Regulators could require 62mpg by 2025? lol wut?

[evident]

i think i remember people bitching on this forum a few years ago about cars not being able to hit 35MPG+, and how refining the ICE is impossible, etc. look at all the progress being made now to ICE's from all manufacturers!

 

[Scotteq]

I'm way ahead of ya. Me and my nigs run a train on a bitch every night :thumbsup:

..which is not at all what I was talking about... 😵

 

[CycloWizard]

The debate was about the cost of fuel. Would jacking up taxes make it infeasible to own a truck yes or no, and the answer is clearly no. People would still buy trucks, but it would have 200HP instead of 400HP. People need to quit their bitching about "omg this is so unfair the taxes on gas are too high and it's all the gubments fault i can't afford to drive when I knowingly bought a vehicle that gets worse gas mileage than an M1 tank!"

Same debate as always. Liberals want to control behavior through taxation (ie smoking tax) and conservatives bitch about their own fuck ups (grrr it's the gubments fault I spent all mah money on cigarettes).

It's sad that this is how you frame the debate at this point: that those who live their lives the way they want must be punished because what they want doesn't coincide with your perspective. It's a fundamental problem with the role of government in modern society. Liberals seem to think that government exists to coerce everyone to act a specific way in accordance with their beliefs and so do conservatives. The only difference is which beliefs are coerced. This is the exact opposite of the real point of government, which is to protect me from your beliefs.

 

[ShawnD1]

It's sad that this is how you frame the debate at this point: that those who live their lives the way they want must be punished because what they want doesn't coincide with your perspective.

Liberal agenda --> USA should rely on foreign countries as little as possible

Conservative agenda --> Fuck the nation. The 10L V12 SUV that I only use to drive on city streets is more important than independence. This is America. If we wanted independence, we would make some kind of declaration of independence.

 

[PeshakJang]

Liberal agenda --> citizens should rely on the government as much as possible, because we know better than them.

How easy was that...

 

[ShawnD1]

How easy was that...

What you quoted is basically correct. When it's left up to individuals, "the tragedy of the commons" happens. Nobody wants to give up their Chevy Suburban, but everyone wants Arabs in the middle east to go fuck themselves. We all want the same goal, but we expect everyone else to do it. Putting government rules on it forces everyone to contribute to our common goal.

 

[CycloWizard]

What you quoted is basically correct. When it's left up to individuals, "the tragedy of the commons" happens. Nobody wants to give up their Chevy Suburban, but everyone wants Arabs in the middle east to go fuck themselves. We all want the same goal, but we expect everyone else to do it. Putting government rules on it forces everyone to contribute to our common goal.

How do you know what I want? You don't want me to contribute to a common goal - you want me to contribute to YOUR goal. Be honest with yourself and address the rest of my post above and maybe you'll begin to understand that.

 

[Pneumothorax]

What you quoted is basically correct. When it's left up to individuals, "the tragedy of the commons" happens. Nobody wants to give up their Chevy Suburban, but everyone wants Arabs in the middle east to go fuck themselves. We all want the same goal, but we expect everyone else to do it. Putting government rules on it forces everyone to contribute to our common goal.

So why are you still here then? Last time I checked Beijing has similar beliefs of "contributing to the common goal"

Also to the greenies earlier who claimed environmental regs improve fuel economy... BS... Our cars run on a richer fuel mixture precisely for environmental reasons. Our gas engines can easily run on much leaner ratios, but nooooo! Too much Nitric oxides are made contributing to acid rain. Not to mention catalytic convertors require some unburnt fuel to be passed on for them to work. Also a 1990 F-150 weighs basically almost a 1000 lbs. lighter than a 2010 with of course the following changes and more: smaller bed and smaller interior space (as we know the 2010 american is much fatter than the 1990 one), no stability control, only a driver's airbag instead of all around, MUCH lower standards on crash test ratings, etc....

 

[ElFenix]

Well - I wouldn't mind more motorcycles in the USA (I own an Aprilia), but methinks you dodged the point there. Silly to throw up your hands like that.

Might be a good time to invest more in Trains. Nothing moves more stuff per gallon of dead dinosaur than those do.

other than container ships. which have a huge advantage, i've been lead to believe.

edit: maybe not so huge, maybe just a couple percent, if even that

 

[ShawnD1]

How do you know what I want? You don't want me to contribute to a common goal - you want me to contribute to YOUR goal. Be honest with yourself and address the rest of my post above and maybe you'll begin to understand that.

