Filed under: MPG, Legislation and Policy
BREAKING! 35 MPG it is! Senate passes energy bill, back to the house
On their third try the US Senate finally passed the new energy bill this evening. After stripping out all the tax provisions the bill easily passed 86-8 in the Senate. Following the vote the White House announced that President Bush would sign the revised bill once the House of Representatives passes it. A House vote is expected early next week. Along with the tax provisions the renewable energy requirements for electric utilities were also removed from the bill earlier. The stripping of the tax provisions means that there will be no new incentives for plug-in hybrid vehicles. Those incentives would have been paid for by the other increases. New fuel economy standards will take effect in 2011, eventually rising to a 35 mpg fleet average by 2020.
[Source: Detroit Free Press]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
small-wee-wee 10:09PM (12/13/2007)
Does that 35 include SUVs and Trucks as part of the "fleet"?
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Dad 10:54PM (12/13/2007)
"After stripping out all the tax provisions the bill easily passed 86-8 in the Senate"
Great news.
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Paul 12:27AM (12/14/2007)
I just hope they can get this right and performance doesn't suffer. I fear them not being able to improve fast enough to meet the deadline and we're all left with gutless wonders. A Suburban with 150 Ft Lbs of torque is not going to do me any good.
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lodel 1:49AM (12/14/2007)
Sell your suburban. Buy a cargo bike.
35 mpg is nothing. How about a law requiring making the damn things smaller.
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priusguy 2:57AM (12/14/2007)
Have you seen European cars? They are half the size and have tiny motors. You don't see the Lexus IS200 in the US, but it is common in Europe. The E200 is a European thing - we have the E500. SMARTS and tiny Fiats are everywhere in Europe - the US has Suburbans, Escalades, and HUMMERS.
Real Car Prices from Real People
http://www.pricehub.com
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ThwartedEfforts 4:18AM (12/14/2007)
35mpg... so about the mileage most European cars get when driven really really hard?
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fredo 4:52AM (12/14/2007)
quite a shame, 35mpg is less than what Europeans are getting from their cars TODAY. US is going for a tough ride with our highly predictable oil crisis coming. And beside the oil consumption we are going to be behind European on technological point of view.
just a shame
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Paul 5:28AM (12/14/2007)
Fredo: I can get 35mpg now in the US if I choose to. The question is why mandate it? I think $3/gal gas is working fine as people are making the choice to drive less or buy a hybrid (or soon, a diesel). I think a mandate creates resentment and you're better off with people coming to the realization themselves they should use less fuel.
$3 + is laying the hurt down on some people. It sucks but I don't mind so much since I live not too far from work and my wife has just consolidated trips a bit. When it hits $4 I don't think you'll need this legislation at all.
If I want what Europe has I'd move there.
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Dad 6:23AM (12/14/2007)
Paul: "I can get 35mpg now in the US if I choose to"
Exactly, you hit the nail on the head! My "little" Chevy Malibu with a 2.2L ecotec with 4-spd auto "slush box" gets 35mpg on flat Midwest roads at 65 mph with ease. I don't want or need Uncle Sam or the UN telling me what I should buy and what I need. That just makes them arrogant little bureaucrats who drive around in limos all day. Let market forces create the solution.
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Dave 8:00AM (12/14/2007)
Sounds like a bunch of communists. Free market economy, I think not. If you demand it, they will build it. Look at the prius.
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Boogyman 8:01AM (12/14/2007)
Yes they have smaller cars in europe, but don't have the safety standards we have here. Which is why a lot is held back form the US. Part of the problem is all the mandatory safety features required by the govt adds weight and reduces fuel economy. All those air bags and door reenforcements add a lot of weight.
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Throwback 8:09AM (12/14/2007)
Paul, you are right on. If I want 35 mpg today I can buy many cars that get that. There are people that feel the need to tell us what we should buy because they "know" what we need. This is usually based on the fact they see someone driving in an SUV by themselves, so therefore they don't need all that space. The reason Prius sales have taken off is because there are people who want high mileage cars (and maybe feel like their doing something for the enviroment), due to high gas prices. Honda and Toyota are making boatloads of cash, looks like the market is working to me.
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Sam Abuelsamid 9:03AM (12/14/2007)
Boogyman, Actually current Euro safety standards are probably as stringent if not more so than US standards. They are however different. For example in Europe they have standards for frontal offset crash tests while in the US there is just a full frontal standard. Europe also has pedestrian safety standards. The Europeans also have airbag requirements. Many newer cars are being designed to meet both sets of requirements.
The reason Europeans go for smaller cars is the high fuel prices there (currently as much as $8/gallon in the UK) and the tighter urban driving conditions in the cities. Americans have traditional shown an unwillingness to pay premium prices for what they consider to be less car. That is starting to change with the popularity of cars like the Mini. We'll soon see if American manufacturers can convince buyers to pay a little more for a modern small car when the Saturn Astra goes on sale in January.
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Charles S 9:03AM (12/14/2007)
First of all, "market forces" are NOT working here. High fuel prices had been in effect for at least 3 years and overall fuel consumption rate has not change, and it is still increasing.
Hybrids at its peak this year makes up 3% of total monthly car sales. The compact cars like Yaris probably won't break 100,000 unit this year. Yes, maybe there are cars that can get 35 mpg, but FEW are buying them.
