CAFE mid-term review - II

....issued jointly by EPA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the California Air Resources Board.

Hmmmmm.

There is a diminishing difference between "light duty trucks" and passenger vehicles, and pretty soon it will be a distinction without a difference. Even now, businesses (including Big Bell) are trending away from trucks wherever possible and getting into these funky little "Hello Kitty" transit vans with "no step" bumpers and racks holding ladders that are not much shorter than the van.
These days it's simply not possible to buy a truck that's just a a truck anymore, but rather they're trending to plush 4-door vehicles with all the amenities of passenger cars.
The cheapest new cars used to be base model trucks, but now......even with all of the alleged regulatory top-cover of being a truck instead of a car, the cheapest new truck in America is over $5,000 more expensive than the cheapest new car (Another Nissan...Versa) ....and these patterns continue across the OEMs.
More insidiously, while it's possible to get sedans (over priced as they are) in quantity in the teens....you will never find trucks in any quantity at the lower price points, and very often the single most expensive car on any given lot will be.........a truck!

I just checked a monster dealership's web site for available new cars under $20k.
There were literally hundreds of cars, but not one truck.

Part of this is demand.
If you can only afford one vehicle for a family and you don't live in the concrete jungle, then it simply makes more sense to drive a truck.
Better ground clearance, better utility, better perceived crash protection.....but more importantly.......better corporate profitability.

I don't remember what the proposed CAFE regs were for LD trucks, and it really doesn't matter because they will probably change....just as "10 year budgets" do in state houses, and in the swamp.

 

f150 lariat pulled up next to me today. that thing was a beast. i can remember being able to see over the sides of the bed, back in the day.

 

Try coming down here to truck country. I like tools, especially the right tool for the job, but dang. Just short of 1000 year flooding, there's little "real" use for a F-350 with a 18" - 24" suspension plus 6" body lift. It's not even good for towing and heaven forbid they ever see dirt. There are hundreds of these things around me here in town. Farmer/ranchers wouldn't touch one of these things. Go 500 miles in any direction and that's all you see.

 

ya, this one was pristine. either brand new, or never seen real work. i was looking at his hubcaps.

 

Is that another euphemism, bisco?

 

not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

Overall what happened is FORD etc. decided to be atypically cooperative rather than adversarial when EPA came up with a relatively drastic initial MPG reduction proposal. As the passage of time proved the initial EPA proposal was too drastic, EPA refused to cooperate with the reality-check review. We need cooperation on both sides to get good targets (if we can ever get there).