I think we just need to turn ALL our day to day decisions over to the government. After all, they're much smarter than us and can run our lives for us much better than we can. Next step should be a government mandated diet free of all the things they think might be bad for us. Get my old drill instructor out of retirement and have him set up a fitness program for all of us. Ban smoking, motorcycles, sky diving and small unsafe cars. Ooops, scratch that one, they'll never get 35MPG if they do that.

 

Yup you read it right, and they're also dimmer new than most of the older halogens in the house. But I've done a lot of lighting desgin so my eye is kinda trained to look for those kind of details.

 

[quote=Rubbus;1939451
Keep the government out of it and let people buy what they want. </rant>[/quote]

If you mean cars, I don't think that's going to work. We're going to HAVE to legislate and/or tax to get things under control.

(My neighbor just bought a new SUV to replace his last SUV. Went from a Chevrolet something to a Cadillac Escalade. He said wants to replace his pickup, too--with a Hummer.)

Europe has it right, and has for years--high gas costs and high taxes = very efficient, albeit smaller, cars. But, if there's an exemption for SUVs and trucks, we will go nowhere. And a tax credit for Hummers? Sounds totally rich-person-government.

As an unrelated aside, I can remember buying a clothes dryer about 30 years ago. We actually stood in the store debating whether or not to get a gas dryer. At that time there was a lot of talk about natural gas "drying up." Ironic, because at that time, in the 70's, the oil refineries were burning off gas as a byproduct of oil production, right here in Houston.

Fortunately, there still is natural gas, the dryer is working fine, and all is well. Oh, except that there's a lot of evidence of global warming. And the size of cars has sure increased since the 70's. Remember when cars actually ruled the road, not SUVs? Or is this just a Houston thing?

 

both a major japanese car exec and Bob Lutz himself have said that there's no problem with a 3% increase in efficiency for cars for 20+ years.... The guy from the Japanese company even said that if the CA CO2 legislation went into effect they wouldn't be too stressed. Lutz thought it would be harder.

That said, there's lots of historical precident that "encouragment" for the automakers to get off thier asses to do some freakin engineering on efficiency is in both thier as well as our interests.

The de-leading of gas and adoption of the catalytic converter lead to widespread adoption of electronic fuel injection in our cars. Without it forget our 100 hp/liter MCS engine. Same V8 (slightly bigger, 302 vs 289) with a hotter cam went from 225 HP gross with a carb to over 300 net while fuel efficincy went from ~14 mpg to about 23 with the 5.0. (My mustang)

Say what you want, but when the market fails (there's no benefit to the car maker to deliver higher MPG and we don't tax carbon use to include some way to recover downstream consiquence costs) something needs to happen.

We no longer lead in energy efficiency industries, and with that the business of the future and the high paying jobs that it will create, are growing overseas faster than here. Silicon Valley is flooding with solar and energy start ups because OTHER industries see that there's a huge upside in efficiency. Too bad our auto industry is late to the party (and their market share shows the consiquences of milking revenues from old designs).

Interestingly, Lutz actually advocates much higher efficiencies, but not by CAFE. He maintians (rightly to some degree) that CAFE just means it costs less to drive big vehicles. He says you have to tax the crap out of gas like the rest of the world does if you want gas use to decrease.

Matt

 

He mention cutting down the travel distances and size of the country too?

 

Funny, I thought that meant you'd just miss your target on the high side.

Hi fellow SCer!

 

Lutz did mention that higher cafe averages actually increased miles driven. If you maintain that our economy is fueled by cheap transportation, then increase in cafe standard would provide an economic boost! To be honest, he fudged the numbers here. While overall miles drivine may have risen, it's also the case that the most recent "decoupleing" of energy per unit GDP was when we put in CAFE standards, and the economy grew while gas mileage increased significantly. Other than that, the energy used per unit GDP has been falling, but at a pretty slow rate.

But what's your point? Your implication is that we need to have cheap gas to go the distances that are required to what, not change at all? What would you propose to reduce dependance on fossil fuels? Or do you maintain that there is no need to?

Even if you ignore green house gas issues, and just look at the economics of our energy picture, something has to change. Anticipating it and working to mitigate the implications sure will be healthier to our economy in the long run that to ignore it and let the unkind hand of market forces have thier way with us.

Matt

 

1st off... my MCS gets 40mpg
2nd... i hope i'm not alive to worry about it in 2112

 

That's probably the truth: you have to tax gasoline more to decrease its use. That or tax a car's purchase price wrt its gas usage. Or both. There's no question that will work. It works in Europe, has for years. It'll work here too. Our gas prices are dirt cheap. And that's why your neighbor buys an Escolade for 40K. If gas cost $6 and the Escolade cost 50k he would buy something else more than likely. And if he didn't the extra $ that his gas costs and that his car cost could be put to use to improve cars overall.

 

No fair using imperial gallons.

