New US Fuel Standards

Dead easy. Carry on making gas guzzlers but introduce a couple overly expensive plug in vehicles which will sell in limited numbers, to bring your fleet average right down.

 

NB: On this CAFE scale, the 2010+ Prius liftback is already over 70 mpg, well in compliance.

 

Absoutely, we should not confuse cafe and epa.
EPA MPG Fuel Economy Stickers vs MPG CAFE Standards - The Daily Green

But even with the prius, toyota is far less efficient than the new standards. The big change comes by using a vehicles footprint, and not just rewarding it for being called a light truck instead of a car.

Trucks still have lower standards than cars, but by 2025 SUVs and minivans do not have the same incentive that they do now. Blame the UAW and IIHS for keeping some favoritism, but the new rules are much better than the old ones.

If I am looking at the figures correctly a car with a small footprint like a prius will need 40 mpg(57 cafe) epa in 2025, a small SUV 37mpg epa, a big truck 23mpg epa. These rules along with higher gasoline prices should significantly shift the country back to less SUVs and more cars, and higher fuel economy on all vehicles.

These are high numbers and if the rules are not changed will mean a much higher percentage of hybrid vehicles and plug ins. The matter will be revisited in 2018, and since most changes to light trucks happen after that date there is the potential for back sliding.

 

So, when is someone going to make the DOT and EPA operate more efficiently.

 

Big Gov and efficiency are and never will be synonymous -!!!!!! EVER


2007 Prius - 140K - Green

 

....it has become a political strategy to commit to stretch goals which may be impossible to reach...the other example of this is the renewable fuel standard which mandates inclusion of large quantities of cellulosic biofuels into gasoline soon, but the biorefineries don't even exist yet. This strategy makes sense to the dems for some reason.

 

This goal seems doable.

Remember, gm and chyrsler went bankrupt because they didn't have efficient cars and trucks.

RPS for biofuels may be another matter. CARB has definitely failed at the ZEV mandate, numerous times. California did fail its RPS, but only 2 years. Texas, hit its standard of 10GW by 2020, already.It looks like Texas may get to 20% renewable by 2025. It all maters on the organization, whether it will fail.

 

Our 2007 Prius (120,000 mi) earns 50 mpg. A close friend's 2013 Prius earns 80 mpg.

 

From the raw EPA numbers, linked in another thread/post, I believe your 2007 Prius earns a CAFE score of 65.8 MPG.

Your close friend's 2013 Prius doesn't yet exist. But if it is unchanged from the 2012 model, it will earn a score of 70.7 MPG (Prius 'c'), 70.7 (Prius liftback), or 58.7 (Prius 'v').

 

Uhh... there were reasons beyond that. Sure, they definitely had efficient cars. But Chrysler hardly had any desirable cars.

I don't think either of them had a business model where they could survive w/o a huge % and large absolute numbers of truck and SUV sales. If they were only making efficient cars, at the profits they were getting on each (or lack of), they'd go under.

 

I thought GM's problems were due to the union contracts.

 

Feel free to check union salaries over time, and executives salaries compensation over the same time...

 

I can go into any plant and tell in about 30 seconds if it union or not. When people are standing around doing little you know it is union.

 

Auto union drove GM to trouble | Marketplace.org

 

You can get 'commentary' which says anything. Look up the actual numbers and do the math yourself.

 

Definitely there were other reasons also, but lack of efficient small cars like the cruze and sonic when gas spiked hurt GM a great deal. GM fought for years to not make cars like these, because as they said the public does not want to buy them. Since there are so few car companies and they are too big to fail, we can't take the manufacturers word on things like "customers really want big SUVs". Leaving the SUV loophole in the cafe standards so long was definitely a government problem. At least GM seems to be getting with the program now, and its vw and toyota that were fighting the new standards.

The current union salaries and benefits added very little to the cost of cars. The unions and dealerships were a big reason for the bankrupcy. GM needed to cut factories, workers, dealerships, brands to be competitive. Unions negotiated for more employment, but GM could not sell that many cars profitably. This lead to the negative spiral of deep discounts and dealer incentives, low resale value, low asp, cost cutting that cost some quality.

The tech is there to hit the new cafe standards. If us car companies don't improve fuel economy with the rest of the world, they will be in trouble again.

 

I was trying to find any critique of the new standards in the media.
Did not find anything but this article explains some of the credits automakers would get (stop/start engines, EV, natgas) to make the approx. 40 MPG (EPA basis) required.

New mileage standards double fuel efficiency - The Review

PS: Interestingly there is also a credit for using more eco-friendly air cond fluid.

 

So we must credit auto worker unions in Germany and Japan with the success of their auto industries.

 

I know next to nothing about Japanese industry, but in Germany, I would say YES, that's a significant part of the story.