Business Regulation
Government to Mandate 60 MPG
Even today's fuel sippers will seem thirsty when the Obama administration is done with its overhaul of mileage rules.
By Jim Ostroff, Associate Editor, The Kiplinger Letter
September 2, 2010
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Within a month, federal regulators will set the wheels in motion to more than double the current standard for mileage per gallon. By 2025, automakers' fleets will have to average 60 miles per gallon, versus 27.5 mpg for passenger cars and 22 mpg for trucks (including big SUVs and pickups) that are made today.
It's part of Obama's push to slow and eventually reverse the growth of U.S. oil imports while also reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Automobiles are a close second to the electric power industry as the largest source of carbon dioxide, a gas the U.S. considers a hazard, asserting that it promotes global warming. By executive fiat, the administration already has required that, starting in the fall of 2015 for 2016 models, automakers' fleets get an average of at least 35.5 mpg, regardless of vehicle sizes and weights. An official proposal of the next boost, to 60 mpg by 2025, will come from the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by October and will be locked into regulations by fall 2011.
To boost vehicles' fuel efficiency beyond 40 mpg, manufacturers will have to tweak gasoline engines by using small turbochargers, advanced fuel injection and ultralight steel, plastics and composite fibers.
They also effectively face a mandate to rev up development of ultra-high-mpg electric plug-in cars and hybrids such as the Chevy Volt, which is set to roll out by December and uses a small gasoline-fueled motor to recharge an onboard battery. Advanced hybrids getting the equivalent of 100 mpg or more will be a must for automakers to reach a minimum fleet average of 60 mpg by 2025. Just to meet the 35.5 mpg standard for 2015, automakers likely will be producing around 1 million gasoline-electric and plug-in cars a year by 2015. It's no coincidence that the DOT and EPA are considering revamped auto sticker labels that highlight plug-in and hybrid vehicles' seemingly astronomical fuel efficiency.
Although a fleet with many Volt-type hybrids might be sufficient to meet the much higher mpg standard that will be required by 2025, it probably wouldn't toe the line on carbon dioxide emissions -- one reason automakers will continue to face pressure to make all-electric-powered plug-in cars.
So they'll step up R&D and lean more heavily on suppliers and contract with others such as A123 and Compact Power to develop batteries that will enable cars to run for several hundred miles between recharges. (The Chevy Volt will be able to travel only 40 miles before the gasoline engine kicks in.)
In addition, expect a push to install tens of thousands of recharging stations in cities, suburbs and along roadside service areas, as well as in car owners' garages. That will increase sales for manufacturers such as AeroVironment and Coulomb Technologies. It should also give a boost to companies such as Better Place, which will embark on a nationwide buildout of mini-stations where motorists can quickly exchange batteries low on juice for fresh ones, as they do now with propane tanks.
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Reader Comments (13)
Posted by: lightrider at 09/04/2010 08:12:22 PM
Obamma..what a clown!!
Posted by: Cato at 09/05/2010 09:22:10 AM
Carbon dioxide is a hazard, eh? News to me. As a gardener, I find it makes my plants thrive. This is nothing but Orwellian-style double-speak run amok. The Obama Administration just wants an excuse to bail out the Unions and toss a bone to the Environmental Lobby in one fell swoop. True to form, our foreign competitors in the auto market will hire thousands of enginners to solve the problem of greater fuel effiiency. Whilst Detroit hires thousands of lawyers to lobby for exemptions to the limits. The result? Better foreign cars on the roads. More subsidies and exemptions to shelter a protected auto industry and their fat and lazy labor supporters. Why not let the market decide what consumers want in their cars? Consumers generally know best what suits their needs.
Posted by: Barbara Goldin at 09/06/2010 08:07:43 PM
Why should this take 14-15 years to accomplish? This should be done within five years and no later-mass produce it so prices come down. Infact, this could have been done many years ago. Other countries willnhave this long before we do; some already have. |BG
Posted by: rick at 09/07/2010 01:32:12 PM
Every reptile and mammal on the planet produces carbon dioxide with each exhale. Increased carbon dioxide increases plant growth which helps food production on the planet. I agree calling this a hazard would just be silly if it wasn't being used to control us and make the countries industry less competitive. Anyone remember the terrible cars of the 80's?
Posted by: JD at 09/07/2010 01:33:43 PM
Price, safety, fuel efficiency. Pick two. You lose the other one. That's physics. But please, keep selling us these electric cars that get their power from a coal plant down the road, polluting at higher rates per mile, but NIMBY!
Posted by: Bud at 09/07/2010 04:09:08 PM
Golly, that's a swell idea. Wouldn't it be better to require mileage at 240 mpg, then the whole world would be so much better off - seems to me the govment is just not goin' fur enough. Whatever they say is always best - 'cause they are always so much smarter then us poor citizens.
Posted by: Sid at 09/07/2010 09:26:22 PM
The article says electricity ranks behind gasoline as the leading producer of carbon emissions. Okay, so where are you going to get cheap electricity to plug all those electric cars in? Wind power? Hardly enough to make 1% of our market today. Solar...hah, even less. Even if government subsidies (i.e. taxes us all) more, there won't be enough infrastructure to carry all of the juice from the sunny, windy west to the rest of the States. Another government mandate brought to you by the world of "duh!"
Posted by: stonytony at 09/07/2010 10:23:33 PM
could someone ask what authority the government is using to make such a demand on a private business?
Posted by: CJ at 09/07/2010 10:40:41 PM
This push for high-mileage standards is long overdue, and it can't come quickly enough. The sooner we can ween ourselves off of oil, the sooner we can make headway on protecting the environment that sustains us and the sooner we can put big oil us out of business. Of course, electric cars are only as "green" as the power-plants that generate their juice, but I'd rather my money go to American coal miners than petro-oil dictators who hate the United States and want to kill us. The same can be said of carbon taxes. I'd rather my money go to the U.S. Treasury than to Oil Producing and Exporting Countries.
Posted by: curious at 09/08/2010 08:23:35 AM
"Automobiles are a close second to the electric power industry as the largest source of carbon dioxide..." Could someone explain to me how INCREASING our use of electricity will decrease CO2 if the previously quoted statement from the article is correct? If anything, it would appear to break even. I don't understand.
Posted by: Simon at 09/08/2010 10:38:11 AM
Hey... While he is at it, MANDATE: 1. Cure to All Cancers 2. Cure to Heart Disease 3. Cure to AIDS other STD's. 4. Can't leave out "World Peace" He and Gore.... Generals in the "Space Cadet" society. There is definetly a loose screw.
Posted by: Simon at 09/08/2010 10:47:41 AM
Can't he mandate something easier: World Peace (at the price of loosing all of our freedoms) Free Health Care for all except the wealthy (who will later become poor to qualify) A Tax All Spend All Mentality (on the Gov.'s discrection) Unlimited Vacation at Tax Payers expense for anyone living in the Whitehouse.
Posted by: RMF at 09/09/2010 07:12:20 PM
Back in the 70's this country was actually on the cutting edge of what is now known as "Green Design". But after intense lobbying by the petrol industry and the election of retrograde conservative administrations many of the energy saving initiatives were effectively hamstrung or neutralized. Today we are essentially back at the starting point we were at 40 years ago. Just image how much further down the road to a sustainable society we would be if these initial efforts weren't derailed by the same uneducated voices we are now hearing again.