Remember the post announcing the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s changes for measuring a vehicle’s miles-per-gallon? Well, Bradley Berman
of Business Week writes that the government is going the wrong way in encouraging automakers to make more
fuel-efficient cars, stating the the new tests would just makes hybrids mpg “more competitive” with current
gasoline and diesel engines which have actually become less efficient over the years.
[More after the jump]
While supporting his position, he mentions the work of Victor Wouk, who, in the ’60s and ’70s, had developed what would
have been a Buick Skylark hybrid-car prototype. (A gasoline-powered version is pictured.) Unfortunately, despite the
prototype meeting the EPA’s tests, the idea was rejected.
“Hybrids are just not a very
practical technology for automotive,” said Erik Stork, head of the EPA’s Mobile Source Air Pollution Control
Program and who had notified Wouk why there would be no more support for the prototype. “That’s why it’s going
nowhere. It certainly wasn’t going anywhere then. Even today, it’s marginal.”
Someone from the current
EPA administration better contact Toyota, Honda, General Motors, and Ford before they ramp up their hybrid production.