Guest Post By Willis Eschenbach
Bizarrely, and unlike almost every other industrialized country, the US has fuel efficiency standards for cars. Each corporation (Ford, Chevy, etc.) has to meet certain fuel economy standards called the CAFE standards.
Let me start by saying that I think that this is governmental over-reach. In virtually every other part of life we let the market decide the required efficiency. We don’t have required efficiencies for gas-fired power plants. More efficient plants occur as a result of the market. We also don’t have required efficiencies for cell phones. If they burn through the batteries, they don’t sell. The market has always handled efficiency quite … well … efficiently.
So I object to ANY automotive fuel standards as both totally un-necessary, and worse, market distorting.
Here’s one important way it distorts the market. “Fuel Economy” is measured in a very curious way. Work efficiencies are usually measured per pound or per kilogram moved. Efficiency would relate to how much energy it takes to move say a hundred kilograms a distance of 10 metres horizontally. If you can move the same weight at the same speed using less energy, you have a more efficient setup.
But that’s not how the CAFE standards work. They’re measured in miles per gallon (or kilometres per liter, with 1 mpg ≈ .4 km/l), with no consideration of how much weight is being moved. This means that if you put the same identical engine in both a heavier car and a lighter car that are otherwise identical, they get assigned different “economy” numbers. But in fact, the efficiency of the engine, the drive train, the rolling resistance, and the aerodynamics is the same in both cases.
Now, this may or may not be the right way to measure fuel “economy”, but it has an odd side-effect. Here’s why. There are a variety of ways to increase the true efficiency of a vehicle. You can increase the efficiency of the engine. You can reduce the rolling resistance of the tires. You can improve the aerodynamic qualities of the vehicle. All of these increase the true efficiency, in that it takes less energy to move the same amount of weight the same distance at the same speed.
But under the CAFE rules, if you merely make your car lighter, you can claim it’s more “economical”. They’ve done a clever switch of “economy” for “efficiency” … bad bureaucrats, no cookies.
Now, making car bodies lighter is generally cheaper than making car engines and drive trains more efficient. So as a result, most of the gains in meeting the CAFE standards have come from making vehicles lighter.
Unfortunately, there is an ugly truth about cars. Less car weight in crashes means more injury and more deaths. Here’s the cold equation—the less steel that gets bent in a crash, the more flesh and bone that gets bent in a crash. The National Academy of Sciences wrote about this as far back as 2002. They said the CAFE standards were killing about 2,000 people per year.
So we have totally distorted the auto marketplace into trading human blood and misery for fuel economy … not a good plan on my planet.
I got to thinking about this again because the President is proposing a re-examination of Comrade Obama’s insane attempt to increase fuel efficiency by imperial fiat. Before he left office, then-President Obama put in new CAFE standards mandating a ludicrous corporate average fuel efficiency of 54.5 miles per gallon (23 km/l) !!!. I cracked up laughing when he first made his Royal And Really Important Official Proclamation Regarding Economy. That charming fellow truly thought that he could just pick a number no matter how high, and magically the cars would get that much more efficient.
President Obama obviously didn’t understand that the one reliable rule about increasing efficiency is that every percent gained comes harder and costs more than the previous percent gained. The first ten percent gained is easy, the next ten percent is harder, and after a while it takes piles of money and effort to gain even one more percentage point.
Case in point? The CAFE standards. Care to guess how much the US nationwide light vehicle fuel “economy” has increased over the last quarter century?
An increase of a whopping two miles per gallon. Less than half a kilometer per liter.
Truly. All that grief, all that money wasted, for a sorry two pathetic miles per gallon increase. Here’s the data:
Be still my beating heart, the excitement of the real-world economy increase is getting to me …
You can see how well the CAFE standards actually work. From 1990 to 2014, almost a quarter century, the CAFE standards were well above the actual efficiency. During that time the efficiency should have been rising … but they didn’t budge one bit. Well, that’s not quite true … the MPG inched upwards. But then, given the general increase in all machinery over time, we’d expect that even if CAFE standards did not exist.
Me, I support the Gordian Knot solution to this lunacy—get rid of the fershlugginer CAFE standards completely, root and branch. Those standards are the reason that Volkswagon had to cheat on their pollution controls. Like other manufacturers, they could make a relatively clean-air car, or they could make a high “fuel economy” car … but not both.
And this is the ultimate irony. The CAFE standards were supposed to reduce pollution, but they couldn’t even do that. Instead they drove manufacturers to make the air dirtier just so they could meet the CAFE requirements.
Other countries were smart enough to never create such cockamamie standards in the first place. But having made the foolish mistake, at least we should correct it as soon as possible.
My best to everyone, you’re all invited to come over to my blog and see what the latest madness might be …
w.
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No more café standards? WooHoo… Let’s Roll Coal!!!
If you really want to roll coal, buy an electric car.
We still import oil. We export coal. If you want American fuel in your American car, Ford and Chevy both have a decent range of plug in hybrid and full electric cars. And Chrysler is about to start selling a plug in hybrid minivan that will go 30 miles on domestic energy before switching to imported oil.
You’d never be able to meet the emission exhaust standards, much less the fuel sulfur standards, with a mobile source of that size. You just don’t have the functions to handle the particulate soot. We aren’t talking about removing any of the actual pollution controls, just the arbitrary efficiency standards that are impossible to meet.
