Posted on 05/19/2009 8:00:51 PM PDT by St. Louis Conservative
At the end of his Rose Garden explanation yesterday of the new U.S. fuel-efficiency standards, President Obama remarked on the good that can be accomplished when we are "working together." The President may be getting ahead of himself. Watching the unlikely coalition arrayed behind him as Mr. Obama committed the U.S. to an astonishing passenger-car mileage average of 39 miles per gallon by 2016, it looks truer to say we are merely standing together in this adventure, for better or worse.
Mr. Obama's fleet-mileage partners yesterday included the two auto companies that have fallen into his arms, Chrysler and GM, still-independent Ford, the major foreign manufacturers, United Auto Workers chief Ron Gettelfinger, and beaming representatives from the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
All that's left to arrive at the President's new destination for the American way of driving are huge, unanswered questions about technology, financing and the marketability of cars that will be small and expensive.
Start with technology. The President's proposed standards would raise fuel economy goals higher and faster than even the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration believes is practical. Last year, NHTSA issued a proposed rule making that would have raised fuel economy to 32.2 mpg by 2015 for cars and light trucks combined. Its 376-page report notes that "the resources used to meet overly stringent CAFE standards . . . would better be allocated to other uses such as technology research and development, or improvements in vehicle safety."
The new U.S. fleet will almost certainly be made up of hybrids and electric cars. This comports with the explicit intention of the President and his environmental partners to back out fossil fuels. One may ask: Once Detroit is forced to build these cars, will free Americans want to buy them?
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
what a national nightmare.
I can’t help but wonder if this is the way they plan to kill Ford. I have no doubt that the remains of GM and Chrysler will get generous subsidies for the deathtraps that won’t sell.
Ford: start thinking WEIGHT. Idiotic reporters might think that hybrids are the wave of the future, but they’re expensive to manufacture (read: a plan to kill private business). Hopefully Mullally, coming from Boeing, understands: it’s all about weight, whether it’s cars, planes, or rockets.
I’d sure like to see some analysis about just how the heck they are going to achieve that 39 average. does that include full size pickups? What about minivans?
An average of 39 MPG means that for every 3/4 ton 4x4, they are going to have to build two priuses. maybe 3. The only way to sell vehicles in that ratio without some kind of cash back incentive is if gas prices are gonna be at least 5 bucks a gallon.
I’m glad we bought a brand new Explorer Limited last year. We better take good care of it, because such a vehicle may not be an option a few years from now. We have a large family too. If these idiots had their way, our family would have to travel in TWO VEHICLES whenever we all wanted to go somewhere together as one vehicle wouldn’t be available that would be large enough for us all.
I will never buy an auto by an american company that is ‘owned’ in any way by the government. To be a patriot now..we should buy foreign autos! Japanese is my bet. They have plants here at least.
You can forget electric cars. The US power grid cannot handle recharging them. It simply does not have the capacity to provide the power for even a few percentage points of the driving public. And there is no possible way to build/add that kind of capacity in the timeline Mr. Naive has laid out.
Hybrids? What is the true environmental cost of manufacturing the additional components? That is, compared to a conventional gasoline or diesel fueled vehicle? The delta in manufacturing is the powerful electric motor, some control circuitry, heavy gauge wire . . . and that big exotic chemical battery. What about maintenance, and disposal/recycling of that big battery? Over the average life of a vehicle, does the reduced fuel consumption really offset all the additional environmental impact of manufacturing and disposal of the other components?
“it’s all about weight...”
Weight matters much more for urban vehicles (stop and go) than vehicles used on open highways. At highway speeds, aerodynamic design matters more than weight.
You’re an optimist. Gas will be at least $20 a gallon in 7 years and you will be limited to 10 gallons a month.
The Escort was Ford’s response to this issue in the early 1980’s. Rumor has it that they never made a dime on them, but they were inexpensive to manufacture and they sold lots of them, which brought the average MPG down. In general, cars in the 80’s were a lot lighter than they are today. All the airbags, standard power options, leather, ABS, etc. add a lot of weight.
Among other vehicles, we have a pair of T-Birds at our house (the same color, too!). One was built in 1987 and one was built in 2005. The ‘05 has almost twice the HP as the ‘87, but it’s over 400 pounds heavier and gets 2 MPG less (even though it’s smaller in every dimension!). The combination of more weight and people’s desire for HP instead of low-end torque are MPG killers.
I don’t know about 39 MPG, but I believe that we can get in the 30’s easily—if people are willing to give up some of those options (and ridiculous things like 250HP for grocery getters). It’s all about weight and low-end torque.
Ford is going to be one of the big winners in the game and right ahead of them Toyota and Honda...hybrids all. Toyota was telling various news agencies, around the world, last year, that EVERY Car and Truck, they build, will be a hybrid by 2020. So they are heading in that direction long before this event. Ford’s Focus is using the toyota hybrid technolgy, but it gets better mileage via their technology. The Ford Escape would be selling like hot cakes if they did a little advertising about how great it is on mileage. Ford is planning many more cars and Honda may have the best hybrid of them all.
True, but we’ve had that nailed down for quite a while. Our ‘87 T-Bird has an aerodynamic coefficient of 0.34. I can think of several ways to get it down further (which Ford did on the ‘92 Taurus). Add low-end torque and an overdrive gear, and you can achieve excellent highway mileage (and, believe it or not, the 5.0 V8 had the best mileage of all the engine options, precisely because it had great low-end torque — it peaked at 270 pound-feet at only 2000 RPM).
I defy you to make a 3/4 ton 4x4 that gets 30+MPG.
I’m guessing a 2016 F-250 will cost $75,000.
Why? Because they will only be able to legally sell about 10,000 of them, and they will go to the highest bidder.
I may buy an F-250 sometime in the next year. I’ll use my 150 to haul hay, but keep the 250 to haul horses and trailers when I need to do so.
Have you priced them?
The only people not “working together” on this are about 3300 dealers who have been driven out of business and their staffs.
And to think - while all of this is going on, Obama’s “Car Czar” is building a 15 MILLION dollar house. Wonder if he went through Freddie and Fannie...
What difference does that make? Ultimately "free Americans" will have 2 choices: If you don't buy a Government Motors car, you will have more trouble financing it plus you will be taxed, excised, and 'road use-d' out the ass; If you do buy Government approved cars you will get a huge tax credit whether you pay taxes or not, easy financing, and rebates.
Either way, government approved and financed vehicles will be roughly the only choice for most people. Count on that.
I predict that the new ranking, in the US, will be...
1. honda
2. ford
3. toyota
4. something korean partnered with GM
5. something european partnered with something chinese and possibly also partnered with chrysler
Ford will start to go heavy on the commercial stuff in america...kinda like international was in the 60s and 70s. Pickups to semis will be dominated by ford, with a strong showing in minivans and SUVs.
World wide it could be the above list exactly backwards.
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