 

Well first off don't getme wrong I do think better mpg standards with our current fuels is something very good, I struggle to get 22mpg at the moment with a so call econo-box. But we've watched MPG go from ~4-6 from a 400hp V8 to being able wo get 24mpg out of a 480hp V8. I think there is value in updating and increasing the refining capacity and getting the cost of gas back under a dollar (my commute won't change and thats easily another $400 in my pocket a month before switching to a vehicle with better mpg lower gas cost will have a huge impact on the economy, and if it means I choose to drive more the tourism industry benifits). I think that keeping the cars currently on the road running on the fuels they have for the next 10 20 30 years and beyond hold value (less energy used to produce cars, it's quite common to see an airframe still in use after 30+ years, cars and planes began a mass produced life around the same time in history, cars have a long way to come to match the level of advancement but thats a different tangent)

I also think the better way of going about the updating is allowing the car companies to compete and allow the market and the consumer to make the choice. I know people with E85 capable vehicles and people with regular E85 acess who tried E85 and decided it was more economical for them to use the current batch of fuels the mpg was so bad. This was a poor solution to fix things, the technology needs to come further before people will choose it.

Same goes for electrical power, something I think is actually just now starting to become a viable solution for many in Europe where the distances tend to be less and the range is acceptable (just no autobahn for all but the Tesla, evne then you're probably pushing it) Now when you can market a car in the US that is electric can do 100+ mph with reasonable acceleration and a range of 500miles and very rapid charge times. Therehave been days with the MINI where I traveled 1250 miles, something not practical in an EV yet.

I'm a tad out of date with the solar powered scene, but the same basic standards apply here that doeswith EVs.

Hybrids are an expensive band-aid and in the R56 vs Prius mpg contest the winner comes down to the driver not the car. EPA and real world numbers are very different with a vast number of hybrids out there. I expect the hybrids life to be limited and expensive.

Hydrogen fuel cells, need the cost to come down bothin production and infrastructure, as the technology progress this usually happens, you can get broadband now for half of what AOL @14.4kps costed 15-18 years ago. Just to use an analogy.

Having the market compete with itself is the fastest way to get things to improve, the 90s in general area prime example of that. Sure a basic guideline is ok, but I'm not sure CAFE is thebest solution to the problem.

Of course thisis all opinion and I did have to becareful the pathit took to keep this from any political degeneration.

 

Infinite refining capacity will never get you to the $1 a gallon for gas that you're looking for. There are a lot of reasons why even supplying it would be bad. The analogy I think of is giving a junkie unlimited heroin. They're happy at first..... Then very dead.

Matt

 

Another thought--we HAVE to get serious with mass transportation in this country! Houston is a prime example. No real bus system outside of the city itself, a freeway in every direction, but no rail and precious few car pool lanes. So, the metropolitan transit system tries to cover with subsidized vans.

My husband drives one of the commuter vans for his company (he's actually an engineer). The van has a capacity of 15, and when gas prices go up, and get publicity, the van is full. When things ease off, the ridership is lower. This is in spite of the large subsidy his company provides to maintain the car pool. Hubby rides free, and so do the others, yet it takes a big increase in gas prices to (temporarily) increase the number of seats taken! (It's such a good deal that his regular riders recently chipped in $25 each to buy better quality shocks than the standard issue.)

At what price point will the van STAY full? Probably $3.50 or more. And when will tracks run to the ever distant suburbs? That's a good one. One of our freeways is going to something like 16 lanes wide...but no rail easement.

 

for quite a while. And I still see new Hummers driving around....

Seems that change is hard for us...

Matt

 

imperial? i'm talking US gallons...

 

You know that new chocolate-colored Clubman? This would be great for it:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20071221/ts_csm/obiotruck

 

JohnBLZ- read this:

http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/..._facts_ce.html

and educate >yourself<.

 

there are examples where one of the premises of his articles aren't supported by historical data. It is possible to "decouple" energy growth and economic growth, and while it's a rare occurence, it has happened in the past. As to wether that possible long term is an open question, as there has never been policy continuity long enough to test the hypothisis. See the bumps in his graphs around the late 70s....

I'd give it a B+/A- on the technical content. The main points that are worth noting...

1) The MAGNITUDE of the problem.
2) The fact that a MIXED ECONOMY approach is required, and free market forces are inadiquate to deal with the problem.
3) There are HUGE HIDDEN COSTS to our current energy picture (like keeping oil supply lines safe with defense dollars that don't get paid for by oil consumers).
4) We're not there yet with the technology to solve all problems. (But we are closer than he claims....)

What should be very interesting to those that aren't greenies like me is that he's making the case for interventionist policies just on the econmics alone without saying anything about what's good for the planet from an environmental standpoint. What is truely shocking is that he's right, and yet there are those who still think that acting in a way to accelerate oil independance is a bad idea.

Good link! Thanks for posting it.

Matt

 

I think this is also major

http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/...icans_vs_.html

Carrot VS Stick. the "Rep vs Dem" is not as relevant...

