CAFE standards - why not raise them?

[Professor Frink]

I hear a lot about CAFE standards, being in southern Michigan where the economy relies so much on the auto industry. Every time someone talks about raising the CAFE (average fuel efficiency) standards, there is an uproar from the auto makers.

Is the uproar because they don't want to spend the extra money designing better engines/emissions, because they are making too much money on monster trucks? What's the problem?

Frink

 

[rockoon]

I hear a lot about CAFE standards, being in southern Michigan where the economy relies so much on the auto industry. Every time someone talks about raising the CAFE (average fuel efficiency) standards, there is an uproar from the auto makers.

Is the uproar because they don't want to spend the extra money designing better engines/emissions, because they are making too much money on monster trucks? What's the problem?

Frink

Stricter CAFE standards will increase air pollution. Its yin/yang.

One group of busy bodies wants the cars to be more efficient while the other says to hell with efficiency we have to make them cleaner. Because both busy-body groups get their way from time to time, the auto manufactuters have every right to be a little annoyed about it.

It's like me asking you to conserve water but shower three times a day.

 

[Chaos]

Re: Re: CAFE standards - why not raise them?

Stricter CAFE standards will increase air pollution. Its yin/yang.

...snip...

How´s that? I´d think if cars are more efficient, they use less fuel, thus causing less pollution, not more.

 

[arcticpenguin]

I think the monster trucks question was right on. American consumers want to drive huge, inefficient monster SUVs. The automakers want to make money by selling them those huge SUVs.

I'm going to cross-link here to another thread. Toyota had some press events last week discussing how affordably they could make gas/electric hybrid cars. GM responded by claiming the hydrogen fuel cell cars will eventually dominate the market. But they don't sell them today, and they don't sell hybrids today. They'd rather release a statement than an efficient car.

 

[rockoon]

Re: Re: Re: CAFE standards - why not raise them?

How´s that? I´d think if cars are more efficient, they use less fuel, thus causing less pollution, not more.

Well to be quite honest there is more than one way to make a vehicle more efficient. The cheapest way is to make the vehicle lighter. The most expensive method is to reduce friction in the moving parts of the vehicle. Neither of these methods will appeal to consumers for one reason or another. Nobody wants cars to be more expensive and they dont want them to be light-weight deathtraps either.

The consumer will go for another option and the trucking industry is already doing it. They use deisel engines. Its more efficient, at the expense of being less friendly to the environment.

 

[xouper]

arcticpenguin: I think the monster trucks question was right on. American consumers want to drive huge, inefficient monster SUVs. The automakers want to make money by selling them those huge SUVs.

And why is this a bad thing? You aren't one of those anti-SUV bigots like Cain, are you?

 

[WildCat]

Ah, more SUV bashing. Last week I saw an anti-SUV sticker on a car. It was the letters "SUV" w/ a red circle around it and a slash through it. The car? A BMW 325i, gets 19 mpg city. I'd bet many SUV's get better mileage than that.

And why doesn't the anti-SUV crowd ever rag on mini-vans? They get the same poor gas mileage.

 

[Cain]

Apparently I'm an anti-SUV bigot. Interesting choice of words from a notorious red-baiter (and SUV apologist).


http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19403&highlight=antiSUV

Xouper- We have more in common than what may first meet the eye-- both our avatars feature brilliant left-wing scientists (socialists, in fact),

Professor Frink: isnt' it almost always about the money? See Keith Brashder's _High and Mighty_ for a critical examination of the industry.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I wonder what percent of the automotive pollution in a large city is caused by the cars, and what percent by the trucks and busses?

(I think most people who are annoyed by SUVs are annoyed for reasons other than gas mileage.)

~~ Paul

 

[Bikewer]

There have been a number of discussions on this topic on various NPR shows I listen to, and it all gets rather complicated.

Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles sound attractive, if they can develop a good infrastructure for moving hydrogen around. But how do you generate hydrogen? The two plans put forward the most often are to extract it from.....guess now......petroleum.

The second is to use electricity to extract it from water. Of course, you have to generate the electricity....

We understand that highly efficient diesel engines are in development, but who knows how far down the line.

Alchohol from biomass is another attractive-sounding scheme, and makes farmers happy. But, the energy needed to convert grain into alchohol is considerable. Alchohol has less total energy than gasoline, so fuel mileage tends to go down in terms of mpg.

Seems to me that this will have to be a multi-pronged approach, at best. We're a large country, with an infrastructure built around the automobile. It's going to be a big job.

 

[xouper]

Cain: Apparently I'm an anti-SUV bigot. Interesting choice of words from a notorious red-baiter (and SUV apologist).

Touche.

http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19403&highlight=antiSUV

Seems I never did post my rebuttal to your last post in that thread. Dang. I had lots of good stuff to refute many of the claims you made. Oh, well, maybe another time.

