Posted on 06/26/2022 1:31:16 AM PDT by UMCRevMom@aol.com
“Used to be 10-15lbs”
Maybe at idle but not with rpms.
Why do cars in Russia need airbags and ABS? Russians don’t bother to wear seatbelts anyway. Many taxis have the seatbelts disabled. Taxi and limo drivers take it as a personal affront if you want to wear seatbelts while they are driving.
Mine failed probably cuz I didn’t use them very often.
“Russia earned what is very likely a record 93 billion euros(about $97 million) in revenue from exports of oil, gas and coal in the first 100 days of the country’s invasion of Ukraine”
I am NOT an expert, BUT... check out the rationale presented in this article:
“Russia is ready to sell crude oil at pretty much any price, but only to friendly countries, Energy Minister Nikolay Shulginov told Russian news agency Interfax.
Commenting on oil price forecasts, Shulginov said that these will need to be revised soon in light of the changes in the geopolitical and economic situation. He added that while a price range of between $80 and $150 per barrel of crude was possible, Russia was ready to sell its oil at any price range because its priority was to keep its oil industry going.
“A price range of $80 to $150 per barrel is generally possible,” Shulginov told Interfax, “but it is not our job to play guesswork with prices. Our job is to ensure the continue operation of the oil industry. We are ready to sell friendly countries oil and oil products at any price range.”
Separately, commenting on news about foreign companies’ exit from the Russian energy industry, Shulginov said this exit is, for now, hypothetical. These companies, he said, would first need to find a buyer for their Russian business.The minister’s statement suggests sanctions, although not directly targeting Russia’s oil industry, are beginning to bite. With lower sales due to the sanctions, Russia may soon need to start shutting down wells because it is running out of storage space, and new facilities are being built with haste.
The limited storage capacity has been a problem for a while but has only come into the spotlight now that Russian oil cargos are being shunned by Western buyers. According to the International Energy Agency, Western sanctions could reduce Russian exports by some 3 million barrels daily this quarter.
This would mean a 3-million-bpd shortfall in global supply with no immediate replacement. Also, if fuel exports are included, the shortfall could become even greater, as OPEC’s secretary-general warned the EU this week during talks in Vienna.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Russia-Ready-To-Sell-Oil-At-Any-Price.html
“90% of the mandated crap from DC to the Car Manufacturers contribute very little to actual function.”
“Such as”
Well for one: Gov’t mandated Required EPA Standards
CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE:
Can E15 Gasoline Really Damage Your Engine?
https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a6244/e15-gasoline-damage-engine/
Most people realize that all of us burn gasohol—a mixture of gasoline and alcohol—in our cars. Just about every gallon of gas pumped today contains as much as 10 percent domestically produced ethanol. Gummed-up fuel systems, damaged tanks and phase separation caused by stray moisture infiltrating fuel systems have plagued many consumers since this mixture debuted, and the problems will only get worse if government policy to increase the proportion of ethanol to gasoline is implemented.
Don’t get me wrong: Gasoline diluted with ethanol is a perfectly acceptable motor fuel when it’s stored properly, dispensed promptly and burned in vehicles and power equipment designed to handle it. Which, unfortunately, is not always the case.
Not a mandate on car manufacturers
“Not a mandate on car manufacturers”
Well, Why Biden is allowing more ethanol in gasoline
The Biden administration says it will suspend a federal rule that bars higher levels of ethanol in gasoline during the summer
April 12, 2022
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration says it will suspend a federal rule that bars higher levels of ethanol in gasoline during the summer. The move, which President Joe Biden was set to announce during a Tuesday visit to Iowa, is intended to tamp down prices at the pump that have spiked during Russia’s war with Ukraine. Iowa is a key producer of the corn-based fuel additive.
A look at how that the decision to authorize year-round use of so-called E15 will impact gas supplies, prices and the environment.
WHAT ACTION IS BIDEN TAKING?
“Most gasoline sold in the U.S. is blended with 10% ethanol. At Biden’s direction, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue an emergency waiver to allow widespread sale of 15% ethanol blend that is usually prohibited between June 1 and Sept. 15 because of concerns that it adds to smog in high temperatures.
