In this morning’s column, Detroit News scribe Daniel Howes’ pointed out that “Road for Autos Runs Through Oval Office.” In other words, GM, Chrysler and perhaps Ford’s fate now rests in the hands of the President of the United States. True dat. Piper. Tune calling. Gold. Rule making. Etc. But Danny wasn’t making the expected plea for Barack’s administration to keep Motown’s hometown heroes out of bankruptcy court until, well, whenever. Oh no, there’s another battle brewing… “President Barack Obama is poised to face an automotive conundrum potentially pitting him, the Detroit auto industry and the more immediate needs of the beleaguered national economy against pressure from environmentalists, fuel economy zealots and the powerful California delegation, including the two members of Congress who escorted him to his inauguration.” Translation: Danny’s signaling Detroit’s “need” to resist state-based hoikment of fleet-wide federal fuel economy standards. In this, he’s not alone…
First, Danny’t take:
“California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzennegger, is urging Obama to make good on a campaign promise and grant his state and 13 others Environmental Protection Agency waivers that would allow them to regulate their own greenhouse gases. (Cha-ching!) And stiffer federal fuel economy rules are ready to become law.”
Cha-ching? Is Howes suggesting that CA’s desire to impose tougher emissions standards than Uncle Sam is somehow financially motivated? How does that work? And what about this leap?
“Fellow Democrats already have used auto bridge loan hearings to make clear their quid pro quo expectations — in exchange for federal loans, the automakers should essentially hybridize their U.S. fleets. (Irrespective of cost, market demand and oil prices, apparently.)”
It would be easy enough to dismiss Howes’ paranoia as, uh, paranoia. But just because he thinks Congress has plans on altering Detroit’s model mix to satisfy their political agenda doesn’t mean Congress doesn’t have plans to alter Detroit’s model mix to satisfy their political agenda.
According to Automotive News [sub], it’s a point that’s not lost on the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA). Although GM and Chrysler are staying stum on California’s desire to pre-empt federal mpg standards, NADA ain’t.
“It makes no sense for the federal government to aid the auto industry with one hand and then burden it with a duplicative rule that regulates fuel economy completely differently than the federal government,” claims David Regan, NADA’s vice president for legislative affairs.
Since when does any of this makes sense?
43.6 mpg for cars, 26.6 mpg for truck. That’s what California’s CO2 law calls for. Since only the Prius gets that now – does it?- what magic technology will appear in the next 7 years that will allow the manufacturers to sell a full lineup of vehicles in these states?
This is a scam to get the citizenry out of their cars and onto the government controlled transit system by taking away choice and drastically raising prices on new vehicles. It will destroy the new vehicle market in these states and force people to keep older, less efficient vehicles that pollute more. Sounds like it solves that CO2 problem, doesn’t it?
The world has been waiting for an automobile that’s also a bath mat. By the looks of the car in the photo, we’ve finally got one.
Quote Howes and Farago: ” “California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzennegger, is urging Obama to make good on a campaign promise and grant his state and 13 others Environmental Protection Agency waivers that would allow them to regulate their own greenhouse gases. (Cha-ching!) And stiffer federal fuel economy rules are ready to become law.”
Cha-ching? Is Howes suggesting that CA’s desire to impose tougher emissions standards than Uncle Sam is somehow financially motivated? How does that work? And what about this leap?”
I’m guessing that the individual states will impose their own gas-guzzler tax or CO2 tax if your vehicles do not meet their individual standards. Oh no, they won’t totally ban your vehicle from their state, but they will begrudgingly ‘let’ you sell in their state so long as you pay their fees thereby exposing the hypocrisy. If these states were really serious about CAFE or CO2 emissions, they would band the vehicles, but they won’t and unless they’re going to ban all currently registered vehicles in said state then this law then becomes very exposed as a fleecing move..of the state taxpayer ultimately-the automakers won’t spend a penny of their money, the end-buyers will be made to pay as usual, for supposed government misguided do-goodery. Thus if what I’m guessing happens, the 13-14 states that suddenly think they can write automotive standards will try and fill their coffers with taxes on new car sales…not that there will be any new car sales if this kind of thing keeps going on. If this comes to pass, you will see a lobbying effort against it by every automaker in the U.S. market-no one wants to deal with 14 different sets of standards, especially within one market.
