In case you were wondering how U.S. automakers could meet presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's ambitious plan to raise Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to 55 mpg by 2030, Wall Street Journal columnist Joseph P. White's got your answer. Actually, his solutions come from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). White joins the chorus of environmental campaigners quoting liberally from "Factor of Two: Halving the Fuel Consumption of New Automobiles by 2035." "Consumers will have to accept little further improvements in acceleration performance, a large fraction of new light-duty vehicles sold must be propelled by alternative powertrains, and vehicle weight must be reduced by 20% to 35% from today." So go slow, go hybrid and go on a diet. White then shares one of the report's case studies. "A hypothetical Camry that weighed 2,525 pounds (1,148 kg), and had a 1.4 liter, 128-horsepower engine could accelerate to 60 miles per hour in 9.2 seconds, but would average 42 miles per gallon (5.5 liters per 100 km.) The same exercise applied to a Ford F-150 pickup would produce a vehicle that weighs 877 pounds less than today's vehicle, gets around on a 162 horsepower engine and averages 27 mpg, compared with 17.3 mpg today." White concludes his diatribe by dismissing Ye Olde Lutzian industry cost kvetching– and completely fails to mention safety. Side note: I'd LOVE to see White driving a Messerschmitt into Manhattan.
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I actually agree with this.
Think about the cars coming out in 1984. V8s were pumping out 140hp fergodsakes. Anything doing 0-60 in less than 10 seconds was conisidered fast.
Nowadays, 4-bangers pumping out 160hp are merely “adequete” and 0-60 in 7 seconds is merely “meh”.
Now, what if they put that level of progress into fuel economy?
Face it, the cars today are fast enough, powerful enough, solid enough, and safe enough. Let’s concentrate on making them less thirsty for a while.
I’m with Blunozer here.
Not to mention that not only are lighter vehicles easier to steer and brake, thus increasing their active safety. And that since most vehicles would be lighter, they will cause less damage to others in case of an accident, thus increasing safety as well.
Unless one is going to a track, one does not need 200+hp in a passenger car.
Actually, it’s all do-able, at a reasonable cost, too. Why do I say that? Well, for one, we’ve gone down this road before (and the Detroit 3 were kicking and screaming the whole time, Chrysler nearly died, so did Ford). Back in the 1970’s, cars started to down-size, the 1980’s saw front wheel drive and further down-sizing, with great gains in efficiency. The 1973 US new car fleet (NOT trucks – cars) got about 11 miles per gallon, the so-called economy champions, AMC’s best, the Gremlin, did only about 18-20 mpg.
Then Detroit lost their way in the 1990’s, and started piling weight and higher performance onto everything, the Europeans certainly did, as well as the Japanese and even South Koreans.
My wife’s prole 2007 Hyundai Sonata four cylinder (163 horsepower) will do 60 mile per hour in about 9.5 seconds, with an automatic, air conditioning, etc. – and it will go 125 miles per hour in a state with speed limits not exceeding 70 (and actual driving speeds near Detroit not exceeding 95 – usually).
Back when I was a kid, my dad bought a new 1964 Rambler Classic V8, 198 (old SAE) horsepower (about equivalent to 150 hp now), automatic, radio, heater (no power steering, no power brakes – in fact they were drum brakes, no air conditioning of course – only the doctors and lawyers with Lincolns or Caddies had that). It got about 17 mpg tops, averaged about 15mpg, did 0-60 in about 11 seconds (pretty peppy for a family car), and topped out at about 105, per the book. My wife’s modern car is nearly twice as efficient. My Prius is nearly four times as efficient – has the same room as that ’64 AND better performance.
Those are the engineering feats we need to have the auto companies work on, not 0-60 in .4 less of a second (like anyone can zoom up to 60 anyway – so much frickin’ traffic, but that’s another story).
Think about the cars coming out in 1984.
Thank you so much for bringing up such a painful subject. While you’re at it, why don’t you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it?
My point is CAFE only focuses on supply, not demand. The only way to bring about such changes is through tax policy. If gasoline is expensive enough, then cars with 1984 performance standards but outstanding fuel economy will become more attractive. If we really want cars to evolve, it requires a substantial increase in taxes at the pump. Demand for fuel efficient vehicles will rise and the automakers will respond or perish. The problem is not technological so much as it is political. Trying to improve fuel economy by controlling supply is a fool’s errand that makes sense only to those who rely on votes to make a living.
I actually agree with this.
Think about the cars coming out in 1984. V8s were pumping out 140hp fergodsakes. Anything doing 0-60 in less than 10 seconds was conisidered fast.
Nowadays, 4-bangers pumping out 160hp are merely “adequete” and 0-60 in 7 seconds is merely “meh”.
Now, what if they put that level of progress into fuel economy?
Face it, the cars today are fast enough, powerful enough, solid enough, and safe enough. Let’s concentrate on making them less thirsty for a while.
