Will this be like the Million Man March?

How come the rest aren’t complaining?

Rather than lump all vehicles together, each category should get a separate target – 32 mpg for light trucks is a reasonable target, but not in 15 years. Maybe in 5 or 10.

CAFE has more to do about political posturing (by God!, we’ll make those evil corporations pay for ‘making’ you spend a few extra bucks!) than it does independence from oil. Fuel economy was never a problem when gas was a dollar cheaper. Ever since the populous began griping and wallowing in self-pity, it’s become a political tool (of both parties now). “You shouldn’t have to SUFFER like this!” I wish people were smarter. It’s not the automakers’ responsibility to increase fuel economy nor their fault that it is where it is. Why should they shoulder the burden? Saving a few dollars at the pump is not an acceptable answer.

I would be happier if the Big Three plus Toyota would outright refuse to adhere to any new standards. But I know that it would be corporate suicide.

This is bullxxxx. Things have got to change. Yes, jobs will probably be put at risk, model lines will change drastically, but this is something that needs to happen. Better to pay a smaller price now than to put it off and pay a bigger price later for putting it off.

why demand anything at all?

If they would stop crying and put their energy into innovating instead of following they might surprise themselves by what they could achieve. Everyone over 50 at GM corporate should be fired.

Toyota and several others are, in fact, complaining. The automakers have put forward an alternate plan that would they think would work as far as CAFE (separate mileage standards for cars and trucks), but in reality, the only thing that will efficiently shift consumer demand is a gas tax. I know conservatives that claim to be economically efficient and blindly hate taxes (but seem to love spending) hate to hear that, and I know that liberals are too engrossed in dead-weight loss policies to care about effective economic policy, but CAFE isn’t effective – it’s time to find something else.

If we didn’t have CAFE, what kind of gas mileage do you think our cars would be getting? Probably similar mileage now because gas prices would still be high and consumers would be *demanding* higher gas mileage cars. Maybe the only people to actually have benefited from CAFE, ironically, are the Big 3 because they HAD to keep investing in cars even if they were loss-leaders and fleet-queens to prop up mileage while their pick-ups raked in profits. If CAFE didn’t exist, they might be in even worse shape!

all this cafe talk makes me hungry.

CAFE should be scrapped.

Automakers need to stop making concepts with incredible performance and fuel economy and just build more fuel efficient machines without having the government leaning on them to do it. Customers need to demand better not just more. and the EPA needs to go get their balls back and do their job.

Brought to you by the same companies that said emissions controls on cars would ruin the auto industry back in the 70’s.
These regulations will spur innovative thinking, and we’ll all come out ahead in the end.
Funny how the big 3 said performance cars would be dead once emissions controls came along, now we can go out and buy 3, 4, 500hp cars with low emmissions. It will be the same with mpg.

It will be difficult for the companies at first for sure, but saying that these goals are unattainable is offensive to all of the great engineers and designers in this country who know this is possible.

Veda – they are. Its part of Honda, Nissan, and Toyota’s game though. Especially Toyota who doesn’t like them at all, but I think that they are too smart to involve themselves with what a lot of Toy loyalists would see as an anti-green protest. Toyota itself builds the most gas guzzlers out of any Jap automakers and they are on par with Chrysler and Dodge for the amount of inefficient trucks they sell. The monstrous Land Cruiser, GX480 or whatever, the Tundra, and others such as the highlander. The Prius of course takes attention away from their big SUVs, but for the rest of them like the Highlander and maybe the Sequia they just slap a hybrid badge on a coupe models and it makes everything OK.

For the first time in a long time, GM and the UAW have some common interests and I sure as hell hope they can achieve them. I’m just not sure that this kind of thing is the best option for the Big 3 in terms of fighting the xxxxin CAFE standards. I can already see the news though – “Big 3 hold massive rally in Chicago to protest legislature that protects our environment. How awful”

And deanster – 5-10 years is one, or barely 2 model cycles. That would mean that all the light trucks would have to stay the way they are today for 5-10 more years until GM previews, develops, tests, markets, and produces a new model version..that is if they want to meet these deadlines. Slider5634 – No, Congress shouldn’t mandate what automakers do, therefore mandating what consumers buy. Consumers drive the market. In the last decade, a bunch of idiots fell in love with Toy and told their friends, ect. and Toy along with other imports massively increased sales while demand for Big 3 product fell. GM laid off 30,000 people as a result, Chrysler laid off 13,000 and both companies posted massive losses. Now GM has changed course and gotten (in my opinion) back on track. If people don’t buy SUVs, all who make them will drop them from their lineup or make them so that consumers want to buy them again. And all the CAFE credits that Toyota has raked up aren’t fair either because Toy can just use their credits and still sell their SUVs.

onramp,
Performance cars, effectively, were dead. It’s taken nearly thirty years to get back to pre-emissions performance levels. The same will happen with these worthless fuel economy standards. The ecotarian argument is baseless crap. The oil independence argument would be crap if our domestic output weren’t stifled. All caused and propogated by the same crowd!

