Imports tell Congress they can handle a 35 mpg CAFE
Did you hear that? It was the sound of fourteen gauntlets being thrown down by import automakers in the halls of Congress. That's the number of foreign car makers including Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and Hyundai that have said they can meet a CAFE standard of 35 MPG -- they just can't do it by 2020 and request "several more years." How many more is several? No one says, but it's a start.
The group in question is the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, which has decided to stop trying to fight the 35 MPG standard that's being proposed. Mike Stanton, president of the group, has called that figure "a pretty sacred number" on Capitol Hill." That group, though, is different than the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which is the Big Three, Toyota, and five others. They say the Association's position isn't at odds with theirs, which makes sense because no one is saying that 35 MPG isn't achievable. Everyone just wants more time to do it, and again, the Association hasn't said how much additional time it wants.
The import makers haven't decided whether they still want to fight the merging of car and truck standards into one single standard for an automaker's entire fleet. It will continue to fight Congress' wish that more cars run on mostly ethanol, and it doesn't want to keep certifying domestically-made and imported cars separately. We would tell you that the debate over federal CAFE standards should come to an end later this year as some analysts claim, but we have little faith a final agreement will be reached.
[Source: Auto News, sub req'd]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
ghil 7:59PM (11/01/2007)
It's a piece of cake: make cars lighter!
Reply
Level 8:23PM (11/01/2007)
How Sir are they going to make cars lighter? with somany safety features that are mandatory these days....and no using exotic light materials would bring the prices toooo high.....Everyone wants light cars but the minute they get involved in a crash etc the same people that want light cars bad mouths them are being a POS...
Level 8:25PM (11/01/2007)
How Sir are they going to make cars lighter? with somany safety features that are mandatory these days....and no using exotic light materials would bring the prices toooo high.....Everyone wants light cars but the minute they get involved in a crash etc the same people that want light cars bad mouths them are being a POS...
Level 8:26PM (11/01/2007)
How Sir are they going to make cars lighter? with somany safety features that are mandatory these days....and no using exotic light materials would bring the prices toooo high.....Everyone wants light cars but the minute they get involved in a crash etc the same people that want light cars bad mouths them are being a POS...
Galley 8:54AM (11/02/2007)
With automated traffic systems, cars could me made of tin foil.
Victor 10:03PM (11/02/2007)
Tin foil? Really? Apparently you have been living under the rock and have no idea how computers and automated systems operate especially on that level of complexity. I have no problem with that, you can go ride in tin foil cars - that how evolution works, one idiot less.
vdk 7:59PM (11/01/2007)
uh? 12 years is not enough? Damn, no one knows if there will be any humans in 2020...
Reply
Aaron B Brown 8:03PM (11/01/2007)
What a bunch of crap, every auto manufacturer on the planet could be building small cars that get 40 mpg tomorrow, and they know it. And ethanol is one of the biggest lies in America today, it's an artificial market that's been manufactured to make people feel better, and allow farmers to be able to sell their corn for more than two dollars a bushel. The cobwebs are starting to form in ethanol plants around the country, as the demand drops. Little more than big oil propaganda to keep their pockets filled with our cash.
It's immoral to produce fuel from food, when so many people are starving to death around the world, and the amount of energy it takes to produce ethanol from corn is somewhere in the neighborhood of five times more energy intensive than making gas from oil. Remember enormous amounts of petrochemicals go into producing corn, from lubricants, tires and fuel for machinery, to pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer to grow the crops. it's a sinkhole for energy and oil. A dead end where you always end up putting much more energy than you get back, while at the same time depleting the topsoil of America's farmland, a finite resource that we cannot afford to waste.
Until we can produce ethanol from farm waste, which is at least 5 to 10 years away, it won't even come close to being energy-efficient. E-85 is a scam, don't fall for it.
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Vivek 8:21PM (11/01/2007)
Yeah sure buddy.
Level 8:32PM (11/01/2007)
Offcourse auto manufacturer can produce a car that gets 40mpg......as a matter a fact I have the car right for you its a 2cyl Yugo....personaly I'll keep my 400hp V8 thank you very much......
alex 8:46PM (11/01/2007)
of course every car maker can make small cars that get 40 mpg. but unless thats all they sell, it won't get their CAFE rating up to 35. sorry bud but some people need trucks. or large sedans. or mid sized sedans.
