Quote:
Originally Posted by brucepick
IHMO the biggest improvement would be to wean American drivers off vehicles that have twice the power needed.
|
brucepick's comment was posted four years ago and it's still true. One easy way for a manufacturer to get its fleet average to 35 mpg is to sell more economy cars and fewer juggernauts. The way to achieve that is to increase customer demand for efficient cars--cars that are smaller, lighter, and less powerful than the high-profit-per-unit cars the manufacturers want to sell us. The manufacturers are strongly motivated to sell us more car than we need, for the same reason McDonald's wants you to supersize your fries: there's bigger money to be made by selling bigger cars (or meals).
It would sure help if motor fuel was expensive enough to make people feel really stupid if they buy inefficient cars. $3 a gallon was enough to make Hummers ridiculous--twenty years ago when they first came out (and fuel was cheap) they were pretty cool and their drivers were envied and admired, but for the last five+ years they've been the butt of jokes. People didn't quit buying them because they couldn't afford the fuel (a 2006 H1 cost over a hundred grand; if you could afford one you could afford to put fuel in it), they quit buying them because buying a Hummer makes you look Really Stupid.
Unfortunately, fuel prices have to go considerably higher before the average overpowered oversized automobile looks sufficiently stupid to demotivate purchasers. I think gasoline has to hit $5 a gallon before Ford and Chrysler's flagship Mustang and Charger (at 17 mpg each) look Really Stupid.
I know what would work--a 100% fuel tax, which would bump fuel at the pump to five bucks a gallon or so. Put the tax money into improving (or at least maintaining) the country's transportation infrastructure; we'd have good roads again, we'd keep more of our money in America, and I'll bet in three years we'd have a 35 mpg national fleet.