Reducing Gasoline Use

Well, I suppose you can stay home....

Your observation is correct and from Australia we've been looking at the folley of the measures adopted.

If I remember correctly, it goes something like this. The increased "efficiency" endorsed by the standard relates to "ton miles per gallon". What the auto industry has then done is to find that larger vehicles with bigger engines can deliver this apparent efficiency. What was missed though is that there is still often only one passenger (the driver) in any particular vehicle and most people want to drive themselves around.

CAFE pretends that a 2 ton SUV getting 20 MPG (40 ton miles per gallon) is more efficient than a 1 ton sedan getting 30 MPG (30 ton miles per gallon). [Or heaven forbit a 0.5 ton micro that gets 75 MPG (37.5 ton miles per gallon.)]

The CAFE standard has increased the efficiency of moving tons of vehicles around the place, but not the efficiency of moving people around.

Driving less would also improve the situation. Good luck with your endeavours.

Here is the only CAFE standard I'm interested in.

Amen!

Actually, I've managed my whole life to own as a daily driver a car that gets 30mpg. That has been over the years a 1959 Volvo, several Corvairs, Truimph TR4, MBG, MBG GT, Triumph GT6, interject 10 years of Honda motorcycles circa 1970's, 1990 Pontiac Grand Prix, 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix, and currently a 2003 Pontiac Vibe.

I also had a Chevy truck loaded with tools for work so I kinda offset any good I was doing for the environment tho some of my motorcycles got over 55 mpg.

You might be interested in the following (found on wiki a couple of days ago when I was researching the future of CAFE standards):

"Overall fuel economy for both cars and light trucks in the U.S. market reached its highest level in 1987, when manufacturers managed 26.2 mpg (8.98 L/100 km). The average in 2004 was 24.6 mpg.^[22] In that time, vehicles increased in size from an average of 3,220 pounds to 4,066 pounds (1,461 kg to 1,844 kg), in part due to an increase in truck ownership during that time from 28% to 53%."

This leaves no question as to why we have increased gasoline usage: our population of vehicles has grown and the average MPG has not.

So before we decide that every Toyota Prius actually needs a 400 hp gasoline engine (shooting for 10 mpg city) we should try to actually increase the average MPG. But we should keep your plan on the back burner because my Cobalt would be a lot more interesting with double the horsepower :)

It just goes to show that people can prove anything to themselves and others with enough time and a flashy power point presentation backed up with an excel spreadsheet.

Get the fed out of the market and let economics 101 do its job. Just the reduction in gasoline getting these bureaucrats to work and turning off their office lights and computers and thermostats would save more resources than all the CAFE standards they dream up.

This is a classic example of do gooders and unintended consequences.

Yeh, a half baked implementation of Economics 101 worked so well with the US banks!

Didn't it?