Look at it this way, suicide clown cars decrease health care costs, but increase the need for death panels.
One of the tricks used to bring up the CAFE of an automaker’s fleet of trucks is to sell just-barely-truck cars. That is how the world got the Chevy HHR and the Chrysler PT Cruiser. Both are technically trucks, and being popular they bring up the CAFE of a fleet that includes large pickup trucks.
CAFE is a joke. The free market will always right itself with regard to energy costs. If people waste a lot of cheap gas, price will rise until people use it spariingly then price will fall until people use it moderately and stabilizse there.
Yes, there will always be temporary market flucuations, but the FACT is, that without any government required fuel economy restrictions, there will always be people who want to minimze the money they burn in their gas tank.
Andno matter how high gas gets, there will always be car nuts like me who are willing to pay more than the median driver so as to be able to enjoy a performance car.
The free market is self-righting. The supporters of Socialists are not willing to accept this fact.
Screw CAFE.
The first set of 'advances' leave you with a computer that doubles as a car, which are likely at the root of Toyota's problems and those that have not yet been publicized in order to pressure other manufacturers.
The second, newly applied 'demands' put you in a cracker box that requires even more technology in an effort to avoid the highly publicized '70s threat of another Pinto, Corvair, Mustang 2, or the later Yugo.
Of course, when your brand new Toyota crushes in the manner it was designed to do, or if the air bags simply deploy before there are sufficient junkers available for gray market replacements, you and Geico will have to replace the whole automobile:
Quite a boon to the industry.
This news only reinforces my determination to keep my full-size pick-up and full-size station wagon. I really don’t care how much gas costs as long as I can avoid ending up in a wheelchair.