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And these taxes could be INSTEAD of the valuation tax in California - the state would still get its money, and people would have big financial incentives to downsize as much as possible.
And manufacturers like Bugatti just pay enormous CAFE fines (to the tune of $10,000 for every car sold, or more) and pass along the costs to their customers.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
If you tax displacement, what if my 2.0 turbo 4cyl motor gets less MPG than the 3.5 L V6? The 3.5 L gets taxed more, which makes no sense to me.
To indirect in my opinion.
I think basing weight to HP limits would be more effective. If the automaker is now paying fines for going under 27.2 MPG, have additional fines for going over 150 HP in a mid sized and 110 HP in a compact car. It is not the Bugatti that is the problem. It is the CamCords with over 200 HP that are using more fuel than necessary to get where you are going.
I have a friend with a 1979 Ferrari in his garage. It has under 3000 original miles. Exotics are not the problem. It is the person commuting 65+ miles per day in a V6 mid size or a V8 SUV/PU.
Again, I think you have to attack the problem directly.
Either a direct gas tax increase, or perhaps a MPG rating tax (the worse the rating, the higher the tax) on new car sales. The latter is about the only reasonable thing I can think of.
Other than that, you're really screwing with the market in different areas hoping to influence the main problem indirectly.
CAFE means so little anymore. Automakers have found they can circumvent the CAFE standards with adding an E85 option to the vehicle. That does nothing to bring about better fuel economy. I would not mind paying the 50+ cents per gallon if they would fix the roads around my area.
Rocky
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Rocky
My goodness! :-P
All I can say is it works everywhere but here, and U.S. government is no more or less corrupt than theirs, certainly not enough to have a significant impact on the outcome of such a plan.
50-state diesel is as good as here, the Germans and the Japanese have engines ready to go and I am sure the Americans can find something in their repertoire to do the job too.
In Europe, gas taxation has led most of the market towards diesels.
In the ultra-urban Japanese market, there has been a move towards lower power and smaller engines, in order to boost fuel economy running regular gas. And of course, more recently, there has been a run-up in hybrids.
The U.S. could take either approach, or a combination of both, or God forbid it could actually INNOVATE to meet the new taxes head on. :-/
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
The best way to effect change is to bring desirable and affordable replacement products to market. For example, I have switched many light bulbs in my home to the compact fluourescent bulbs because, in the long run, it saves me time & energy. I hate climbing up on a ladder to change the regular bulbs as they burn out often and I rarely remember to get them at the store. Changing a light bulb every few years saves me time & money (overall), not to mention the energy savings reaped.
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It's funny how little Americans think of anything but the initial upfront costs when making major purchases. Gas over the life of the car can cost as much as the car initially cost to buy, yet fuel economy is mostly ignored in purchase decisions.
I think that's part of the reason we see so many sub-prime mortgage defaults right now, and so many people are in loans at 21% on their Ford Expedition, that they can't even afford to gas up and insure any more, let alone make the payments for.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Bruce Williams would give them the meanest stare and look at them like they're crazy. Really, when you're signing on to a home loan you'd better be smart enough to read all of the paperwork and ask questions of you don't understand all of it, and/or, hire a real estate lawyer to help you navigate your buying process and real estate loan. If you think that will be too expensive you'd best be thinkin' again on that one.
The sub-prime mortgage defaults are partly the blame of the consumer stretching recklessly to get the loan and the agents, brokers and lenders are to blame for the rest.
Too far in to the Lost Wages category for me to venture.
Diesels are not a nirvana ending, for me, anyway. Loud clangy, stinky chatterboxes for each and every driver in America? Imagine the possibilities! Huh...I'd rather look to Charles Barkley for NBA basketball advice than pick me up one of those contraptions. :sick:
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
When they started CARB demanded pollution free vehicles and wanted the manufacturers to move towards Evs or at the very least zero emissions vehicles. The manufacturers told them they didn’t believe they could produce any pollution free vehicles and suggested that they could produce a reduced emissions vehicle and they even called it a hybrid. CARB flat turned the industry down. Remember the industry was heavily domestic when CARB started. Toyota, GM and Ford had Evs in production and they even had several commercials supporting the concept. By the way I am not saying that Evs were the solution but it was one that CARB was willing to support and hybrids were rejected at the very beginning. As the deadline approached Toyota and Honda had a brainstorm. They presented a new concept that no one thought about 30 years ago. The gas hybrid. Wow said CARB who would have thought of that? And they promptly dropped the requirement for a ZERO emissions vehicle. Honda and Toyota started selling hybrids and Ford, GM and Toyota dropped their EV efforts like a hot potato. I fully believe that everyone on the board for CARB can tell you what their own large intestine looks like from the inside, personally. CAFÉ was never any closer to getting their act together. CARB has consistently been anti diesel and now that the EPA is getting into the fuel game because of the supreme court I am not so sure things are going to get any better. I simply do not believe there is a way to fix CAFÉ.