Senior Biden administration officials said the move will save drivers an average of 10 cents per gallon at 2,300 gas stations that sell E15, as the high-blend ethanol is known. Those stations are mostly in the Midwest and the South, including Texas, according to industry groups.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/explainer-biden-allowing-ethanol-gasoline-84036558
Also, The Shocking Truth About America’s Ethanol Law
“This argument over the virtues and evils of ethanol focuses on one particular law: the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires that gasoline manufacturers purchase large and, until this year, ever-growing amounts of ethanol, which they then blend into the nation’s fuel supply. (True insiders will protest that gas companies can buy renewable fuel credits, called RINs, instead of ethanol, but the ethanol-boosting effect is the same in either case. So we’ll stay away from that rabbit hole.) As you might expect, corn farmers and ethanol producers helped push this law through Congress.
Does Your Gas Tank Hold Enough Food To Feed 22 People?
If you oppose government interventions in the free market, as Cruz does, the RFS is an outrage. “End the Ethanol Rip-Off,” wrote author Robert Bryce in The New York Times last year. He pointed out that a gallon of ethanol delivers only two-thirds as much energy as a gallon of pure petroleum-based gasoline, and as a result, we’re paying about twice as much for that ethanol, per unit of energy, as for petroleum-derived gasoline. The loser, he says, is the American consumer, to the tune of about $10 billion each year.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/02/10/466010209/the-shocking-truth-about-americas-ethanol-law-it-doesnt-matter-for-now
Me: “Not a mandate on car manufacturers”
You: Well, Why Biden is allowing more ethanol in gasoline
Not a mandate on car manufactures.
ADDENDUM: STATUTORY AUTHORITIES TITLES 23 and 49, UNITED STATES CODE
-https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/statutory-authorities
-Motor Vehicle Safety - May 2013
-Highway Safety - May 2013
PART C - Information, Standards, and Requirements - May 2013
FIXING AMERICA’S SURFACE TRANSPORTATION ACT (FAST Act)
- The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, or “FAST Act,” was signed into law on December 4, 2015. The FAST Act authorized $2.7 billion in funding for the Section 402 Highway Safety Programs and Section 405 National Priority Safety Programs for fiscal years 2016 through 2020.
MOVING AHEAD FOR PROGRESS IN THE 21ST CENTURY ACT
MAP-21, as enacted (July 6, 2012; P.L. 112-141) (Text, PDF) (the PDF version totals 584 pages)
-Highway Safety Provisions (for reading or copying — counting the first page of MAP-21 as page #1 — see pages 328 - 353 of the PDF)
-Open container, repeat offenders, and adjustments to highway safety penalty provisions (for reading or copying, see pages 152 – 156 of the PDF)
-Extension of NHTSA’s Highway Safety Programs — through fiscal year 2012 (for reading, see pages 577 – 578 of the PDF; for copying [due to a glitch in the document], copy pages 981 – 982 of the PDF)
-Motor Vehicle Safety Provisions (for reading or copying — counting the first page of MAP-21 as page #1, see pages 353 - 372 of the PDF)
-Motorcoach Safety (for reading, see pages 405 – 411 of the PDF; for copying [due to a glitch in the document], copy pages 809 – 815 of the PDF)
-Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Research (for reading, see pages 493 – 501 of the PDF; for copying [due to a glitch in the document], copy pages 897 – 905 of the PDF)
MOTOR VEHICLE SAFETY - May 2008
- Authority to Promulgate Safety Standards for Retrofitting Commercial Motor Vehicles and Equipment (HTML, PDF)
- National Driver Register - May 2006 (HTML | PDF)
HIGHWAY SAFETY - May 2008
PART C - Information, Standards, and Requirements - May 2008
Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act (SAFETEA)
- SAFETEA-LU, as enacted (Aug. 10, 2005; P.L. 109-59) (HTML, PDF)
- Motor Vehicle Safety Provisions (HTML, PDF)
- Highway Safety Provisions (HTML, PDF)
LOL!!! Yes, let's Hope!
And, in the summer, every decent hill had two or three overheated cars on it. And when it was REALLY hot, even on a flat road.
I plugged it with a golf tee.
The sanction war is hurting us and, especially, Europe much worse than Russia. It's debatable whether Russia is being hurt at all.
The sanction war has bene another failed policy of the Biden regime. Yet, you seem to want to embrace it. Well, conservatives should be vehemently opposing the sanction war. The well-being of Americans takes priority over waging an economic war with Russia over a war in Ukraine that absolutely NOTHING to do with our national security.
I agree with war. However, I don’t want to be an isolationist while people are killed by a Putin & his “mythical kingdom!”
