“I don’t believe increasing the fleet gas mileage necessarily increases the cost of the car.”
It most certainly does. A parts manufacturer gets hit in 2 ways. First, the lighter commodities (aluminum, magnesium, etc) are more expensive than rolled steel. Second, those materials are more difficult to manipulate in manufacturing while maintaining the same craftmanship or durability. The first drives up their cost per part and the second lowers the number of parts produced hourly, which then increases the allocation of fixed costs per part produced.
Now extrapolate that to a car or truck that consists of 10-12,000 tier 1 parts, then go backwards over 3-4 subtiers in the supply chain.
Don’t worry tho, when the prices go up as a result of the governmented directed policies, then those utopians will just be able to shift the blame to the evil corporations. The ignorant masses will eat it up!
“First, the lighter commodities (aluminum, magnesium, etc) are more expensive”
My idea is to use steel and other cheap stuff, but smaller amounts of it. We end up with smaller, cheezier, cheaper cars that get high gas mileage.
If buyers want more exotic, expensive cars that get high gas mileage then make some of those also. Maybe that’s all the new car buyers want. In that case forget the cheap cars.