You can’t really call it progress when in 1964, we had V8’s pumping out 340 horsepower.
The main problem is government telling us what to buy, then it’s all downhill from there. Let 3 dollar gallon gas dictate what we buy, not the geniuses in washington.
Why would we let them set such policy or make any decisions about minimum fuel economy when they can’t manage the budget effectively? Since they fail to see what costs truly are, they are blind to the costs of this “new” technology on the rest of us.
“Go slow” is hardly a fair characterization, unless you consider present performance standards “slow.” I, for one, do not — I find them more than adequate and usually a bit zippy (in a fun way — thinking back to the Mazda3 I rented overseas recently).
After all, the language used was that we should accept “little further improvements in acceleration performance,” not backsliding in acceleration performance. The idea is things will level out, not go backwards. So if things are not slow now, and they stay the same way into the future, they will not be slow then, unless you have an expectation of inflation — acceleration should always improve by 3% every year, and if it does not, then it has fallen behind somehow. Which I think may be a silly sort of expectation to have.
Ironically, the “hypothetical” 2525 lb. Camry with a 1.4L 128hp engine is not far from the 1989 Camry: 2690 lbs., 2.0L I-4 developing 115 hp. How many modern technologies can be substituted (or stuffed) into that envelope to ensure a modern driving experience?
One word: Diesel.
NBK-Boston: Ironically, the “hypothetical” 2525 lb. Camry with a 1.4L 128hp engine is not far from the 1989 Camry: 2690 lbs., 2.0L I-4 developing 115 hp.
But the 1989 Camry is considerably inferior to the 2007 Camry in terms of protecting its occupants during a crash, not to mention in controlling noise, vibration and harshness.
It’s therefore reasonable to ask whether this hypothetical Camry will offer today’s level of occupant safety, not to mention today’s level of quiet, smoothness and comfort.
As for the “smaller, lighter cars can better avoid a crash” line of thought – there has never been any real-world proof to back up that line of thought. Just because a car performs better on the skidpad or during the Car & Driver handling test does not mean that it will perform that same way in the real world. I recall reading that most fatalities in small cars occur in single-vehicle crashes or in a collision with another car.
55 MPG average is very achievable, but I’m sure everyone here knows that. It’s funny and sad that the car companies say otherwise. As it is now, the price of fuel has produced some more efficient vehicles, but we still have a long way to go. It’s too bad that the PNGV was killed off. They had some pretty decent diesel-electric hybrids at the time. Now with diesel engines meeting Tier 2 bin 5 standards, hopefully diesel hybrid powertrains will actually be improved and implemented in production vehicles sometime soon.
Taxing will not solve the problem.Come to Canada folks.Here we are an oil producing nation gas prices translate to about 4$US a gallon,a massive portion is tax.
Lot and lots of SUVs, big honking pick ups, old gas hogs ,you name it we drive it.Folks here have heavy right feet.More fuel gets wasted.We have longer commutes up here.
Taxing gas has little,or no impact on consuption
It does have an impact on total tax revenue, and I guess we all benifit there.
A gas tax as a tool for the greenies,or for long term conservation,forget it.
the only way to bring about such changes is through tax policy. If gasoline is expensive enough, then cars with 1984 performance standards but outstanding fuel economy will become more attractive.
I agree that tax policy is the way to go. The market does not always ‘do the right thing’. Gas taxes certainly help alter peoples behaviour, but I don’t think the numerous small pains are as effective at dissuading purchases of ‘gas guzzlers’ as a big hit up front. Or annually. With some exemptions, the more gas you use, the bigger the hit up front you should take. And the scale should not be linear, i.e. if you get ten mpg on average you should pay 4 times as much as a car that gets 15.
I like power as much as the next person, but the power that manufacturers are packing into their cars is ridiculous. I don’t know what’s worse, the belief that a family sedan needs 250 plus horsepower or the fact that Mercedes thinks a road car needs 600hp.
On a side note, I remember getting lost driving around southern Ontario and found some guy who was cornering the market on Kabinenrollers. He had a huge row of the them stretching across a field. I was never able to find it again.
# geeber :
November 19th, 2007 at 10:33 am
“I recall reading that most fatalities in small cars occur in single-vehicle crashes or in a collision with another car.”
Isn’t that how most fatalities happen in any car?
55 MPG average is very achievable, but I’m sure everyone here knows that. It’s funny and sad that the car companies say otherwise.
Is this with our without complying with today’s safety standards?
If a 55 mpg car is so acheivable, why have we seen only one vehicle capable of it? Given the price of gasoline today, such a car would be a bonified hit. Perhaps it take a bit more than wishful thinking to bring such a car to reality.
One word: Diesel.
Two words: Particulate pollution
I’m not sure why so many think diesel is the way to go. Carbon output might be lower, but isn’t particulates much higher? Fuel mileage is better, but is it better enough offset the 50 cent/gallon price premium here in the US? Yeah, you can burn old veggie oil in them, but too many people do it can we plany enough soybeans to fuel them?
