Photo by psd. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

At the SAE Congress this week, the director of the EPA's Office of Transportation and Air Quality, Margo Oge, said that in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent compared to 2000 levels (something the Detroit News called a proposal that is "widely backed" in the scientific community), a new CAFE standard of 75 mpg would need to be implemented. And you thought you heard a howl when the 35 mpg by 2020 limit was imposed late last year. How could cars reach that goal? Oge suggests improvements in both engines and fuels. Glad that was figured out.

While 75 mpg is a fanciful fight we'll leave for another day, this line jumped out at me in the Detroit News piece: "Oge said the auto industry should be able to meet the 35 mpg standard by 2018 with the same size fleet, with cost-effective technology improvements, based on an internal EPA study." By 2018? Cool. Where's the pressure to move the CAFE law's implementation up two years?

[Source: Detroit News]

Is the EPA is trying to kill the muscle car? Margo Oge, EPA director-office of transportation and air quality, said this in an address to the Automotive News World Congress:

We must bring about an end to the horsepower arms race among auto makers and replace it with another different kind of a race, a race to produce the most affordable and desirable, low carbon-vehicle each year.

Fast and green are not mutually exclusive! In fact, electric- and ethanol-powered cars are often more powerful than ordinary cars. Why not a race to make the greenest car with the most horsepower? Horsepower boosting features like turbo and fuel injection also improve fuel efficiency. There is no need for a trade off or a war.

Can't we all just get along?

Related:

• Corvette's chief engineer: CAFE will make muscle cars an "endangered species"
• Classic and muscle cars can get in on the E85 action, too
• So, who wants to get into Daryl Hannah's biodiesel El Camino?

[Source: Wards Auto Via Autopia, AutoBlog]