As an aside, I find the auto-correct on your post quite amusing. No restrictions on cafés. Your overpriced coffee doesn’t need to have any actual beans at all!
Yeah, I didn’t catch the auto correct thing before I hit ‘Post Comment’. Forgot to put a 🙂 at the end of the sentence too. Oh well.
As just an FYI, my personal car is an ’06 Honda Civic Hybrid… Has >300k miles on it. It paid for itself.
The way to improve REAL fuel economy, is to simply pull out every second traffic light inside city limits. Eliminate four way stop signs. The only thing they do is ensure that the next crash will be from a standing start.
City traffic light don’t have the brains of a two year old child.
Remember these are programmed by the same geniuses who gave us Microsoft Windows. They may be coding brainiacs; I don’t doubt that.. But what good is efficient code if it encodes a totally lousy solution to a simple problem.
When three months has gone by, then you can pull out half of the remaining traffic lights.
It would help if you actually gave drivers a driving test, BEFORE you hand them a drivers licence. I mean a test that tests if they are actually able to drive a car, and make good decisions.
Watch the cars making a left turn on a green arrow. They start moving, and once they have definite proof that the car is moving, it is time to apply the brakes, to make sure the car doesn’t accelerate as they make a ninety degree left turn.
Well news for them; just changing direction IS acceleration. What they need to do is increase speed at the same time.
Modern cars, are NOT like a Dodge Charger or Dart. They do NOT rollover when cornering at speeds higher than five miles per hour.
The Detroiosaurus Maximus came into being when there were NO CAFE standards. The idea was o build a rubber tired tank for civilians.
Its the same theory as suiting up football players in a suit of armor with shoulder pads, and hard helmets to crush the knees of the opponent players.
I’ve watched a LOT of Aussie rules football. They wear next to no clothing at all, and I don’t recall the last time I saw anyone get significantly hurt; and those guys never stop when somebody drops the ball. About the only way to stop play in Aussie rules, is to cold cock the referee.
That’s an infraction that will cause play to stop, while you apologize to the ref.
But back to CAFE standards.
I’ve always believed that the way to protect drivers from being injured in a crash; is to simply avoid the crash in the first place.
The Europeans did that by perfecting the ” Sports Car ” which was designed to go around corners, either left or right turns, and to stay on the road, instead of shooting off the corners in a skid.
And they used road racing courses for their engineering laboratories. Americans still seem to think that the Ford Thunderbird is a sports car; so is the Mustang. The Chevy Corvette probably is.
Sheer speed and acceleration may be what some people like; that’s ok with me.
I actually watched some top fuel, and funny car races over the weekend (on T&V). Yes it’s a blast for three or four seconds. And then of course there is NASCAR. It is very pretty to watch them lining up two abreast for a restart after a spectacular crash.
Sometimes, they actually cross the finish line like that with the predetermined winner out in front. ( NO ! Predetermined by the incidental leader before the yellow flag; never would say it’s fixed.)
I’m all for getting the Government out of the regulating business. I’d be happy if they did the seventeen or 18 things that the US Constitution tells them they can do (The Congress)
I’m all for eliminating EVERY regulation writing agency, and having the US Congress write ALL of the laws themselves; that’s why they were elected, and NOT some unelected bureaucrats.
I’m quite happy that my 2 litre Subaru Impreza gets me 50 MPG at city speeds (in between mandated stops ).
They don’t guarantee that, and I’m taking their instantaneous MPG instrument’s word for that.
G
This passage is applicable to a wide range of expenditure…
From pollution abatement to signal-to-noise ratio, it takes a geometric increase in $ spent to yield a linear improvement.
The Law of Diminishing Returns is tough to beat…
https://www.boundless.com/economics/textbooks/boundless-economics-textbook/production-9/the-production-function-63/the-law-of-diminishing-returns-238-12336/
Some clueless Democracy congressman, Harry Reid or Markey IIRC, said (in effect) in answer to an interviewer’s statement that auto manufacturers were claiming the new standards were unachievable, “they managed to improve their MPG by 25% [or whatever] in the past ten years, so they can do so again.” He had no concept that the initial gains were low-hanginging fruit, and that the next gains would come harder.
I think Ed Markey was the fracking moron who said that industry would have to deliver whatever they legislated, regarding cap & tax.
The EPA mandates that refiners use a product that doesn’t exist, and fines them for their failure to follow the rules.
A Fine for Not Using a Biofuel That Doesn’t Exist
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/business/energy-environment/companies-face-fines-for-not-using-unavailable-biofuel.html
This fact also relates to much of the nonsense being pushed by the EPA.
It applies to most proponents of unreasonable environmental legislation, because so many of them never pursued careers and qualifications that involved real science or engineering. There are people who like to make rules, and then there are people who have to obey rules. A bit like Leonardo DiCaprio.
The former prez said that “we” made cars more fuel efficient. “We” did not do squat. He has exactly zero knowledge on how to increase mileage. He just signed the requirement. Now if he only could have repealed those pesky Laws of Physics…..
One young fan of electric cars declared to me that all we need to develop better batteries is for government to pass a law requiring battery makers to do so.
