"Dave C." <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:
[email protected]...
> > > CAFE has effectively limited the weight of passenger vehicles. CAFE
has
> > > been shown to cost lives for exactly this reason.
> >
> > This may be true, but CAFE has also saved lives, because forcing
vehicles
> > to use less fuel helps to reduce pollution, and thus fewer people dying
> each
> > year
> > as a result of pollution-related illnesses. Most likely the lives lost
by
> > one
> > thing are balanced by the other.
> >
> > Ted
>
> You trade large cars for larger trucks, and you think the net result is
less
> fuel burned? Here's a clue: if large cars were still unrestricted by
CAFE,
> those large cars would benefit from some of the same technology that has
> allowed all vehicles (SUVs included) to pollute less, per gallon burned.
> AND, the large cars would STILL get better MPG compared to the SUVs that
> replaced them.
>
> In other words, CAFE has cost lives both by reducing weight of vehicles
AND
> by causing vehicles to burn MORE fuel, as many people are buying large
> trucks for the specific reason that they can not buy large cars
> ymore. -Dave
>
>
You are entirely correct, except perhaps the cause and effect is slightly
different, or maybe I have another byproduct of CAFE to add.
CAFE has taken buyers of cars and turned them into buyers of trucks. I
specifically remember the arguments of the early to mid '70s where families
that wanted to drive around in Crown Victoria Stationwagons with 427 ci
engines were frowned upon to the point that Detroit stopped building them.
It seemed to me at the time that the idea of people like Lloyd was that if
we could get rid of the Crown Vic stationwagons, then we wouldn't have
problems associated with these kinds of cars. What people like Lloyd seem ot
forget is that families need the space ot haul children and groceries, and
getting rid of Crown Vics simply turned these buyers into SUV buyers. They
were mini-van buyers, and even full sized van buyers for a few years. The
point is not the kinds of vehicles they bought, the point is that they were
no longer buying cars, they bought trucks instead.
When CAFE standards were dreampt up, it was thought that trucks were not a
significant part of the automotive population, trucks were used for work,
not play. And certainly not for hauling families around town, let alone the
countryside. We didn't want or need to impose the same kinds of standards on
truck as we developed for cars because the things that make cars safer make
trucks weaker and more costly. Since truck buyers were working class
consumers, we didn't want to impose costly standards on them that didn't do
anything to help the work they were doing.
Obviously, truck buyers today are not the same as they were in the '70s and
early '80s. But, a large part of this is because of people with an agenda
like Lloyd has. Since we have managed to push a huge segment of car buyers
into the truck marketplace by eliminating the cars that people need and
want, then we have created a consumer that is forced to forgo safety and
economy for size. There have been significant improvements in engine
technology, and that 427 ci carburated engine of the '70s has gone from
giving 7 ~ 10 mpg to being capable of delivering 15 ~ 20 mpg. While still
short of the 40 ~ 60 mpg that Lloyd thinks is a reasonable figure, it is
double what we could get in years past.
Another thing that Lloyd will never admit is the concept of Passenger Miles
Per Gallon. If a car that can carry 2 passengers gets 30 mpg, then we
realize a PMPG of 60. That is, two people that go 30 miles on the same
gallon of gass go 60 PMPG. An SUV that gets 15 mpg, and is carrying 7 people
is getting 105 PMPG. This is a pretty good bargain, if you ask me. If a car
that gets 30 mpg can carry 4 people, then it will deliver 120 PMPG, but it
takes two of them to get the seven passengers where they need to go.
-Dave