So you're admitting that you want to support terrorism by giving money to the middle east? Lovely.

 

[CycloWizard]

So you're admitting that you want to support terrorism by giving money to the middle east? Lovely.

Wow. And here, all this time, I thought you had a brain. Now you're resorting to using retarded Republican slogans to bolster your Democrat ideals.

 

[ShawnD1]

Wow. And here, all this time, I thought you had a brain. Now you're resorting to using retarded Republican slogans to bolster your Democrat ideals.

I said our common goal was to stop giving money to the middle east and you disagreed with me.

 

[CycloWizard]

I said our common goal was to stop giving money to the middle east and you disagreed with me.

The ever-nebulous "Middle East" is not a charity organization - I don't give them anything. What I do with my money is my business. Do you spend money on any goods made in China, comrade?

 

[ShawnD1]

The ever-nebulous "Middle East" is not a charity organization - I don't give them anything. What I do with my money is my business. Do you spend money on any goods made in China, comrade?

So basically you're admitting that you didn't know oil comes from the middle east? I can't even tell if you're serious.

 

[lothar]

once it wears out, yes it could. and save up cash and by used😛

and are you driving the same car you were driving 10 - 15 year ago? I'm not. were you even driving 15 years ago? after all we are talking 15 years down the line here. a lot can happen between now and then.

No.
No.
I bought my car June 2009 a few days after I turned 24. Barring any unforeseen consequences, I expect to be keeping the same car at least until I'm 40. I will drive my car into the ground. There are some Americans(my neighbors do this, luckily I don't follow the "keeping up with the Jonses" mentality) who buy a new vehicle every 4 years...I'm not one of them.

 

[CycloWizard]

So basically you're admitting that you didn't know oil comes from the middle east? I can't even tell if you're serious.

You really are an idiot. Chemists...

 

[lothar]

Yes you will buy another vehicle.

I remember the situation I had when I was getting my first car. My dad was going to buy a new car and was considering giving me his 1986 cutlass supreme with a 4-barrel carb for free. Car was in great condition, kept in a garage, low miles, but horrible gas mileage because it's heavier than a minivan with terrible wind resistance. After going through the numbers, we saw that it was cheaper for me to buy a used car that gets better mileage. There was no feasible way I could afford to drive that tank. I ended up buying a 1992 Ford Tempo which used half as much gas. My yearly gas budget for the Tempo was about $2000. If I had used my dad's tank car, I would spending $4000 per year just on gas.

That isn't debatable...

The question to answer is "when?".
Before I bought my car, I considered getting a Toyota Prius.
Based on my driving habit numbers, it would have taken 11-13 years(not including any possible special battery replacement costs) for the hybrid vehicle to be "in the money" over an equivalent gasoline powered vehicle that costs less.

By that 11-13 years, it's time for me to buy a new car anyway so why do I want to make myself uncomfortable sitting in a Prius for 11-13 years?
If I was a Taxi driver or drive a gazillion amount of miles like most Americans do, then getting a Prius would make sense.

My Accord gets 26mpg based on *my own* driving habits.
A Prius is about 48mpg using that same driving habits.

*Note*: EPA does their mpg calculation based on 45% highway, 55% city driving, 15000 annual miles and a fuel price of $ 2.72 per gallon.


Take your eye off the Prius(which represents a best case scenario today in high end mpg) for a moment and start comparing vehicles of the same model.
Gasoline Camry vs Camry Hybrid?
Gasoline SUV vs Hybrid SUV's of the same model claiming only a 1-4mpg advantage(which is borderline scammish, but MOST "SUV hybrids" on the market do in fact claim that) over their gasoline powered counterparts?
If I were to buy any of those hybrids, I'll be losing more money than I need to because the "potential" fuel savings will take almost forever to catch up with the initial extra cost.

Do your own calculation based on your own driving habits to see if paying $5,000 extra for a Toyota Camry Hybrid vehicle makes sense over a regular gasoline powered Camry.