NICKNICK: I forgot two crucial words:
Most fatalities in small cars occur in single-vehicle crashes or in a collision with another small car.
Sorry about that.
I’m a car enthusiast from way back. II don’t think I’ve ever owned a boring car, but I’ve never owned one with over 200 hp, either. In fact, the most exciting “whip” I ever snapped had about one-third that output, but it was lightweight and well-engineered and a hoot to drive (NSU TT). Acceleration is a funny thing: unlike any other automotive virtue, the more you have of it, the less time you can spend using it. Once up to speed, further acceleration is useless. In a 150-mile day driving my VW TDI, I might spend ten seconds using more than half throttle, and I still drive more quickly than 75% of my peers. No one’s keeping a stopwatch on me when I drive, and if I take an extra two seconds getting up to 60 mph, I’m happy to make up that time by not slowing down for the corners. High horsepower is a fun toy for teenagers and drag racers. Heavyweight cars are a perceived safety factor for those ignorant of advanced engineering and the physics of car control. Unless we can get over those two shibboleths, the next generation won’t be driving any kind of cars at all, IMHO.
Nice post and discussion. I agree that those lighter, leaner design goals should at least be a larger part of the thought process behind new vehicles that Detroit has ont he drawing board. Smaller lighter cars are also more fun to drive in the more common every day driving situations, in my humble opinion; flinging around the latest generation 2600 lb Civic with it’s feisty 1.8 liter four cylinder humming away is actually a pretty good time.
As one poster noted, 300 hp is great, but generally only useful on a track. Also unless you’re in good with a lawyer who can handle all the speeding tickets for you, getting busted for speeding is such a drag.
geeber:
I never meant to imply that the 1989 Camry was an equal to the (much larger) 2007 Camry. Hence my comment about having to redesign within such an envelope with a raft of more modern technologies and see how close we can come to contemporary standards of safety, comfort, handling, etc.
Personally, I think you’d be hard pressed to get an entire 2007 Camry within a 2500 lb. weight limit without going broke on exotic materials. But that’s because a 2007 is much more of a car, not just in terms of performance and safety, but also in terms of sheer volume and size, than the 1989 model. Personally, I think it’s a bit misleading that Toyota kept the same name the whole time, because there is practically no way in which the two cars are comparable. My only real point was that a 2500 lb. “Camry” is not some far-off crazy dream — it’s been done before. But I guess that stretches the meaning of the word “Camry” as it was used in the article.
If you didn’t want to expend a dime on new engineering costs, you could achieve a 2500 lb. Camry by going “back to the future.” If you did put some energy into it, you could come up with a direct replacement to the 1989 Camry — in terms of size, weight and passenger capacity — that would beat the old one for performance, safety and fuel economy. In fact, it’s already been done. It’s called the Yaris.
(1989 Camry: 89 cu ft passenger space, 12 cu ft baggage space, 23/29 MPG.
2007 Yaris: 87 cu ft passenger space, 13 cu ft baggage space, 34/40 MPG old method.)
Wheatridger: In fact, the most exciting “whip” I ever snapped had about one-third that output, but it was lightweight and well-engineered and a hoot to drive (NSU TT).
An expensive two-seater with questionable reliability isn’t going to meet the needs of most people in this day and age, no matter how much fun it is to drive.
Wheatridger: High horsepower is a fun toy for teenagers and drag racers.
And those who must regularly merge into fast-moving traffic, or get around ignoramuses camping in the left lane on limited access highways, or pass on two-lane roads, or…
Wheatridger: Heavyweight cars are a perceived safety factor for those ignorant of advanced engineering and the physics of car control.
People aren’t “ignorant” of advanced engineering. They have an innate understanding that it costs lots of money to make a big leap in fuel economy while maintaining current levels of safety, comfort and performance.
A series of smaller, incremental advances, over time, can cumulatively yield significant results, but, those advances take time.
A Camry that gets 70 mpg isn’t going to do much good if it costs $65,000. That will only encourage people to hold on to their present vehicle for as long as possible.
NBK-Boston:
I understand where you are coming from, but real, live paying customers are given the choice every day between the Yaris (aka the 1989 Camry) and the Camry, and they overwhelmingly pick the Camry. So, realistically, people who really liked the 1989 Camry, but want more safety, can already buy one in the form of the Yaris.
Toyota correctly read the market, which is why it is killing the competition and is one of the top-selling nameplates on the market.
And in 1989, note that the smaller Camry wasn’t a best-seller. The car didn’t become a true sales powerhouse until the 1992 redesign, which is today remembered as being a “little Lexus.”
Also, most people don’t view the Camry as a gas-guzzler in any sense.
Besides, let’s be realistic here. The problem ISN’T the Camry (or the Accord, or the Fusion, or the new Malibu, or the Altima, etc.).
