in 1979, GM brass issued a strict, soul-crushing mandate: absolutely no engines over 305 cubic inches in their mid-size cars. CAFE standards were murdering Detroit muscle. But Oldsmobileās rogue engineers weren't going down quietly. They exploited an obscure corporate loophole to smuggle the banned 350-cube L34 "Rocket" V8 into the Hurst/Olds W-30. It was the only GM intermediate that year to successfully defy the corporate blockade. To crown this brilliant treason, they dropped in the legendary Hurst Dual/Gate shifter, letting you bang gears manually through a beefed-up TH350 transmission. Today, this black-and-gold G-body commands ultimate respect because it was built by gearhead renegades who flatly refused to let horsepower die. Modern automakers are just too paralyzed by lawyers and safety committees to ever pull off an inside job this gloriously reckless again.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Qualityā Free Actions
Free to watch ā¢ No registration required ā¢ HD streaming
Move marks presidentās latest effort to dismantle pollution regulations and support for cleaner-running vehicles
Lucy Campbell at The Guardian:
Donald TrumpĀ announced on Wednesday that he is repealing the Biden-era federal fuel economy standards, significantly weakening fuel efficiency requirements for tens of millions of new gasoline-powered cars and light trucks.
It marks the US presidentās latest effort to dismantle pollution regulations and federal support for cleaner-running vehicles and renewable energy. Burning gasoline is a significant contributor to global heating and transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
āWe are officially terminatingĀ Joe Bidenās ridiculously burdensome, horrible actually, Cafe standards that imposed expensive restrictions,ā Trump said in an Oval Office announcement, flanked by top auto executives including the CEOs of Ford and Stellantis. āIt put tremendous upward pressure on car prices, combined with the insane electric vehicle mandate.ā
The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (Cafe) standards, first established in 1975, set the average fuel economy targets for new vehicles and have been tightened over the years to make vehicles more fuel-efficient.
TheĀ Biden administrationĀ proposed modest increases to the requirements for the vehicles most Americans drive as part of a push to promote electric vehicles and address the climate emergency. Joe Biden required automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of passenger cars and light trucks to about 50 miles per gallon by 2031.
Trump is now rolling that back, loosening regulatory pressure on automakers to control pollution from gasoline-powered cars and trucks. The standards proposed by him would require cars to get about 34 miles to the gallon by 2031, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Wednesdayās announcement marks the latest action by the Trump administration to reverse Biden-era policies that encouraged cleaner energy vehicles, includingĀ relaxing auto tailpipe emissions rules, repealing fines for automakersĀ that donāt meet federal mileage standardsĀ andĀ terminating consumer creditsĀ of up to $7,500 for electric vehicle purchases.
Trump announces that heāll repeal the Biden-era fuel efficiency standards for gas-powered cars and trucks.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Qualityā Free Actions
Free to watch ā¢ No registration required ā¢ HD streaming
NotJustBikes looks into why SUVs and pickups have become the most popular class of vehicle in North America - spoiler alert, itās because recategorizing things as ālight trucksā allows the auto industry to make more money, while avoiding the safety and fuel efficiency standards that regular cars have to meet.
But not only are these monster vehicles taking up more room on our streets, theyāre killing people. Crash fatalities are way up since the low point of 2014, and these vehicles are the primary reason.
Thereās a legitimate use for light trucks and off road vehicles, but as NJB points out, actual farmers are using older, smaller pickups that - surprise - are easier to load things into and have bigger beds for hauling stuff; and most commercial contractors and delivery services use compact vans with more interior space.
SUVs and extended cab trucks are sold as āfamilyā vehicles, in the sole sense of wanting to protect them by winning the automotive arms race. But paradoxically these vehicles have less interior space than typical station wagons or minivans, so they make no sense for families or as daily drivers more generally.
People with poor driving skills buy them to feel safer, even as the combination of poor skills and sheer size / weight threaten all other road users.
Finally, it is as we suspect: These vehicles are successfully marketed to status-obsessed sociopaths who donāt really care about others.
Iām suspicious of the pro-high-CAFE standards claims.
Iām suspicious of Trumpās anti-high-CAFE standards claims too, but thatās mostly because Iām suspicious of everything Trump says that is not literally a trivial analytical truth. I think itās fairly clear why no reasonable person is inclined to trust what Trump says. My suspicions about the pro-high-CAFE standard view may require explanation.
The key issue is: CAFE standards are not an engineering breakthrough or anything. Theyāre just a certain level of average fleet fuel economy that car companies have to meet or else pay a fine.
Trump claims that he is blocking Californiaās attempt to raise statewide CAFE standards because lower CAFE standards would result in safer, less expensive cars.
The pro-raising-CAFE standards side says āwell, as with like 90% of what Trump says, thatās a false claim unsubstantiated by any evidence.āĀ
I guess what Iām wondering is: if the tradeoffs arenāt what the Trump administration says they are, what are the actual tradeoffs? Itās not like car companies could just make their cars much more fuel efficient, and choose not to for no reason. (What if GMC cars were just 10 MPG more efficient that Ford cars with comparable size, cost, performance, etc, and when you asked a Ford dealer why, he just shrugged and said āFords be like that?ā)
You could make some kind of case that thereās a collective action problem or something, like: if you have a fleet with a mix of bigger and smaller cars, the bigger cars are costlier and more fuel-consuming, but safer for their passengers (and more dangerous to others, especially people in smaller cars), so that if you make all cars smaller then you can improve fuel efficiency without damaging safety in the aggregate (or even improving it), but if you leave it up to the market the Nash equilibrium is for there to be a lot of safe-for-passengers, dangerous-to-people-outside big cars on the road.
If so, though, I havenāt really heard that kind of case -- with accompanying evidence -- from proponents of higher CAFE standards.
It also seems like the structure of CAFE standards at the corporate level seems likely to have some weird effects? Like, if you have an economy hybrid car company (whose average fleet efficiency is well above CAFE standards) and a performance sports car or SUV company (whose average fleet efficiency is below CAFE standards), they could save money by merging but not changing any of their cars. Iām not sure if that actually happens, but it seems weird.
A good old fashioned Pigouvian gas tax seems like the way to go to me, but if thatās politically untenable, Iām perfectly willing to accept second-best policies, but I do wish there were a bit clearer logic and a bit more transparency about the tradeoffs involved.
Why is Trump Getting the Cold Shoulder from the Car Companies?
Why is Trump Getting the Cold Shoulder from the CarĀ Companies?
Usually, youād expect a regulated industry to applaud an effort to lighten its regulatory burdens. So you would think that the car industry would support Trumpās effort to roll back fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles and take away Californiaās authority to set its own vehicle standards. But that effort is being met by silence in some cases and vocal opposition in others.Ā According to E&Eā¦