Aaron B Brown 9:01PM (11/01/2007)
Read and learn, I realize this is a foreign concept to some of you, but give it a try. :-)
Ethanol, in the minus column.
Ethanol’s Boom Stalling as Glut Depresses Price
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/business/30ethanol.html?ex=1348804800&en=5a445a4ca77d01c0&ei=5088&
Sharp price drop puts brakes on ethanol boom
http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071007/NEWS/710070313/1001
Connecticut sips ethanol Kool-Aid
http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2007/10/06/opinion/289378.txt
Ethanol price decline might trigger state subsidy
http://www.minotdailynews.com/news/articles.asp?articleID=15015
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Ethanol, in the plus column
Microbe may lead to cheaper ethanol
http://www.masslive.com/chicopeeholyoke/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-11/119174175762850.xml&coll=1
POET says Iowa plant to make cellulosic by 2011
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN0523949520071005
DuPont, BP team to perfect ethanol substitute
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070926/BUSINESS01/709260353/-1/SPORTS09
Microbe to Turn Plants into Ethanol
http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=4968
elprogramer 10:42PM (11/01/2007)
They already do, but nobody buys them except poor people.
Funny thing, capitalism.
Drewboy 7:55AM (11/02/2007)
I notice Aaron that you don't even really crack at peak oil, which we may have hit within the past two years. Lets wait and see what people say when gas reaches $4/gallon in the US this May.
Groovdog 6:27PM (11/02/2007)
Peak oil is crap. The US is sitting on over 1 trillion barrels of shale alone. We just need some tech and some will to become independent. If more Americans realized this we could rid ourselves of the negative influence of numerous oil states.
naggs 11:18AM (11/02/2007)
small cars already do get 40 mpg, that is not hard. the problem is that they only represent a few % of the total number of cars sold
iQuack 8:27PM (11/01/2007)
CAFE is a distraction and 100% political crap. Nobody needs economy standards if gasoline prices rise enough.
Most Americans want bigger, heavier, and safer cars. When gas is costly enough, people will switch from gas hogs to gas sippers. No need for the government to distort markets with CAFE. Just see what kinds of cars are bought if/when gas hits $5 or $6 per gallon in the U.S.!
We buy foreign oil because it's the cheapest fuel available to us. When you think about it, we should all go out and buy Hummers so that the demand for gasoline will raise the pump price sufficiently to bring alternate fuels into production.
By the way, it's likely that the total cost to both the Earth and people's wallets might be higher for a Prius than a Hummer after considering the extra complexity of hybrid car power systems, battery production and eventual recycling, etc.
Blow-hards in Congress always want to "do something" when we'd all be better off if they restrained themselves from screwing up the free market.
Reply
Louis Duran 10:19PM (11/01/2007)
Raising the CAFE standard may just be easier than raising the gas price which is another route the congress could and in my opinion should take. They should raise the federal gasoline tax which has not increased in 15 years to account for the additional expense of maintaining the national highway system.
If we as voters are going to complain about collapsing bridges or under-capacity highways in urban areas, the blame falls squarely on us. We tend to treat badly any politician that tries to raise the federal gas tax even if it is a necessity.
iQuack 10:28PM (11/01/2007)
Good points. But collapsing bridges and crumbling roads often occur because tax money was wasted on bike paths and other things rather than making necessary repairs where it matters.
Politicians (especially leftist Democrats) will always say they don't have enough money because they want to raise taxes and buy votes with whatever revenue they can get.
Maybe taxes should be increased--but only after the waste is eliminated.
akatsuki 10:46AM (11/02/2007)
Really? Bike paths have consumed so much of the budget that they can't repair roads? And it really isn't that we have overbuilt to enable urban sprawl and didn't bother to concern ourselves with maintenance costs?
Bike paths? Seriously you need to get out a bit more.
Why do you think tollways keep getting built? Cause they can't mess with gas taxes even those are more logical and needed for infrastructure. We could fund the war that way, but the war is about keeping gas cheap, so that won't work.
I am completely against CAFE. 100%. Let people choose whatever car they want. But gas prices should be much higher than they are...