The Russian people do not want war & have protested all over Russia. Mother are converging on the Kremlin. The soldiers don’t want to invade ‘Ukraine’. The young conscripts were lied to by their superiors & not allowed to turn back when they reached the Ukrainian border. The Russian professional soldiers refused to go fight in Ukraine under the loop-hole of it NOT being declared a war but only a “Special Military Operation”!
Putin has been merciless toward both the Russian & Ukrainian people!
It’s a surprise any of us made it out of childhood.😜
It’s only liquid when it’s melted.😏
Hmm he looks kinda pasty white.🤔
There’s not enough metal in a modern car to make very many soup cans.🤔
Russia can either produce this domestically or get it from China. Russia is a bad guy (they are Communist) but don’t underestimate them.
I was just surfing the net somehow I came across this article & thought it would add to topic discussion:
MAJOR RUSSIAN INDUSTRIES BREAK DOWN UNDER WEIGHT OF SANCTIONS
Andrea Peters
The World Socialist Web Site
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/06/08/drjx-j08.html?fbclid=IwAR3PlFrs_ZtLGDiAh3j5HtLBY9R43CY5RHgot1w8rsW_z5cWBzcE_cKiqzg
7 June 2022
Key sectors of Russian industry are breaking down under the weight of import and export bans, deficits of spare parts and materials, the closure of foreign markets and the freezing of financial transactions. Reports are emerging of problems in everything from trucking to the production of milk cartons, as companies struggle to sustain operations.
On Tuesday, Russian lead producers announced they are in danger of shuttering factories due to the absence of overseas buyers and a decline in domestic demand fueled in large part by a sharp contraction in the auto industry. Even with some enterprises having already cut production by 30 percent over the last several months, warehouses are full with unsold lead.
European consumers previously accounted for nearly 50 percent of all Russian lead sales, and they have effectively been absent from the market since March due to logistical and financial problems brought on by Western sanction. As of July 10, EU purchases of Russian lead will be entirely prohibited. Lead companies also say they are encountering major obstacles getting the government licenses necessary to divert production to Asian countries.
At an industry-wide conference held on June 7, Russian freight companies declared they are at risk of bankruptcy due to a steep decline in prices, high costs for replacement parts, and an inability to purchase new vehicles from foreign suppliers. In April, the EU barred the country’s trucks from entering its soil.
Domestic demand is down, too. Between March and June 1, corporations saw freight prices drop by 13.2 percent on average for the top 100 destinations, with some major routes experiencing two to three times that decline. The fee charged for transporting goods between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Russia’s two largest cities, fell by 34.4 percent during those three months. Whereas previously, 1 million Russian trucks made 300,000 daily shipments, now 1.1 million trucks are making just 180,000. Air cargo is also down.
The government is aware of the problem, with the minister of transport acknowledging in May that sanctions “practically broke all the logistics in the country.” It has made grants and low-cost loans available, but companies say that is not enough. They need help with the cost of fuel, and they are overburdened by taxes. In addition, while the ministry of industry and trade has approved “parallel imports”—branded goods that are brought into the country without the permission of the trademark owner—of Scania and Volvo products, they have not done so for Mercedes, MAN, Iveco, DAF and Isuzu. As a result, the rubber necessary for truck repairs is, for instance, in short supply, reports news outlet RBK.
Russia’s ports are also in crisis. In March, cargo turnover in Saint Petersburg, one of the country’s largest harbors, fell by 41 percent in absolute volume. The government has responded by cutting rental rates that shippers have to pay for the use of port facilities, but experts say that without an increase in demand the problem cannot be overcome.
There are ongoing discussions over the creation of new maritime links between domestic and international ports, including some in Iran. But putting such plans into action requires significant investments, as well as time, because in many cases the infrastructure to send or receive the kinds of cargo that would be borne by Russian ships does not currently exist. A looming EU and UK ban on insuring Russian maritime transport will further complicate the situation.
The auto industry also continues to suffer from the pullout of foreign car producers and a major shortfall of materials, particularly electronic components. Rosstat, Russia’s central statistical agency, announced Wednesday that auto production fell by nearly half between January and April. This is the steepest drop witnessed in any sector. In April of this year, Russian automakers produced 85.4 percent fewer cars than they did at the same time in 2021. “At the moment, only two enterprises produce cars more or less stably—the Ulyanovsk UAZ and the Tula plant Haval,” reported Izvestiia on June 6.
