Gas Guzzlers Gone?

You've appear to have misread the article. It says:

"New standards for cars and light trucks, including SUVs, will make U.S. vehicles more fuel-efficient."

"The growth in the number of U.S. vehicles, after surging the last 30 years, is likely to plateau."

"Alternative fuels will grow enough to cover increased fuel needs."

But you wrote "cars are more fuel efficient, the number of cars has peaked, and alternative fuels are finally catching on."

You will note the difference in tense.

The fleet average fuel economy is worse now than in 1985, because many people are convinced they want bigger, heavier, more feature-laden vehicles. In 1982, the Ford Escort was the best seller, and large SUVs were very rare. Now Ford F150s and Chevy Silverados are top sellers, and the Honda Accord (2500 lb in 1982) is classified as a large car and weighs 3800 lb (about the same as a 1962 Chevy 409).

The recession will probably have some lasting effects on buying behavior, and there are signs that small cars are making a comeback. If the economy improves, people will drive more, although this is likely to be offset to some extent by gradual improvements in the fleet average efficiency. It's not a done deal.

And the Virginia state legislature is trying to make a preemptive strike on rising gas efficiency by indexing the state gas tax on rising fleet fuel efficiency.

Apparently they (the legislature) are reading the future tense of the article as present tense, also. And whining that they are currently losing gas tax revenues because of the so called increase in efficiency.

I hate politicians...

Hooker

I am not a big supporter of larger / heavier vehicles except for commercial use by people and companies that really need them. As we all know, commuters have shifted to SUVs and pickups over the last 30 years, which has hurt CAFE results, when many of us really only need a decent passenger vehicle.

But keep in mind that some of the weight gain, in all vehicle categories has also been also due to vehicle safety features (stronger cage, side-impact beams, crumple zones, ABS, air bags, stability control) that vastly improve the ability to survive a collision.

An amazing fact is that when EPA calculates average fuel economy in ton-miles/gallon their data shows that results have steadily improved for the last 35 years! I have attached a good graphic from a recent EPA report. We just need to be selective and be better at choosing smaller vehicles that meet our needs (not our wants). I know that is not easy in a free society with advertising everywhere you go telling you to drive a quad-cab SUV with a V8 or V10.

Anyway, if light vehicle sales continue to rise, yes, fuel consumption will fall off. This ignores population growth.

http://www.epa.gov/oms/fetrends.htm