that being said i am enjoying getting about 30 mpg's in my pzev focus(25 city/33 hgy epa). i never take long highway trips.
Not to mention, I have to agree A LITTLE with the carmakers when they say that it is unfair to place the onus for improving fuel economy on them when the consumers are just as guilty in the whole process, by the nature of their buying decisions. Yet that is what CAFE does, place the onus on the carmakers.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
The automakers just want to sell what the public wants without getting cross ways with any of the above agencies. So nothing much has happened since the 1970s. Lower emissions and slightly better economy. Europe has us beat on every angle. Except we still have lower taxes.
boaz47: In the last twenty years has the fleet fuel average, the goal of CAFE, improved? If you had a corporation that preformed as bad as CAFE would it still be in business if it didn't show a profit in twenty years?
This is a curious statement. CAFE has mandated averages for 2 classes of vehicles. Both classes perform at or under these averages. Exactly how is this considered a failure?
If you make a law that requires 28 mpg (for example) and everyone averages 28 mpg, then how do you justify a complaint that everyone isn't averaging 35?
The problem isn't the CAFE regs, per se, but rather why CAFE isn't something more. Clear goals and political will are the issues, not CAFE as is stands today.
Group A, which is the largest group shall have to have higher standards than Group B. Hey, how come the market is shifting to Group B instead????
The question is not really whether CAFE has reached the end of its usefulness, but perhaps whether the present government has
Obviously, if the CAFE averages were raised more significantly than what is current, the fleet average would improve. Why wasn't that proposed? Because this government doesn't have the political will to do it. Their political base does not have oil conservation on their "todo" list. That is the crux. If improving the efficiency of the fleet is not a goal, then you don't get to step 2, i.e., how do we do this.
Did someone say "lifestyle issue"? Hey, maybe something interesting will come up here
That would be me. But I didn't say "I don't like SUVs, why..."
And yes, it's a lifestyle issue. Thirty years ago, folks lived just fine without these behemoths that now grace our fair suburban streets. Granted, cars were bigger but that was an engineering issue rather than a need-based design.
But people aren't going to give up gas guzzlers without a personal incentive to do so, and IMO, manufacturers are better motivated to change by the vision of profits over regulation. Think about it - with an average MPG regulated, manufacturers have zero incentive to achieve anything above & beyond mere compliance.
I would so rather see Congress devoting energy to passing legislation that promotes alternative fuel sources, technologies, and high MPG vehicle production, rather than simply regulating a minimum standard. When you set the bar low, most will achieve just that.
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I can in no way claim to be as smart as a corporate bean counter but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how things work. Corollas are no longer Toyota's number one seller the Larger Camry is and has been for a long time. The Civic is no longer Honda's number one seller the Accord is. But with the help of the Corollas and Civics we can have Accord V-6 with 260 HP or Camrys with similar HP numbers. It isn't hard to see how easy it is to beat CAFE standards without trying. Even the new standards my friend Nippon has pointed out for trucks has a giant hole you can drive a 3/4 ton truck through. Has anyone else noticed that 1/2 ton trucks are getting bigger? If you think about it they are closing in on 8000 pounds even today. Add 920 pounds to a 8000 pound 1/2 ton Ford and guess what? more than 700,000 Fords become exempt from CAFE. So if I were doing the math it could be something like this. I could spend the tooling money and try to develop a truck in the half ton range that had a new engine or was even a hybrid that I would make very little profit on for five or ten years or I could make my current truck 920 pounds heavier, call it the improved stronger 1/2 ton and take 700,000 trucks out of the fuel mileage equation.
What kind of corporate creeps would do that? During the current CAFE standards SUVs at one point represented almost 50 percent of the car sales in the US. GM and Ford Both sold SUVs and light trucks in record numbers and neither paid one dime in Gas Guzzler fines because of credits and other offsets by offering multi fuel options that no one really bought.