I respect a state’s right to write it’s own laws, but in this case, when a product is sold nationwide and that product traverses in and out of your borders (trucks, planes, trains, shipping, cargo) a singular Federal standard might serve us all best.
dwford has swerved into the truth here. You must understand that the “greens” simply don’t want you to own an automobile, or truck, or any personal transportation. In their strategy of incrementalism, they’ll temporarily tolerate “electric cars”, hybrids, etc, to “save the planet”, but bottom line, they want to take your car away. Period. These people are not our friends and they will not make nice with us. They are our mortal enemies.
Given the importance of the automobile, truck, motorcycle, minivan, and other personal transportation to the American culture, it could reasonably be argued that these folks are anti-American. Remember, it was Mr. Gore who wrote in his first “book”, “Earth in the Balance” that the internal combustion engine posed the greatest threat to mankind. Or words to that effect. That’s the mentality we’re dealing with. get used to it. They want to take your car away. Never forget this!
They don’t care if it’s one state at a time, or if Washington works at cross purposes, or how it gets done, as long as it gets done.
It’s always the car that takes the blame for “global warming”. Why do they never target the biggest gas guzzlers of all: Airplanes? These things suck up loads of fuel. In fact, half of all petroleum refined winds up as jet fuel. Besides, Ahhnold, if you’d get out of your Hummer once in a while, you’d see how this affects normal people, who no longer have anything to buy but Priuses. But then again, is there anything California would want more? Err, besides legalizing pot.
Obama says he wants to end the US dependence on foreign oil by 2019. You can look at it as a finance problem or, for the redneck gun nuts, you can look at it as a national security problem, what-ever makes you feel better.
The road transport sector being approximately 27% (DoE 2003) of energy use (3% for airlines BTW), it’s going to get targeted to help out in that goal.
Do US citizens really think that should not be done?? Seriously? What possible rational argument is there against such a goal?
It’s true that airplanes consume a lot of fuel, but I thought I read something years ago about how flight can be more economical than transporting the same number of people great distances in individual cars.
More thoughts…
Cicero :
The world has been waiting for an automobile that’s also a bath mat. By the looks of the car in the photo, we’ve finally got one.
This is funny as hell! Yeah, it even has the little suction-cups!
PeteMoran :
Obama says he wants to end the US dependence on foreign oil by 2019. You can look at it as a finance problem or, for the redneck gun nuts, you can look at it as a national security problem, what-ever makes you feel better.
Well now, that’s a bit of an insulting and back-handedly divisive phrasing. And it does nothing to bolster the argument or bring people together to think through a problem.
I didn’t vote for the President, but I’m neither a redneck nor a “gun nut”. However, I DO look at it as a national security problem. The recent drop in oil prices has put great pressure on the Venezuelan and Iranian governments. It does make a difference!
But I also don’t think we can eliminate our use of foreign oil by some predetermined date (while retaining our standard of living) just because the President says we must. It’s too simplistic; the engineering math problem is more complex than that.
If you’re willing to give up your cars and your convenient supermarket food and your use of medicines, fertilizers, plastics, and electricity, then maybe we can talk about that, but I would never presume to ask any fellow American to make himself or his family cold, hungry, and poor.
Which is what will happen if we don’t let economic demand for technology move at its own pace. I hope “against hope” that the government stays out of it.
PeteMoran:
Sure that should be our goal.
But back here, in what is laughingly called the real word, where we are bound by the laws of nature, not the snake oil of politicians, the US will still be dependent on foreign oil in 2019, and in 2119. Cars will still be our mass transit system and they, and the rest of our economy will still be powered by fossil fuels.
I agree that reducing our dependence on foreign oil is a national goal of great importance. However, I do not wish to see individual states nor the Feds penalize people for driving the vehicles they have a Constitutionally insured right to choose…I do not wish to see any government getting into the car business of sorts by legislating away vehicles people want to buy.
Today’s safety regulations and the 2020 35MPG CAFE standard should be more than enough legislation in place to force the automakers to make more efficient, smaller vehicles (which BTW most Americans do not wish to drive IMHO)…we don’t need any more legislation or taxes.
State and Federal governments would be better served by incentivizing the purchase of higher mpg, lower CO2 vehicles than to slap on a punitive tax to try and and curb the purchase of the opposite types of vehicle with tax credits, lower registration fees etc etc… Look at the X-prize type of incentives as an example. If you throw a big enough incentive out there, the B&B will go after it.
