Public wants 60mpg, but don't listen to them.

[Mr. Wyndham]

I'm not usually a fan of these xxxxxx.autos.com sites, like yahoo or aol...but this one caught my attention and I actually read it.

Pretty decent read on the "real world" with regards to fuel economy, regulations, and consumers...versus a half-baked poll trying to convince us otherwise.

http://autos.aol.com/article/opinion...isten-to-them/

Americans in the Midwest of all political persuasions say they'd support a minimum 60 mpg fuel economy standard by 2025, says an environmental group that conducted a survey this month.

The 60 mpg figure has come up several times in the past few months as automakers, lobbying groups and government officials try to set new standards for the future. New fuel economy figures are due out Sept. 1 from the federal government.

Ceres, a two-decade-old non-profit environmental group founded in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez Alaskan oil spill, says bipartisan voters in Ohio and Michigan say they want to see 60 mpg as the new fuel economy standard.

"In a democracy, public opinion should matter," says Mark Mellman, CEO and president of The Mellmann Group, which conducted the survey of 1,600 voters in the Heartland.

But what consumers say in surveys is very often the exact opposite of how they behave in a new car showroom. People say they want better fuel economy, but when it comes time to choose between paying an extra $3,000 for a hybrid system or getting a bigger car with heated leather seats and a Bose sound system, their dreams of driving green often evaporate.

Opposition to a 60 mpg standard will be met with catcalls from environmentalists. Indeed, the findings of apparent public support put the auto industry in the unpopular and politically incorrect position of saying no to this noble goal. The industry has an illustrious and pock-marked tradition of pushing back against environmental and safety mandates -- safety belts, airbags and higher fuel economy -- that clearly benefit society and the planet.

But on this one, they might be right.

Without standards like CAFE, which was passed in 1977, the industry has been loath to increase fuel economy on its own. Average fuel economy remained about flat from the early 1980s until the late 2000s when those figures started creeping up. New federal mandates, which the industry also opposed, call for the industry to have a minimum 34.1 mpg by 2016.

And, as could have been predicted, fuel economy has started to improve as the industry works to reach that goal. We are seeing more cars topping 40 mpg in highway driving, and 30 mpg in combined city/highway driving, than ever before. The new Ford Explorer is much more fuel efficient than the old one, and is selling much better than the old model did in the last few years. The new Subaru Impreza has jumped from highway mileage in the mid-20s to the mid-30s, using every engineering trick available to hit those numbers.

But amidst the progress, the 34.1 mpg goal is a stretch. There are concerns that people won't want to pay for the added technology -- hybrid systems, direct injection engines, turbo chargers and stop-start systems that shut an engine down at idle and stop-lights -- needed to get to a 34.1 average.

Pushing for 60 mpg sounds like a good idea. It would wean us off our addiction on foreign oil, and could help improve national security as we became less dependent on getting oil from places where people hate us.

Automakers can build a car that gets 60 mpg, but few would choose it for the family ride.

Automakers would have to contort car designs, and would fill up showrooms with tiny, really expensive vehicles. Given that the most popular vehicle in the U.S. has been the Ford F-150 pickup for 34 years in a row, there's no evidence Americans want tiny cars. The smart fortwo has been a bust in the U.S., and has never made any money for automaker Daimler. And every time gas prices slip below $3.50 per gallon, sales of all small cars soften up almost overnight.

Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the lobbying group Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, says a 60 mpg mandate would essentially mean all cars would have to be electric cars.

She has a point: The smallest car Kia Motors sells, the Rio subcompact, will get maybe 50 mpg on the highway when it debuts this fall. It has all the gas saving bells and whistles except an electric or hybrid drivetrain, which would add between $5,000 and $12,000 to its cost.

Given that electric cars only hit the market this December, it's unclear where we'll be with that technology in 13 years. The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf are certainly cool, but they have their limitations. The Volt only seats four people, because its large battery cuts the back seat in half. The Leaf can only go 100 miles at best (and often less) because it doesn't have a gas backup, so it rules out a large segment of the population who like to drive their cars farther than 45 minutes from home (because you need to save battery power to get back.)