For many years, lots of people have been buying very large vehicles for a variety of reasons. These vehicles do not get good gas mileage. Recent price volatility in gasoline prices, however, has decreased sales of these vehicles, as people are migrating out of the the mid-size and large SUV class to smaller vehicles. So current trends are in the right direction from a fuel conservation standpoint.
But people aren’t going to go from a Tahoe to a Yaris. They may, however go from a Tahoe to a Camry, which would still be an improvement, especially since most of the Camrys sold are the four cylinder versions.
I agree with the people who say today’s cars accelerate plenty fast eough. If technological progress can’t develop 55 mpg cars over the next 27 years, with amenities equal to those of today, it would be a very sad commentary on human ingenuity (I’d prefer to say Yankee ingenuity), and we’re cooked, literally. (See the latest IPCC report.) Frankly, if India and China continue to develop apace, 55mpg might not be adequate.
I’ve said it before–we NEED a carbon tax, bad, but it’s going to be an uphill battle, because according to a recent article in, I believe, new scientist, Americans don’t undnerstand the need for a carbon tax, and don’t want it. But I think as an insurance policy, the mandate is a good idea.
The bottom line is that most people won’t really care about gas mileage until the price rises a lot higher (by tax or by scarcity). People WILL care about losing safety and comfort. They will vote with their dollars and lawyers.
I am glad I am not an automaker or even an owner of their stocks. It’s ugly.
If we hadn’t let our commerce center around millions of 18-wheelers traveling the Interstate highway system, the percieved “need” for SUV’s may have never materialized; and the movement of goods (today) would be economical (albeit slower) with the rail-and-hub system. Now the USA’s dependance on the “independance” of long-haul truck transport has come crashing down; and the rail system has been reduced to bike trails.
I just came back from 5 months in Switzerland. Here we have a country where the minimum wage is equivalent to about $14 per hour, easily offsetting the premium paid for gas when compared with North America. The standard of living is higher, people have more disposable income. Roads regularly have MUCH steeper grades than I’m used to in Eastern Canada (the Alps will do that). The legal highway speed limit is 120 km/h (75 MPH). What do they drive over there? A Mk4 Golf comes standard with a 1.6 L engine. Premium cars like the Mercedes E-class can be had with motors as small as 2.4 L. A Ford Escape (Maverick, over there) has a frugal 2.0 L. I worked at a company that had 90 hp Ford Transit delivery vans, cruising along at 120-130 without problems. Hell, I was driving a Mazda 121 (1.3L, about 75 hp and owned by people who could EASILY afford a much more powerful car). I never felt that it was in any way unsafe, nor did I have any trouble merging onto highways at 75 MPH. In fact, in my observation, people in North America merge slower than Europeans do, despite having more room and more powerful engines. And not only that, the car was FUN to drive.
So I don’t buy for one second that North Americans NEED the power and acceleration that we’re consuming. In fact, most of the time we don’t even use nearly what we have. It’s not a question of needs, it’s a question of a culture of conspicuous consumption. I contend that if everyone had a 30% drop in power in their cars, traffic speeds wouldn’t change; people would just be forced to rev the engine a little more during those few seconds of merging or hard acceleration. What does that mean? Better fuel economy for the 90% of the time that the engine isn’t being asked for hard acceleration, and… more fun, actually being able to wind the motor out once in a while.
We North Americans just need to get over ourselves and stop pretending that a car that takes over 10 seconds to get to 60 MPH is somehow unsafe. My ’92 Jetta took nearly that long, and I was usually the fastest one merging.
@Shaker
Actually the US rail freight system is thriving and busy to capacity. Hauling stuff around in big trucks is pretty efficent too.
The simplest way to increase fuel efficency is to tax the hell out of fuel, $8 a gallon (current UK price) would change habits pretty quickly and you could probably abolish property tax with the proceeds.
I suspect that the improvements in crash-worthiness of passenger cars over the past 20 years has been canceled out by the massive numbers of battering ram trucks and SUVs which have invaded the highways.
It is no surprise that once CAFE regulations stopped pushing fuel economy requirements up the industry stopped making improvements to economy and instead focused on more power and more weight.
Change the rules again and the priorities will change.
Why not look into multi-fuel, smaller motor cars as a solution? In Australia, it is common for cars to have a petrol and a LPG tank. The driver switches from one to other depending on driving conditions.
I don’t think LPG tank cars will come to the US soon. But in the meantime, how about developing an add-on “adrenaline” system for cars? That would allow you to have a small motor that is powerful enough for 98% of your driving needs. When you need serious power, fast, then kick in a N2O (nitrous oxide) feed into the motor. The nitrous bottles should be able to be bought at fuel stations and autoparts shops.
That way the driver pays a premium for extra power, when they need it, without paying extra for that capacity for normal driving.
I suspect that very few of the people that say 55 MPG CAFE is “No Problem” truly understand how CAFE is calculated. It is done across all of the vehicles an automaker sells (not offers), using a Harmonic (or inverse) Average. This yields a lower number than taking a simple, numeric average.