Here I have to agree with Nippon. Fuel prices not CAFE has hurt SUV and light truck sales. Fuel prices has invigorated small cars sales that were in the basement for so many years. It is the consumers wallet that has had a far greater impact in the last four years than 30 years of CAFE. I would conclude that CAFE has indeed been a waste of money. Now they want to change the standards again to a standard that Honda and Toyota may already be meeting? Putting regulations into effect that the market forces are already effecting isn't doing anything. Well maybe I am being harsh. At least CAFE creates government jobs and allows someone to live off of taxpayers money.
But what you say is so true: raise the price of gas, and you will begin to save gas and therefore oil on a societal level. That's why those gas taxes have to come up. Use some of the new revenues to make public transportation free.
CAFE standards were frozen by Ronald Reagan in 1986. Does anyone think seriously that we are ever going to make up for 21 years of standing still (and backsliding in the overall mix, as we trended towards trucks)?
What kirstie said has resonance for me - I was reading this review in C&D last night of the latest Suburban with the 6.2L engine. They made a point of saying that while it was a decent improvement over its predecessor, it was becoming increasingly irrelevant in the age of $3 gas. You know what fuel economy they achieved? TEN MPG! In a vehicle whose city EPA rating is 14, both of which figures are abysmally low. Consumers will move away from them post-haste in the next few years I think.
Which gives CAFE half a chance to do its job, I suppose, if we can get the standards up quickly. Hadn't thought of it that way. But if gas prices subside again for more than a few months, people will forget. People forget so quickly...
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Actually, IMO, the fact that it's only a lifestyle issue is really the problem. Like it's discretionary. Something those granola-crunching, treehugging, Bush-impeaching Vermonters would do, but not a real USA-loving, it's my god-given right bleating, "deal with it" types.
But people aren't going to give up gas guzzlers without a personal incentive to do so...
And certainly not with a leadership vacuum. I have no intention of turning this into a political rant, but one should not underestimate the power of leadership on this issue. We are heading towards an energy crisis and although the transportaion sector is only one of several major pieces, it's a big one. The first step to solving the problem is recognition and right now, our leadership is in denial. On this and many other issues....but I refuse to digress
...with an average MPG regulated, manufacturers have zero incentive to achieve anything above & beyond mere compliance.
Absolutely true. The obvious answer to that problem is to raise the bar.
I would so rather see Congress devoting energy to passing legislation that promotes alternative fuel sources...
That would be good, too. Frankly, I think we need both, because we need all the "push" we can get, since we are pretty much mired in the mud on this.
Not sure what this means. CAFE's goal is to set an average for the fleet. It has accomplished that, so what "beating" is going on?
Has anyone else noticed that 1/2 ton trucks are getting bigger?
These are outside CAFE's scope. I agree, CAFE's scope should change.
...neither paid one dime in Gas Guzzler fines because of credits and other offsets...
GG tax applies to cars only, not trucks.
Fuel prices not CAFE has hurt SUV and light truck sales.
The standard for LTVs has been under 22 for a long time, and with MVs and mini-utes getting much better (thereby bringing the LTV avgs up), of course SUV sales have not been impacted much.
I would conclude that CAFE has indeed been a waste of money.
What money? The cost to administer? What is that cost?
As for the benefit, I offer this:
Observe that mpg went from about 18 mpg before CAFE to 27 in a few years. Since then, as CAFE has remained constant, so has mpg.
Putting regulations into effect that the market forces are already effecting isn't doing anything.
I don't follow this. The overall average is not increasing now. The current effect of the market is net zero.
I fail to see any evidence that CAFE did either of these things.
Do you think a government system that has been mired in the mud for 30 years can be corrected?
Absolutely. It's called an election
I assume you are referring to the leadership in Congress? I wonder what Pelosi is doing to cut back on energy waste?
I do agree that leaders must make the first step to conserving our natural resources. Do you know any that have? Congress is the one to blame for the lack of progress with regards to CAFE standards. They are also responsible for lowering the standard in 1986.
Congress specified that CAFE standards must be set at the “maximum feasible level.” Congress provided that the Department’s determinations of maximum feasible level be made in consideration of four factors:
(1) Technological feasibility;
(2) Economic practicability;
(3) Effect of other standards on fuel economy; and
(4) Need of the nation to conserve energy
For what years and at what levels have the passenger car CAFE standards been set?