I submit this…If in the 1800’s the Federal government had taxed the daylights out of the Stagecoach business in the hopes of building a transcontinental railroad, they would have built their railroad decades later then they did because instead, the Feds offered great incentives for private firms to build the transcon railroad…If the Feds had taxed the daylights out of the railroads and shipping business, we might not ever have seen a domestic airline industry…but by offering incentives via lucrative air-mail routes, private individuals and their companies (Boeing, Cord, Hughes, Douglas) stepped up and created an airline industry out of their pursuits of Federal incentives, and not by trying to dodge punitive taxes or trying to legislate a certain type of activity or industry away. If you had put a punitive federal tax on every fax being sent in the 1980’s…you would have probably never seen your government build the Web as we know it today…but by incentivizing the creation of the internet by speculators hoping to make money on the WWW’s traffic, the internet grew at an exponential rate and arrived on our desktops, laptops, phones and PDAs decades before some Federal policy or tax would have created it-Thanks Al Gore for the internet…you and Clinton were smart enough to get out of the way.
Incentives drive invention and results infinitely faster than taxation and punitive policies…
C02 it a tiny percentage of the greenhouse effect (around 3 or 4%), compared to the 95% from water vapor. The human contribution of that CO2 is still smaller again, like less than 0.5%, and that contributed by the car? Hardly worth mentioning.
I can not wait for this BS to be over, taxing cars based on CO2 emissions is so absolutely ludicrous, so ass backward retarded, it would make about as much sense to tax them daily based on the amount of air they displace going down the road, adjusted for barometric pressure.
@ ZoomZoom
I apologize for my tongue-in-cheek phrasing.
I also don’t think we can eliminate our use of foreign oil by some predetermined date (while retaining our standard of living)
Why? If efficiency is introduced over time it doesn’t have to cost anything, in fact it SAVES money.
I would never presume to ask any fellow American to make himself or his family cold, hungry, and poor.
Eh!? Efficiency doesn’t have to mean giving anything up, but it means thinking about the problem differently. It doesn’t necessarily follow that people will starve. Where does this stuff come from???????
It has been so cold and snowed so much so far this winter, I am waiting for the “global cooling” nuts to come out again!
Where I live you get the same annual $74 road tax
whether you drive a Maybach or an Aveo. Whether a 5.7L Mopar hemi or a 1.3 Atkinsonised Civic Hybrid. That has to change.
It will not be effective to use taxes to limit liter-age. The effect will be circumvented by more V6 and V8 engines with a short stroke.
It may, however, be effective to limit cylinder diameter to 75mm and also tax on number of cylinders. That is, the tax is on total piston crown area.
Admittedly this can be circumvented by forced induction turbochargers for one. These are ‘green’ but may discourage some consumers because of their susceptibility to abuse. No government intervention needed there.
And again limiting cylinder diameters can also be circumvented by designing for higher piston velocities. More expensive piston materials will mean increased engine costs to discourage only the most motivated consumer here.
With the availability of such low power engines this may hopefully encourage the adoption of series hybrids which have almost double the efficacy of multi-ratio clutched transmissions and easily half the losses of automatic transmissions.
CVT are also a possibility if wear issues are minimal. This has not been the case in industry, I might add.
T2
Well now, that’s a bit of an insulting and back-handedly divisive phrasing. And it does nothing to bolster the argument or bring people together to think through a problem.
Yes, but as evident in this and other threads, it’s perfectly ok to over-generalize or simply smack-talk greens, isn’t it? **
Courtesy is a two-way street.
** (note: I’m not targeting you with this comment)
dwford:
They’re out already. Russian Pravda newspaper said last week that we’re on the edge of another ice age. This is based on records from deep bore hole drilling and the CO2 levels measured therefrom.
Eh!? Efficiency doesn’t have to mean giving anything up, but it means thinking about the problem differently….
PeteMoran’s comments may have been more inflammatory than necessary (gun nuts while discussing fuel use as it relates to the overall economy?) but the basic premise of what he states is true. Efficiency/conservation needs to be about making the needed task be handled by using less, not by sacrifice. That said, if mileage requirements been slowly raised a bit each year, we wouldn’t be saddled with the sad fact that the NA vehicle fleet MPG averages today the same number that it did in 1981.
