CAFE Standards

Yesterday President OBama issued requirement for improved fuel efficiency on cars sold in this country. The question you have to ask yourself is why did he have to do this, why didn't the marketplace take care of it?

For the last 20 years or so, American car makers have focused on selling or leasing high profit models. To get fuel efficiency there are really only two possibilities. You either have to reduce weight (less power needed) or improve the engine efficiency. The second one is clearly more appealing, since it allows the cars to have the creature comforts we desire. I assume their is some progress in this area, however, it clearly hasn't resulted in any significant improvements except perhaps in hybrids.

So the other choice would be to have simpler, lighter cars that got great gas mileage. In the mid 70s, after the gas crisis, I bought one of the earliest Honda Civics. It could best be described as a tin box on wheels back then, but it got up to 45 miles per gallon. It had very few creature comforts and a manual transmission. It was actually fun to drive and easy to park but of course I was a lot younger then. The only real problem I ever had with it was that the clip on the clutch line broke once when I was on the Northern State Parkway. I was actually able to fix this myself at the time and get home.

After a few years I was making more money and the paint on the Honda had started to fade, so I sold it for about $100 to a college student I knew who was driving back and forth from New York City to Buffalo. I believe he kept it for at least another 3 years and I don't know what happened to it after that.

I've had a series of cars since then, all of which had significantly more power and creature comforts but none of which got anywhere near the mileage that original Honda Civic got. I don't even think later Honda Civics are near those numbers and of course Honda, Toyota, and the others added higher end, less fuel efficient vehicles to appeal to American buyers.

So why don't we already have vehicles that get much better gas mileage? In my case, the vehicle I now drive gets less than half of what the old Civic I had got, but it is a lot bigger and much more comfortable. Fuel efficiency was always listed on the sticker but when I went to buy this car it was by no means my primary consideration. Also, since cars come in "classes" it sounded fairly persuasive that this car was above average in it "class".

I don't think I'm that atypical, although I would like to think I am, but I wanted a car that had some power, had the creature comforts I expected, decent reliability and enough space. I have to say that the car I bought met all these criteria. I would have liked to get all that with good fuel economy. I also don't think the car companies had any interest in providing bad fuel economy to me, marketplace forces, meaning me and all of you, wouldn't buy it if it meant either less creature comforts or a higher price.

So the Government has leveled the playing field by dictating a level of fuel efficiency that the marketplace didn't provide. It wouldn't have been required had we all demanded it in the first place.