Heh, I suspect said young fan of electric cars isn’t aware that petrol and electric cars competed in the marketplace for quite a few years. Petrol ICEs did better because the market found ways to produce them more efficiently (in economics, that is, cheaper to own and operate). I also suspect said young fan has no idea that the laws of physics and chemistry are hard limits. Batteries need mass and the outputs are determined by electrochemical redox (oxidation-reduction) reactions. Liquid fuel ICEs have a power/weight requirement (so do others, but you’re not going to find much better fuels than mid-length hydrocarbons for this purpose).
I have my fingers crossed on this one. Thanks Willis.
Yes, Thanks Willis. One additional point I did not see mentioned was the fact that, in order to meet the CAFE averages the manufacturers have to sell a LOT of light, efficient cars to make up for the large, heavy vehicles which are in demand. This means making them cheaply – and that means using manufacturing in coumtries where labor costs are low. Thus many producers built plants in Mexico. The inevitable result was/is a lot of unemployed US car workers and the political unrest which followed.
CA, as it thinks it is in most regulatory things, is way ahead of us on this: in 1990, CA mandated that 10% of cars be zero emission by 2003. Didn’t happen.
Here we are 14 years later (than 2003), and the current “counting” fudge is about 2M cars (out of 28M on CA roads) are “partial zero and advanced – PZEV, and technology partial zero emission vehicles AT PZEV”. Still hasn’t happened.
yes but it allows California to blackmail most car manufacturers and pay a good portion of that blackmail money to Tesla … (keeping them in business)
Thanks, Javert. CA also keeps jacking up the “Renewable Mandate”, and energy prices have followed, and business are fleeing the state.
The only consolation is that “What can’t go on, won’t go on” …
Regards,
w.
Talk about businesses leaving California, this seems interesting:
http://www.spectrumlocationsolutions.com/pdf/Businesses-Leave-California-.pdf
Demands to make manufacturers AVERAGE mpg (across the range) figures more ‘efficient’ have led to the likes of Aston Martin to develop their own versions of LEV’s resulting in ridiculous propositions as the ‘Cygnet’ city car…. that no one wants.
Dave, Aston Martin’s plant is near my home in the UK. They bought the rights to the Toyota Aygo and redeveloped and re-badged it into a 30k GBP luxury mini. This was to allow them to get a corporate ave fuel efficiency. I quite often see these cars on road test around my area. I must say they look the part even though I can understand the cynical reasoning behind their build.
The title of the post reminds me of this:
Wasn’t the pollution the new CAFE standards were supposed to reduce CO2, or as they put it cahbahn pollution? If I recall correctly, the new and improved CAFE standards were supposed to reduce global temperatures something like 0.07C by 2100. That’s a truly admirable and measurable reduction.
I can’t tell if you are bieng sarcastic, so I’ll answer you straight.
If they worked. There isn’t a gasoline car on the market that can get 54 mpg honestly. The only way to do that is to use electric cars or hybrids with astronomical efficiency ratings caused by ludicrous optimism about the amount of time they run on battery.
I break 50mpg from time to time. Of course I drive a Fiat 500 with a manual transmission. I’ve also learned every place that I can coast on my commute.
Ben, the big claim for the CAFE standard was carbon (CO2?) reduction and reduction of global warming. Then they claimed a ridiculously low, immeasurable number for the temperature reduction.
It doesn’t matter how they justified it. The reality isn’t lining up with their dreams.
And there’s a big difference between being able to sometimes get 50 mpg and being able to exceed it consistently. If I turned off the A/C, I could get 42 in my Honda, but that’s a little problematic in my city.
Miles per gallon is a misleading way to measure fuel economy, besides as Willis points out it doesn’t say much about fuel efficiency. Look at it this way- not too many years ago lots of people were driving cars that got 10 mpg. 10 gallons to go 100 miles. The early econo boxes got 25mpg or so. 4 gallons to go 100 miles. Last year many of the econo boxes got 33mpg. 3 gallons for 100 miles(well, 99 actually). The famed Prius got 42mpg,. ~2.5 gallons/100mi. The 2017 new model gets 52mpg, 1.9 gallons/100 miles. Gallons per 100 miles makes a lot more sense.
Electric cars, courtesy of the EPA, show ridiculous numbers in the 100mpg range. What the EPA doesn’t tell you is that figure is merely a direct conversion of the energy in gasoline into electricity with no allowance for power plant efficiency(55% at best) or the transmission/charging/discharging losses of 15-20%. Overall, the joules to joules comparison of gas to electric is about 44mpg, about the same as the Prius and only slightly better than other pretty good hybrids.
The ridiculous 54.5 number is the Corporate fleet average. That means the only private vehicles available will effectively be sub compact and compact cars. There is no way the auto companies will be able to generate enough sales of highly profitable larger cars, trucks, and vans to make any money. Currently they account for about 60% of sales. That will have to drop to 10 percent or so, driving up the cost of cars proportionately.
Mass transit, which doesn’t actually transport people more efficiently, only works in crowded cities. With any distance to travel, and counting off shift travel, mass transit is no more efficient than cars because the buses and trains have to run many times with only a few passengers in the off peak hours. Plus in any industrial area they have to run 24 hours a day, further decreasing efficiency.