In an interview with Ridus.ru, industry expert Sergei Aslanyan explained the depth of the crisis. “We don’t have electronics factories, we don’t have anything to make an engine out of. We have ‘Niva,’ which is 45 years old, 20 percent consists of imports,” he said referring to one model produced by Russian manufacturer Lada. But, he added, “It has pistons and piston rings from the American corporation Federal Mogul. And now we will even have nothing to assemble the Niva from. What are we going to make air bag systems from? Who will present us with an airbag? Nobody. We don’t even have bearings.”
The prospect that a nationwide import substitution program, which the Kremlin is pushing, will fill the gaps is a pipedream, argue experts. “Even the Soviet archaic Moskvich [car model] cannot be revived today. Where can I get it? It disappeared a long time ago. I’m afraid that even the documentation can only be found in the museum. It is impossible to breathe life into the dead,” Yang Heitzeer, vice president of the National Automobile Union, told Ridus.ru.
The data, computing, and telecommunications industries, which sustain all sectors of the economy, are now without the semiconductors, microchips and servers they need to operate and expand. Home-grown companies have not been able to match the memory, processing and bandwith capacities of foreign-made producers. These are in high demand because overseas corporations are no longer providing cloud services to Russian firms.
In Tatarstan, with a population of more than 3.8 million, the Ministry of Digital Development had to scrap plans to extend 4G/LTE to 61 cities and instead was only able to provide the service to 30 new places. It simply lacked the materials necessary. A similar problem occurred in Saratov Oblast, home to 2.4 million people.
In late May, the Russian Steel Association told the government that it is confronting difficulties due to a steep fall in domestic demand and the strength of the ruble. In addition, with the EU having banned imports, producers have been forced to “sell goods at a discount, and in some cases even below cost” to China and other Asian countries, Russian Steel’s head Alexei Sentyurin explained.
Its members will suffer major losses and have to cut production, the organization said, unless the government reduces its tax burden and works to devalue the ruble. “Ferrous metallurgy enterprises face serious risks of staff reductions,” adds news outlet RBK based on its discussion with Sentyurin.
Russian agriculture is facing problems too because of its heavy reliance on imported seeds, which in some cases account for the majority or even the entirety of the product it uses—for instance, sunflowers (70-77 percent) and sugar beets (100 percent). While experts say an immediate crisis has been forestalled because the industry built up seed reserves, what will happen next year is unclear.
Yevgenii Ivanov of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies explained to Zol.ru, “As a rule, all companies in the world that deal with sugar beet seeds grow them in northern Italy and southern France. In Russia, only some areas near Sochi and in the Crimea are suitable for these purposes.” Crimea, however, is at the center of the war in Ukraine, and Kiev began cutting off water supplies to the region, which lacks adequate resources of its own, even prior to the Russian invasion. But, as Ivanov noted, “it is impossible to grow sugar beet there without irrigation.”
The forestry industry is also running into difficulties. The head of the Khanty-Mansi autonomous region has been receiving large numbers of complaints from timber companies about the fact that due to export bans they have nowhere to sell their goods. Former major markets, such as Uzbekistan, are now closed.
There are concerns over the supply of bacteria for the fermentation of goods like yogurt and kefir, because Russian milk-product producers import 80 percent of what they need. For some time, there was a deficit of milk in stores in parts of the country because the Finnish carton maker that Russian producers relied on pulled out. The elevator industry is also having manufacturing problems.
Even the Russian oil and gas industry, which is posting record profits despite EU and US import bans due to surging energy prices and increased demand from China, India and elsewhere, is limited by the fact that it has lost access to imported technology, software, and human capital that it needs to develop new wells and gas fields in previously untapped places, like, for instance, the Barents Sea. Without a solution to this, as well as the construction of new pipelines to Asian markets, it will struggle to sustain itself and grow.
The Russian government is trying to cover up the depth of the crisis, claiming that unemployment, allegedly at just 4 percent, is the lowest ever, that its programs will reduce poverty in 2022 and its economic policies secure the real incomes of the population. President Putin declared on Tuesday that inflation is being brought under control.
The Kremlin is deeply concerned that popular anger over the collapse of the economy will not just be directed against the West for its punishing sanctions, but at the state for its disastrous invasion of Ukraine and the miserable consequences of 30 years of capitalist restoration. But the manipulation of jobless numbers, raises for government employees that amount to a couple hundred dollars a year, and false claims about the prices of essentials goods and services cannot change the reality facing the Russian working class.
For its part, the US and its NATO allies are celebrating the destruction of Russia. Media accounts in the Western press generally note with barely suppressed delight the deepening crisis.
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