 

[Zebo]

http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/01/aut...eed%3A+rss/money_topstories+(Top+Stories)



Is it just me, or does this seem kinda pathetic? My 2000 Corolla gets pretty close to 34.1mpg, probably more when I drive gently, and its not even close to taking the crown for fuel economy. Definitely seems like too little, not sure if you'd classify it as too late yet though. Seems like we've but stuck around ~30mpg for a few decades now, and technology exists to easily significantly increase that.

No everyone wants to drive a death trap like that or a motorcycle and laws of physics arnt going anywhere. My guess is this goal is rolled back like CARB rolls back their goals all the time.

A real goal would be govt putting millions of American to work building nuke plants, battery stations, and batteries and fund universal battery so you could swap at battery service station, batteries which you rent at less than comparable petroleum energy, batteries which would swap using a fork lift faster than filling up. No company has this kind of money or would see return on investment so it would take govt doing it at first like Tennessee Valley Authority was done. Course too many moneid interests these days so it won't happen like real HC reform did not happen.

 

[DominionSeraph]

This is the exact opposite of the real point of government, which is to protect me from your beliefs.

Uhhh... a part of that breaks out to, "A government must always do the exact opposite of what anyone believes it should do," because that's the only way to protect another from what a person thinks the government should be doing.
But you went ahead and said you believed in the generalized form of that, meaning that the government can't do that or it would align with your beliefs, negating the protection of others from that belief. So to protect others from your belief it can't protect them from your belief, because protecting others from your belief is what your belief is.

Anyway, it was a stupid thing to say. Policing private citizen's actions is only a tiny portion of what a government does. It isn't even necessary for a government to be a government.

 

[DominionSeraph]

What I do with my money is my business.

What you do with your money is the business of everyone affected.

No man is an island.

 

[lothar]

No everyone wants to drive a death trap like that or a motorcycle and laws of physics arnt going anywhere. My guess is this goal is rolled back like CARB rolls back their goals all the time.

A real goal would be govt putting millions of American to work building nuke plants, battery stations, and batteries and fund universal battery so you could swap at battery service station, batteries which you rent at less than compatible petroleum, batteries which would swap using a fork lift faster than filling up. No company has this kind of money or would see return on investment so it would take govt doing it at first. Course too many moneid interests so it won't happen like real HC reform did not happen.

All they have to do is release a single "all electric" powered vehicle.
An electric only powered vehicle in theory has "infinite" mpg because it doesn't use any gasoline/diesel fuel. 😉

(Infinity mpg + 1mpg) divided by 2 is still more than the 62.5mpg average that government is mandating.

 

[Zebo]

I'm often amused at how americans view their conveyances. Metro Denver is the great home of the SUV, most of which never get further off-road than a gravel driveway, and whose owners hurry home in a blizzard, then stay there. And full sized pickups, so that the owner can move stuff from place to place, which is seldom. Not to mention cars with a top speed of 160mph, in a land where the speed limit is 75mph... and you'll have to post bond at the jail if caught doing over 100mph...

During the rush hour commute, the vast, vast majority of cars have only one occupant, the driver, even the 7 passenger not so mini vans... and they're content to drive right past each other going opposite directions every day on hteir way to work- people live in longmont and work at the tech center and vice versa, think nothing of it... Where I-70 west of the city is regularly jammed up all the way to Georgetown (40 miles away) most sunday evenings during the summer and during ski season, largely with single occupant vehicles...

It's all about ownership and what would seem to be convenience, except that they lease the car or trade it in just as soon as they're not upside down on the payments, trade it in for something New! and Shiny!, and driving many miles every day thru snarled traffic never seemed convenient to me...

I guess it's all part and parcel of the Reagan revolution, the culture of greed, the rejection of Carter's call for conservation. Back then, our suppliers tried to show us that we weren't invincible with the oil embargo, but in the meanwhile they've been content to give us enough rope to hang ourselves, that's for sure. Now it's all about the global free market, and lots of people in India and China hunger for that same petroleum while using it a lot more efficiently. As our own capitalists send them our jobs and we send them our paychecks buying their stuff, they'll be able to pay more to have more, and we'll get caught in the squeeze because we can't match their efficiency wrt petroleum use.

I think Carter had that figured out. Reagan never cared, nor do our current financial elite- the price of gas is purely abstract from their POV. Hell, McCain didn't know the price of gas or the make of the car he was chauffeured around in, either, and probably still doesn't... it doesn't even count as chump change.