RE mass transit. I always define mass transit it as going from where you aren’t to where you don’t want to go, when you don’t want to go.
I admit sometimes it works well.
And forget about picking up a little lumber and hardware (and maybe thise new tools that will be just right) on the way home from work for that little furniture or home lab bench or gardening project…
Mass transit only works well in New York City, and that was in a large part because it was built back when the government regulations didn’t make everything cost ten times more. Here in greater Orlando, they build the “Sunrail,” a not very fast commuter train that only services a linear path. If you want to go somewhere on the East side of the area, like the university, you’re out of luck.
And the cost! Not only do the ticket prices not pay for the construction or even routine maintenance, they don’t even pay for the cost of selling the tickets.
Right no passenger rail system works without some government handouts. A few freight lines such as the iron rail lines in the Kimberlies of Western Australia are economic – they are now driverless. The sub-ways in London, Paris and Tokyo are useful but are subsidised.
and London, Paris, Moscow, Berlin etc.
To be fair, road building and maintenance is also fully subsidised out of the public purse.
Don’t forget the most expensive rail system ($/unit length of rail) on earth, the Washington DC area Metro.
Fairs fair Philohippus: if you are including electricity generation costs for EVs, you should include the cost of extractiong and refining petrol/gasoline. I have a car that runs on both and it will go 14 miles on the electricity used to extract, refine and distribute enough petrol to drive 17 miles
Philoh… is correct, the EPA comparison is not accurate and was probably concocted to deceive the masses into thinking how efficient electric cars are. It is not good economics or honest government to only look at one stage of a process and not consider the entire efficiency from the beginning to the end. He was talking about efficiency not cost and there is a lot of energy lost in the power plants, distribution, etc. more so than refining crude oil. If one did look at cost which might be a good idea first one must look at the significant taxes paid for gasoline which supposedly pays for roads, bridges and mass transportation not paid by electric cars.
fair’s fair, if you want to include the cost of extracting and refining oil to gasoline, you need to include the cost of extracting and transporting the coal to the power plants as well.
Thanks, MarkW, you beat me to it.
w.
“…extracting and transporting the coal to the power plants ….” accepted. I think my point though is that you can make any point you like by cherry picking where you draw the line.
John,
A fair and honest analysis should not arbitrarily “draw a line” it needs to consider the entire process from beginning to the end. That’s good Engineering. The government draws a line at a point that makes no sense whatsoever to deceive those who are not sufficiently informed to realize the fraud. They get away with it because we have a complicit MSM.
Ironically, the same government overreach that calls for more miles per gallon, also mandates that the gasoline have 10% ethanol in it which arguably gets you slightly fewer miles per gallon.
Unless your (MN) state legislature brilliantly mandates an idiotic 15% ethanol blend!
Interestingly if the ethanol is used to increase the average octane rating, you could get more mileage out of fuel with ethanol, in a car that supports a high compression engine. However, the oil companies tend to use lower quality base stock and mix it with the ethanol to still get the 87 octane rating. Another problem is high compression engine parts tend to cost more, negating the benefit of any efficiency gains.
When Detroit first started to produce large numbers of diesel engines, they tried to do it on the cheap by taking a gasoline engine and increasing the compression. Needless to say, they started having a lot of problems with these engines after a couple of years on the road.
I’m my experience and research, ethanol not only lower fuel efficiency, but also increases emissions. Ethanol is also corrosive to most vehicle fuel systems. It is the epitome of insanity for the government to mandate higher fuel standards while also allowing ethanol to be added to the fuel supply. The use of corn in ethanol production also raises food prices. Typical government program.
High compression engines burn the air as well as the fuel to make NOX.
That nitrogen did not come out of your fuel tank it came right in the front through your radiator.
G
MarkW March 20, 2017 at 7:58 am
When Detroit first started to produce large numbers of diesel engines, they tried to do it on the cheap by taking a gasoline engine and increasing the compression. Needless to say, they started having a lot of problems with these engines after a couple of years on the road.
Yeah the Odlsmobile diesel single handedly destroyed diesels in the US, built on the cheap they basically used all the same parts as the gasoline engines, in particular the pistons and con-rods. With the higher compression ratio they were rapidly trashed. Instrumental in letting the foreign manufacturers into the US market because the reputation of Detroit was badly hit.
The LF9 (350 cu in) Olds diesel was not done “on the cheap.” The beefy block was highly sought after for use in racing applications (w/gasoline conversion), especially after the typical American destroyed the engine due to his/her lack of experience in the care and feeding of a diesel vehicle. The initial failure of this engine was not due to the engine itself, but from the poor quality of diesel fuel (i.e. water & particles) that was used in it when it hit the market. I had a Olds Delta 88 with one, and it went well over 350,000 miles with only needing an injector replacement.
David Dirkse March 20, 2017 at 4:46 pm
The LF9 (350 cu in) Olds diesel was not done “on the cheap.” The beefy block was highly sought after for use in racing applications (w/gasoline conversion),
But not for a diesel, too few head bolts for example which stretched and caused head gasket failure etc.
Followed by bent con rods…….
In your research for this post, did you happen to come across this report from NAS regarding the effect that CAFE has had on fuel economy? I did not read it but the Wikipedia page on CAFE says they (NAS) are claiming that CAFE had the effect of reducing fuel consumption by 14%…I’d say that’s not very much…and more or less supports your claim…if the report is valid.
