Utopian thinking runs headlong into reality. Again. CNS News:
The Obama Administration’s new fuel economy standards will cause the retail price of average motor vehicles to increase over $11,000, according to a study conducted by the Center for Automotive Research.
“A fuel economy standard of 37.6 mpg is associated with a price increase of $5,244, 18.1 percent higher than the 2009 National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) average price of $28,966. A fuel economy standard of 40.8 mpg is associated with a price increase of $6,770, 23.4 percent higher than the 2009 NADA price,” says their report called, “The U.S. Automotive Market and Industry in 2025.”
“A fuel economy standard of 44.8 mpg is associated with a price increase of $8,214, 28.4 percent higher than the 2009 NADA price. The fourth fuel economy standard of 49.6 mpg is associated with an $11,290 increase in retail price. It is assumed that manufacturers and dealers will pass on the cost increase in fuel economy and safety technology to the consumer, at a retail price equivalent.”
The Obama administration’s new fuel economy standards would require automakers to produce cars and light trucks with an average fuel economy of 54.5 mpg by 2025. The Center for Automotive Research says their study is “the result of 11 months of effort and investigation by researchers at CAR in 2010-2011.”
Zoe Lipman, the National Wildlife Federation’s Senior Manager for Transportation and Global Warming Solutions argued on a conference call held Thursday that the estimated fuel savings due to these standards will outweigh the “modest” motor vehicle price increases for consumers.
— and if not that, the higher costs of buying a new car, coupled with the higher costs of fuel that come with government plans to strangle domestic energy production and exploration, will finally divide the country into its proper classes — with the elites and crony capitalists owning their own modes of transportation, while the worker class is shuttled about in Obama’s high speed trains like productive, revenue-producing drones.
At last, the natural state of man is realized. The cream is allowed to rise. Human wheat separates from human chaff. Utopia!
[…]
Thomas Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research disagrees with Lipman.
“The Obama administration’s latest fuel economy mandates are an aggressive step away from consumer choice and towards government control,” he said in a USA Today op-ed.
“Every day, Americans are seeing the negative consequences of the administration’s increasingly aggressive meddling in the economy—more government control and less consumer choice.”
I’m confused. He says that like allowing the smart people to run things — rather than to rely on the wild vicissitudes of an invisible, spastic hand, who sometimes inadvertently slaps its betters upside their really smart heads — is a bad thing…
driving is a privilege not a right, citizen
I wonder what the body count will be for His Majesty’s decree? Any “effort and investigation” expended calculating excess deaths from these government commands? More energy + more bodies in a smaller lighter box = more fatalities, more severe injuries, more expensive accidents. More deaths. Did CAR report those numbers, or not even calculate them so they couldn’t report them? Your Government at Work, courtesy of Prince Alfred E. Obama.
Go where you want, when you want, for any reason or no reason at all? Ha. Where are your papers citizen and why are you traveling? Do you have the proper reasons? Proper attitude?
Now we just need to send a few million more used cars to the scrapyards, so that people can be “encouraged” to buy new.
Cash For Clunkers II: The Legend of Barry’s Gold
Assumptions:
1. You drive 20,000 miles per year
2. Gas is a constant $4 per gallon
Case 1:
Your car gets 25 miles per gallon. Each year, you use 800 gallons of fuel. Over 5 years, this is a cost of $16,000
Case 2:
Your car gets the Barry Magic Number of 54.5 mpg. Each year, you use 367 gallons of fuel. Over 5 years, this is a cost of $7,340.
So by spending $11,000 more, I get to save $8,660 over 5 years. I have to go over 6 years to make the initial expenditure worth the fuel savings. Don’t know about you, but I’d rather have the $11,000 up front. Of course one way to get the “savings” quicker is to jump the price of gas up a whole hella lot. But Barry wouldn’t let that happen, would he? Naaaah.
Look.
You wingers don’t recognize that Obama and his crew have enough brains in their pinky fingers to abolish entropy once and for all.
H8rs.
Building a car that gets 50 mpg is easy. Those greedy automakers just don’t want to do it.
Yup. All you have to do is set new fuel economy standards and the engineering will magically catch up. And, like dicentra said, entropy can be legislated away at the stroke of Teh Won’s pen.
These guys are delusional.
And/or tyrannical. Pick ’em.
Smart-car, Obama-smart. It gets 80mpg, trust us, you don’t need to see any stinking documents.
On the other hand, getting the majority of the American population walking again, reducing obesity and subsequent medical bills will more than offset the increase in car costs.
So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice…
Walking? I was promised a monorail!
When Obama is president, you’ll run motherfucker, ain’t no room for walking slackers no how…
Oh, it can be done… VW has a (concept) diesel hybrid that gets 69MPG highway, and the traditional diesel Golf TDI you can buy today (apparently) gets close to 50MPG in real life.
But of course it shouldn’t be done, as a Government-enforced fleet-wide fuel efficiency standard. Why a standard in the first place? (*) Isn’t it enough that the mileage numbers are printed on the sticker? If it’s more cost-effective for me to get a less efficient (but cheaper) car, why shouldn’t I take that option. Never mind the fact that maybe my vehicle needs dictate a truck or a van, or something else that isn’t a cute little 4-seater econobox.
And why a fleet-wide average? Who cares if the Really Big Truck Company of America only makes trucks? Why are we effectively forcing them to also sell high-efficiency cars that their customers don’t want, and give them away at a loss if necessary, just so they can sell their actual product? If a company makes nothing but gas-guzzlers, that doesn’t preclude other companies making fuel-efficient cars; it encourages same, in fact.
This “all companies should be the same” thinking leads to atrocities such as the Aston-Martin Cygnet or the new Chevy Volt rebadged as a Cadillac ELR.
—
* Rhetorical questions all. “Because they can” is the only answer needed.
Laissez-les monter le cheval de fer.
We already have them, they’re called golf carts.
‘Course the higher you jack the price of new cars the longer the proles will hang onto their old guzzlers and smokers, but I suppose that’s counterintuitive to our monied elites and the ivory tower set.
Also, there have been rumblings about forcing heavy trucks to conform to new higher mileage standards, which shows just how clueless these knuckleheads are. Over the road truckers lie awake at night trying to figure out how to get another 1/4-mile per gallon out of their rigs. If it were possible to build a more fuel-efficient truck the truckers would beat a path to your door.
Look at all the fairings, spoilers, air dams and such on those big rigs now. They’re not there for the looks they’re there because someone thought, perhaps foolishly, that they could squeeze out just a bit better mileage. Or watch the traffic on I-80 across southern Wyoming. In the middle of the day all the trucks are headed east with those gentle 60 mph Wyoming zephyrs behind them. 2am they’re headed west when it’s calm at night.
I’m sure the govmint can figure out ways to make a big rig cost another $50 grand, but I doubt they’ll do a damn thing about the mileage in the process.
Old Coke, New Coke; Old GM, New GM, Old Shit, New Shit.
[…] yeah. That’s the whole idea. As Jeff says: …the higher costs of buying a new car, coupled with the higher costs of fuel that come with […]