For example, you would think that if an automaker sold equal numbers of cars getting 20 mpg and 40 mpg, then its CAFE would be 30 mpg. Wrong! It would only be 26.67 mpg. To get 30 mpg CAFE, an automaker would need to sell two 40 mpg cars for every one 20 mpg car.
The implications of this are very significant when one starts talking about a combined car/truck fleet for CAFE purposes. Today, cars and trucks must each meet a separate CAFE standard (domestics and imports are also separated). If combined, as new proposals would do, then the inclusion of trucks makes it nearly impossible to hit a 55 mpg standard. Since 55 mpg is double the present Car CAFE Std of 27.5 mpg, let’s assume that the truck average could somehow be doubled from its present 20 mpg to 40 mpg (an entire fleet averaging more than today’s most efficient SUV, the Ford Hybrid Escape). Trucks make up about half of all sales in the U.S., so the car fleet would need to balance the 40 mpg truck fleet to average 55 mpg overall. To do so, the car fleet would need to average 88 mpg! That is more than triple the present 27.5 mpg average, and would require sales of millions of new cars getting over 100 mpg to be achieved.
Even if an automaker somehow came up with the technology to offer such radically improved fuel economy, it must still sell the required volume of high fuel economy models in the market to actually hit its CAFE requirement. Just offering or even building them is not enough. Even if a company offers a balanced line-up that could in theory meet the standard, if people don’t buy enough of its high mpg vehicles, it will fall short on CAFE. This is why the full-line automakers (Toyota included) are opposed to the 55 mpg CAFE proposal.
Passing a CAFE bill alone without putting it in the context of a total U.S. energy policy is a guarantee for failure. The original U.S. CAFE standards served to accelerate the growth in vehicle miles traveled, as it became cheaper for consumers to travel by car. As a result, these standards did little to reduce overall U.S. oil consumption. There must be higher fuel taxes along with higher CAFE standards to both encourage the purchase of the required high mpg vehicles (which will be both smaller and slower), as well as reduce consumption across the entire fleet. Less than 10% of the U.S. vehicle fleet is replaced each year (~17 mil vehicles), and the vehicles on the road must also be encouraged to reduce consumption. A proper energy policy would use these extra fuel taxes to develop the infrastructure for hydrogen fuels, plus invest in mass transit to truly reduce our oil consumption. Use of fuel taxes as part of a total energy policy is why Europe has $6/gallon gasoline. They also have engine displacement taxes (e.g. above 2.0L). European energy policy also favors more-efficient diesel engines by taxing diesel fuel much lower than gas. This has led to a 40% sales mix for diesel engines in new cars.
Why do I want to care about Cafe or MPG? Impose a tax? Less money for me maybe?
Seriously, I do not have power over others. I’m looking out for my best interests. Does any of this really concern me? Can I really do anything about it? I do not think so right now.
How about making SUVs illegal for regular use? that may work best for me. How about more efficient sugar cane ethanol like Brazil? How about higher gas guzzler taxes? Those may work for me. There is no one to blame here, No one has more right to anything better than anyone else. Its simply economics. We do not seem willing to achieving both high HP and high MPG right now. Taxing is more imposing than encouraging to most people, IMO. What we really need is simple. We really need to fight, to work, to commit to achieving improved safety, higher MPG, Fun cars, and affordable prices. Oh and before any of those things, we need to love and respect ourselves. Pretty strait forward.
I want a light, low-horsepower, efficient hatch that is stupid and simple..like the Geo Metro XLI. The Yaris is not too far away from what I want, but it is not small or efficient enough.
No such vehicle is made now. It is not that there is no demand, it is that there is no money to be made in it, so no one does.
Market forces make manufacturers produce expensive vehicles. Expensive vehicles make money (duh) and people won’t pay a lot for a small car (with few exceptions). So manufacturers simply don’t have an incentive to produce small cars…and they don’t produce them.
Legal incentives (CAFE) will work only to a degree (look what we have today).
Social incentives (green buzz) seem to be doing little.
The folks who do risk assessment and product planning need to see that a new “Metro” will be profitable. Small and cheap = low margin = need to guarantee a large number of sales to make it worthwhile.
That is the question…would a new “Metro” be sold in numbers high enough to be profitable?
Driving a Messerschmitt in Manhattan isn’t the problem. Driving it on the Parkway is.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I just don’t feel safe unless I’m carrying around at least a couple of tons of scrap metal everywhere I go. (But I’m not about to let that interfere with my ability to peel out when I feel like it!)