The 60 mpg average goal that would be set for 2025, still 14 years away -- which seems like plenty of time to ramp up infrastructure to put recharging stations all over the country and dial up production of batteries. But it's not. It takes four to five years to develop a car, and even longer to invent new technologies, test them for quality and durability, and then get them on the road. That's not even considering the infrastructure development needed to provide recharging stations across the U.S.

The auto industry should sell between 13 million and 16 million new vehicles a year between now and 2025. For automakers, in the next fourteen years, to make 10% of those a year electrics and hybrids would be an enormous achievement.

The auto industry has a very powerful lobbying group, one that doesn't hesitate to throw about its weight when it doesn't like proposed legislation. Yet given the industry's history of stonewalling, it would be a mistake to pass a 60 mph CAFE standard. If the U.S. seriously wants to encourage consumers to start driving small cars, it needs to adopt higher gas taxes, a wildly unpopular idea with voters. History has shown that higher fuel prices are the only thing that drives U.S. consumers to smaller cars.

In Europe, they understand the connection between high gas prices and better fuel economy. Drivers opt for smaller cars, sacrificing storage space and other niceties to have a more efficient vehicle. The Ceres survey did not ask consumers if they would be willing to pay $8 a gallon gas to support the 60 mpg goal.

If it had, the survey would really be interesting.

Bottom Line
It's worth remembering that while the federal government can mandate that automakers build vehicles that get 60 mpg, they can't mandate that consumers buy them.

[TOMS1SS]

Try 2050 and that's a stretch in my opinion. American's don't want fuel efficient cars, all the trucks and muscle cars selling hand over fist at $4 dollar a gallon is proof of that.

[DGthe3]

Bob Lutz once described CAFE as being like trying to fight obesity by forcing people to only sell smaller clothes.

[DarkneSS]

Stop comparing us to Europe WTF. You can bike to many places in Europe where you live, not the case in Ny. On AVG our cities and work places are more spread out than in Rurope.

[Apex Paul]

Originally Posted by Dragoneye

Given that the most popular vehicle in the U.S. has been the Ford F-150 pickup for 34 years in a row

Wow. That's the most impressive statistic I have seen in a while.

Originally Posted by DGthe3

Bob Lutz once described CAFE as being like trying to fight obesity by forcing people to only sell smaller clothes.

I'd like to see it. (Is that wrong?)

[derklug]

I want a car that gets 60mpg, and has warp drive and an interstellar nav system built in the dash. Show all the people that want 60MPG a Cruze and tell them that it will be GM's full sized sedan, and they may change their minds.

[Number 3]

When you ask the question as follows:

Do you support 60 MPG CAFE Standard?

"Why yes, yes I do. I think that's a grand idea", is a typical response.

But if you were to ask it like this:

Do you support a 60 MPG CAFE Standard that will cost your new car from $3,500 to $10,000 in technology?

"WTF??", is likely what you'd get.

It's the old "auto companies are in cahoots with the oil companies. Kept us from 100 mpg for years now" mentality too.





Or lets start a poll.......................WHO WANTS FREE BEER?

[Mr Twisty]

Originally Posted by Number 3

Or lets start a poll.......................WHO WANTS FREE BEER?

Sorry man... all I read was blablablah yaddayadda FREE BEER

Just give me a small pickup with a 4 cylinder diesel turbo that gets ~40mpg to run to town for widgets... I'll be a happy camper.

Ain't getting rid of the big block for pulling stumps tho.

[TOMS1SS]

Originally Posted by Number 3

Or lets start a poll.......................WHO WANTS FREE BEER?

My vote is yes. I'll take a Dogfish Head 120 minute IPA please.

[JoeP@TeamBeckyD]

Originally Posted by DGthe3

Bob Lutz once described CAFE as being like trying to fight obesity by forcing people to only sell smaller clothes.

That won't work???

Originally Posted by Number 3

When you ask the question as follows:

Do you support 60 MPG CAFE Standard?

"Why yes, yes I do. I think that's a grand idea", is a typical response.

But if you were to ask it like this:

Do you support a 60 MPG CAFE Standard that will cost your new car from $3,500 to $10,000 in technology?

