Monday, May 18, 2009

Obama to announce new fuel economy requirements tomorrow


President Obama is slated to announce his new CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards tomorrow. The means fleet averages will be 42 mpg for cars and 26 mpg for truck by 2016. According to the New York Times, that means vehicles will be 30% cleaner and more fuel-efficient by that time.

Current standards are 27.5 mpg for cars and 24 mpg for trucks.

Of course, one easy way to do this is to offer more subcompact, fuel-efficient vehicles. The not-so-easy party is developing more large, fuel-friendly cars and trucks for those that want/need them.

LINK
Obama to Announce New Mileage and Emissions Standards (New York Times)

6 comments:

Unknown said...

i know how, get everyone to work white collar jobs where you don't need to haul/tow anything, would it count towards fleet vehicles like HD trucks?

Andy Lilienthal said...

I think there are probably ways to increase mileage on trucks like adding diesel options to vehicles OTHER than HD models.

Ford was supposed to release a diesel F-150; what happend to that?

Where are all of the compact pickups?

I think there is room for improvement on trucks and cars alike. I don't think this is an impossible task.

nlpnt said...

Good, maybe we can have some *low* work trucks now. People who buy them as fashion statements or to compensate for something like to sit up tall, but loading/unloading 1000 lb. of equipment from ground level to a pickup box floor almost 5' up gets REAL old REAL fast.

D2M said...

You know, in Japan they have these small trucks. They're great for moving furniture and doing smaller house repair stuff. I think most businesses could use them instead of the bigger trucks. I suspect that we often get bigger trucks than we actually need.

But that said... there are times when you just need a freakin' big truck. :)

Andy Lilienthal said...

nlpnt: You're 100% right. New trucks are so tall, it's a pain in the butt to try to get stuff in the bed. Case in point, my wife and I had to dig out an area behind our house for drainage, so we were left with a big pile of rock and dirt. My neighbor said we could use his F-350 to haul the material away, but his dually is SO tall, it will take forever to sling all of that debris into the back of his rig, which sits four feet off the ground.

D2M: I know what you're talking about, I think. Something like these? Japanese Mini Trucks

D2M said...

Yeah, those are it! I had no idea they were available in the US. I bet they're not super popular in the US because they look... well... kinda small and cute. Hehe.

We see them all the time here though! They're really handy.