CTS Driver – LMAO!!

For the rest of you complainers, you really have no idea what you are asking for. One of the real problems today in this country is the shear amount of opinionated, yet ignorant, voters we have. Raise CAFE standards!! YAYYY!!! Tax the rich! YAYYYY! We’ll defeat global warming! YAYYY! Your Chevy Aveo now costs $30,000!!…..Huh?

Piablo: my point exactly. If people wanted high-MPG cars, they’d already be buying them. Instead, most of us want creature comforts, which make the car heavier.

Imagine an 80-hp honda civic. Not a seller at all, but it would probably get 60 mpg.

CAFE standards suck. They want higher MPG and yet they’re making testing standards more stringent. I don’t see how any truck will ever get 32MPG. I think even the Ford Ranger only got 29MPG highway, with the old standards.

I have a better idea for a law. How about we stop doing business with OPEC? Make it a criminal offense.

Instead of all these car manufacturers wasting millions of dollars trying to block this inevitability, why don’t they start innovating and come up with something that WILL pass those standards? Hmm?!? How about that? I’m just getting sick and tired of hearing this sh*t. Rallies here. Lawsuit there. Objections everwhere. Shut the hell up and engineer your way out of it! Period.

The fact is that the twin threats of CAFE and emissions regulations almost destroyed the car industry in the 1980s. Because they got caught flat footed after the energy crisis of 1973 and 1979, they couldn’t switch tooling fast enough to build smaller, more efficient and reliable cars. If you remember, a typical American sedan didn’t have 150 hp engine standard. A Ford 302 managed 140 HP in 1973. By 1980, the same engine was gasping to produce 110 hp. American automakers have made tremendous strides since then and are also closing the alleged “quality gap” between american and asian cars. The only reason that the Japanese and the Europeans are not whining right now is that they have sizable home markets. In the case of the US automakers, the domestic market is the only one they have. If anyone wants to get 35 mpg, buy a Honda Fit or a Toyota Yaris, otherwise, leave the rest of us alone.

swamprat,
Ford produces cars under their own namesake in Asia, Australia, and Europe. General Motors produces cars under the name Holden in Australia and Vauxhall in Europe. As for Chrysler Corp, they were exporting cars like the Plymouth Barracuda back in the ’70s to Europe and have had a strong presence in both Europe and Australia.

The domestic manufacturers have a very strong presence worldwide and have much more efficient vehicles overseas.

This ‘rally’ is strictly money-motivated and has nothing to do with paying less at the pump, of this I am convinced. It’s got more to do with revamping the lineup to produce more efficient vehicles – the Big Three would rather spend tons of money in PR to market a car under a new nameplate than they would in R&D to produce more efficient engines. To put it bluntly, the Big 3 are L-A-Z-Y and aren’t doing a whole lot to move their development in the right direction. As for a $30,000.00 Aveo, I could see it happening, but only because GM would be looking for another way to nail us in the pocketbook.

As for GM’s Volt, I doubt that car will cost less than $35,000.00. What will kill that car is GM’s tendency to ask way too much for vehicles like that, and as such, it won’t sell until they get smacked by low sales numbers.

And speaking of technology, not even a month ago Toyota won a 24-hour race in a hybrid LeMans racer in Japan. Who else has proven their hybrid development in racing like that?

ozyran – you are just as clueless as to how much the Volt will cost as everyone else. Why do you have be so quick to dismiss it? GM has said that it will be affordable. I am assuming that they are smart enough to price it in the $20s to compete with the Prius (except the Volt’s technology is actually more advanced). Your trying to hate on something that you don’t know **** about yet. Please wait until it comes out and then find something bad to say about it, okay?

Lastly, do hybrid races really exist?? LMAO what a joke – hybrids are made for fuel efficiency, not performance. All the money Toyota spent to win that race is a PERFECT example of how clueless they are when it comes to exciting vehicles…you know the ones with a lot of horsepower and a roaring engine – not the ones where you can only hear the hum of the battery pack.