"WTF??", is likely what you'd get.

It's the old "auto companies are in cahoots with the oil companies. Kept us from 100 mpg for years now" mentality too.





Or lets start a poll.......................WHO WANTS FREE BEER?

[Apex Motorsports]

Originally Posted by Number 3

When you ask the question as follows:

Do you support 60 MPG CAFE Standard?

"Why yes, yes I do. I think that's a grand idea", is a typical response.

But if you were to ask it like this:

Do you support a 60 MPG CAFE Standard that will cost your new car from $3,500 to $10,000 in technology?

"WTF??", is likely what you'd get.

It's the old "auto companies are in cahoots with the oil companies. Kept us from 100 mpg for years now" mentality too.





Or lets start a poll.......................WHO WANTS FREE BEER?

Exactly. What they really want is to be able to drive and it not hurt the pocket book. In other words, cheap oil.

[fielderLS3]

The average consumer is an idiot. Hell, why stop at 60 mpg. Wouldn't we all want a car that got 150 mpg (and let's say had 800hp, pulled 2 g's around the skidpad, and stickered for about $10K while we are at it too).

All this poll shows is how scientifically and economically illiterate the population in general is. People seem to think you can legislate technology, as if the automakers could build a 60mpg car today with no compromises and no price increase over current models, but choose not to.

The "public" says they want 60 mpg, but ultimately, they don't know what they want, because the car buying public is largely reactionary. If the average person attempted to design what they thought was the perfect car, the result would probably not be too far off from what happened when Homer Simpson designed a car. Let's not forget that design by focus group gave us the 2004 Malibu.

[rayhawk]

Originally Posted by fielderLS3

The average consumer is an idiot. Hell, why stop at 60 mpg. Wouldn't we all want a car that got 150 mpg (and let's say had 800hp, pulled 2 g's around the skidpad, and stickered for about $10K while we are at it too).

All this poll shows is how scientifically and economically illiterate the population in general is. People seem to think you can legislate technology, as if the automakers could build a 60mpg car today with no compromises and no price increase over current models, but choose not to.

The "public" says they want 60 mpg, but ultimately, they don't know what they want, because the car buying public is largely reactionary. If the average person attempted to design what they thought was the perfect car, the result would probably not be too far off from what happened when Homer Simpson designed a car. Let's not forget that design by focus group gave us the 2004 Malibu.

This is so true. As Homer said, "I want the world to think it's going to end when I gun the motor!"

Unfortunately, every generation of Americans becomes less knowledgeable about science and technology, so I don't expect any improvement. People think someone who knows how to set up a router is a genius, but the reality is the vast majority of people have no business making sweeping choices about the future of technology. Whether we are talking about energy production, CAFE, etc., only legitimate scientists and engineers should have any input. That excludes nearly every person in our government, and unfortunately, the vast majority of the people who elected them.

[DevilsReject97]

Originally Posted by TOMS1SS

American's don't want fuel efficient cars, all the trucks and muscle cars selling hand over fist at $4 dollar a gallon is proof of that.

Please, just stop. We're not Europe. If you like it so much, pack your gear and go move there.

First, most of those countries do not have the high standards we do for both crashing and safety. This causes the prices to go higher here than they do over there.

Second, those countries are setup a lot differently then we are here in the US. They have smaller roads, often just 2 lane roads. They have high quality mass transit, which the US doesn't.

Three, about half the cars in Europe are diesel powered....which provides better fuel economy in most cases.

Four, and this is the point of Dragon's post - MOST of those "fuel efficient" cars are the size of a freaking go-cart.


I'm sorry, but I am not riding around in something that's 5 ft. long and 3 ft. wide. I would like to go home after an accident. You talk about how Americans don't mind paying out that money, but then you fail to see why.

At the same token, I'm not against improving fuel mileage. These companies can already do it with the technology that is already in use today. There are engines overseas that could easily be put in the same cars here, but because of stupidity in regulations, they don't.

I just find it funny that your sitting here basically calling us stupid for paying to gas the vehicles we choose to drive and yet you do the exact same thing.....