Some soccer moms will have to give up hulking SUVs. Carpenters will still haul materials around in pickup trucks, but they will cost more. Nearly everybody else will drive smaller cars, and more of them will run on electricity. The higher mileage and emissions standards set by the Obama administration on Tuesday, which begin to take effect in 2012 and are to be achieved by 2016, will transform the American car and truck fleet.
The new rules would bring new cars and trucks sold in the United States to an average of 35.5 miles per gallon, about 10 mpg more than today’s standards. Passenger cars will be required to get 39 mpg, light trucks 30 mpg.
That means cars and trucks on American roads will have to become smaller, lighter and more efficient.
Yes indeed it will “transform” the US auto fleet. Even fewer people will buy new cars, and the old car market will soar.
Congratulations President Obama. You just struck another blow against Chrysler, Ford, and GM — as if they needed that.
I wonder if the so-called “fleet”, is not going to turn into a “wagon train”. Probably not, too much methane pollution…
Grandmother in SC
See Chris Johnson’s Dream sequence memorabilia for some perspective. Not all utopias come into being…………………….
… and more dangerous. President Obama, I hope you will take the same risks as we will have to and ride a regular car, not an armoured ten ton limousine paid for by us.
It’s about time. This should be coupled with a hefty gas tax.
Ah yes … a fellow who has never actually managed a for-profit business, never had to make a payroll, never had to market anything – is now directing a major heavy industry in the US. Is he naive, idealistic or actually a sleeper bent on destroying the US economy? I’m having a difficult time with my discernment process …
Re #5
Gas taxes are extremely regressive. Nice to know that some want to save the planet on the backs of the poor.
Actually, Sarah (#1), Ford is already making the transition. Of all the (formerly) big three they seem to have gotten it the most. As just one example, a plant formerly devoted to producing trucks will be turning out the Ford Focus. Too often we North Americans seem to believe it is our right to drive big vehicles with big horsepower burning cheap gas – not exactly what I would call a shining example of good stewardship. If everyone right now made a Focus, a Honda Civic, or a Toyota Corolla their primary vehicle – all of which are built in North America by the way and all of which surpass 40 mpg – it would be a win-win-win situation. Automakers, consumers and the environment would benefit.
This makes very good political sense for Slick Barry. It is a tax on rural folks and especially those who own their own business and require the ability to move significant loads in the course of conducting their business. it will particularly hurt those in the construction trades who often must travel significant distances to construction sites and haul their tolls with them.
The liberal, intellectual elites who live in cities and the other urban voters who heavily support the president will not feel the sting of this new ukase.
I’m thinking of buying some rural land and growing enough soybeans to power a big, powerful Mercedes turbo-diesel sedan with vegetable oil.
And the downward spiral of the US economy just started accelerating. Hang on, folks, it’s going to be a bumpy ride — in a very cramped car.
[i]Carpenters will still haul materials around in pickup trucks, but they will cost more.[/i]
And therefore, their hourly costs will go up, the price of their labor will go up, the price of the finished product will go up, and wages will not.
As for smaller cars, I saw a Smart Car the other day. No trunk??? How can a family go on a shopping trip for back-to-school clothes, if there is no room for the purchases? Or even grocery shopping. Stupid car is more like it. Why no trunk? that really puzzles me. These small cars the government is forcing on us are very ill-designed. They are not built for Americans, they are built for aging Europeans with no families. (Of course that shouldn’t bother Episcopalians, we are too educated to have children anyway).
This is NOT Europe, We do not have compact towns where you can walk from one end to the other in five minutes. It takes me over 45 minutes driving at 30 mph (granted, with traffic lights) to cross from one side of Tallahassee to the other in non-rush-hour traffic. From my house to downtown (where I volunteer every Thursday at the Museum) it’s five miles. To FSU it’s five. I’m on the outskirts of town. There is no housing closer.
Obama has just reacted without any thought — again.
sorry, it’s SEVEN to FSU.
I wonder if the wunderkind surrounding “the One” have thought about the impact of this on car-pooling. My wife drives a 2005 Mazda MPV. It seats 7, has a modest 6 cylinder engine, and gets average mileage in the low twenties (navigating suburban sprawl).
One reason we bought the car last year (to replace an ancient Volvo 240) was to facilitate car-pooling. We can take our daughters, plus friends to and from school, to and from soccer, softball, and 4-H, and other parents (driving something larger than an econobox), can return the favor.
So what’s better, driving 4-6 kids in a vehicle with less mileage, or increasing the number of trips in (theoretically) higher mileage cars?
Sara (#1) is right — one effect of the rules will be to cause people to hang on to the cars they like longer. I’m hanging on to our Mazda and my Subaru Forester (mileage in the high twenties) as long as I can.
If we don’t think the reason behind all this ecological legislation is to encourage smaller families so situations like Franz describes will also be a thing of the past and so lessen the human footprint on the “sacred Earth-mother”, then we are deceiving ourselves. Environmentalists have said time and again their goal is negative population growth.
My car is a 2006 Dodge Caravan. It, too, seats seven. I bought it because a) my daughter was going away to college and we needed something big enough to move her needed ‘stuff’ over and bring her & stuff back each semester/year and b) my son is in Boy Scouts and goes on camping trips with the troop. We often take another scout + equipment to the camping site.
I get 23 MPG highway, slightly less city. No bus service out where I live. I’d have to drive INTO town to a park-n-ride station. Of course when I had a job, it was in another town altogether and meant a 30 mile one way commute each day (60 miles round trip), and no bus service from county to county.
As to car pooling, I agree. What’s better — three to five people in a 23 mpg vehicle, or five cars that get 30 mpg all on the road at the same time going to the same destination?
Oh, well, pay no mind to that memo released (by accident) from the Obama administration that admits global warming legislation is based more on politics than on science, since, they admit, the science isn’t there to support the claims. We’ll get stuck with the new restrictions anyway, and crash the economy along the way. 🙂
Considering the fatal crash results of small autos maybe we better start teaching our drivers to drive safely and get the fatal rate DOWN!!!
#7, you’re right — that’s the reason I don’t really support a big gas tax. I was intentially stirring up trouble and I apologize.
I DO support aggressive MPG standards and other incentives for alternate fuel, however.
Sarah, the companies that make vehicles people want to buy haven’t faced bankruptcy. Chrysler, Ford, and GM haven’t made vehicles that people still want to buy. The only blows against them have been struck by them—for more than a decade.
Or as [i]Newsweek[/i] recently put it, “GM is essentially an unfunded pension plan that happens to manufacture cars.”
Um, Ember, Chrysler sold just as many cars in the US as Toyota sold in the US last year. The difference is that due to costs, labor & union demands, etc. and other differences, Chrysler made LESS MONEY on those cars.
The problem is not that the US auto makers are NOT making the cars people want to buy (they are), but for some reason, they are not making the PROFIT MARGIN on those cars that foreign auto makers earn.
People elected a socialist president.
Lutheran,
Yes, they did, in spite of warnings from the ‘right-wing- media who are now being proven correct.
Except the 46% of us who did not vote for him, plus those who did not vote at all. Of course, in this country, all one needed was 50% plus 1 to win.
I can’t wait to see what the 2010 elections bring about.