Of course, we can ask NJ governor Corzine, last year seriously injured riding in his 6,000 lb http://www.chevrolet.com/suburban/specifications/ Suburban (driven by a trained cop chauffeur) when it went out of control after being hit by a 5,000 lb http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/2007-dodge-ram-1500-3.htm Dodge Ram which went out of control trying to avoid another truck which went out of control when it pulled back on the highway after it went off the highway when it went out of control trying to avoid Corzine’s Suburban in the first place.
re roadrunner, above: hopefully most people will quit buying trucks. But even with medium-sized trucks on the road, if we can’t get to a 55mpg average fuel economy by 2035, that’s a pretty sad statement on our technological capabilities. For my account of the hypercar idea, which takes a much more optimistic view of what we can do, go to http://tinyurl.com/tkrby
Just look to Europe where they have 40 mpg mid-sized vehicles (turbo diesels) and 70 mpg micro-cars (about the same size as a Mini). Their prices and vehicles are a preview to life in America if fuel should drastically increase without a corresponding increase in wages.
As China and India “come on line” and more of their drivers dream of hitting the roads, I see sustained and substantial higher prices a real possibility.
We’ll live closer to our jobs, those people who think small cars automatically equal crap will get quieter, and efficiency will become more important than 0-60 speeds.
Like several of the other commenters I already drive a small car (’97 VW Cabrio 2.0L) and already outrun alot of the other more powerful traffic because while my launches might be a bit slower, my average speed is higher. I generally see right around 30 mpg from week to week around town, slightly more on the highway. A ten second 0-60 is PLENTY. If more vehicles were running 0-60 times of ten seconds then a sub ten second time would matter even less.
I spent three years in Italy (1991-1994) driving small cars and diesels while gasoline was $5 a gallon and I’ve never wanted a big car since. Maybe something big for out of town trips and occasional use only.
I mostly think people should drive what they want big or small but my mind is changing. Their higher consumption is pushing the prices I pay higher.
I think alot of the resistance of the big car companies to sell better small vehicles is that the small vehicle drivers are still in the minority. The car makers want us to buy big because that is still where the profit is. They know they can’t sell a compact car with a premium price tag in the quantities that they can sell a luxury-SUV or truck at a (higher) premium price tag.
Until Detroit gets serious about some small cars (Mini, GTI, MR2) then I’m going to keep buying imports. They sell interesting small cars in Europe (Opel, Ford, -uh – well Opel and Ford) so I’ll keep driving my imports until they decide to bring them over… Saturn has my attention. The Focus is a possibility too. The Aveeo is not… Neither is the Cavalier -er, the Cobalt…
Our society progressed from riding horses to riding cars.
Whoever thinks another step is not possible lacks imagination.
The studies quoted by RF show plenty of potential. So, let’s get it going…
Detroit will get serious about building good small to very small cars when the price of gas goes up even more, and the Japanese move in with the 660cc Keicars. They are economical and not quite as daft as the Smart Car.
Nobody else cares but you and me, geezer, eh goober, er, whatever- but my old NSU TT, just for the record, wasn’t the car you think it is. It wasn’t a two-seater, and it wasn’t costly. It was a Beetle-class car, rarely seen west of the Atlantic.
Thanks, Juniperbug, for eloquently echoing and amplifying my sentiments.
There is a road to economy that leads through the green fields of higher performance. Just one thing is needed – in the words of racers immortal, “add lightness.” Plus two other things: a clutch pedal and a stick shift. For my TDI, the fuel economy disadvantage of an autobox is about 10 mpg. That’s as much of a hit as my 28 mpg Forester takes when I tow a one-ton travel trailer, getting 18 mpg.
When will we all get over this fantasy that weight equals safety, or even crash resistance? Your car’s basic structure isn’t strengthened by the five motors powering each front seat, or the larger gas tank and fuel load made necessary by a larger frame and engine block.
When I hear that small cars are unsafe, I think of a full-sized pickup I saw beside the freeway, on its roof. Except there was no roof. The vehicle was upside down, with its door handles in the short grass. The cab’s roof structure was gone, mashed flat. I didn’t want to imagine what shape the driver was in, but I suppose on his last drive, he felt safer because he wasn’t in one of those “flimsy little toy cars” buzzing around his bumpers…
A gas tax simply is not politically viable. By the time you raise the price of gas to a level that will make a difference to a family making $100K a year, you will devastate a family making $30K a year. The effect is made even worse by the layout of many cities and suburbs/exurbs; the lower income people are commuting farther because that is the only way they can buy a house.
It’s possible, qwerty, to give back much of that tax hike to targets groups through income taxes. It’s wiser to phase in higher gas taxes on a known schedule (50 cents a year for four years, anyone?) to put consumers on notice of upcoming changes. When fuel costs rise, those outlying suburbs will become less of a bargain, and there will be plenty of aged, unfashionable, but newly desirable housing in the older & inner suburbs, just waiting for new occupants.
Look at the past few years. Fuel costs will go up. The question is, will the additional costs go to a social benefit (debt reduction, social security) or a national loss (foreign suppliers)? Will they go up at a steady pace, so the economics of alternatives becomes predictable or by unpredictable leaps?
As was pointed out above, unless the method for calculating CAFE changes, a 55mpg average is unlikely for a year’s new car fleet as a whole, but the methods for pushing in that direction are sound.
