woiyo wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:woiyo wrote:"Make production of huge gas guzzlers a money losing deal, and we get smaller, more fuel efficient cars and no more resistence on the part of the car manufacturers."
What real leaders would do is provide an incentive to car makers to make cars efficient immediately, not some token bullsh!t 30 MPG in 10 years or whatever. Do we have leaders who have the balls to DO IT NOW and not wait another 30 years?
Obama certainly is not one.
That's funny, he's proposing that sort of thing through tax credits and raising of the fuel economy standards. Detroit screams bloody murder every time someone brings higher fuel efficiencies up, though...
Cycloptichorn
Who cares what Detriot has to say. Obamas plan is not strong enough as I believe the benchmark is 7 years? If you want to sell a car in the US, it must get 40MPG or it can not be sold.
Govt regulates everything except this.
woiyo, what has happened to your brain lately? I thought you were sensible?
What if I live 1 mile from work, and want to buy a truck or suv that gets 15 or 20 mpg because I have 5 kids to take to baseball games, or because I use my vehicle to haul lumber to a construction job, or because of a thousand reasons? I may not burn as much fuel than some joker that drives a roller skate 50 miles to work. What right does the government have to tell Detroit what they can sell me?
The point is that the free market is a much better arbitor of what is the most efficient. If gasoline stays at $4.00 per gallon or higher, you can bet that used car lots will stay full of gas guzzlers and the highways will become increasingly traveled by a more efficient fleet of vehicles, however, if you have government mandate every vehicle has to get 40 mpg, you will end up with one huge bureaucratic disaster. First of all, many people need vehicles to haul and tow cargo, and there is no current technology to build vehicles that can do some kinds of jobs and get 40 mpg, so you end up with a situation of exemptions or special cases, and then how do you administer that?
You need to rethink what you said. You should not mandate a minimum mpg that high any more than you should mandate how far people can live from work, or how many miles they can drive per year, or how big of a house people can live in, or how much food they should eat, or the list is endless.