LOL: “Assuming the price of gasoline stays about what it is today.”
Climatewire reports,
Ahead of three public hearings on the Obama administration’s new fuel economy standards, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) released a report yesterday that found higher standards will have immediate benefits for drivers’ pocketbooks.
The new corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards require a fleetwide average of 54.5 mpg by model year 2025. CFA’s new research shows that a buyer with a five-year loan on a car that complies with the 2025 standard would start saving money in the first month.
Savings on gasoline spending will outstrip the monthly cost of fuel-efficient technology from the start, said Mark Cooper, director of research with CFA, in a media conference co-hosted by the nonprofit group Consumer Reports.
By the time the five-year loan ends, Cooper calculated, the consumer will have saved an average of about $800. By the 10th year of ownership, assuming the price of gasoline stays about what it is today, the vehicle would generate an estimated $3,000 in consumer savings, most of which would go to the original owner.
“This is a consumer program,” said Cooper. “No doubt about it”…
The strong CAFE standards have broad support from consumer groups, environmentalists, labor unions and even a lot of automakers. According to the CFA report, the only real opposition comes from auto dealers, “who are fearful of losing the profits they made from older, fuel inefficient vehicles.”
Bailey Wood, spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), says that when it comes to selling cars versus SUVs, however, the profit margins are within a couple of percentage points.
Wood also says he’s skeptical of consumer group surveys because they don’t account for different types of vehicles, miles driven and other factors that influence costs and benefits. Savings calculations also overlook the fact that 20 percent of new cars are leased, said Wood. The people who lease cars will never see the savings of fuel economy returned to them because they don’t drive the car long enough to reap the benefits, he said.
“As soon as people start realizing these things have a real and substantial cost to them, I think the perspectives will change.”
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“This is a consumer program,” said Cooper. “No doubt about it”…
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And you consumers vill like vhat vee sell you!
If I recall correctly, the implementation of the original CAFE standards in 1975 had separate standards for “passenger cars” and “light trucks”. The cars became so lightweight that people who would never have thought of driving a ‘truck’ switched to SUVs (a type of light truck unheard of before CAFE) for their greater safety.
The 2011 CAFE standards are tied to a vehicle’s ‘footprint’ (wheelbase length times width), which result in stricter CAFE requirements for smaller vehicles. The discrimination between cars and light trucks persists.
For example, the 2012 Honda Fit (weighs a tad more than a full-dress Harley) has a footprint of 40 sq ft and must achieve CAFE fuel economy of 36 miles per gallon, while a Ford F-150 with its footprint of 65–75 sq ft need only achieve 22 miles per US gallon.
This will only continue to encourage people to drive SUVs and trucks that do not get mileage as high as that achieved by cars.
The rule-makers seem to be incapable of foreseeing how real people will respond to their naive edicts.