Classical Values :: Controlling What Is Sold

December 03, 2007

Controlling What Is Sold

The New York Times has an article on the new Congressional mandate to raise average vehicle mileage standards from 27.5 mpg to 35 mpg. We have been here before.

The standards have usually turned into perverse incentives. SUVs were the result of discontinuing the station wagon, because the station wagon was a passenger vehicle. Perversely SUVs get worse mileage than station wagons.

I think this will cause a full fledged move into trucks. Which perversely get worse mileage than SUVs. It is one thing to mandate the vehicles sold. It is quite another to mandate which vehicles will be bought.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

posted by Simon on 12.03.07 at 12:17 PM

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Comments

I think we can expect to see a lot of new and possibly even weird looking vehicles coming into the market when the new mileage standards go into effect, vehicles that can technically be called "trucks" but which will function as family cars. I wonder what they will look like.

ch · December 3, 2007 12:34 PM

The next thing we know, they'll be passing a law saying that the Laws of Thermodynamics must be revised to give a more favorable result.

It looks like the bill has the truck/SUV thing covered, by saying that "Under the compromise, the companies will retain the distinction between the classes of vehicles, but must still meet a combined 35 m.p.g. fleetwide standard."

Eventually, the problem will be solved in the way most conformable to Ms Pelosi's world-view: We'll all be driving Yugos or Trabants.

After a decade or two of that, they'll decide that cars are an unneccessary polluter, and who needs to go to Brighton by car anyway when there's a very nice railroad train waiting to take you there.

On alternate Thursdays.

ZZMike · December 3, 2007 05:08 PM

Of course, if gasoline goes to $8.00 a gallon in the next few years, and I think there is a good chance of that happening, the average passenger car sold in the U.S. will be getting more than 35 MPG regardless of any government mandate. Consumers will demand it.

Chocolatier · December 3, 2007 05:28 PM

Pgh, PA Gas $3.15 to $3.09. The bubble has burst.

doug · December 3, 2007 09:17 PM

If they really want to raise fuel economy, they should stop pussyfooting around with CAFE and directly mandate what kind of car you can or can't buy. After all, the reason that automakers make less fuel-efficient cars is because people buy them. People WANT them. Punishing a company that produces what people want to buy is un-American (so is my suggestion, but that's a different story). Instead, they should put the responsibility (and the burden) on the American consumer, where it belongs. And then they'll find out, to their chagrin, how unpopular that is, and how tenuous their hold on their own power is.

I say, let the market decide. If gas goes up to $8 per gallon (and let's hope it doesn't), people will regulate themselves.

John S. · December 4, 2007 06:27 PM