But now we're talking about it, again, in some pretty lame ways, particularly among Righties. Drill baby drill! won't even begin to cover our butts, but they want to believe it will, so they do. And they'll continue to worship at the altar of greed and self indulgence, vote for anybody who says Yes! You can have it all! just the same way they bought that McMansion back in 2005...

Jevons paradox says conservation makes you use more of resource not less, not to mention it's global resource and if we don't use it someone else will. I'd rather use it, thanks. Pollution and cost is the only reason to switch IMO and leave petroleum to making things, heavy equipment and air/water travel.

 

[charrison]

That's not true. SUVs generally get horrible mileage simply because they have an AWD or 4WD power train. If you look at how bad the gas mileage is for any Subaru car, you'll see that adding 2 extra drive wheels drops your gas mileage by about 20%

Most suvs are not 4WD. Most cars are not AWD. Looking at fueleconomy.gov, there appears to be about 5% penalty for 4wd,AWD.

I think his anger was more that people buy a truck that doesn't accurately reflect what they need. For example, my cousin pulls a huge camping trailer with a beat up 20 year old half ton Chevy. That thing probably doesn't even have 200 horsepower, but it does a good job of pulling things (you can challenge me on the power but I don't really care). Today, people are buying trucks with 400 horsepower just so they pull that same size camping trailer. A Toyota Tundra has 380HP, and that's just a half ton truck. A Ford F250 has even more power and more torque. It's great to have that extra power, but it's not needed. That's the argument.

Just remember the added horsepower does add fuel economy. These vehicles do not have to work very to maintain speed once they reach it. And they will get far better fuel economy when they have load. I wont disagree that a smaller engine will get the job done, but the larger engine will do it better and with improved fuel economy.

The 250 and 350 often share the same engine as the f150. The base engine for 250/350 has the same engine optional engine available in the f150. It only has more power if a buyer were to get the v10 or diesel. And you dont get those unless you are doing a lot of towing.

Just something to think about. The 1990 Ford F150 had as little as 165HP (4.9L I6) and they worked just fine. I think their rated towing capacity was 3500lbs. What's interesting is that the modern Toyota Tacoma, a small small truck, is very similar to the 1990 Ford F150. The shitty Tacoma has 159HP and a rated towing capacity of 3500lbs.

And the small truck market is about dead in this country. When people see the fuel economy difference between a tacoma or a ranger, they opt for the full size truck.

It appears the 2011 f-150 will have 300hp v6, 6 speed transmission and get better than 23mpg on the highway. Would anyone buy a little truck, when they could get this?

 

[Jhhnn]

Jevons paradox says conservation makes you use more of resource not less, not to mention it's global resource and if we don't use it someone else will. I'd rather use it, thanks. Pollution and cost is the only reason to switch IMO and leave petroleum to making things, heavy equipment and air/water travel.

Not exactly-

As the Jevons effect applies only to technological improvements that increase fuel efficiency, policies that impose conservation standards and increase costs do not display the apparent paradox.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

There are other caveats, as well.

As emerging economies become more self sufficient, with increased earnings and demand, they'll tend to decouple from the consumption engine of the US economy. If their efficiency of use is much greater than our own, they'll be willing and able to pay more for petroleum than we want to ourselves, forcing conservation on us as economic necessity.

That decoupling likely won't be gentle, but rather wrenching for us, because the desirability of dollars will necessarily decline, likely in some rather large steps. That's how currency devaluation works, in general, being basically unconstrained capitalist activity.

So, uhh, go ahead, guys and gals, base buying decisions on what you want emotionally rather than what you know really makes sense, kinda the way Righties who claim to be libertarians actually vote. Pay no mind to the idea that maybe you'll drag the rest of us down in the process, because it's all about you, and you alone, anyway...

Or just take the James Watt attitude- suck it out of the ground, blow it out our tailpipes because the rapture is coming...

 

[charrison]

As emerging economies become more self sufficient, with increased earnings and demand, they'll tend to decouple from the consumption engine of the US economy. If their efficiency of use is much greater than our own, they'll be willing and able to pay more for petroleum than we want to ourselves, forcing conservation on us as economic necessity.

The best tool for forcing conservation is price. Far better than cafe.