Posted on 08/24/2005 1:50:08 PM PDT by wayoverontheright
I am aware that many on this forum also favor increasing CAFE, I hope you understand that I respect your views, I only hope to offer the benefit of some observations which have convinced me it is the wrong way for our country to go.
link to article here....http://washtimes.com/business/20050822-122511-5121r.htm
Awful lot of unabashed vanities lately. Is it safe to go back in that water? I only very rarely try to float a rant these days.
IMHO, CAFE is responsible for the virtual demise of the old family-mover, the full size station wagon. Automakers discovered that minivans and SUVs were considered trucks while wagons (that got the same gas mileage) were considered cars. This created an incentive to push "trucks" since they fell into a different category under CAFE.
Having now read your vanity, your best argument is that higher fuel efficiency is bad because it allows people to drive more? But in any event I think whichever way CAFE goes, there is about to be a revolution in the use of high efficiency hybrid vehicles. You can debate the pros and cons of that all day but I sense it is happening.
I will tell you why I disagree with you.
Our dependence on oil is a national security issue.
The billions we spend on oil go straight to the most evil government supporters of terrorism and insurgencies like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
There is a significant cost to our government, and by extension every citizen, for this high consumption and dependency on oil.
It a matter of national strategic importance for us to reduce our dependency on oil. We should do many things, even if each one only helps the slightest amount. Increase CAFE standards, explore for oil offshore and in alaska, build oil refineries, increase nuclear power plants, and keep research going on cleaner burning coal and other fuels.
If oil is a nonrenewable resource, what makes more sense national security-wise, using up Saudi Arabia oil's first or ours.
You'd think that with gas prices this high that the real driving force to higher mileage cars would be consumer demand, not contrived government regulation.
I agree CFAE is what got us into the mess we are in now. Dont worry at $3.00 a gallon Americans will soon demand higher efficiency cars.
Absolutely! And, the rear wheel drive v-8. Why do I drive a Cadillac and an SUV now? Because I can't get a safe, moderately priced full sized car anymore. Thanks to the government, the Olds Cutlass or Buick Skylark is not an option.
CAFE created SUVs. And killed about 50,000 people. http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/WM85.cfm
Not quite. In 1972 I bought a Honda 600 Coupe, which got 42 MPG -- and a friend had been driving his Honda 600 Sedan for a year or two already.
It wasn't a big car (but it was big enough to hold three frat brothers, a Little Sister, and our luggage and presents to get to another frat brother's wedding), and too small for the American market in general. But the following year I was offered rather more than I'd paid for it -- cash.
(It was stolen 8 years later, with 169k on the odometer.)
Why do you think Honda is preparing to bring over a variant of the Honda Fit/Jazz that has been hit everywhere that car is sold? Or the fact Ford is seriously looking at selling the next-generation Fiesta model (smaller than the current Focus) in the USA? Or the fact that automotive engineers are rapidly developing technologies for gasoline engines such as direct fuel injection, lean-burn combustion, better spark plug designs and more advanced variable-timing valvetrain designs that in the long run could improve gasoline engine efficiency as much as 35 percent over today's engines?
All CAFE standards do is get auto manufacturers to produce lines of small, lightweight, dangerous cars that few people want or buy. They are a tremendous waste of resources.
Must not be many Dodge Rams Hemi's on that chart....
The BEST mileage I've got was an avg of 12.8 over 2700 miles...with the tailgate down to Idahoe and back.
And it's runs just fine.
You're free to make your point.
I think we need to mandate higher fuel efficiency and develop alternative fuels for the most conservative of reasons, namely to not have our nation be beholding to any other nation for something so important.
Let's be honest about something. We have nothing in common with the Saudis. They share none of the same ideals as we do and they represent the pinnacle of what can happen when a severely backward culture suddenly encounters great wealth and with it power. Does any American in their right mind really think that Saudi Arabia is a country worth emulating?
Yet we have to be nice to them and for one reason only. Oil. They have it and we need it and so we put up with their repressions, their overt support of the worst kinds of terrorists, and their horribly backward culture because of it.
If we find another workable source of fuel they, and many other regimes, lose their power to influence us because frankly that's the only card they have to play. Quite frankly world peace begins when the Saudis and their ilk run out of money and we already have the capability with fuels like E85 to put a major crimp in their cash flow.
In WW2 there were posters everywhere encouraging car pooling and energy conservation that said "If you ride alone you ride with Hitler." We need to face that again and realize that if you drive a big gas guzzling vehicle for no real reason you are, in fact, riding with Osama Bin Laden and giving aid and comfort to people who are trying to kill our men and women in uniform.
That's a very stark way to put it but it is true.
Interesting - I know a few people who own Rams with a HEMI. They griped about the mileage when they got them... but after all was said and done, it wasn't all that bad compared to my Ram (1500 with the 4.7L V8).
I averaged just a little over 15 MPG in combined driving, and an average of right at 20 MPG in pure highway driving.
The average I have heard from HEMI owners around here - 12-13 MPG city/15-17 MPG highway.
Now - actually USING that extra horsepower will significantly reduce those numbers!
I disagree with the stipulation that increased
CAFE standards would exponentialy and unlimitedly
increase "sprawl. And suggest a diffeent analogy.
We now have TV with Cable, and even Satellite TV.
Moving from 3 channels to hundreds of channels.
But there are still only 26 hours a day, and only
so many hours in a day, that most people can
devote to watching TV, and continue to effectively
run their lives....while true, with greater choices
availiable to watch, viewing may have increased on
average, it is still limite by other constraints
that are involved. If gas were back to 32 cents a
gallon, there is still only so much time availiable
in any persons life to spend commuting, or travelling
to and from vacation spots. Diversity of choice, may
offer uninteded consequences, but self limitation,
for the sake of itself, sounds an awful lot like
stagnation instead of conservatism. Better milage
from the same amount of fuel, a better fuel with
lower colateral costs, sounds more conservative
than radical to me.
Ooops! I meant 24...(one redfaced Nick)
<8o)
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