California’s a mess. A bankrupt fiasco. A state that has
regulated and spent itself into a well of debt so deep it makes
the economic situation in the other 49 states seem not half-bad.
But instead of putting a chokehold on California’s run-amok
bureaucrats, the federal government just gave them the go ahead
to impose California-specific fuel economy and emissions control
requirements on new cars sold there, beginning with the 2016
model year. California has long wanted to demand that new cars
achieve 40 mpg, on average — 5 mph higher than the “49 state”
requirement recently passed by Congress and signed into law by
President Obama.
Now there will be two sets of differing requirements for the
flatlined auto industry to cope with: One for cars sold in CA,
one for cars sold everywhere else. Maybe several
different requirements, since a number of states have expressed
interest in either following CA or maybe passing requirements of
their own.
So, instead of building a single car to sell everywhere in the
United States, the car companies will have to build some cars for
CA, some for other states. Which of course will make them more
expensive for everyone, since it costs more to build a
“California Corolla” and a slightly different one for, say, Texas
— instead of just a Corolla that’s sold everywhere.
The other option is for the industry to build all its cars to
meet the CA standard and then sell them everywhere. But here
again, state laws tend to be slightly different from state to
state — and it will take lots of billable hours for the lawyers
to sort it out and then more time and money frittered away by
designers and engineers trying to make it all work. Which means,
probably, it’ll cost you more, too.
Undergirding both the recently passed nationwide 35 mpg standard
and the even more ambitious CA 40 mpg standard is a species of
Magical Thinking that imagines if you can wish it (or toss out a
new law) it will be so. The people running the EPA, the Congress
and the CA state government are not engineers. They like the
notion of 35-40 mpg cars (doesn’t everyone?) and assume it’s
merely the intransigence of the car companies and the
machinations of “big oil” that have kept such wonders from a
desperate public.
But 35-40 mpg cars are hard to make when the government has
already imposed laws and regulations that have pushed the weight
of “economy” cars up by more than 500 pounds on average, mandated
ethanol-laced “gasoline” that reduces average fuel efficiency by
as much as 5-10 percent and the industry so bankrupted by the
existing rules and rigmarole that there is not much money left
lying around to “invest” in “new technologies” — which are
rarely cheap. (Not many know this, but every single hybrid sold
by Toyota to date has been sold at a loss, the company
subsidizing the true cost in order to “encourage” the
technology.)
We did have 40 mpg cars — dozens of different models — about a
quarter century ago. But that was before the government came
thunder-thighing into the room and imposed “safety” requirements
like air bags and low-speed bumper impact edicts that made it
illegal to build cars like the old VW Beetle or the Renault LeCar
or the Plymouth Champ or even the venerable Chrysler K-cars of
the early '80s — all of which got better mileage than any new
“economy” car built today.
The economy cars of the '70s and '80s were much lighter than
their modern counterparts, so they could get by with smaller,
much less gas thirsty engines. Even without the advantages of
modern technology, they easily got better mileage than almost any
modern econo not-so-compact can deliver.
True, they weren’t as “safe” in an accident — and yes, they were
slow (0-60 times were on the order of 15 seconds vs. 8-9 seconds
today). But you literally cannot have it both ways. You can have
a low-cost, extremely fuel efficient compact. Or you can have a
more expensive, not-so-compact that’s astonishingly crashworthy
for its size and rather peppy, too — but not quite so fuel
efficient.
What you can’t have is a 40 mpg economy compact that’s as
crashworthy as the mid-sized cars of 20 years ago and which can
get to 60 mph in under 10 seconds for not much more than $10,000
or so — merely because you wish it to be so.
And a 40 mpg pick-up? Family-sized car? Why not also wish for
world peace while you’re at it?
But in the Land of Dreams, magical thinking is a pervasive
affliction. It has already driven California to the brink of an
unprecedented financial disaster. Now we’re about to follow
California’s example on a national scale.
Enjoy the ride. The upside is, it won’t last long…