Xouper- We have more in common than what may first meet the eye-- both our avatars feature brilliant left-wing scientists (socialists, in fact),

I didn't choose my avatar for his political or social views, but for the irreverent tongue, which I like to imagine was firmly in his cheek a few instants earlier.

Professor Frink: isnt' it almost always about the money? See Keith Brashder's _High and Mighty_ for a critical examination of the industry.

Thank you for the recommendation. I'll add it to my list of books to read.

 

[Professor Frink]

Rockoon, I still haven't heard a reason why stricter CAFE would mean more pollution. It is interesting to hear, though, about having lighter cars and/or better engineering of the parts WITHIN the car.

I always knew it was about money - I'm too cynical to think any other way about big business. I think that part of the problem with the detroit automakers is that for many of the CAFE standards, the foreign jobs already meet stricter standards - Honda, Toyota, etc. make their living off of smaller cars with great gas mileage. Detroit doesn't, so if the standards go up, Detroit will have to change their cars, costing money, and foreign companies won't.

Detroit automakers also say that they reason they're losing so much money is the vested pension plans, that the foreign automakers either don't have them, or else they have them (the ones producing in the US) and they're small since they have only been doing it for a couple of years. Will pension plans bring down the automakers, all of them, eventually?

Frink

 

[Agammamon]

Re: Re: Re: Re: CAFE standards - why not raise them?

. . .Well to be quite honest there is more than one way to make a vehicle more efficient. The cheapest way is to make the vehicle lighter. . .Nobody wants cars to be more expensive and they dont want them to be light-weight deathtraps either. . .

And this seems to be the route manufacturers are going for now. Perhaps not what the legislature intended but it certainly seems that it is cheaper to reduce the mass of the vehicle (reducing it's body strength) that to try to develop more efficient engines.

The auto industry has been able to rely on the research and expertise acquired by a wide range of companies in regards to increasing strength/mass ratios (spreading the R/D costs around) but not many outside of auto manufacturers care enough about the efficiency of I/C engines to pour the money into improvements.

 

[Agammamon]

Ah, more SUV bashing. Last week I saw an anti-SUV sticker on a car. It was the letters "SUV" w/ a red circle around it and a slash through it. The car? A BMW 325i, gets 19 mpg city. I'd bet many SUV's get better mileage than that.

And why doesn't the anti-SUV crowd ever rag on mini-vans? They get the same poor gas mileage.

Or 2-seat sportscars? I can get a whole 21 MPG in the city (rarely exceed 19 tho').

 

[Larspeart]

Hey Fink! I'm from Southeastern Michigan too!

Small world! Lets drive our seperate SUV's while on cruise control to meet each other, drink coffee made in an explotative 3rd world country while dining on some endangered species, and throwing cigarette butts in the sewer!

Or, we can just /wave to each other.

 

[Dragonrock]

The reason often given for CAFE standards increasing pollution is because it makes cars more expensive so people keep their old, smoke-belching, rust bucket because they can't afford a new car.

The same is true of certain forms of manufacturing. Bush raised tarrifs on steel imports to increase the usage of domestic steel. The reason people use imports is because domestics suck. The reason domestics suck is because the manufacturing plants are filled with 30 year old equipment. The reason the equipment is so old is because right now the plants are grandfathered in with the pollution standards and they can't afford the new pollution controls that would be required if they upgrade. So, all Bush's tarrifs did was increase the price of products and generate money for the feds.

I've heard that what auto manufacturers are doing is building underpriced POS cars that get very high gas milage to raise the average of their fleets. The loss they take on the small cars is made up in higher prices for the larger cars and SUVs. Perhaps if CAFE standards were removed and the only thing measured was emissions then car prices might balance a little and emissions might go down.

 

[jimlintott]

I have a simple solution. Put speed limiters in trucks (and many SUVs) at say 65 mph (about 110kmh). This will have two effects. Most obviously it will slow down many trucks. This saves fuel. Second it will make them less desirable for day to day transportation and will move a large part of their market back to cars which are safer and generally more fuel efficient.

I can't say I blame the auto manufacturers for not wanting to build vehicles that their customers don't seem to want. Not good business.

 

[daver]

I have a simple solution. Put speed limiters in trucks (and many SUVs) at say 65 mph (about 110kmh).

And it will increase the number of accidents when someone can no longer get out of the way.

 

[Bikewer]

Re: Dragonrocks comment about folks keeping old cars cause' they can't afford new ones....Here in the St. louis area, we have in excess of 20,000 licence validation stickers stolen every year.

That gives you some idea of how many cars are on the road that could not pass inspection. With no functional mass transit in many cities (including ours, but they're trying) poor folks have severe problems in this regard.
To make matters worse, most of the jobs are out in the surrounding counties, which makes commuting a necessity.

 

[tracer]

The consumer will go for another option and the trucking industry is already doing it. They use deisel engines. Its more efficient, at the expense of being less friendly to the environment.

Um ... I thought CAFE requirements only applied to gasoline-powered vehicles.