Let’s Pay Detroit To Bring Their Gas Sipping Cars Home To The U.S.A.
Who hasn’t been enraged to read about how Ford and G.M. can make perfectly good little gas sippers in Europe, but just can’t bring themselves to make a fuel efficient car for us back home?
Well, now that they need some funding from us, here’s an idea. Let’s fund Detroit just to set up their efficient European car factories — back here, where they are really needed. Let’s get some better gas mileage out of their money troubles.
Apparently, it only costs $75 million to completely retool a plant, to produce an efficient little car instead of the gas-guzzling behemoth they were fobbing off on us fools all these years.
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Detroit needs money, and we need efficient vehicles. Let’s make a deal: We taxpayers will provide the funding to retool their factories to build just the specific models that are in the Common Good. We’ll fund retooling to build any models that help solve the climate crisis by getting better than 50 mpg, right now. It’s a win-win.
To make it super quick and easy, let’s forgo NHTSA crash tests on their current European models that already we would die for. After all, that EU is such a nanny state, right, and these gas sippers already passed fussy ECE rules to meet European requirements. Surely those sissy foreign crash-tests are good enough for us back here in the wild wild west: let’s accept their foreign rules. Some hardy soul here has demonstrated that small light fuel efficient cars are actually safe enough.
Our NHTSA crash-testing requirements have kept fuel efficient imports out for decades. And not just fuel efficient foreign cars. Even our own “foreign” cars.
It’s time to just tear down that wall. This would be a quick and easy way to reduce our heavy carbon footprint. Allowing ECE rules could be achieved with a quick stroke of the legislative pen once our first real working majority finally moves in next January. Then all we’d have to do, fellow-funders, is decide which models to fund first to finish fossil fuels fast.
Me? I’d go for any old Ka that gets 56 mpg.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
I say out with the old and in with the new. The Big 3 had their chance and for some reason they squandered it while others did not. Why should we pay for their mistakes with our taxes and no guarantees? The Big 3 are trying to get way with murder and we the taxpayer should not reward them for their misdeeds, misdirection, and mismanagement. I am all for supporting other companies in America that have new ideas, but not the old dilapidated, oversized, Big 3. It’s time the Big 3 pay their dues for their own actions–it’s the American way, why change it now? No need for America to become a corporate welfare nation as the the US Constitution was never written for such matters, nor would its founders approve of such shameful business matters. America loses it dignity should we bail out the Big 3. Either the the Big 3 stand on their own and reap what they have sewn or they do not stand at all. It’s American way. The Big 3 can use the bankruptcy laws as this is what they were written for and we should not allow favoritism to the Big 3 while the common man gets left by the wayside being forced to abide by our laws.
You have a point.
But given that we are going to be paying, anyway, why don’t we get something for our money?
Why would we want to give-up safety laws that took so long to enact? I remember when the US auto industry was struggling to meet pollution laws with catalytic convertors, and Honda met the US laws without one! The Toyota IQ and the Smart cars are safe. You must remember we are still a country laden with oversized vehicles. What you think might be a bargain will be undermined by the insurance required to own a vehicle that is not safe by US standards. Insurance companies have no interest in helping out the average citizen and will charge according to what their data indicates will suffice to protect their interests.
We should all be for reducing our carbon footprint, but not at the expense of safety and through a knee-jerk reaction that will foster more problems than it solves in the long-run. America should be using its braintrust resources to produce what we need, and produce an example to others in the world versus trying to shortcut its way with stopgap solution. America is better than that, much better.
Thanks for the post Susan…
I would only add something to consider. The problem is not oil or the efficiency of the combustion engine, it’s the combustion engine itself. The engine as we know it is a manufacturing nightmare for all auto companies. It doesn’t scale (non modular) requires extensive supply chains, limits design of vehicles (loss 1/3rd of chassis) and does nothing to reduce the # of factories that can operate at maximum capacity.
