[dude1394]

Ah Car and Driver...another right wing group who just doesn't understand that everyone driving a mini-cooper is a good thing. They obviously do not know nearly as much about the auto industry as the new UAW CEO's.

http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/...icles_car_news

That thud you just heard was the “other shoe” dropping in Washington, D.C.: the Obama administration has used the turmoil in the auto industry as an opportunity to nudge—okay, force—the industry into a new, more environmentally sensitive direction, thus making good on its promise to impose stricter Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) and tailpipe emissions standards across the automobile industry.



The proposed mandate raises CAFE standards about five percent annually from today’s level of 23 mpg for trucks and 27.5 mpg for cars to 30 mpg for trucks and 39 mpg for passenger cars by 2016, for an average of 35.5 mpg overall. This is roughly four years earlier than the already aggressive 35-mpg goalpost established by Congress in 2007.



As Goes California, So Goes the Country
These standards more or less embrace the strict fuel-economy/emissions proposals that California and about a dozen other states have been trying to implement for years, but which have been blocked by industry lawsuits. The mandate should therefore put many of the existing state lawsuits to rest.



Interestingly, many of the same players that have been trying to block the implementation of the California proposals have embraced the Obama mandate. Ostensibly, this is because the new rules create a uniform standard for the country, instead of allowing states to dictate their own emissions and fuel-economy standards.



“We’re cool with this,” Chrysler spokesman Scott Brown told us in a phone interview. “Most important is that it’s clear instead of piecemeal—we love that.”



Moments later, GM environment and energy spokesman Shad Balch echoed the sentiment, nearly verbatim: “We love it. Now we know what to build,” he told us. “As it was before, it was 14 states doing 14 different things, and we’d have to build products for each.” The new regulations, he said, allow for a “harmonized national product program, which allows for more efficient product planning. For a company trying to become leaner and more efficient, this is a huge step in the right direction.”



There's another force at play here, however, as both Chrysler and GM, recipients of massive government bailout loans, are in no position to voice dissent. Whether they think these policies are sound or not is moot; they will toe the Obama party line because he's their de facto boss. Ford knows it will have to ask for Obama's help if the economy doesn't improve soon, so it is also going along with the hype. Honda and Toyota have been tooting their green horns for years, so they can't very well be the voices of dissent on this issue. Put bluntly, the government is ramming this down the throats of the car companies.



How Do They Do It In Europe?
Senator after senator cites as evidence for the attainability of these standards the vehicles sold in Europe. But car for car, European vehicles aren't meaningfully more efficient. Take the Ford Focus sedan, a car that's comparably sized here and in Europe (although not the same vehicle). In the U.S., the base Focus sedan costs $15,000, has 140 hp, and is rated at 28 mpg combined by the EPA. The base Focus sedan available in Germany costs $20,000 (plus 19-percent tax!), has only 79 hp, and would be rated by the EPA at approximately 30 mpg combined if they were to test it. (Our estimate is based on standard differentials between U.S. and E.U. test numbers.) Paying an extra $5000, Europeans sacrifice 44 percent of their horsepower and gain less than 10 percent in fuel economy.



So why is Europe's fleet so much more efficient overall? The cars people buy there are much smaller. The Focus is one of the tinier mass-market cars sold in the U.S. today, but it's considered a reasonably sized family vehicle in Europe. The average European consumer buys a car a few sizes smaller than a Focus. (This is mainly due to space constraints in cities and smaller roads. If Europeans drove the long distances we do, they likely would drive Hummers, too.) And about half of Europeans buy diesels, which consume around 30-percent less fuel.
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Wouldn't U.S. Consumers Buy Fuel Misers if They Could?
We hear a lot from regulators about the increased choice these new regulations will bring, but these choices seem to be answers to questions no consumer is asking. The few vehicles available today that meet these standards don't sell in large quantities because of their small size, poor performance, and high prices. Sales of the Toyota Prius and other hybrids briefly shot up when gas cost $4.00 a gallon, but as soon as gas prices started dropping, so did hybrid sales. Prius sales fell so sharply (even in relation to a market in overall decline) that Toyota last year halted construction of a Prius factory it was building in Mississippi. Today, the best-selling vehicles in the U.S. so far this year are the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado pickup trucks. Nobody is stopping buyers of these vehicles from purchasing Priuses instead.