Quote:
Originally Posted by OldScoolCamaro
...and what pray tell are we forgetting about, and at risk of repeating.....?,
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Captain said it well, but I'll give it a try as well.
We are risking losing the choices in performance we have today. The 'muscle' cars that came out after the Gov't regulations in the 1970s were a joke. We run that risk with the new regulations. Fleets will have to average 54.5MPG by 2025. Something else to consider;
coverage of medium duty trucks has been added to the CAFE regulations starting in 2012, and heavy duty commercial trucks starting in 2014. So now those low MPG vehicles will count against the average when they have not been counted before.
To show how tough 54.5MPG is to get, consider the Fiat 500 gets 40MPG highway, the Mini Cooper gets 37MPG highway, and the Prius gets 51MPG highway.
Now we all know that technology will advance, but who can say how much? And dont count on shedding weight being the answer. The Gov't mandates crash safety requirements as well. Speaking of safety, the Fiat 500 got the lowest cash test rating of ALL new cars.
So unless technology makes some serious headway it is just not going to be possible to continue to sell the high HP, but low MPG, performance cars in the volumes we do now (if they can even be sold at all). Remember, these new CAFE numbers were put into effect before the previous ones (which were lower) had ran their course. 54.5 in 2025 can change you know. It might actually get worse!
It's got zero to do with politics, or alarmism, or anything else. It's just simple math.
Links:
http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2...-new-cars.html
http://autos.yahoo.com/fiat/500/2013/
http://www.edmunds.com/mini/cooper/2013/mpg.html
http://autos.yahoo.com/toyota/prius/2013/