I don’t have the time to read this study linked below but I’d be curious about how they came to that conclusion of 14%…if anyone else cares to read it and report back.
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10172&page=9
Whom the gods would destroy, they would first make insane.
The gods must have really had it with us.
Aren’t the miles-per-gallon claims invariably wrapped with baffle-gab anyway? Like highway mileage vs. stop and go city driving; your car has to be in perfect tune; your tires must be new and properly inflated, etc. As well, the general atmospheric conditions in which you are driving has an impact. Driving in warm weather vs. cold weather; starting your car in freezing temperatures will swallow extra gas; running the A/C on a long drive at the height of summer heat will use more gas. I could go on, and I’m no mechanic, but you get the idea. It’s possible your real-world MPG will be worse than the “official” MPG simply because you aren’t driving in ideal conditions all the time.
I’ve always felt that to be fair, the tests should also include everything that draws electrical power in the car turned on. Radio, fan, head lights, etc.
The tests also do not include stop signs and traffic lights, which government installs to force you to drive their way.
G
The town that I live in has been replacing stop signs and lights with round a bouts. On a good day I don’t have to stop even once in my commute.
george e. smith March 20, 2017 at 9:38 am
The tests also do not include stop signs and traffic lights, which government installs to force you to drive their way.
That’s where regenerative braking in hybrids works well.
Phil,
Are you suggesting that we should put in more compulsory stops to maximize the benefits of regenerative braking.
The kinetic energy of a car with the drive train disconnected is best used for travelling further down the road, rather than charging batteries.
G
We (the US of A) can produce as much fuel as we can use for a log time.
What’s it to the Federal government to MANDATE how many mpg my vehicle gets?
The only way the Obama CAFE standard could be met were if every one drove golf carts.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years. When gas prices are high, auto ads push gas mileage.
When gas prices are low, auto ads push luxury and power.
No. It’s not easier to make a car lighter than it is to make the engine more efficient or make the roiling resistance lower or the wind drag lower. They are all equally difficult and expensive at this point. And car weight isn’t the only thing that is balanced against occupant safety. There is a balance between rolling resistance and handling also.
How does rolling resistance affect handling ??
G
Tires with less rolling resistance tend to be harder, which means there is less surface area touching the road, which results in less traction.
Well you can calculate the amount of tire surface touching the road, by dividing the car weight by the tire pressure. That will give you the total contact surface area for infinitely flexible tires.
For less flexible tires, the contact area will be smaller than that.
The tires are not slipping on the road surface. The tire velocity is zero at the road surface, and twice the car speed at the top of the tire. The transmission losses and wind resistance are what gives rolling resistance.
G
Actually, cars have been getting heavier, not lighter, due to another government mandate, safety.
Where my 2000 Kia Sephia had two air bags, my 2012 Mitsubishi Lancer has 17 air bags, active stability control with traction control, tire pressure monitor & many more required safety features.
To compare like to like, my 2000 Sephia to Kia’s replacement, 2016 Forte, the Sephia was 2550 lbs curb weight, where the Forte weighs 2885 lbs.
The government doesn’t mandate 17 airbags. That is car company overkill.
actually I’d call that underkill – if it works to stop death and severe injury in a crash. (ok 17 might be a lot, but it isn’t killing anything – unless it is made by Takata.)
The airbags weren’t a direct mandate, but the result of crash test standards. The Sephia was designed when frontal crash tests were the only standard things were rated on. Front airbags did a decent job of abating that, so the testers went on to other crash scenarios like side impact and offset impact etc. With each new test scenario, engineers went into action to try to beat them, which gave them variations on two main choices – add a lot of steel or add airbags. If they add steel, they blow their CAFE numbers, so airbags it is (with a little bit of steel in door and door support beams.) Thus the Forte gained almost 900 lbs, but has better safety ratings in the areas the Sephia wasn’t designed for.
Unfortunately my car is one of the many with Takata airbags subject to recall. As I understand it from the dealership, the front driver-side airbag is unsafe but the passenger side airbag is OK. So if the airbags are triggered because of, say, a minor but still significant collision, the driver could be injured by the airbag deployment but not the passenger. Yeah, all that extra weight for safety is great.
The other problem with airbags is that they are quite expensive to replace after they’ve been deployed. In a minor collision with relatively light damage to the vehicle, the cost of replacing the deployed airbags will result in the car being written off as a total loss, when the structural and cosmetic damage to the car could otherwise have been repaired.
http://s9.postimg.org/ua7bt7ju7/horshack.png
Hey! Why don’t they fill all those airbags with CO2 and sequester it like that?
Where’s my consulting fee?
I wonder if Harley Davidson motorcycles have a fleet average of 55 mpg?
My Road King gets about 40 mpg, but if the roads are good and I’m really having fun I can get it down to 35 mpg. 😉
People want a safe car. That is one reason that SUVs sell well. They are perceived as being “heavier duty” and safer in a crash. And you sit higher up with a better view of the road. But they don’t get as good fuel economy. People are willing to give that up. But Obama wasn’t.
Leftists tend to assume that government always knows best.
And they roll over a lot easier.
