these sort of cars. The automakers here in America have engaged in a 60+ year marketing campaign that focuses on the idea of an “American car”, how do you reverse that in 7 years time? You can’t undo the concepts people grew up with, that generations of people grew up with. Not in 7 years time.
Maybe, maybe not. The issue isn’t whether we are at the end of cheap oil but whether we reach a point where gas prices change consumers car purchasing habits in the next few years or if that is a decades down the road. If the market naturally leads us to having consistent gas prices above say, $4/gal then I think the Detroit automakers will do quite well at selling small, fuel efficient cars here in the United States. But if that isn’t the situation they will not do well at selling these cars and to get them on the road we’ll have to manipulate consumer behavior by artificially raising price at the pump or we’ll have to subsidize the automakers for the big losses they take.
Well, here’s the thing. Let’s say the leaders of our country at the Federal level think every child should learn a second language. They mandate that to receive any Federal schools funding State schools must give all of their students a second-language curriculum such that they can speak a second language by High School graduation. However, they provide no additional Federal funding to hire new foreign language teachers, buy more textbooks for an increased number of foreign language classes and et cetera. It’s an “unfunded mandate” not an unheard of concept in our federal system (though the example I just gave is extreme and unrealistic.)
I bring it up because of this. The government can do all sorts of things, it can proclaim it wants certain mpg average. But if the private companies simply cannot remain solvent and meet these standards then the government has to step in to help them, period. The automakers aren’t like the Federal government, they can’t just spend billions of dollars that doesn’t exist, in a relatively short period of time this leads to bankruptcy and collapse of the corporation.
Here’s the thing, Detroit sells small fuel efficient cars at a loss right now, to meet CAFE standards. They make money on the less fuel efficient cars and we’re essentially forcing them to sell the highly efficient cars at a loss (because there has not been enough consumer demand to move them otherwise), the current standards are something like 27 mpg. At 35.5 mpg in 2016 Detroit will have to do two things:
Work to make their less fuel efficient vehicles more fuel efficient. This is a good thing, we can all agree.
Sell an even larger portion of their sales at a loss in order to meet CAFE standards.
I think we all want to see Detroit selling more fuel efficient cars, but without the demand for these vehicles at a certain point, then Detroit has to sell them at a loss, they have to cut price below what is sustainable to move the vehicle.
Can Detroit profit from selling these cars? Sure, and they will, when they can charge a high price because people are willing to pay a premium for fuel efficiency, but people will only pay a premium for fuel efficiency if the price at the pump is high. Toyota made a killing with its hybrids during the high gas prices we saw a few years ago, Detroit was still trying to sell SUVs and got slammed for it. Unfortunately for the Detroit automakers interest in fuel efficiency has gone down just as they have started reacting to the high gas prices several years ago.
We are in complete agreement that gas prices will have to rise by some means other than the market, though–that is in fact my point.
Making companies less profitable means that in a few years the government will be faced with the same situation it faced recently: let the big automakers fail or bail them out. History suggests we will not let them fail, so while you are correct that we are not statutorily committing to future bailouts, if we create a climate in which we reduce the profitability of U.S. automakers then we are obviously creating a situation that will lead to future bailouts.
Correct, we are not statutorily committing to higher fuel taxes. However, again, if we actually want Detroit to sell these cars at a profit, we have to raise fuel taxes. We can certainly force Detroit to sell more fuel efficient cars, that is exactly what CAFE does. What we cannot do solely through CAFE regulations is change what the public is willing to pay for small, fuel efficient cars. The trend so far has been that Detroit must sell these cars at a loss in order to meet CAFE standards, while they sell less fuel efficient vehicles at a greater profit–ideally enough that they remain profitable across the board.
My simple question is this: What do we do if Americans don’t want to buy smaller, fuel efficient cars at a price which is profitable for the automakers?
We can:
Say that is the problem of the automakers. They will respond by of course lowering the price of these fuel efficient cars into unprofitability, with the aim of selling enough of the cars that people ARE willing to pay a nice price for so that they still make profit as a company. I find it doubtful that given their current situation any of these companies will be able to do this.
Say “we need to help the automakers out” which means subsidizing them so they can afford to sell the product at a loss.
Say “we need to change the minds of the public” which means raising the price of gasoline through artificial manipulations.
I’m not actually opposed to such a gas tax, to be honest. I’m all for higher taxes when it makes sense.
One thing I was unaware of when I wrote one of my earlier posts is that CAFE standards only apply to cars and light trucks, so luckily it will not affect major freight movers.
I do wonder how this impacts companies that primarily use light trucks in their business, though. Contractors, people of that nature often work out of such vehicles and I can’t necessarily agree that pushing their companies into insolvency is a good thing on a nation-wide level.
“Historically, it is the sales-weighted harmonic mean fuel economy, expressed in miles per gallon (mpg), of a manufacturer’s fleet of current model year passenger cars or light trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 8,500 pounds (3,856 kg) or less, manufactured for sale in the United States.”
It doesn’t mean they will necessarily have to manufacture fewer gas guzzlers, it just means they may have to manufacture more high-efficiency cars at a loss in order to allow them to sell more gas guzzlers. Or they could focus on creating a very high fuel efficiency vehicle (say 50mpg +) and selling it at a big loss.
Something else to keep in mind is the NHTSA has serious concerns about the increased risk of fatalities in small cars. How do we weigh that against environmentalism and dependence on foreign oil?
The NHTSA (which is not a political entity) actually came out suggesting fuel-economy of 32 mpg by 2015, and said that they felt spending above that should go towards vehicle safety as any high efficiency standards would not be ideal in that time frame. The “30,000” figure for transportation-related pollution is also obviously not as firm a number as the 37,000 traffic accident deaths.
We know for sure what killed someone who dies in a fatal car accident. We’re playing statistical games and making some suppositions when we determine what caused someone to get cancer or emphysema or such.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “statistical games” when talking about epidemiology. More importantly, attributing traffic deaths to vehicle weight involves the same statistical assumptions.
That NHTSA thought we could do 32 mpg by 2015 seems to underscore my point that the safety cost of increasing fuel efficiency will be much lower than the safety benefits of the policy when considering air pollution, climate change, and oil dependency.
I have one of those as well. The fan is not the compressor. A/C compressors are actually less likely to run 100% of the time with an automatic climate control, because it only runs when it actually has to cool the system. The a/c in your house has a similar setup, it just doesn’t run the fan 100% of the time like your car does, unless you have the fan set to “on” in your house.
In older auto systems the a/c compressor only ran 100% of the time when you had the a/c set on MAX. The rest of the time, it would cycle on and off. Unless you are running around in heat that requires the compressor to run 100% of the time (this does not happen every month, even in central TX) you’d be freezing in your car when it wasn’t that hot, or it would be insufficient to keep you cool when it was.
