Vehicle makers say US fuel economy standards put a million jobs at risk

[freebeard]

It's complicated. The donor vehicle is on a 1971 pan, with the ball-joint front end, but the rear trailing arms have been boxed butchered to the point I can't even get shock absorbers on it. It seems easiest to swap out the trailing arms and use the swing axles.

I could convert to double jointed axles, then with traverse leaf or quarter elliptic springs I could suck the rear tires in and make my dream vehicle:

[ThermionicScott]

When life hands you lemons...

[freebeard]

...you make lemon-shaped cars.

[aerostealth]

Certainly higher mpg standards are doable. Electric drive technology which is on its way to becoming mainstream makes 100 mpg equivalent routine. Within several more years people will look at ICE driven cars as quaint and outmoded. Giving the automakers what they want now will only retard progress and set America back again. Having more fuel inefficient vehicles in our mix will only cause the price of gasoline to rise.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by aerostealth

Certainly higher mpg standards are doable.

Yes, some higher standards are doable, but the weight penalty inherent to some safety features required to "federalize" a random vehicle make it more difficult.

Electric drive technology which is on its way to becoming mainstream makes 100 mpg equivalent routine. Within several more years people will look at ICE driven cars as quaint and outmoded.

I'm not sure if electric drive is going to become mainstream so soon at all, but certainly some mild-hybrid capabilities and features like regenerative braking and electric assist are likely to become mainstream sooner.

Giving the automakers what they want now will only retard progress and set America back again. Having more fuel inefficient vehicles in our mix will only cause the price of gasoline to rise.

What has set America back were those policies that favored SUVs and larger minivans classified as "light trucks" in order to bypass emissions and fuel-efficiency standards. And then, some safety standards implemented by NHTSA seem quite likely to have been set to eliminate competition from the Japanese automakers and their forward-control vans.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

What has set America back were those policies that favored SUVs and larger minivans classified as "light trucks" in order to bypass emissions and fuel-efficiency standards. And then, some safety standards implemented by NHTSA seem quite likely to have been set to eliminate competition from the Japanese automakers and their forward-control vans.

That says it all.
Car makers would benefit. Vehicle makers will suffer.

[niky]

Originally Posted by sendler

Crude oil will pass peak and start getting more and more expensive. We will have done not enough to replace it or our obsolete economic paradigm and be caught in an energy trap where it is too expensive to do anything about it.

I think the problem is that we've hit the "easy oil" peak already. The aftershocks from 2008 prove this... shale oil and other alternatives have a built-in inflexibility in the cost of prospecting and extraction that is at odds with what the global economy can afford at this point.

We'll only get a clearer picture when the cheap oil glut created by the previous Saudi oil minister's decision to dump oil two years back clears up. Then we can see what the market can really afford.

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

What has set America back were those policies that favored SUVs and larger minivans classified as "light trucks" in order to bypass emissions and fuel-efficiency standards. And then, some safety standards implemented by NHTSA seem quite likely to have been set to eliminate competition from the Japanese automakers and their forward-control vans.

Protectionist policies like that have virtually ensured that no American made car is competitive outside the home market. Not unless it's an American-branded car that's actually designed and built outside the USA.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Cummins tried coating. It ate through and around the coatings. They tried steel but that wore the cylinder bores out something like twice as fast and the increased reciprocating mass reduced efficiency and caused problems balancing the engine power assembles on some engines.
The best way to burn relatively untreated or lightly treated bio gas is in a gas turbine since they are made with high alloy steels that are very corrosion resistant or boilers, it also helps that boilers and gas turbines burn the gas as soon as it enters the engine.
I work with bio gas and I know people who work at the Cummins R&D plant here in clovis so I have a real good idea what it does.

Remember how some people were saying how wonderful bio gas is?
The boiler where I work that burns 25% bio gas to 75% natural gas is leaking again. Last year I thought the boiler got a full retube for almost $30,000.
Well it turns out they only retubed half the boiler, not through whole thing like I thought.
Well now some of the old tubes that were not leaking have started leaking.
So they bought another 800hp boiler because they learned during the retube job last year they just can't operate on two 1,200hp boilers since the last round of plant expansions.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by niky

Protectionist policies like that have virtually ensured that no American made car is competitive outside the home market. Not unless it's an American-branded car that's actually designed and built outside the USA.

Actually, some newer models from Cadillac and Lincoln do look competitive towards their European and Japanese contenders. The problem is that American cars and light commercial vehicles became somewhat more "specialized" either in exercizes of gross excess or some luxury-oriented landyachts that may justify the higher cost of designing and manufacturing in America while their counterparts developed in other countries have a broader appeal.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by niky

Protectionist policies like that have virtually ensured that no American made car is competitive outside the home market.

Tesla?