Obama wants 35.5 MPG fleet average by 2016
President Barack Obama has his own idea of how to fix the auto industry, and part of that plan is to increase the federal fleet fuel consumption average to 35.5 MPG by 2016. The plan calls for incremental increases of 5% per year from 2012 to 2016, and the standard is nationalized, putting an end to the costly legal battle that California and several other states have been waging to use their own stricter MPG requirements. The plan will supposedly reduce domestic oil consumption by some 1.8 billion barrels, and for the first time the EPA will be required to measure the contaminants coming from a cars exhaust pipe.
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Cars will be required to get an average of 42 mpg, and vehicles classified as trucks need to achieve just 26 mpg, only a 2 mpg bump over the current fleet average of 24. American companies will have the hardest time meeting these goals, especially with Chrysler bankrupt and GM teetering on the brink and both under de facto government control. Obama also wants to introduce tax incentives to buying these new green vehicles, as Americans have displayed time and again a preference for big, gas guzzling autos.
Personally, I feel like this initiative will take money and attention away from the development of alternative-energy vehicles as companies struggle to meet the mandate. This means a lot of cheap, tiny cars which American automakers struggle to make even the slimmest profits on. But more than that, politicians should not be allowed to make cars. Do you really want a politician deciding how much headroom you get?
According to Obama, “Everybody wins.” Well, everybody except the people who need or want a bigger car.
Is innovation a zero sum game? I don’t know if you’re familiar with bankruptcy proceedings, but it involves taking underutilized assets and selling them to people who will make more efficient use of them. This is the American Way, my friend, and if I could fault Obama for one thing, it’s that he’s been propping up moribund incompetents at GM - and Chrysler. I suppose the CAFE standards are an attempt to counterbalance this.
The union babble that jobs would be lost is also non-sense. What’s lost is the right to large pensions and $45/hr rates. Somebody will buy the assets, hire the people at a more reasonable rate, and off we go. That’s how it works. How is an auto worker divinely entitled to more than the average US worker?
Again, there is no economical or physical immediacy whatsoever between increased mileage standards and smaller cars. Yield, or efficiency, breaks that imperative.
Some of the biggest cars in the world come from those countries you refer to (Italy, France, Germany), and they are made for people with money. Sat in a Porsche Cayenne lately, or a Maserati? Yes, people who don’t have money don’t get to drive really big cars. There is no inherent right to drive big expensive cars, it is an earned privilege.
Finally, as the efficiency curve continues to go up, and you will get to drive your Hummer at only a fraction of its energy consumption. However, it will be made by a chinese company, because they pay attention to things like that.
If you can afford a Maserati, you can afford $10 a gallon gas. For the rest of us?
Also, how do you “earn” the privilege to drive a big car?
This isn’t going to increase fuel efficiency because the technology improves, but because cars will get smaller. Again, I refer to Europe, because while they do have some big cars, a majority of the population that does drive gets around in econo-boxes.
35 miles per gallon is an insult to the rest of the world, what is happening here is, the larger american cars are going to be made to do the millage here.
Why on earth make a 3.5 or larger engine do 35 to the gallon, when some of the very best models are already available and do double that now.
You could apply the magnificent German engineering and use it instead of making a new design and wasting billions.
Getting from A to B is what we are all doing, the speed limit is never adheared to, why make an engine produce 200 plus bhp when a 1000cc engine with at least 65 would do the trick and give you more than double 35.
You make me LOL