G
I agree with Mr. Eschenbach’s point, but the reader may want to obtain more context by clicking on the link Mr. Eschenbach provided for the data. In particular, one may be forgiven for interpreting them as saying that new passenger cars’ gas mileages have increased substantially and that we may see non-negligible mileage increases as old car cars retire.
Again, I agree that CAFE standards are insane. I just question whether we’re stuck at 22 mpg.
Joe, always good to year from you. However, you say:
The graph shows a 25-year span during which lots and lots and lots of old cars retired … where is the increase? The average lifespan of a car in the US is on the order of 13 years, so during that time the US fleet basically turned over twice … so where is your “non-neglible increase”???
w.
I remain of the opinion that the reader would be well served to consider at all the data, not just the one row depicted graphically above.
The 1985, 2000, and 2014 mileage values for new passenger cars are 27.6, 28.5, and 36.4, respectively, while those for light trucks are 20.7, 21.3, and 26.3. In other words, new-car gas mileage seems to have accelerated in the past decade.
So I’m not sure that the fleet mileage’s having failed to budge much despite many cars’ retirements over the last twenty-five years tells us as much about what will happen over the next twenty-five as the casual reader might suppose.
Cash for clunkers
My car’s long term average MPG since I bought it, is around 29.5 MPG. BUT, it also has a long term average SPEED of 11 MPH.
My car won’t go 11 MPH. In Drive at idle it is set to 15 MPH.
I have to have my brakes on, to go 11 MPH.
Around silicon valley, we have our brakes on a lot.
On the same roads, at posted speeds, sans brake lights; I can get 50 MPG; and that is before I put it into neutral once up to road speed.
G
Its worae tnan you imagine, WE. Details in ebook Arts of Truth. The official milafe numbers are pure gasoline. The reported are E10. Minus 3.5% milage. Provable officisl obfuscation.
Willis, you say “This means that if you put the same identical engine in both a heavier car and a lighter car that are otherwise identical, they get assigned different “economy” numbers. But in fact, the efficiency of the engine, the drive train, the rolling resistance, and the aerodynamics is the same in both cases.”
Not quite right. All else being equal, a heavier car will have a higher rolling resistance. Maybe not much but it will be higher.
Just try adding a few more shovel fulls onto your wheelbarrow to check it out.
Mmmm … if I keep the air pressure in my wheelbarrow tires, you’re right. But if I adjust them for the weight, rolling resistance goes down again.
Not sure how that will all play out in sum, but it’s gonna be pretty small.
Thanks for an interesting question.
w.
You can only do that if the tires are built to withstand the increased pressure.
MarkW March 20, 2017 at 8:05 am
True … and that’s why they make the tires on my panel truck strong enough to be inflated to 65 PSI …
w.
Willis, I looked at some truck tires on 18 wheelers at truck stops, and it seems that their tires are typically rated for 125 PSI.
I needed to know the pressure to calculate the loading on the bridge I designed to go across my moat to my house. I had to design a bridge that could carry an H-20 Truck; that’s a ten tired 20 ton truck (two tons per tire). If you had such a truck (it’s fictional) you can’t legally drive it on any road in the USA, including the road leading to my bridge, which will take an A-1 Abrams main battle tank, with another one on top of it.
G
Actually its more complex than that. The engine doesn’t have ‘an efficiency’ – its a range depending on what it is called upon to do.
The classic example was in the UK back in the 70s the Ford Escort Mk I came with an 1100cc, a 1300cc and a 1600cc engine.
All were pretty thirsty, but the worst was…
…the 1100…
In order to get any performance at all you needed to rev it high.
There’s another factor to consider. Most American cars can be bought with more than one engine choice. The smaller engines provide better miles/gal. This is not because smaller engines are more efficient (they are actually less efficient than bigger engines). The reason is that the smaller engine needs a wider open throttle to achieve the same driving test. Therefore, the pumping losses across a partially closed throttle plate lower the efficiency *at that given EPA driving test*. If you look at the map of brake specific fuel consumption, you will see that the smaller engine is operating in a more efficient region on that plot. For the nerds out there: pumping losses are Vdot deltaP where Vdot is m^3/sec and deltaP is Pascals, and power is J/sec or Watts.
Not necessarily. Assuming the heavier car is the same body shape etc. as the lighter one, the heavier one will roll much further than the lighter one, when you put it in neutral.
“Rolling” resistance is largely a function of aerodynamics, bearing friction, and transmission efficiency.
The tires are just sitting on the road, and the tires are sized correctly for the load capacity.
My car effectively accelerates, when I put it in neutral on a flat road. the actual real rolling resistance is quite small.
If I accelerate promptly, but not jack rabbit to posted speed, from a traffic light, then put it in neutral I can easily coast to the next light without slowing down enough for the car behind me to even notice, unless he is riding my bumper; which he usually is.
I’m always driving in HIS lane. No matter what lane I’m in, it is HIS lane. And when he finally moves over to the right and passes me on the right, he will pull front of me, without signaling, and then slam on his brakes, because the guy in front of me is going the same speed I am. That will cause me to do an all anchors overboard panic stop, to ensure that I don’t crash into him, since he just cut my safety following margin by at least a factor of three.
So I hope the guy that replaced him riding my tail understands that, or else he is going to crash into my tail.
