Obama orders push to cleaner, more efficient cars

January 26, 2009 · Filed Under Commercial Fleets, FuelClinic, Fuelishness!, Fuels, News & Reports, Related News

Some encouraging news earlier today…

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama opened an ambitious, double-barreled assault on global warming and U.S. energy woes Monday, moving quickly toward rules requiring cleaner-running cars that guzzle less gas — a must, he said, for “our security, our economy and our planet.”

He also vowed to succeed where a long line of predecessors had failed in slowing U.S. dependence on foreign oil…

…Obama directed federal transportation officials to get going on new fuel efficiency rules, which will affect cars produced and sold for the 2011 model year. That step was needed to enforce a 2007 energy law, which calls for cars and trucks to be more efficient every year, to at least 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

While I have worked very hard over the last 8 months to help users improve fuel efficiency, and strongly support higher efficiency standards (it’s a disgrace that fuel efficiency for modern vehicles is basically unchanged from those of the early 1980′s), I am concerned about the potential confusion of having each state able to set their own standards for vehicle emissions, and so are the automakers…

The auto industry responded warily. Reducing planet-warming emissions is a great idea, car makers and dealers said, but they expressed deep concern about costly regulations and conflicting state and federal rules at a time when people already are not buying cars. U.S. auto sales plunged 18 percent in 2008.

And industry analysts said the changes could cost consumers thousands of dollars — for smaller, “greener” cars.

Obama on Monday directed the Environmental Protection Agency to review whether California and more than a dozen states should be allowed to impose tougher auto emission standards on car makers to fight greenhouse gas emissions. The Bush administration had blocked the efforts by the states, which account for about half of the nation’s auto sales.

We have a national auto-industry, not state-specific cottage industries. Our auto makers need to be able to efficiently build automobiles that can be sold anywhere in the country. America simply does not have “time or money” to mitigate a jumbled quagmire of new emissions regulations for the automakers. We need to act more quickly.

Instead of creating a confusing new collection of tighter tail-pipe emission standards, maintaining the current established emissions standards while increasing fuel efficiency standards will have a greater and more immediate effect – creating and securing jobs, saving consumers after-tax money (which is an economic-stimulus method that works), cutting fuel consumption (and foreign oil dependence), and cutting emissions more aggressively – without cumbersome tailpipe testing.

This approach will also reduce the engineering costs by allowing automakers to focus all their talents on improving fuel efficiency, so they can create automobiles that are competitive with the higher-mileage imports, instead of trying to improve efficiency while also managing to meet a variety of emissions-only regulations.

At the same time, Obama should hold American automakers to their promise of building-in the Flex-Fuel components needed to “future-proof” these new vehicles, to allow consumers to have a choice to take advantage of the growing alternative fuels market. These systems add very little to the cost of building a new car (about $100/ea. is the last estimate I’ve heard), are well-proven (they’ve been around for 10 years or so), and empower drivers to reduce their own emissions even further by choosing to use alcohol-blended fuels.

I also suggest shifting the impetus for new efficiency standards from global warming for the time being, and concentrate on economic and security related benefits of higher fuel efficiency standards. Regardless of your position on the issue of man-made global warming, the consuming public (who put their hard-earned money on the line) is simply not very worried about global warming, according to the recent Pew survey (among others).

Why try to force-feed the customers a solution to a problem they aren’t concerned about? I think there is much more potential for progress by explaining the economic and national security advantages of higher-fuel-efficiency vehicles – with the added benefit of reduced emissions.

As far as I’m concerned, the best news from today is apparently Obama’s not going to let the temporary downturn in oil prices sway his resolve…

Obama also meant to set a tone with his promises: Science will trump ideology and special interests, attention will stay high even when gas prices fall.

We all know these prices are bound to rebound. Prices are already making upticks at retail gasoline stations (+$0.20 this last month), even as excess oil sits idly in storage tanks and tanker ships around the world.

What do you think about Obama’s announcement today?

What do you think of my own proposals?

Comments are greatly appreciated and all view points (thoughtfully delivered) are welcome.