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Push for fuel-efficient vehicles The price of gas is through the roof, a new report confirms that smog shortens people's lives, and the disruption of world food markets due to climate change and the use of grains to make fuel threatens global catastrophe. If those facts are not enough of a market signal to push Detroit to make more fuel-efficient vehicles, how about this one?
If you want to sell new cars in our market, the U. S. Transportation Department announced last month, you had better meet fuel efficiency standards that are, for the first time in 30 years, significantly tougher.
Transportation Secretary Mary Peters filled in the details of an act of Congress that, last year, ordered increases in the average and overall fuel efficiency of cars, trucks and SUVs made for sale in the United States. The collective average efficiency of all vehicles must rise to 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015 and to 35 mpg by 2020.
Different models and even different manufacturers can meet the standards differently, depending on the mix of large, small, hybrid and alternative-fuel vehicles they sell. But, overall, the DOT figures the new rules applied to cars built between 2011 and 2015 will save nearly 55 billion gallons of oil and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 521 million metric tons.
It will also add some $650 to the retail cost of a new car and an estimated $979 to the cost of a small truck. But, the same numbers crunchers say, savings on gas will cover the higher initial outlay in no more than 56 months.
The Bush administration has dragged its feet and headed off congressional action on boosting auto fuel efficiency throughout its nearly eight years. But a perfect storm of events has made it increasingly difficult for even the industry to argue that increased efficiency is anything but in the common interest of car seller and car buyer alike.
The marketplace is providing a needed shove, as well. With gas prices now changing driving habits, consumers are looking hard at gas mileage numbers. It took American automakers longer than it should have to figure where this trend was going, but if they hope to salvage sales, they have marketplace incentive to meet that consumer demand.
And with new federal rules in place, the automakers won't be tempted to stand around and wait for the other guy to make the first move. Now they all know what is expected of them, and they will be pushed to do it.
Though, if one of the manufacturers can make a car that surpasses even the most ambitious legal requirement, any justice would require that it reap the rewards of its invention.
— The Buffalo News
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