I don’t mind that; I will then become the new owner of his house.
But that is better than the right side passer, becoming the new owner of MY house.
G
FWIW — I think that higher CAFE standards have been a net positive for our country. Yes, higher CAFE means less safe cars, but we’ve also taken steps to improve our cars significantly over the past few decades. The net is much safer cars than we had. At the same time, the reason for CAFE standards was the reduction of our dependence on foreign fuels. This has been very successful.
The downside of CAFE standards has been the rise of foreign automobile sales. Japanese cars were very poorly made (consequently, the were lower weight.) This meant that our CAFE standards had the effect of pushing more sales to Japanese car makers. The funds were used to improve their car quality. This move was already in effect thanks to high gasoline prices and the mistaken perception by US car companies in believing that the transition was to more maneuverable cars rather than lower gas mileage cars.
The most significant downside is that cars are more expensive. That means that those on the lower end of the economic scale have a more difficult time affording the cars that have better gas mileage and therefore can’t afford to cut their fuel costs. This is my greatest concern for aggressive climate change policies.
The point being that there are reasons to exert government policies to drive the marketplace to areas they are not efficient at affecting. Your cell phone example should raise those red flags. After all, Samsung tried to get the most electrical capacity out of their batteries at the lowest cost and wound up with significant safety hazards. Eventually the market will move to safer batteries, but how many fires should we suffer through before this happens?
These headphones caught fire midflight. Do you really believe the free market should address that?
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjqpaP7-OPSAhUJMSYKHV5dCjoQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.digitaltrends.com%2Fhome-theater%2Fheadphones-fire-airplane-passenger%2F&psig=AFQjCNF_lhoKP2Q2fEE_HgdfRcVRGsedzA&ust=1490060190104614
CAFE has given us more complex and problematic technologies like CVT transmissions and direct-injection engines. What do you think will be the impact on fuel economy of cars being scrapped years earlier as a result? Right now, it’s not even possible to repair the CVT in our car; you can only replace it at $7.5k a time.
lorcanbonda March 19, 2017 at 6:37 pm
Say what? As you point out there are dangers, but as you point out they are driven by the market pushing efficiency.
Now if that is true, consider what would happen if a “CABE” standard, a “Cellphone Average Battery Efficiency” standard, said that we had to double battery efficiency?
Obviously, that would lead to MORE fires, just as the CAFE standards have led to more deaths.
So your example proves my point, not yours.
w.
Not to mention that regulations are one of the main things driving manufacturing to China, which is why so much electronics is now cheap crap that doesn’t meet the most basic safety standards (though it probably says it does on the box).
Another point is the belief that government is capable of foreseeing all possible safety problems in advance.
No, I’m not suggesting CABE standard for cellphone batteries. However, it would benefit us to have better safety standards which are required before devices are sold.
The Samsung (and other battery fires) are due to the quick rush to market for cheap electronic devices. We all want the newest, inexpensive electronics, but I don’t think we should accept shoddy safety standards. It is not worth it. The Samsung fires occurred because they sold more phones than they planned & needed to add battery suppliers quickly. They were also trying to get ~ 40% extra capacity out of the battery than is typically achieved. The batteries were too large to fit in the metal casing and then they were overcharged.
The free market drove these decisions to poor quality — cheap, Chinese battery manufacturers with shoddy safety records and the rush to quick production of electronics. Samsung Note 7 was not the norm — they were better than the norm. Hoverboards or headphones are much worse.
lorcanbonda
March 19, 2017 at 6:37 pm
“… At the same time, the reason for CAFE standards was the reduction of our dependence on foreign fuels. This has been very successful.”
I don’t think CAFE standards had anything to do with “reduction of our dependence on foreign fuels.”
Slywolfe:
I believe lorcanbonda was correct; that is certainly how I remember it being justified at the time. The ever-trustworthy Wikipedia says here:
Adendum to above. I was not agreeing with lorcanbonda that the CAFE regulations have actually been effective; just that they were promoted as a way to reduce dependence on imported oil. Now of course they have morphed into a way to save the planet from dangerous warming, in which cause they will be even less effective.
That they were promoted as a way of reducing our dependence on foreign fuels is true.
Likewise reductions in CO2 emissions are being promoted as a way to cool the planet.
Two big mistakes Jimmy Carter made besides running for president.
Department of Energy and Department of Education.
Hopefully, Trump can reset these terrible money wasting, people destroying, over regulating monsters.
To clarify: CAFE standards were “sold as” a way to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources. The fact that we have become less dependent on foreign energy sources, however, has nothing to do with CAFE, and everything to do with the frakking revolution that has massively expanded domestic sources of energy.
AGW is not Science;
Thank you…
Jimmy Carter didn’t start the Department of Education — that was Reagan. Under Carter, we had the Department of Health, Education, & Welfare. Reagan divided that into two departments with the intent of dissolving Education. He never did follow through with that.
My only point about the purpose of CAFE standards was to show the reason for the policy and the ultimate result. The CAFE standards alone aren’t responsible, but the policy (which included CAFE standards) was.
People consider many attributes of vehicles and select the vehicle that best meets their needs and desire.
Obama said, “Screw that. Gas mileage is the only attribute that matters.”
