Make America Guzzle Again!?

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

Pointing at physics says a Yukon can't get 50 mpg doesn't mean that Bubba can't get 50 mpg on his solo commute.

A diesel Yukon could get "around " 50mpg at 25mph

But bubba won't drive the national speed limit in 1920 nor would he accept 15hp
That said our cars should do better at low speeds, America has jacked up priorities.

Bigger vehicles should cost enough to drive that bubba really can't have one for a solo commute.

Ah well

[oil pan 4]

Just because there is going to be a regime change doesn't mean suddenly people will stop buying fuel efficient vehicles. It's already been happening.
I saw it on the news Americans have made their choice. Cars like the Chevy cruz just are not selling. GM is planning to lay off 2,000 workers in January. The hardest hit plant will be the one that produces the cruz.
I knew it was coming, dealer lots are full of these things and they can't even give them away, talking about the $100 a month lease deal they were pushing on local TV ads.
American chose to guzzle again when $3 a gallon just seemed to have lost its shock value about 2 or 3 years ago.
To me it looks like gas guzzlers have been selling fairly well for at least the last year or 2.

[ksa8907]

The future of motoring is going to be hybrid and electric drive. GM made hybrid tahoes that got decent mileage for a full size suv with a 6.0 v8. IF they actually committed to better FE, we could have a yukon with 30 mpg highway and mid 20's around town.

[botsapper]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Fleet fuel economy will improve over time, regardless. I'm not saying the U.S. has made a good decision concerning political leadership, but the executive branch only represents 1/3 of the federal power.
.

This new admin has both House and Senate majorities too.

[vskid3]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

I knew it was coming, dealer lots are full of these things and they can't even give them away, talking about the $100 a month lease deal they were pushing on local TV ads.
American chose to guzzle again when $3 a gallon just seemed to have lost its shock value about 2 or 3 years ago.
To me it looks like gas guzzlers have been selling fairly well for at least the last year or 2.

Maybe the gas guzzler tax needs to apply to any vehicle that gets below the current average.

[oil pan 4]

It's a $2,000 tax. That means it's only a difference of around $25 per month on a car payment.
Since the payment difference between a economy car and a big gas guzzler is almost double that tells us people are not at all concerned about $25 difference in a car payment.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Just because there is going to be a regime change doesn't mean suddenly people will stop buying fuel efficient vehicles. It's already been happening.
I saw it on the news Americans have made their choice. Cars like the Chevy cruz just are not selling. GM is planning to lay off 2,000 workers in January. The hardest hit plant will be the one that produces the cruz.
I knew it was coming, dealer lots are full of these things and they can't even give them away, talking about the $100 a month lease deal they were pushing on local TV ads.
American chose to guzzle again when $3 a gallon just seemed to have lost its shock value about 2 or 3 years ago.
To me it looks like gas guzzlers have been selling fairly well for at least the last year or 2.

That is why the VW L1 will have no competitors until fuel prices get dear again. All the mfgs know how to make them- there may even be prototypes under wraps- but they wait until the business case for building them can be made. Humans = rarely pro-active.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by botsapper

This new admin has both House and Senate majorities too.

All three branches are likely to shift.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

I wonder how arbitrary it really was. Sure, you can see a bunch of stoners sitting around throwing numbers around, but maybe there's a chance that the numbers are based in reality. If there's a market shift towards cars and away from trucks for personal transportation, the fleet average is going to skyrocket.

Pointing at physics says a Yukon can't get 50 mpg doesn't mean that Bubba can't get 50 mpg on his solo commute.

Good points. I'm merely pointing out our human tendancy to believe growth rates are sustainable, when in fact nothing with a rate of growth is sustainable.

The law of diminishing returns makes each incrimintal improvement to something exponentially more difficult to achieve. I immediately think of Moore's Law of transistor size in computer chips. We're just a few years away from being unable to substantially reduce the size any further. Physics has limitations, and we are running into those limitations. In the same vein, Toyota's goal of making each itteration of the Prius 10% more fuel efficient is not sustainable.

This isn't to say that improvement isn't worthwhile, just that we cannot extrapolate from previous gains what our future gains will be. For example, if battery density doubled in the past 10 years, we cannot assume that all it takes is more research to double it again in the next 10 years. Likewise, if fuel economy improved a certain percentage in the past, we cannot assume it reasonable to make the same improvement again in the future.

Each incrimental improvement is likely to be exponentially more costly, and at some point the benefit of improvement is outweighed by the substantially higher cost. This is why CAFE and EPA targets should be reviewed. Resonable people would consider the cost / benefit, but unreasonable people would simply impose demands on an industry to satisfy their religious (loosely used to refer to people who think global warming is humanities biggest threat) beliefs.

... and demonstrating 1 instance of reasonable action doesn't imply that all of a person's actions are reasonable. I'm hoping The Great Wall was just idle rhetoric to appeal to extreme voters instead of an actual foreign relations strategy.

[Frank Lee]

It's not at all arbitrary. While I don't have a link to provide at the moment, the govt uses research labs to crunch all sorts of data to weigh what is feasible and what is not.