30 years ago I had a series of British sports cars that regularly turned in 45mpg highway efficiency at sustained 70+mph, and in mixed driving managed around 38mpg. While these cars got a little heavier as I bought newer versions, they weighed between 1700 – 1850 lbs. Those cars had 1.2L – 1.5L engines, with 4 speed manual transmissions equipped with electric overdrive that could be switched on in 3rd & 4th gears for 6 ratios. I’m 6’3″ and have only added 15 lbs. to my own frame in 40 years. I used to fit in those cars and I drove them 500 miles in a sitting, no problem. I still fit in them. I can’t help but note that these lightweight cars were body-on-frame. That fuel economy was delivered via carburettors, not fuel injectors. Computer-controlled engine management was still over the horizon.
Most Brit sports cars were Triumph Spitfires, all of which I drove hard, into high mileage, and mine were quite reliable. They generally needed differential bearing rebuilds every 60,000 miles. None of those cars had A/C, air bags, side crash door beams, etc. But the tail end of this chain did have catalytic converters and other smog controls. Front and rear bumpers grew. Powertrains were choked and enfeebled by the year as mass crept up until those cars were gone after 1980.
Today, a closest-equivalent Mazda Miata weighs about 700 lbs. more, I cannot fit in one, and its fuel economy is rated only 21/28mpg with a 6 speed manual transmission. It has twice the horsepower of my last Triumph but scarcely better than half the fuel economy. On the other hand, the Miata is unibody, stiffer, quieter, dead reliable, quicker, grippier, more precise to drive, and better protects its occupants in a mishap.
When I compare what was considered a compact or subcompact of the day with today’s equivalents, a similar comparison is illuminated. A Honda CVCC Coupe would be a micro-car today. I saw one a few weeks ago at the Petersen Museum here in Los Angeles and was reminded of its diminuitive size. A current Mini or a Fit look supersize by comparison. A Ford F150 was more human scale. On the other hand, our big cars today are smaller but no longer lighter.
In the intervening years, I’ve had 7, then 6, then 5 and now 4 seconds cars. That fuel economy hasn’t really suffered as performance car horsepower has climbed from ~215 to over 400 is remarkable, and it’s been a boon to those of us who prefer and use acceleration close to specified potential some of the time. But clearly, if the engineering priority were directed toward efficiency gains, more will be found. With a 443hp car capable of 0 – 60 in around 4.3 seconds, I know I’d appreciate, say, a 3.7 second super Corvette, but I don’t need it. Really, I don’t. In fact, in most traffic situations, I already have more acceleration than I can safely apply in most traffic. So at this point, I’d rather see the next gen XLR-V be 500 lbs. lighter than more power shoehorned in. Why stop there? How about an 810 lbs. reduction? A 3000 lbs. luxury GT with a retracting hardtop and perhaps 320 hp would be crisp.
Still, having owned a succession of relatively big-mill cars from Ford & GM that were dearly gratifying, nothing I’ve owned, borrowed, test-driven has been more sheer fun in the context of the time and place than even my last, least powerful 71hp Triumph.
However, to get the serious weight reductions in new vehicles, we will have to give up something or pay to keep our comforts and cede some carrying capacity. Our safety obsessions might have to dial back a bit. Environmentally, large scale displacement of steel with aluminum and magnesium aren’t a sure gain. Aluminum production is energy-intensive. We’ll see more composites and plastics in vehicles, but most of these will also be oil-derived. Just as we saw the price of cars climb faster than the core inflation rate during the push for safety advances, fuel economy, and pollution reduction between 1971 and roughly 1991, I suspect a drive for weight loss and fuel efficiency in cars will also spark a new round of price increases after a period of relative price stability.
CAFE isn’t an effective way to drive efficiency, and taxes only feed the beast of a government unwilling to allocate the funds judiciously and specifically. If global warming alarmists were genuinely serious about achieving CO2 reductions soonest, they would put their energies into immediate and near term carbon mitigation in the fixed location infrastructure, where meaningful change could be accomplished in as little as five years. The green drive against the automobile is political, not environmental, and is a blatant effort to reduce personal freedom by constraining mobility. Environmentalism merely provides cover for a higher-control agenda. We don’t have to cave in to that.
But that green insincerity notwithstanding, a 1968-sized F150, a modern update to the Ranger, an American equivalent to the coming Fiat 500, a modern Rambler American, more cars with GM’s 2.0L Ecotec turbo, 4 cylinder sports cars and coupes that people my size can fit in, plus affordable reductions in vehicle mass all around would all be welcome. GM has one of the few cars anywhere that’s actually gotten lighter, more efficient and yet more powerful over the past 30 years while improving in every possible measure: Corvette. Drop the power increases and their efforts on that car point the way, if applied to more prosaic products as aggressively as economics allow.
