Obama can read a teleprompter pretty well — but math is
apparently not his strong suit. Responding to questions about the
rising cost of gas (really, the falling purchasing power of the
increasingly worthless dollar), our Great Leader explained that his
55 MPG fuel economy mandate would provide relief.
“[F]olks will be able to fill up every two weeks instead
of every week, saving the typical family more than $8,000 at the
pump over time,” he said. “That’s a big deal, especially as
families are yet again feeling the pinch from rising gas
prices.”
Very folksy talk. No doubt he assumes the folks
are as innumerate as he is a smooth talker.
Because what he is saying amounts to — first — you will
have to buy a new Obama Car in order to offset the cost of fuel.
Let’s work that out and see how it will help the
folks.
The cost of an average new car — 2012 — is about $18,000
(not including the financing, not including the taxes, including
personal property taxes where applicable, or the cost of a
full-coverage insurance policy on a new car). This amount will buy
you something along the lines of a Honda Civic one step up from the
base model without AC.
Let’s say gas goes to $5 per gallon. That’s about $1.25 in
depreciated dollars more than we were paying around this time last
year.
So if you have a 15 gallon tank in your car and you fill
up once a week, you are now spending about $19 more to fill’er up.
Times four times twelve, that works out to $900 more a year. It’s a
lot of money, yes. But it’s a lot less than the cost of an $18,000
new car (again, not counting interest payments, taxes and
insurance).
How much less?
Well, let’s see. Being generous and assuming 0 percent
interest on a five-year loan, the payment on an $18,000 balance
works out to $300 a month. So, using Obama maff, your “savings”
comes to… well… uh… hmmm.
Three months after you’ve bought your new car, you’re
starting to pay a lot more per month for the car than you
were paying for gas.
Oh, but wait — because it gets
better.
The $18,000 car used in this example is a 2012
model car — not the Obama Car of 2025, when new cars will be
required by government mandate to average 55 MPG. And mandates
aren’t free. Technology, R&D, hardware, tooling, new materials,
etc. - it all costs money. Perhaps Obama has watched too many
Star Trek episodes and imagines that just like Captain
Picard, he can “make it so” merely by saying so.
Look at current hybrids for a taste of what’s to come.
They all cost several thousand dollars more than comparable
non-hybrid cars. A 2012 Prius hatchback, for example, has a
base sticker price of $23,520 — about $5,500 more than
the current average car’s cost. Call it the Obama Car
Surcharge.
And none of them — not even the sainted Toyota Prius —
averages 55 MPG.
To get to the magic 55 MPG mark, it will be necessary to
re-invent the car (and the car engine and lots of other stuff
besides).
Expect the Obama Car Surcharge to go up. A lot.
We’ll pay another way, too. By prematurely throwing away a
number of otherwise still-saleable new car models long before their
R&D and tooling costs have been amortized. Unless there is an
engineering miracle, expect anything with a V-8 (or V-6) to be
placed on the endangered species list. Large sedans (excepting
high-dollar luxury sedans) are already gone. Mid-sized cars will
follow — at least as mass-market vehicles. So also most current
pick-up trucks, SUVs and crossovers — as none of them come within
spitting distance of 30 MPG, let alone 55.
We’ll just throw them
away.
And who will make up the shortfall? You and I will. Either
in the form of directly passed-on costs (higher new car prices) or
in the form of reduced stock value as a result of the automakers’
declining profitability. We may also get to pay for a new round of
bailouts as this could easily result in several too big to fail
automakers going belly up (again).
There are diesels — some of which (in Europe) are capable
of more than 55 MPG already. But take note that none of these cars
are sold here, because our government’s screwy regulations make it
too much hassle (and not profitable enough) for these cars to be
sold here. It’s not that the Europeans are loosey goosey on
pollution controls. They just have different ones — and
rejiggering their Euro-spec diesels to comply with Uncle’s specs
isn’t worth the trouble.
So nix that reasonable solution.
There will also be a conflict between the government’s
fuel economy edicts and its “safety” edicts — which have already
added several hundred pounds of deadweight to the average new car.
And every pound of weight imposes a fuel efficiency penalty. The
only inexpensive way to improve fuel economy is to reduce the curb
weight of a car. But to maintain the same level of “safety,”
wholesale redesigns will be required — as well as the use of
costly alloys and composites. You can’t have your cake (high
economy) and eat it (“safety”) too. Something will have to
give.
And something will give.
You and I will give more money.
It will either be given at the pump, in the form of
depreciated Obama Bucks to buy gas that hasn’t actually gotten more
expensive in real terms but which nonetheless costs us
more because our dollars are worth less. Or we’ll be herded into a
new Obama Car and swap an extra $900 a year in gas costs for a
$400-$500 a month debt albatross around our necks .
