CAFE Standards

Maybe I'm stupid, but if cars from overseas are so much more fuel efficient, why can't we just buy them here? (Oh yeah, California has emissions-per-gallon standards that the more efficient designs don't meet...the overseas cars put out less emissions-per-mile [and therefore per trip] than lots of California-approved cars, but California doesn't care about that.)

Maybe I'm missing something, but I was under the impression the Obama administration got some concrete numbers and got a sooner date.

OK, on a quick check, I see the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the 2011 regulations to a certain extent. However, mileage and efficiency have steadily improved over the years, even though the average has been dragged down by the SUV's and pickups, mostly.

As someone else mentioned, since the US has been regulating emissions, rather than mileage, our emissions are better than those of most of the world (cleaner air) but often that has come with not so much improvement in fuel mileage.

Just as an oddity, most cars today have much higher performance than similar cars 30 years ago. I bought a brand-new 1978 Ford Fiesta. It was rated at 50 mpg, but really only got 35 mpg (most manufacturers had found ways of gaming the testing), and its 1600 cc engine produced a whole 64 hp. Our 2006 Cobalt is rated at 34 highway mpg, and we get it. It has 140 hp out of a 2400 cc engine, and is really zippy.

Now, here's the kicker. Since all engines are now computer controlled, Chevrolet could recall our car, put a different chip in it, limit it to 90 hp, and get it up to 40 mpg. They don't do that, but they could.

However, one thing to remember is that driving in the U.S. is very different from Europe. Our cars are our mass transit, and we have much longer distances than Europe does. Our cars go more miles, need to be more comfortable, and need to stand up to that treatment for years. That's why the Yugo and, to some extent, the Smart have been failures in the U.S. They are good for a certain type of driving, but they aren't versatile enough to really work well in most of the U.S.

California's regulations often affect which cars foreign manufacturers will sell in the US. I had this discussion a few years ago with the high mucky mucks at BMW because they did not offer the X5 as a diesel in the US. The answer was that since they wouldn't be able to sell it in California it wasn't worth it to them to sell it in the remainder of the US.

I agree with you! But what you and I think don't matter. That was their logic and I guess that there were two reasons why. One is that if California passes some environmental law, sooner or later the rest of the US will follow suit. The other is that they may have a large proportion of their sales there so restricting sale to the 49 other states wouldn't have allowed them to make the profit they wanted. What I found ironic in that was that the X5 was and is manufactured in South Carolina.

By the way I had not been keeping up with what BMW was doing for the past three years but I see they are now offering a diesel in the X5. I guess they figured out a way to meet the stricter emissions standards.