That said, new standards need to be devised with an eye on what is physically possible. Most of the technological advances of the past two decades were wasted on letting vehicle weight bloat beyond reason. If you focus on removing that excess bloat, you do end up with a Prius type of vehicle, still not enough to make the cut. So, unless there is significant effort made in improving the efficacy of the ICE to extract that 75% of waste heat, or devise a different method of propulsion, we still can’t make it. As posted above, the effects of vehicles, and I will add power plants, are not confined rigidly to state borders. A national approach is the only way to go. It is a bit of a paradox because much of the progress in cleaning/greening vehicles originated in the state of California and I feel that they are the “engine” to drive the industry, kicking and screaming perhaps, to more responsible designs. However, requirements that vary from state to state become that much more complex and expensive to implement.
As an aside, anybody who thinks that this cold winter is proof that global warming is a hoax obviously doesn’t pay attention to the scientists that make it clear that any one or two seasons has no bearing whatsoever on long term planetary trends…on either side of the argument.
I didn’t know that Obama was an expert on automobile manufacturing, along with his cabinet and Congress.
Imagine that.
Once these “wondercars” come out, and no wants to buy them, then the next steps occur:
– a massive gasoline tax
– massive registration taxes on vehicles they don’t like
– some other crazy govt scheme that will be the combination of spying on citizens, and taxing those who won’t get with the program.
The power to tax is the power to control. The worst thing to ever happen was the income tax – it showed to the ruling class that the average American is a dupe and will put up with just about anything.
The Soviets would be proud.
Fleet-average fuel economy regulations are a witch’s brew of Voo Doo numbers that serve little else than as a Jackboot on the throat of the full product line Detroit automakers. CAFE, on its own, has a rather dismal record of improving real-world gas mileage. Thirty years has proven this is the case.
Barrel-head prices (and taxes) have zero loopholes and have proven to be very quick and effective getting people to focus on buying at the economy end of the true right size for their needs. Six months of four-buck gas has proven this is the case.
It remains to be seen if The Chosen One is able to back up his campaign bravado with brave action in the face of heavily funded politicos faking magnum concern for “the little guy”.
PeteMoran :
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Obama says he wants to end the US dependence on foreign oil by 2019. You can look at it as a finance problem or, for the redneck gun nuts, you can look at it as a national security problem, what-ever makes you feel better.
Yeah, us gun totting, pickup driving rednecks are the only ones worried about national security. Lord Obama in the White House proves that! :)
CarPerson has it right. No need at all for fuel standards if the stuff was simply expensive. I’m not advocating it should be, everyone (except enviro-extremists…and yes, they’re extremist) likes fuel cheap.
It is not the American way to tax the crud outta something, but if you want foreign oil imports to end, and you want a serious market for alt-fuels, I’m sorry, but fuel should be $7-8/gallon. End of story. The panic of $4 fuel (as mentioned above) did more in that short period of time than CAFE ever has.
So if we’re gonna do it, do it right. Unfortunately no politician has the will to actually do it, because Americans don’t want them to. So they use CAFE and make the companies do the dirty work, for a waiting public that has no interest in such vehicles when gas is $1.80/gallon….and nobody ever stops to think gas might go up to $4-$5 again and plan ahead. The car companies (and every single one is against this 14 different state standards thing…including everyone’s favorites Toyota and Honda) have to spend the billion and billions to meet a standard without knowing if there will be a market. Then watch, we’ll build all kinds of batteries and people will complain about battery pollution. Or we go electric, and suddenly we don’t have enough power plants…but can’t build those because coal is dirty and nuclear is dangerous. This stuff isn’t free….but people seem to think that a car company can produce a 50mpg vehicle that can haul 8, tow the boat to the lake, and still cost $35,000.
Unfortunately all these movements I think really are more geared to bring in more revenue to the gov. We can’t spend like we are forever without the money coming from somewhere. So states come up with schemes that “protect the environment”…cuz thats the rallying cry of the day, then use this cover to raise taxes on “undesired” vehicles, or “wasteful” people, so they can take that money and throw it away on waste and interest. You know massive taxes won’t fix the roads, or build great public transit. It will be pissed away on bonds and other worthless programs. Then when they’re out of money again, they’ll come up with some new scheme to get more money out of you.
