Posted on 08/12/2002 8:16:08 AM PDT by dubyagee
No gas hogs in LaLa Land
ROWLAND NETHAWAY Senior editor
Californians are strutting about congratulating themselves for their new state law requiring higher automobile fuel efficiency.
They believe that California's new state law will force car manufacturers to stop producing gas-guzzling vehicles responsible for global warming.
The logic behind the new law requiring greater fuel efficiency from car manufacturers is a faith-based belief that the automobile industry is involved in a giant conspiracy to deny the public fuel-efficient cars.
Ford, General Motors and the other car manufacturers, according to these anti-big business addicts, have the secret to 300-miles-per-gallon internal combustion engines locked away in a safe somewhere. The car industries make immoral profits by keeping this information from the public.
These urban-myth conspiracy theories have been around since the invention of automobiles.
Since I was a boy I've heard stories about the invention of new spark plugs, carburetors or fuel additives that could allow cars to run for hundreds of miles on a gallon of gas.
Generally, the stories included specific details about how the inventors of these miracles had been paid off and threatened to keep their mouths shut, if not simply murdered. Their supposed inventions were guarded more closely than the Coca-Cola recipe.
Same conspiracies, different era
Fifty years ago, these fanciful tales were voiced by run-of-the-mill drug store and pool hall conspiracy buffs.
In recent years, it has been the greenies, environmental groups, anti-globalists and Californians who think that government laws can force General Motors et al to finally release these secret fuel-efficient technologies.
It was cockamamie nonsense in 1952 and it remains just as harebrained today.
Car manufacturers wouldn't have to offer zero percent interest rates to sell cars if they could build cars with the size and power that buyers want and also get hundreds of miles per gallon.
Every car, SUV and truck owner in the nation would line up to buy such a vehicle.
The oil industry might not be pleased with 300-miles-per-gallon cars and trucks, but, hey, that's the breaks. There will always be uses for oil.
Since no knowledgeable person expects revolutionary efficiency breakthroughs on the venerable internal combustion engine, about the only way to increase fuel efficiency is to decrease safety by making cars and trucks smaller and lighter.
Anti-SUV acolytes may want to see everyone in scooter cars and public buses, but that's a hard sell to motorists who don't feel better about themselves driving around in lightweight, cramped, underpowered vehicles.
The last I heard, the car manufacturers said they would contest the new California fuel-efficiency law.
I suggest that the automobile industry simply ignore the California law.
Californians think their state law will force the car industry worldwide to build cars to California's standards.
Instead, car manufacturers should notify all the car dealers in California that they will be out of business on the day the state's new fuel efficiency standards go into effect.
If Californians want to own a new car, they will have to move to another state.
After a while, California would look like Havana, Cuba, where the cars are caught in a 1950s time warp.
Californians want the rest of the nation to pay to subsidize their lifestyles, which includes a gluttonous appetite for oil, electricity and water taken from other states.
There will be a lot less self-righteous strutting in LaLa Land if the auto industry simply ignores California's new fuel-efficiency law.
Rowland Nethaway's columns appear on Wednesdays and Fridays. E-mail: RNethaway@wacotrib.com
Just back off their rear bumper so you can see better.
Right on. I'll bet he get's really pissed when he's behind the 18 wheeler hauling his groceries, or the crap he buys at WalMart. God forbid the FedEx or UPS truck delivering all the junk you buy off Ebay.
We drive SUV's because we are Americans, we are productive, we have built the best country and economy the world has ever seen, but most of all we drive them because we earn enough to damn well afford it.
All Californians are strutting? I keep wondering how the average Californian feels about this. I know a lot of Iowans that hate waste and dependence on foreign oil.
I like this guy's thinking!
Basically, the point is that "the secret" to a vehicle with 300 mpg mileage isn't in some sort of special internal combustion engine that is much better, but rather in realizing that such a vehicle would have to be lighter and have less wind resistance than a moped, if it were supposed to travel at 60 mph.
How such a vehicle could carry 4 people is a mystery - let alone how it could carry the dog and a week's worth of groceries, or a trunkful of luggage. Those silly little electric bubblecars seen in Boulder and other "enlightened" places - they have too much wind resistance to make it. (And, they only have one occupant capacity.)
Earlier, another poster asked "medved" what he drove and he replied that he rode a motorcycle. This was quite a surprise to me, after having encountered his ASCII bat mascot, "Splifford," so many times in his posts, I was convinced he drove a "bat-mobile."
You've actually been over-optomistic in your calculation: basically you've shown the power required for level ground; if you factor in the power requirement to maintain 60mph up any significant grade, the challenge becomes all the more difficult.
Essentially, it would take a vehicle made out of "Unobtanium," that mysterious material that is infinitely strong, infinitely light, and has infinite fatigue resistance, and isn't brittle. Even then, the hill climbing power requirement of the payload alone would take more than a lawn-mower engine.
Hypocrite. There was an article a few months ago about how motorcycles are worse polluters than SUVs. Get rid of the cycle-o-death. Buy a bicycle. Show us you care.
And don't whine about how far it is to pedal. If you really cared, you would live closer to work.
Not gonna honk, just gonna "oink, oink..."
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