Current standards require new cars to average 27.5 miles per gallon; trucks have to get 23 miles a gallon. But here’s what those figures will be just seven years from now: Cars will have to average 39 miles per gallon. Trucks will have to get 30 miles per gallon.
I have never even driven a car, other than a hybrid, which got that kind of mileage. But that is going to be the required standard, less than seven years from now. For years, the automakers have fought savagely against increased mileage standards.
Their bulldog on Capitol Hill was Congressman John Dingell, Detroit’s human truck, as they called him. He’s been in Washington and on guard for the automobile industry since 1955.
Yesterday, here’s what he had to say about the agreement: “This is a remarkable environmental and national security accomplishment in an era that requires aggressive action to combat global warming and free our nation from foreign oil.”
Six months ago, if you showed me those words, I would have thought they came from Ralph Nader, or Greenpeace.
So - why does everyone all of a sudden think these drastically heightened fuel economy standards are a good idea? For a number of reasons, perhaps the biggest of which is that it doesn’t make any sense to have different state standards for emissions.
There are plenty of areas where the states should have broad leeway to make their own laws. But we all share the same atmosphere. California cannot prevent Nevada air from blowing across the state line. From the automakers’ point of view, having different standards for fuel economy doesn’t make sense either.
They are barely staying alive. They can’t afford, as Congressman Dingell said yesterday, “to be concerned about meeting a patchwork of different state standards.”
For years, California has had far tougher fuel standards than the rest of America. What Detroit wanted was for California to be forced to back off. But that isn’t happening. The nation’s biggest state is immensely rich, and immensely powerful, politically and otherwise.
Plus, for all intents and purposes, Chrysler and General Motors are wards of the government. They are depending on federal financing to keep them going, and help them through bankruptcy.
They are in no position to rock the boat. We are facing a new world here, and Detroit is going to have to be brave. What nobody knows, however, is whether the automakers can possibly achieve these fuel efficiency targets in less than seven years.
In past years, targets have been set, but then amended, pushed back, watered down. It’s possible that the mentality in the boardrooms is, as Free Press columnist Tom Walsh said yesterday, to say anything about 2016 that you need to say in order to survive.
Possibly. Yet things aren’t what they used to be. Every day, Michigan sees a little more clearly just how true that is.
Of course, the car companies can make a fleeet of cars that get that kind of mileage. The fleet, all of it, would look like a fleet of Geo Metros. That'll stir the souls of car buyers everywhere, and send them all rushing to the dealerships to return GM to profitability.
Jack Lessenberry has made, I think, one small error that is worth noting. He wrote, "For years, California has had far tougher fuel standards than the rest of America." I think that is mostly untrue. What California has had are different "emissions" standards, not "tougher fuel standards."
And they are two VERY different things. Changing a car's emission system doesn't mean it will get better mileage, or that drivers will drive less. Nor is it true that changing a car's architecture, so that it gets better mileage, means that the car will ultimately consume less gasoline. Indeed, a high-mileage car won't consume less gasoline if its owner decides to drive more, since mileage is so much less of a concern. And, in all of this, nothing is being said about "carbon" [carbon dioxide] being produced into the atmosphere.
Obama hasn't directly addressed any of those issues with this punitive and draconian order he is shoving down the throats of Americans. He is telling the car companies to make much smaller, lighter cars, and he is telling Americans what it is that they have to buy.
How many blog entries and print columns by Jack Lessenberry have we read, wherein he was castigating politicians for not having the guts to raise the taxes he thinks are neccessary, and to make plain the hard decisions the public needs to understand? I don't think I could count them all.
But here we we are talking about reducing gasoline consumption. And we have the perfect embodiment of Obama and the Democrats having the precise tool, the example of the Europeans and Asians, and the votes to make it happen, and yet ducking the issue. That tool is a federal gasoline tax. A federal gas tax is the one clear method to reduce gasoline consumption. CAFE standards have been proven, over several decades, to have no impact on gasoline usage. Higher mileage cars? People drive more. Higher gasoline prices? People drive less. But Obama and the Democrats don't have the guts, or the integrity, to enact a federal gas tax. They are probably too smart, knowing that they will get slaughtered and hung out to dry in the next election if they did so.