Don't get me wrong, I totally understand how the opposition feel. However, the problem here is not about "freedom" to buy, but safeguarding our economy, national security, and the future of our energy infrastructure.
Maybe at $4+ a gallon people will definitely buy more fuel efficient cars, but waiting for that to happen is incredibly shortsighted. Our economy is already on the edge and higher fuel prices is definitely pushing the inflation rate up. If you want LEADERSHIP in our gov't, then an energy policy has to be in place NOW.
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Charles S 9:17AM (12/14/2007)
"Americans have traditional shown an unwillingness to pay premium prices for what they consider to be less car. That is starting to change with the popularity of cars like the Mini."
I have a MINI and bought it the first year it came out in US in 2002. While BMW underestimated the popularity of the MINI, the sales figures really hasn't change much since 2003; selling at about 35k-39k units per year.
While not all figures are in for 2007, sales numbers this year is not that great.
The thing is, MINI did great when it was selling on performance, and 50% of all MINIs sold in US are the "S" model. These beefier MINIs rarely get more than 25 mpg combined. Maybe the base version gets great mileage, but in general, US customers are not willing to pay premium prices on small cars.
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Mark 9:27AM (12/14/2007)
Charles - I'm not sure what you consider to be *high* gas prices. My sis-in-law lives in Norway, They have all the oil they need and more from the North Sea and she pays $2.50 --- a *liter*. If gas here was 10 clams a gallon you would see itty bitty cars and a lot more mass transit. We would also see blood in the streets as we canned everyone in Congress, which is why they are so unlikely to make real change happen. The market will work over time. Prices in real dollars have to be high enough to overcome the inelasticity in demand (we all have to drive some amount because we have no alternative) and the slow turnover in the fleet of cars on the road. I'm hanging on to my '98 V70 which gets mediocre mileage until I can get a serial or plug in hybrid or diesel that gets at least 50 mpg.
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Charles S 9:36AM (12/14/2007)
"Government regulation always brings unintended consequences."
The truth is, the world looks to US for STABILITY *because* of our government policies. I'm not saying that everything the government does is right, but we also don't have "anything goes" market place that people think we should have.
If people really think it's restrictive to have fuel economy rules, then I'd say it is also UNFAIR that current regulations favor large fuel-guzzler; while cars have huge amount of regulations, gas-guzzlers get all kinds of exemptions. Can't have it one way but ignore the other; if we are to regulation vehicles in the name of safety and emissions, then unsafe vehicles like SUVs need to face the same regulations as cars.
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The inconvenient treehugger 9:59AM (12/14/2007)
Paul, Fredo and the lot of you: Let the market forces decide?
Whatever you do, do not intervene with my individual freedom to do what I want. And what I do not want is to be labeled as some treehugger environmentalist. So let me have the gas guzzling SUV.
So: " I don't want or need anybody telling me what I should buy and what I need. That just makes me ignorant little consumer who drives around in SUV all day."
Or: "I don't want or need the market telling me what I should buy and what I need. That just makes them arrogant little capitalists who drive around in limos all day."
Let´s have some regulation or nothing will happen for Christ´s sake! And according to reports things need to change and fast. If we manage to have 30-40 % global emission reduction by 2020, then we could have fifty-fifty chance of not having an uncontrolled environmental/climate change. We are looking at controlled environmental/climate change. This is the latest report I heard.
35 mpg is a start but not nearly enough. Do you think that road safety would have improved without the 65 miles/hour limit? People did nag about it but at least now they can see the benefits. And if they still nag about it... well let them. They are only acting on their individual rights to do so.
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GoodCheer 10:02AM (12/14/2007)
Do the tax provisions stripped from the bill include the "tax changes that would have eliminated almost $13 billion of tax breaks for oil companies"? That would be a shame.
Don't get me wrong, I own stock in Exxon and Chevron, so I'm making piles of money from those tax breaks, but I still think that they are a mistake from a fiscal, energy, security, and environmental policy perspective.
And I have to disagree with the statement "the free market will work it out". The free market is notoriously short-sighted. The reason for governmental policy-making is to be forward looking, to help insure the country is in a position to face the changing conditions in the future. The market in contrast is dominated by people (like myself) who have a strong tendency to base their decisions on past experience or in-the-moment impulses.
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Charles S 10:02AM (12/14/2007)
@Mark:
Your example of how much Europe pays for gas is irrelevant here. In the last three years, US gas prices nearly doubled. Such high increases in anything else would surely affect sales, but like you said, we have to use gas, so people got used to it.
"The market will work over time. Prices in real dollars have to be high enough to overcome the inelasticity in demand (we all have to drive some amount because we have no alternative) and the slow turnover in the fleet of cars on the road."
Again, shortsighted. We have adjusted well so far, but that doesn't mean a steady increase in gas prices won't eventually cripple our economy.
We can ignore everything else for now and just look at inflation. Everything we import will cost more, and if our economy slows further, that will only erode the dollar further. I can't predict the future, but letting the market correct itself is FAITH and gambling that everything will fall into place.
The fact that you're holding onto your old vehicle is because you assume that "the market" will make a serial hybrid. The truth is GM can easier walk away from the project; it's a business, and the "market" may just make it too difficult to make one at an affordable price.
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