I tell ya, something is becoming seriously wrong in America the last decade. What ever happened to fiscal responsibility? Why can’t a politician just lay it out? Either we tax you more to pay for this stuff, or we find a way to spend less. Go ahead and make your choice. The way people hate taxes, I think I’d know where it would go. Of course, those same people also love “free” government handouts, and are too stupid to realize that instead of an in-your-face gas tax or property tax or income tax hike, the gov will play politics and take your money in other ways you won’t notice as much. There’s a reason people bitch about even a talk of a $0.05 gas tax hike, but they never seem to even be aware of all the other “fees” they pay elsewhere…like their airline landing fees, or hotel fees, or convention center fees, or bottled water taxes or rental car fees, etc.
Please, lets just stop with the massive spending of money we don’t have. I don’t want to be paying massive amounts of taxes that go toward nothing but more government bloat. Unfortunately I think I might be in the minority here…. And in an economy based on spending like we are, 20% sales taxes on everything like there is in Europe will KILL American’s spending habits. Hell, I know I’d think long and hard about buying a car or a house, or a TV or any other large purchase if my $25,000 car required $5000 in taxes. I already bite my lip paying almost 10% here in Chicago. But that will be reality if we keep spending 700 billion here, 850 billion there. Its not free. (as a note, don’t I seem to recall that the 700 billion was supposed to be “enough” and we wouldn’t need any more?) How do we know that after 1.5 trillion, its not going to be “we need another trillion”. The economy works. Yeah, it sucks short term, but we’re really gonna screw ourselves if we try to artifically prop it up with goverment spending. It will crash even harder when that finally gives out.
Where in the world can I go that is what America used to be? I want it back.
Ok, sorry for the rant. I’m done.
Jerome10 :
Where in the world can I go that is what America used to be? I want it back.
Come on, we’re doomed.
I agree with all your sentiments, but it seems to me that most of the sheeple don’t want to hear it, don’t want to face it, or simply don’t care.
The panic of $4 fuel (as mentioned above) did more in that short period of time than CAFE ever has.…
And why is that? It’s because the law was full of loopholes that made it easy to circumvent. And American corporate culture was fast to exploit it. The lawmakers chose not to do anything about it and CAFE became noting more than a minimum floor, a floor that was way too low, even lower than those who drafted the law expected. Had CAFE worked more like emission regs, where standards were increased as technology, there would have been a steady uptick to the national fleet efficiency. Instead, technology was used to allow cars to become overweight blobs. Don’t want to take a bridge two ignorance. See, you can twist the rules and work on the edge if you want to. Just ask Al!!
Rev Junkie,
It’s not how much fuel you use, it’s how many miles per gallon you use. Airplanes do extremely well in miles per gallon per seat. Sorry, but you missed the mark. If you stopped airline service, the only savings would be from less travel. That may work, but it’s a more complex argument than simply how many gallons per hour a boeing burns.
T2,
It makes no sense to tax engine sizes if your goal is energy savings. If you want energy savings tax energy use. Your scheme incentivises people to only buy the one vehicle that meets all their needs, and drive it all the time (do the math). Instead, we would save more fuel if people who need a big engine on occasion, only drove it when they needed it (towing, hauling, etc.) and drove a more efficient car the rest of the time. OTOH, if you want get rid of larger vehicles because you hate them, then you have the right idea. Just realize it will not save fuel.
Psar,
There is a difference between characterizing a person based on the ideas they support (greens), and from where they are from (redneck). Both are usually not the best way to go, but there is a real difference. What’s worse, and done here often, is to do the sidestep ad hominem: You, or your idea, is (conservative, liberal, etc.) and therefore wrong.
PS Before I get a note from RF, I am sure I have crossed this line myself. That doesn’t mean I am wrong in pointing it out. If a liar promotes honesty, that may be hypocrisy, but it is no refutation of honesty as a virtue.
Jerome,
There are plenty of us that are for a higher fuel tax that are not enviro extremists. Given that lousy start, I didn’t bother to read the rest of your post.
Golden,
You are correct. The government has once again been outsmarted by the market place. There are essentially less than 1,000 people involved in making any new law, and their are millions of us figuring out how to live how we want to. It’s tough for the politicians to easily trick us into voting them in, and then to forget they so easily outwitted us. Even though we do outwit them every other day of the year, they need to realize their limitations.