Tyranny. Your considerations don’t matter to the government.
Miles Per Gallon is a useless number. Why? Because a vehicle is often used to transport multiple people, and/or stuff. So a van that can transport nine people is different from a truck that can hold two or four people, and can also haul a load of something. Different types of vehicles do different things, because we are all individual in our needs and lifestyles. I’d say, we should do away with “standards” that have no basis in reality. Real cars and trucks do real work, for real people. People should decide what they want, based on their needs, and government should just stay out of it.
I agree that MPG is worthless in determining vehicle fuel efficiency. I much prefer load pounds X mpg. My Chevy Malibu can move 800 lbs of load at 30 mpg or 27,000 lb-mpg. Our Freightliner, cattle truck only gets 6 mpg, but hauls 45,000 lb of load, or 270,000 lb-mpg. So the truck is 10x more efficient than my car at moving loads.
MPG is worthless except for the particular car YOU drive.
The MPG of anybody else’s car is NO skin off your teeth; only the one you drive.
G
I turned my diesel powered Golf in to VW on their buy back program last week. The lady who handled the deal said the latest word was the cars were to be “crunched”.
Now every car that is recalled will be replaced with another vehicle that will likely get less MPG the the diesel that is turned in. I replaced my Golf with a VW Passat, so VW isn’t even penalized in my case because they made and sold a car that would not have been made except for the recall.
The metal in the crunched cars will be re-cycled, but that is not pollution free or energy free.
Some one explain how all this makes sense.
It keeps government bureaucrats employed.
My son also turned in a Golf TDI a month or so ago. Got a decent buyback on it. It’s a shame though, the car was a great driver – 6 speed manual, APR chipped. Quick, nice handling, and really fun to drive. What a waste.
Maybe they don’t call it fuel efficiency for a reason. They mean economy.
Traffic Deaths: Haven’t traffic deaths been going down in recent years, at least per million miles traveled.
Your one graph is a little misleading because you plot actual fleet economy not new car economy, which actually is what CAFE can control, and which is actually surpassing CAFE stds.
“And this is the ultimate irony. The CAFE standards were supposed to reduce pollution, but they couldn’t even do that. Instead they drove manufacturers to make the air dirtier just so they could meet the CAFE requirements.”
The air dirtier? Huh? You mean cheat, right. And now consumers aren’t buying as much from the cheater. (Wasn’t there a raid on Audi headquarters last week, in Germany? Wonder how that turns out.)
The air dirtier? Huh? You mean cheat, right. And now consumers aren’t buying as much from the cheater. (Wasn’t there a raid on Audi headquarters last week, in Germany? Wonder how that turns out.)
____________________________________________
The Attorney already HAS all paperwork and e-mails from VW.
Now there’s rumors about ‘presentations’ of new software.
Since the Attorney already HAS all data, paper + electronic, the outcome is really interesting.
Link below has numbers and rates, but getting old now.
http://www.nsc.org/NewsDocuments/2015/6-month-fatality-increase.pdf
Many places have more recent news, here is one:
http://www.autoblog.com/2017/02/15/us-traffic-deaths-pass-grim-milestone/
… the NSC estimates that 40,200 Americans were killed in car crashes in 2016. That is a 6% increase in fatal crashes from 2015.
Seems a lot of people talk on phones and text while driving.
Note, that’s 40,000+ per year in the USA.
Snakebites = 4 or 5
About 25,000 deaths are caused by falls from steps, etc.
We should ban steps.
ReallySkeptical March 19, 2017 at 7:09 pm
I was interested, not by the effect on new cars in theory, but the effect on the US fleet in reality. I’m sorry you don’t seem to like reality, but including reality doesn’t make my graph “misleading”.
In fact, no, people didn’t stop buying from the cheater—VW sales were up in 2016, not down. Even in the US their sales were up. In 2015 VW sold 30,956 vehicles in the US. In 2016 VW sold 37,229 vehicles in the US. Nice try.
What I meant was exactly what I said: an unintended effect of the CAFE standards was that they were so strict that people cheated to achieve the standards, and the net result was the air got DIRTIER. Once again you seem to be objecting to reality and preferring theory.
w.
I would seem that if the average of all the cars bought last year was above 30 mpg, that in 10 or 15 years the curve might move up, as CAFE was not moved up until the last administration. (Don’t forget that CAFE moved the fleet average from 15 to 20 mpg in the 80s.)
This is from Market Watch for VW:
“In the U.S., new car sales fell nearly 8%, to 322,900 vehicles in 2016.”
I have no idea where you are getting your numbers. They sound more like Telsa sales not VW.
I heard on the radio the day before yesterday that Audi (owned by VW) numbers also fell. It was the news account with the raid I mentioned.
ReallySkeptical, I got the figures from the VOLKSWAGEN OF AMERICA REPORTS DECEMBER AND 2016 YEAR-END SALES RESULTS.
However, i failed to notice that those were DECEMBER sales instead of yearly sales. Those agree with your figures, 349,440 vehicles vs. 322,948. So yes, there was a small drop, you were right and I was wrong.
I do note that sales rebounded, with December 2016 being stronger than December 2015.
None of this changes my underlying point, which is that the CAFE standards distort the market in a host of ways.
Thanks for checking.
w.