 

I agree wholeheartedly. I had to spend a year in DC for my job. We drove up and lived in an apartment about 0.5 miles away from the metro. I worked downtown and took the train every day. Not one day, regardless of how bad the weather, did I drive to work. If we did anything, go to a play, a game, shopping in a mall, etc. we took the train. Our employer even gave us a subsidy to take the train. I put 2,000 miles on one car that year. Our second car which stayed behind got a grand total of 400 miles, which entailed a buddy of mine coming over and driving it once a week so it didn't sit there all year. When I grew up, having bus service was a standard even for medium sized towns, no longer. It's been mentioned here that we should tax gas like Europe, I'd be for that, but you have to have viable alternatives to make that tax have an impact on the decision to drive or take another form of transportation. In Europe that alternative exists. The best subway system I've ever been on was Moscow. Now with their new found wealth from oil and gas, they are clogging the streets with cars. We've managed to export our transportation gluttony overseas!! Unfortunately unless you live in NY, DC, Chicago, you don't have much alternative, then the tax just becomes a burden and doesn't entice you to do anything. I was in France a couple of years ago. You had to look hard to find anything larger than a Honda Civic, and even if you found one, it was probably a cab. An awful lot of Smart Cars and Scooters, and people seem to get along fine. No trains, but buses everywhere, that get used!! It is a whole change in attitude between style of life. In Europe, people are more inclined to urban dwelling, here suburban, which is part of the reason for the disparity in transportation methods between the old and new world. We could take a lesson from them.

Oh, and I have every bulb in my house a florescent. LED Christmas lights, and just yesterday put in a tankless hot water heater.

 

We had this a mere short ~9-10 years ago and was at $1.40 as little as 4 years ago. The economy was better then too But oil right now is also an industry with few companies that offer basically no competition, with prices that rise in unison while the companies own stockholder reports show exponential increases in profit while the pump prices rise and the actual cost to prodice fuel decreases. In the last 10 years, for the first time since the great depression, and a brief fuel shortage gas prices are rising dramatically faster than the inflation rate.

I think the standard should be get the gas price down there get MPG of current cars to continually increase, and make the new technologies to a point were they are not only cut emissions, but are a competitive solution with the current market, and that progress for range affordability and operability continues to be made. The dependance on oil does need to be broken yes, I just think it needs to be done in such a way that the consumer chooses to break that dependance because there is a better alternative, not a regression in technology that is more expensive and less function but more "green"

 

Somebody needs to set higher standards and is not going to be the general public or the corporations. The US uses 1/3 of the entire worlds oil supply and 50% of that 1/3 is waisted on driving huge inefficient automobiles. If we didn't have the government setting any standards we would still be driving cars without seatbelts, that got 8 MPG, that didn't have safety glass, no crash standards and caused more pollution than now. The American public is living a fantasy. The worlds oil supply is not unlimited. The US has used up over 90% of its oil supply. It is now predicted that by the year 2012 oil production will no longer meet global demand. Don't worry either taxes are going to go up across the board. We are fighting a very expensive war and are putting off the expense for future generations to pay off. Our interstate highway system is in disrepair. The Minnesota bridge collapse is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

don't forget to check the color temperature of your new flourescents guys, some are daylight (can help people with SAD too), near daylight and then varieties that seem to get more yellow as the purchase price decreases in line with the number/type of phosphors used inside the tube..

of couse, we'll be replacing our flourescents with LED bulbs fairly soon (a year or two), and energy costs should drop significantly again as well as challenging our thinking about how many lights we put in a room and where we put them...

roll on the future...

 

If gas were $1.40 a gallon, then it would take much, much longer to get to the point of economic viability of other technologies. As long as pricing is set by the (wrong headed) cost of delivery, we're screwed. This strands lots and lots of costs (economists call these externalities) on the backs of society at large, basically subsidizing the use of whatever it is that isn't prices based on life cycle pricing. Once again, this is an area where the US is lagging the world in a major way, and as such is using a huge, unseen credit card of defered payments to lube todays growth.

What is interesting is that if one were to actuall price things closer to the true cost of use, then market forces would acutally start favoring more of the technologies that don't strand the costs like fossil fuels do so massively.

In the last 4 years, world wide oil demand has increased about 1/2 of a Saudi Arabia. It's rising at about one saudi arabia per 7 or so years, and the growth is inexorable. What most fail to realize is how friggin massive the issue is, and cheap gas is one of the worst possble solutions to the problem.

Matt

 

There certainly are a lot of totalitarians coming out of the closet on this thread. Using the coercive power of government to force your choices on your neighbors seems to be a popular theme. If government wants to be helpful it should get out of the way. Stop allowing environmentalist wackos to put much of Americas oil off limits. Let electrical utility companies use nuclear energy like they do in Japan and France. Allow oil companies to add refining capacity without 15-20 years of litigation. The “greenies” remind me of the anti death penalty fanatics. They say that the death penalty is not useful because it takes so long and costs so much when it is THEY who cause the delays and cost. Similarly, the very people who talk about shortages and accuse oil companies of artificially driving up prices are the ones who do their best to restrict access to energy sources.