I think the future ‘carrot’ should be - retire the combustion engine. End it’s era as the platform, don’t try to improve it or squeeze more out.
I’ve written a number of pieces on ways to rethink this problem– and start to look at how auto makers can change their entire revenue stream by separating construction of the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ of the vehicle using advanced electric motors using a combination of batteries, fuel cells and capacitors with drive by wire systems.
http://www.theenergyroadmap.com/futureblogger/show/1272-the-future-of-the-us-auto-industry-
Thanks for the post!! It’s important that new standards get set for Detroit…
I’m just concerned that we’re going to try to make them build a better buggy whip… than enable a new platform. They don’t have a problem with CAFE standards, they have too many factories. So let’s cut out the mechanical heat engine- and grab a hold of more modular electric motor systems and new energy storage devices.
Best
Garry G
Editor
TheEnergyRoadmap.com
http://www.theenergyroadmap.com
Oh, totally agreed re the better buggywhip: and you will never meet more of an EV-angelist than me from way back.
But… real innovation will not come quickly from these behemoths. Adaptation is the best we can expect from such bureaucratic organizations, and in the meantime, all the EV start-ups (and Mitsubishi and Nissan and Mini E etc) will get us to the real future.
But when I saw yesterday at autobloggreen that it only costs $75 million to retool, I thought, since we are paying them anyway…
We are county who unwilling to make machcanal improvement. We bend flood by expensive electrical alternatives and shortcuts. I see alot untapp portenail in combustion engine still. We should have cars that get 75 m.p.g. hower such teck is conversail and atuo enginers don’t understand it and Electrical enginers hate it.
We’re one technology break through away from leading a revolution in the auto industry. If GM can sell a few of its plants to Catepillar or John Deere or any company expected to fulfill the demand for the expected massive infrastructure re-built in the USA, and then invest everything into Nano research, maybe a portfolio of companies, to make the next generation of super-batteries — that will give a sizeable share of the market in electric cars, where battery life is the last great obstacle to mass market adoption.
Here’s my question.
Can the big 3 count foreign manufactured cars when calculating CAFE standards? If not, allowing them to count any of these high mileage foreign built cars that they sell in the US towards the CAFE requirement ought to have all three US automakers importing plenty of these cars. As the author points out, the crash test standard is one impediment. The EPA emission standards are another impediment.
The fact that the US automakers don’t import these cars or make them here makes me suspect that they cannot pass the US safety and environmental regulations. I know that Europeans do not require safety glass in car windshields. I would not be that confident in the European nanny staters. Their legislators and bureaucrats seem even more susceptible to bribery and influence peddlers than our own, and that is saying something.
Mark; an eyeopening read that might change your mind about this - the classic on relative auto safety used the text for graduate courses by a former GM safety researcher - Leonard Evans: “Traffic Safety and the Driver”
http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Safety-Driver-Leonard-Evans/dp/0442001630
includes interesting background on how we came to have the NHTSA rules;
“US vehicle equipment and construction regulations are based almost entirely on SAE standards, which were written almost entirely by US automakers.
Some question whether the results of this regulatory philosophy and practice support a safety-related basis for the prohibition on ECE vehicles.
The sizable auto safety lead enjoyed by the USA since the 1960s had slowed by 2002, with the US improvement percentages at 16th place (behind Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland) in terms of deaths per thousand vehicles.
In terms of deaths per 100 million miles, the USA had dropped from first place to tenth place.
With the partial exception of Canada, all of the countries achieving better safety results either require or permit vehicles built to comply with the ECE regulations, not the US regulations.”
from his book via Wikipedia
Susan, It is really nice to see that someone with a wider distribution than I have has read my posts and is spreading the word.
The biggest problem that I see is that the Senior Senator from my state, Harry Reid will most likely join with Nancy Pelosi and they will do their best to prevent this idea from coming to pass or at the minimum place so many controls on it that it will be completely unprofitable.
Don’t forget, they are socialists and this is a capitalistic idea.