The Obama adminstration this week announced that it would be setting new guidelines for fuel efficient to apply to the 2011 model year cars and trucks.
Let me make it clear from the beginning that I am a strong supporter of efforts to improve fuel mileage for both environmental reasons and national security reasons.
However I think perhaps the adminstration is going a bit fast in setting targets for the 2011 model year. Some reports suggest they may even be shooting for the 2020 target of 35 mpg for cars in the 2011 model year.
As Mr. Scott was fond of reminding us, you can’t change the laws of physics no matter how much you want to. The simple fact is that if you want to move car A at speed B then it is going to take force C and that requires using energy D to produce the force.
Of course our ultimate goal would be to develop more efficient engines and better ways of running cars (i.e., engines beyond the internal combustion model) which would simply allow us to reduce D while getting the same level of C.
But for the moment that isn’t as much of an option as we’d like, which means you are looking at either reducing B (i.e., a slower car which would then run longer to get from place to place, defeating the whole purpose) or reducing A (i.e., a smaller car with less mass which would be less safe in the event of accidents).
There are of course some methods of making cars more efficient these days, various forms of hybrids or hydrogen cell type vehicles. But the problem there runs into the fact that you cannot ignore the laws of economics either. As anyone who has been car shopping will tell you, the hybrid type vehicles tend to be more expensive than their traditional cousins.
In an economy where people are struggling to get by I am not sure that making cars more expensive is exactly a good idea. In addition the vehicles are not always the most effective in terms of performance. Now I am not talking about having a power car of any kind. The two cars I’ve driven are far from being muscle cars.
But if you look at the plug in type models they can only go a couple hundred miles on one charge (as seen when a new Congressman tried to drive to DC only to need two cars to make the trip). For some people that might be enough but if you have a longer commute and factor in waiting time in traffic, you could find problems here.
Now as I said at the start, I am in favor of more efficient cars. Aside from the fact that I would love to see cleaner air I would also be happy to tell the Middle East to take their oil and shove it.
But I also think we need to be realistic about things. It is going to take time to develop these new technologies and I don’t want us to be rushing to push something out just for show, I’d rather have them take the time to develop a properly designed car. In fact given that the 2011 model year cars will be going into production in about a year, I am not even sure you could design a new model in that short of a time.
So while I am solidly behind the Adminstration in wanting to make cars more efficient and also recognize that absent some government urging the auto makers are likely to drag their feet, I also think we need to balance out the realities of time and technology and perhaps make the 2011 target a bit more realistic by shooting for 2013 or 2014.
Indeed given the problems of getting things in place by 2011, I suspect we will end up going for 2013 or 2014 anyway, so why not just say so up front rather than making it a public relations thing ?