Phil
The reason we have CAFE instead of a carbon tax is politics. If politicians raised gas taxes, we’d vote them out of office. So they came up with a complicated scheme for raising gas mileage, which constituents view as a benefit and therefore support. But global events will likely overtake domestic political considerations in the not too distant future.
Even if CO2 emissions didn’t contribute to global warming (of course they do, but that’s a politically incorrect viewpoint among auto enthusiasts), there would be more than enough justification for expediting research and development of vehicles that minimize consumption of petroleum. One interesting statistic I heard recently is that if China and India were to use energy at one half of the current US rate per capita, the two countries would consume more than today’s total worldwide oil production. I wonder what that would do to oil prices? Perhaps we can just ask them politely to stay poor.
Likewise, the world’s largest oil producers are Russia, Venezuela and our friends in the Middle East. One notes that Messrs. Putin, Chavez and
Ahmadinejad have become decidedly less appreciative of US interests as oil approaches $100/barrel.
Geo-politics mandates a radical reduction in oil consumption,and soon.
“Likewise, the world’s largest oil producers are Russia, Venezuela and our friends in the Middle East. One notes that Messrs. Putin, Chavez and
Ahmadinejad have become decidedly less appreciative of US interests as oil approaches $100/barrel.”
America is a super power in terms of our military and our consumer spending potential. China and India have so many people in those countries that each consumer only has to be a minor consumer to equal the market potential of America. As the Russians and the Arabs no longer NEED us I don’t expect them to smooch up to us as much.
Sigh. Raising the gas tax can’t both discourage gas usage and raise massive amounts of revenue. Either people will drive less — less usage but also less revenue — or they will drive the same or more — more revenue with no drop in usage. I just love when politicians try to sell you that both things will happen.
It’s similar to what happens with changes in the capital gains tax rates. Lower the rate, you get more revenue as more people are willing to sell to collect unrealized capital gains. Raise the rate, you get less revenue as more people decide to not sell their profitable stocks but instead sell their losing stocks to maximize capital losses.
Let the free markets work instead. They already are — why else are the SUV’s taking such a hit in sales. Besides, I’ll take seriously gas mileage when I see the politicians, govt. workers and celebrities using a Prius to get around, instead of a convoy of SUV’s.
And the person who said the Swiss have a higher standard of living — wrong. Only one nation in Europe has a higher economic income per capita than the lowest state in the US. That’s Luxembourg which has all those EU tax dollars being siphoned off by all the EU govt. workers (think Northern Virginia with all the federal workers from DC). But it’s still beaten by 49 US states. The EU and the UN like to inflate their “living standard” by including subjective items in their rankings.
It looks like we aren’t going to need a gas tax after all, the free market is driving up the cost of fuel plenty fast as it is.
For years I’ve been saying that it would take $5/gallon gasoline for the US to start dealing seriously with fuel use issues. Soon we will find out if I’m right or not.
I got my driver’s license right after the fuel scares of the 1970s and it has amazed me that by the 1990s everything learned in that era was unlearned.
The words of the late, great David Brinkley, in regards to the other half of the partners in power, comes to mind: doesn’t have a creative bone in his body. Now, the same could be said for the senator from New York.
As the top of her class at Wellseley in 1969, it’s hard to call Hillary Clinton a pandering nitwit, but certainly she is pandering here. Raising CAFE standards is just a standard way of grinding Detroit, while allowing the petroleum – aka “energy” – industry to keep reaping record profits with no benefit to the public; and at this juncture, that’s hardly what is needed.
Andrew Sullivan was correct, back in 2004, when he suggested in Time magazine that the Federal government put a dollar a gallon tax on gasoline to pay down the debt incurred by the Iraq war (which Senator Clinton voted for, in case anyone has forgotten). Mr. Sullivan was on the Michael Medved (radio) show today and I called in and asked him if he still felt that same way, and what presidential candidates might be most inclined to try to work with Congress to enact such a tax.
He responded that indeed he did still feel the same, with the caveat that some sort of way of making allowance for the poor be made. And in response to the second question, he responded by saying that no presidential candidate has had “the cajones” (direct quote) to even bring up the idea of taxing gasoline.
If you want to see Detroit change its products, tell Congress to tax gasoline to pay down the Federal debt incurred by the Iraq war. Currently, that debt is (what economists call) the hidden cost of the invasion of Iraq.
Hey, I’d pay an additional tax on gas if I thought they’d pay down our national debt or invest in alternative energy technology but I know better. Like social insecurity they’d likely invent some quiet port barrel projects to soak up that revenue somehow.
Europe’s current fleet average is around 35 mpg. Remember there are alot more mini-cars and diesels in their mix. I don’t see us improving on our fleet average any time soon with the number of large vehicles we have in the mix.
Watched the traffic this morn. Most of the large vehicles I saw (pickups, SUVs, and minivans) were carrying a single person. Stupid…
I have a 30 year old VW pickup that gets 50MPG If they could do it 30 years ago why can’t they do it now?
Way to go GREENIES !!