To meet the goal of doubling the 1974 passenger car fuel economy average by 1985 (to 27.5 mpg), Congress set fuel economy standards for some of the intervening years. Passenger car standards were established for MY 1978 (18 mpg); MY 1979 (19 mpg); MY 1980 (20 mpg); and for MY 1985 and thereafter (27.5 mpg). Congress left the level of 1981-84 standards to the Department to establish administratively. Subsequently, standards of 22, 24, 26, and 27 mpg were established. For the post-1985 period, Congress provided for the continued application of the 27.5 mpg standard for passenger cars, but gave the Department the authority to set higher or lower standards. From MY 1986 through 1989, the passenger car standards were lowered. Thereafter, in MY 1990, the passenger car standard was amended to 27.5 mpg, which it has remained at this level.
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview.htm
So the leadership has changed several times over the last 30 years, and yet the system hasn't worked. So a change in leadership now isn't likely to make much difference. The question falls back on, has the fleet average improved in twenty years? If the answer is no then CAFE doesn't work. If it doesn't work shouldn't we try something else? And if we should try something else why keep CAFE? :confuse:
After the fall 1986 elections, Congress was firmly in control of the Democrats (the Democrats captured the Senate and increased their majority in the House of Representatives), but nothing was done to raise CAFE.
Nor was anything done after the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 - and until the fall of 1994, both the executive and legislative branches of government were under Democratic control.
Considering that the gains by Democrats in the most recent national election were made by either moderates in the South and West, or legislators in the mold of Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) (who is more concerned about preserving UAW jobs than raising CAFE), it remains to be seen whether a big rise in CAFE standards is the province of reality or wishful thinking.
I think we should restore the 55 mph speed limit. After, that one was a huge success.
After that, we'll reinstate Prohibition.
After that, we'll reinstate Prohibition."
Now that was something that made me smile. We as a people seem to be willing to attack a problem that we can't solve with the same methods and somehow expect different results. I believe if I was an automotive lobbiest I would push for them to keep CAFE. After all it is better than letting them try something else that that might be challenging for them.
Rocky
There is merit in giving credits for alternative fuels but not when they are doing it for E85. You can't subsidize a crop, guarantee prices, tariff the heck out of imported sources and then give credit to car manufacturers for making vehicles you can burn the stuff in.
Speaking of E85 the milk prices are going through the roof (even more so than gasoline) and the culprit is increased feed costs for the cows. You guessed it - corn.
If you had a pretty straight CAFE that increased gradually it could work. Watching how both parties have attached pork to every bill and special interest rules as well I don't see this happening.
No, Bush, in case you were unsure
Congress is the one to blame for the lack of progress with regards to CAFE standards.
Actually, no. The Sect'y of transportation administers CAFE and is responsible for the standards set and he reports to the Prez.
Not that congress couldn't do anything, but it would have to get past Dubya's veto. And congress, with its newly minted backbone, is a bit preoccupied with other things at the moment.
We could argue about parties and interests, but the fact is that the current administration is not in favor of increasing CAFE. That's a fact.
...and yet the system hasn't worked.
Actually, it has worked perfectly. It was designed to bring the average to CAFE levels and it did. I'm not sure what the source of your POV is.
has the fleet average improved in twenty years?
Have the Cubs won the pennant? CAFE has no mechanism to achieve higher averages than it specifies nor can it help the Cubs.
If it doesn't work shouldn't we try something else? And if we should try something else why keep CAFE?
How about increasing the average it specifies? If your complaint is that is hasn't been increased, wouldn't the remedy be increasing it?
LOL....and what point would that be? That CAFE failed to make 27.5 the minumum mpg rating for all vehicles? Are you under the impression that it was designed to do that?
...many have a short memory and for some reason think that a change in the color of the party will result in other changes. The only change is from one politicians pocket to the others.
Oh yeah. Bush? Gore? Probably all the policies would be the same. That's a good one :=)
Well, that's getting to the point. If people don't really think that improving the efficiency of our fleet is important, then nothing else is going to matter.
I still think the ultimate fix is throwing billions of dollars at alternative energy and a infrastructure to support it.
No doubt about it. But the solution is probably 10-20 years away from making a major impact, and that's a long time to do nothing about our current fleet.
Rocky
-Rocky