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The EPA, working with the Departments of Transportation and Energy, has come up with two potential fuel economy labels, aimed at addressing the challenges posed by new plug-in, and fuel cell vehicles. The EPA’s Gina McCarthy gives an overview on the two label styles in the video above, but the main difference appears to be that one label would give cars letter grades (from A+ to D) on their fuel efficiency and greenhouse as emissions, while the other… wouldn’t. Read more about the first label (with letter grades) here, and compare it to the second label here. Let us know what you think, and if you feel strongly enough, send your comments to the EPA here.
26 Comments on “Choose Your Next EPA Fuel Economy Label...”
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As far as I’m concerned I like the first sticker better over the one with the grade listed. I couldn’t care about the grade (the grade as compared to what?), but the first one with the prominent mixed driving mileage number makes more sense. For instance I will never drive an entire tank on the freeway nor will I ever drive an entire tank in the city. When I calculate my mileage (most every tank since I started driving) I get a number for mixed driving which usually is fairly comparable to the ratings online. For me I would have a hard time trying to figure out what my highway mileage versus city mileage is, and I trust the onboard mileage computers about as much as I would trust my cat not to eat the tuna in the center of the floor. My car usually reads about .8mpg above what I calculate by hand.
I like my fuel efficiency like I like my bra sizes: Ds only. Hilarious that the EPA thinks it can guilt trip people into underpowered vehicles with an A+ through D rating system. How about a system of smiley and frowny faces?
Come on now. We know they won’t be going with the extremely simple letter system. That makes it too easy.
Besides, it isn’t like the companies that have something to loss would allow such a simple approach become the new standard. It is in their best interest for the consumer to not be able to make such an easy choice for themselves.
But I do like the addition of gallons per 100 mile.
+1 on the Gallons per Mile. If they could add that to the non graded sticker it would be a winner. The grade politicizes the label by penalizing even efficient ICE vehicles. A Jetta diesel would probably get an A-/B+ compared to an A+ Prius on CO2 alone. In this sample, an obviously fuel efficient SUV…which would have good mileage even if it were a small car, gets a B.
+1 on the Gallons per Mile
My car is +1 against breath weapons.
You could do like is done with appliances. Compare them to each other. “Class Average” “Best in Class” “Worst in Class” use a little sliding scale.
I don’t like any label with the words “greenhouse gases”, but at least the second label has real numbers instead of grades.
Today’s “B” car will be tomorrow’s “C” car – forget that stuff.
This sounds like the “Consumer Reports” grading system.
These hi-fi speakers are B+ and those others are C-. The “C-“speakers might be better in a larger room.
There are too many factors for the letter grades to be useful.
The letter grade system is a perfect illustration of how The Government sees the subjects: too dumb to read, need to be governmed for their own good. Same reasoning that went to British system of color-coded foods.
“too dumb to read” Yup, I think that covers the average American.
Or our Terror Threat Warning system, which hasn’t gone below “Orange” since 9/14/2001. (rollseyes)
The government is right. Unfortunately, there really are a lot more people who just aren’t that smart, or at least have serious literacy issues. Remember that around 10% of Americans are functionally illiterate, and ESL brings that number up even further.
I encounter this—very often—in systems design and analysis. It’s fairly common in blue-collar work where ESL and functional literacy issues are common, but it’s not unheard of in clerical work. Hell, I’ve seen a few engineers with reading-comp issues; they just happened to be very good at math.
Not everyone can or will do the research or educate themselves, so in order to prevent these people from being exploited and/or to minimize loss due to miscommunication there’s a need for systems like this whereby things are reduced to a very-readable if dumbed-down state.
Now, you could just tell these people to go hang, and there’s arguments for doing that. The problem is that you’d be exposing them, and you, to some harm. Child seats are the classic example of this: many manufacturers had to significantly redesign their manuals when they found out that their manuals were reading well above the literacy level of the average customer and that said misunderstanding was resulting in incorrect use of the product.
This isn’t an American problem, exclusively, by the way. It’s the nature of humanity: for every William Wordsworth you have a Joe Plumber, and you need to accomodate Joe’s inability to read at grade three just as we’re forgiving of Will’s inability to change a faucet.
The problem comes when these kinds of things are perverted by groups with vested interests. The terror threat is an example, but the prime problem is food labelling, which in theory is supposed to make it easier for people to make healthy choices, but has been twisted by the food industry that it’s very easy for even fairly smart people to make boneheaded choices.
By that measure, this isn’t actually too bad.
Letter grading? Must be graded on a curve as I don’t know of any cars that would really earn an A, unless it’s solar, right? Unless GM makes it (A) or Toyota does (F).
And therein lies the problem. Today’s A will be tomorrow’s B. And who will decide this?
Why not have Realtors label homes this way? How about breakfast cereal? Airlines? And have the government do all the rating for us, so that we subjects don’t have to think.
