Tag: mpg

Crunch Time

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Uncle admits that his current fuel economy fatwas have added $1,800 (laughable; it’s much, much more) to the price tag of every new car – a sum that renders the savings achieved at the pump an irrelevance.CAFE lead

The current MPG mandatory minimum is 35.5 MPG (average) vs. 27.5 (what it was back in 2010, before Uncle kicked it up).

Most new cars don’t average 35.5 MPG; a very few hit that mark (like the Prius hybrid) but most fall far short. But let’s – for the sake of discussion – say that Uncle’s fatwa achieved its stated goal of forcing the car companies to build cars that average 35.5 MPG.

That’s an 8 MPG improvement for $1,800.

Is it worth it?

Continue reading “Crunch Time”

History Repeats

Guest Post by Eric Peters

 

Do you know why SUVs became so popular?Hummer H1 pic

It wasn’t because of their, er, sportiness. Or even their utility. It was because they provided a way to get the size (especially under the hood) that American buyers wanted but which the government was doing its damndest to deny them via fuel efficiency mandates.

The story goes like this:

In the mid-late 1970s, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE, in government-ese) standards began to bite down. Government bureaucrats and politicians, in their usual secular Puritan we-know-best way, decided – then decreed – that new cars – generally – weren’t “efficient” enough.

It wasn’t that there weren’t numerous high-mileage cars available on the market for people who valued fuel economy more than other attributes (size, power, etc.). Granted, they were mostly imports – models like the VW Beetle and Honda Civic, Datsun B210, etc. But the point stands: Fuel-efficient cars were available.CAFE 1

The problem – from the government’s viewpoint – was that not enough of them were being made.

Or, bought.

The bureaucrats and politicians felt that all cars should be more “efficient” and ordered it be so – regardless of market wants and needs. And regardless of the destruction and distortions this might impose on the car industry.

CAFE was enacted.

Continue reading “History Repeats”