Any politician who talks about a "global climate crisis" ought to be compelled to vote for a higher gasoline taxes. If you don't vote for higher gas taxes, you have to shut up. We'd then see how much of a crisis we really have.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 20, 2009 at 03:26 PM
Mass Transit....Repeat that about 5 goggles...
Convert Michian Auto Sector to National Mass Transit Manufacturing State
Mass Transit ....Repeat that 5 googles....
Posted by: Thrasher | May 20, 2009 at 03:50 PM
Maybe we should keep this in mind when California comes to us looking for water.
Posted by: Bumby | May 20, 2009 at 04:35 PM
Better cars = more sprawl. All the savings will be consumed by growth. This is NOT progress. It is not even "change".
Posted by: fpteditors | May 21, 2009 at 09:29 AM
Thanks to Greg Thrasher, and his "Alternative Think Tank," which consists soleley of a weblog as far as I know, we now know the answer to all of Michigan's (and the domestic auto industry's) problems:
Mass transit.
Very soon, I'm sure, Thrasher's Alternative Think Tank will have mass transit solutions to these needs:
~ The family of four in Clinton Township, that wishes to go to their cottage on Mullet Lake, and are bringing their boat on a trailer.
~ The two guys, one from Trenton and one from Ypsilanti, who want to leave after their factory shift on a Friday night to go to Houghton Lake for a weekend, bringing their two snowmobiles, and be back at home Sunday night.
~ The mom in Troy whose three kids each have a hockey game this week; one is in Novi, another is in Ann Arbor, and another is in Essex, Ontario.
~ The self-employed house painter and handyman from Detroit, who currently drives an Econoline van with 122,000 miles on it and who makes $35,000 hard-earned dollars a year. He carries a truckload of paint and equipment, and works on homes in St. Clair Shores, Oak Park, Farmington, Grosse Isle and everywhere in between.
Won't mass transit work great for all of those people?
Oh, yeah.
And won't they all just love driving a new, miniature, 39-mpg Obamobile?
Oh, yeah.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 21, 2009 at 10:10 AM
Anonymous,
As usual your posts add nothing of value to the dialouge..My theme regarding MASS TRANSIT is a macro approach that changes the road for millions not just a few people ..
Of course I understand underdeveloped thinkers like you lack the vision to have macro ideas and bold themes...Myopic thinkers like you just want to drive around in Econoline vans picking up dirty diapers from the butts of stinky kids..
Then again I understand what drives intellectual cowards who post under 'anonymous' who are envious of people like Obama and progressive people like me ..
BTW my alternative think tank( amazing how people still operate out of old paradigms rejecting new progressive vehicles and visionary constructs like my 'alternative think tank'..of course these same brick and typewriter type thinkers still think cars and the Big 3 matter anymore in the global marketplace...
Everyday I am reminded why our state has become a backward 3rd world venue...posters like Anonymous reveal why ..so sad..so sad..
Posted by: Thrasher | May 21, 2009 at 12:09 PM
The Trasher Think Tank is merely a figment of Trasher's mind. No white papers(better make that a black papers), policy papers, etc. Just a jabbering racist bro with a mouth and no intellect. Trasher is just blast of no substance hot air. He weighs in on all topics but he has no expertise, insight or creativity. A flakey,mouthy chump with no accretive value.
Posted by: Augustas Woodward | May 23, 2009 at 12:34 AM
Trasher????? Who is dat man, thing, element, mineral??lol,lol,lol
Trasher is no THRASHER ....lol,lol,lol
Posted by: Thrasher | May 25, 2009 at 11:18 AM
A gas tax could still materialize if gas prices don't rise above $3.50 anyway or when the economy improves. It just depends if enough people will accept something like this to help pay for new infrastructure, roads, mass transit, and alternative energy R&D and subsidies. It could be argued that, in the long run, a gas tax really wouldn't be all that bad or cost all that much, because you could get a pretty good return on that investment and the money would stay here. Of coarse, it could still be a pretty hard sell, because in the short term it would increase costs. I think if Obama manages to keep enough political capital and/or get re-elected, he could well propose a gas tax in a few years and it might even pass without a whole lot of fuss.
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Posted by: Account Deleted | February 08, 2012 at 01:00 AM