Autoblog

We've reported on the silent dangers of hybrids before, and it appears that word of their possible threat to blind people has made it to the halls of Congress. A bill is being introduced today in the House of Representatives that calls for the U.S. Department of Transportation to study whether or not the feds need to regulate a minimum sound level for all cars and, if so, what that minimum should be. If passed, the entire auto industry would have two years to comply. The issue revolves around blind people not being able to hear hybrids while they're running solely on battery power, since they produce much less noise than a normal car with an internal combustion engine. We've heard no reports, however, of hybrids being involved in accidents with pedestrians where the vehicle's silent operation was at fault, but clearly there are many who would like to keep it that way.

The state of Maryland actually passed similar legislation last month, and the industry's own Society of Automotive Engineers already has a task force studying whether or not the decibel level, or lack thereof, produced by hybrids is something we should be worrying about.

Our question is that if such a bill were passed, what technology would automakers use to increase the sound a hybrid makes while running on battery power? Might we hear hybrids with external speakers pumping out the soundtrack of a fossil fuel-burning V8?

[Source: Automotive News, sub. req'd]

Despite being passed by the House of Representatives yesterday by a 235 to 181 margin, the new energy bill reached the Senate floor this morning and failed to muster enough votes to move on to the White House, where the President has threatened a veto of it in its current state. The Senate vote was 53 to 42, a majority but still seven votes shy of the 60 it needed. This means that the Senate will now spend the weekend reworking the bill, after which it will have to go back to the House for approval yet again. The funny thing is, the automotive industry actually supports the bill in its current state, despite the fact that it calls for a jump in CAFE requirements to a fleet-wide average of 35 mpg by 2020. Even with the support of the industry, politicians seem intent on keeping this bill running around in circles.

[Source: Automotive News]

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved the Energy Independence and Security Act today by a margin of 235 to 181. The new energy bill was crafted on a compromise reached last week between Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), and calls for an increase of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard to 35 mpg by 2020. Though the compromises contained in the bill, like keeping standards for cars and trucks separate, assured it a win in the House, it seems there's little chance of it surviving elsewhere. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) came right out and said the bill "clearly has no chance of becoming law." That's because the White House has already said it will veto the bill, which contains additional green policy that affects more than just CAFE standards.

The bill heads to the Senate next, where it will likely lose much of its teeth before being sent off to the President's desk for a possible veto. A number of automakers that have rallied against various forms of this bill have already made public statements that they'll put their best efforts forth to comply with whatever changes are made into law (read GM's statement here and Ford's after the jump), which means they sense the fight is ending and it's time start working on technologies to raise their fleet-wide fuel economy average.

[Source: Houston Chronicle]