When she mentioned ethanol in the same breath as hybrids, I lost interest. I’m sure there would be no favoritism shown for Gov’t Motors, the ethanol industry or any others. I just know it.
That video scared me. I thought it was a man. Suddenly a woman’s voice came out. Cognitive dissonance reigned for a moment there.
All I can say is this illustrates the problem with government today. Several people are pulling down nice salaries, with gold-plated benefits, doing crap like this. Who gives a hoot?
Gina’s pretty butch!
When do we switch to metric?
Gallons per mile should be more prominent than MPG.
Since people use trucks and SUVs as car replacements, why don’t we just go ahead and make the CAFE standards the same for cars and trucks/SUVs?
I don’t see how this “addresses the challenges posed by new plug-in vehicles.” At first I thought it just completely ignored that challenge, but then in the fine print of version 2 it says 33.7kWh is equivalent to 1 gallon of gasoline.
If you go by energy content, 33.7 appears to be reasonably close to the actual heat energy content of gasoline. Unfortunately you only get at best something like a third of that in useful power from the usual internal combustion engine, compared to much higher efficiency for electric motors. So in practical terms they’re not equivalent at all, and the number is off by a factor of more than two.
If you go by price, that many watt-hours is actually equal to about 1.4 gallons at their chosen $2.80/gal and the average US retail price for electricity, so in that case they’re off by only about 40%.
So they’re making battery-electric power look better than it really is by somewhere between 40 and 300 percent.
Really, they need to do the simple and obvious thing for plug-in hybrids: Show us both miles per kWh when in all-electric mode, and miles per gallon when not. Trying to come up with an equivalence for electricity and gasoline is pointless and misleading, as their relative prices will vary, the price of electricity is way variable depending where you live, gasoline engines will vary in efficiency, and the electricity will come from a changing mix of sources. They’re just not similar enough to compare directly in a meaningful way in this context.
But then, if they’re considering assigning letter grades, and insisting on making even more prominent an “annual fuel cost” that is relevant only to the unusual citizen who is exactly average, they obviously don’t see any problem in over-simplifying things to the point of stupidity.
So, bureaucrats from three federal agencies had to coordinate to come up with a choice of inane labels.
Fire the lot of them, everyone who worked on this nonsense, and let them try to find honest work.
Just another stupid taxtaker parasite demanding you all live for her.
An Associated Press article on the internet says:
“Environmentalists said the information on the stickers should reflect pollution from power plants that recharge electric vehicles. The proposal would only factor in greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes.”
Many will say the letters are treating consumers like children. To also ignore salient facts reminds me of my mom stretching the truth in order to get me to do what she wants. Children do not buy vehicles.
A lot of consumers certainly think and act like children. “I feel safe because I’m sitting up high and that makes this a safe vehicle. Fifty cupholders represent good value to me. I have no idea what this E85 decal means but it is green so I guess I’m saving the earth and getting better mileage.”
Not all consumers, but a whole lot of them.
And yeah, the dumbed-down letter grades annoy me too, but you and I are probably in the minority.
@Jim
I think most of the people here are on the side of let’s not put a letter grade on the car.
I can’t believe they are wasting their time with these new labels when they still haven’t fixed the things that are intrinsically wrong with the current fuel economy test. The current test, born from emissions testing, actually is counter to optimal fuel economy. I worked for a car company, with emissions compliance/calibration engineers and it was common to speak of “real world fuel economy” (RWFE) vs. test economy. Many of the calibration changes they made improved test economy, while hurting RWFE. Of course, they had no choice, because there are HUGE incentives to meet the economy numbers…or more accurately, huge disincentives, if they don’t. If the EPA really wants to help consumers, and save the planet they should fix the darn test! You could probably increase RWFE by 10%, by just making the test more accurate of actual driver usage.
I would say that one way they could fix the test is to take every car they test out for a week with all of their measurement tools and drive around on the roads and on the freeway, with A/C, without A/C etc., etc. If taken over a week everything should average out and that would give a more accurate fuel economy number.
Additionally, I think they should start testing cars with the various Ethanol blends that are found around the country so people who live in a state where Ethanol is mandated can see what kind of mileage they might get.
They’d never do it because it’s not repeatable. I also think they could start using the fuel that we can buy at the pump instead of their own blend.
Labels, schmabels! How about some truly relevant testing that more accurately gives real-world numbers. My car routinely turns in 10% better highway mileage than its EPA numbers, at a higher cruising speed (80), and A/C on. Part of that disparity may reflect the routine use of cruise control on Interstates that have fairly open conditions. The tests should have categories that indicate urban freeway traffic as a “highway” segment, as well as one for cross-country trips. In making a choice, the consumer needs to know how the product fits the intended usage pattern. I’m still trying to figure out how a real Traverse gets 30 mpg anywhere except downhill with a tailwind.