Hello everyone

I have just got back from Ukraine but i have to return in a week again because My daughter wants me to help her boyfriend immigrate to Canada and yes my daughter got herself a boy friend in Ukraine, at lest we all understand him. O and deanster i will have to keep Alexandra away from Pablo because I know she can handle an AK-47 better than he can.

My oldest son wants to fallow my footsteps and join the army but the Canadian army. He joined a few weeks ago and he passed basic training. He wants to be fields engineer so that means he gets the Canadian spec assault rifle the C6 i think.

Anyway on to the topic.

I agree with Commodore on the Racing stuff he said, it would be so boring to watch hybrids race. One thing is for sure I need loud motors and high speed that of witch the hybrids don’t have for now. And when I was in Ukraine I went to see the F1 race live in Germany. So i have seen two live F1 races this year. The other one was the Canadian GP in Montreal. and now that is some good racing i don’t think any races could beat F1 but that is my opinion.

Ic3dog, some things are just not that simple. There already are solutions to better gas mileage. People do not buy them. Why build something if nobody will buy it? CAFE standards do not say the manuafacturers can’t make cars with mileage ratings below 32mpg. What it says is IF they make a fleet average below 32mpg, they will have to pay a fine for each and every vehicle that does not meet the average. Who pays this fine? WE DO. So in everyone’s exuberance to raise CAFE standards, you’ve just asked for a tax. GM, Ford, Chrysler, their margins are too slim, and they will simply pass the buck to consumers, as they should by the way. The Silverados, Tahoes, big trucks that regardless of what arrogant, hypocritical libs think are needed resources for families and business will not make 32mpg anytime soon. So guess what happens to those already expensive vehicles? They get even more expensive. Companies like Porsche, BWM, Mercedes, they could give a ****. Their margins are so high anyway, they can take a $1000 hit and not even notice it.

What the ignorant do not realise is that taxes like these are designed to do exactly what you complainers are doing, class warfare. This tax isn’t about Camrys and Impalas, it’s about SUVs and trucks. And hook line and sinker, just because you don’t drive one, you support the CAFE increases. Because let’s be honest, those SUV drivers can afford it, those sons of bitches! Tax the rich! When people so willfully push a tax on someone else, it WILL come back to them some day. I don’t know anyone who ever got a job from a poor person. So keep taxing them rich people….

This is all BS, tactics to get the public rallied behind the auto companies because they dont wanna spend the extra R&D costs to do whats rite for the country. Hell, schools, and small companies are building cars that get excellent performance, and great economy. If they can do it the big guys can. That and the Oil companies have been keeping the American autos a float, in return they must keep on producing cars that dont get the numbers mileage wise. They also must spread disinformation.
I honestly dont understand why some of you ppl fight this so much. What is wrong with wanting to make the world you live in a cleaner place? Do you **** in your own bed? Do you ever wash your clothes? Ever take a shower? Someone tell me why im a bad person for wanting increased EPA standards, for wanting pure electric cars, for not wanting to have to buy gas every week from unstable countries that do not like us? Tell me.

swamprat: you’re quite right, especially your last sentence

Carlord, you’re missing the point. Wanting a cleaner environment is great. Not ****ting in your own bed is even better. That’s all fine and dandy, but as I explained it doesn’t mean a hill of beans when the costs of these vehicles get more and more expensive. There are ways of promoting better fuel economy without taxing consumers.

Not to mention, if you are so passionate about driving better vehicles, there are plenty of choices out there already for you. Sounds to me you are more concerned about what other people are buying and driving. So who are you supporting, Obama or Hillary?

Engineering, Research and development, it all costs MONEY. $$$$$$$ And WE, as in CONSUMERS, pay for it.

If you want better fuel efficient vehicles, stop asking to be taxed, stop asking to tax others, and start asking for vehcile design regulations to be overhauled. Fuel efficiency combined with design INefficiency is a giant paradox.

Piablo: you make some very interesting points. Of course I don’t want to see SUV’s/pick-ups’ prices skyrocket, that’s just wrong. But I really believe the time has come that *some* vehicles COULD offer better mileage, don’t ya think? Carbon-fiber bodies instead of steel alone should bring huge weight savings, for instance. Everyone should work towards this common goal: saving fuel. Governments everywhere should work with the industry to make mass-production of carbon-fiber parts affordable for every car manufacturer. The technology is there, no more excuses, just make it happen!

BIG PLANS AHEAD