Hi all;
Soap Box switch set to 'ON'
I'm going to barge in here and state that something is being overlooked.
The thing that is being overlooked is the greed of the politicians
in Congress.

Case to point:
In 1993, while working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, I found
myself in a 50 mile commute - one way... Being ever the engineer (is that
how that word is spelled?), I decided to get a classic commute car. The
car of choice was a Honda Civic VX (the VX is important) hatchback.
Reasons for buying it were the essence of simplicity.

It had, (the VX model,
that is) at that time, the highest EPA estimated millage of any car on the
market. The figure I was interested in was highway mileage because, at that
time, most of my commuting was done at 55-65 mph. This changed by the time
I sold the car to absolutely awful Los Angeles style stop and go for 50
miles
each way. I digress. Back in those days, there was a lot of chit chat about
the EPA estimates not being accurate, so after buying the car, I dutifully
recorded every fill up with mileage.

I sold the car ten years later with .25M miles
on it.I tallied up on my trustee Excel what I actually saw, for my driving
style,
tires, etc. Here's the results: The EPA estimated mpg was 51 highway. The
best
recorded mpg I got was 58. The worst mpg was 35. The mean was 45 mpg over
ten
years of mostly freeway (bumper to bumper driving). The 58 figure was early
on when you could still travel at 65 mph. So, what's this got to do with
politicians?

Just show me, today, a car that gets the average mpg that mine
got for the highway, which is not a hybrid, can carry 4 comfortably, 5
uncomfortably,  has large cargo and easily exceeds 120mph and could drive
from San Jose, CA to San Diego, CA without a fill up. I don't think it's
out there. I don't think anyone would suggest that the failing car companies
who desperately need high mileage cars to stay in business are not building
them because they're in cahoots with the oil industry? Or am I all wet here?

It's simply a case of environmentalists doing everything they can do to get
greenhouse gases down, ignoring the fact that much more gasoline is being
used to supply these somewhat cleaner, low mileage vehicles. Does anyone not
think that whatever technology breakthrough us techies come up with that the
gov won't come down on the industry with yet cleaner requirements? Not to
mention the need for an excessive increase in fuel tax to "balance" it all
out and, of course, replenish the king's coffers? If you disagree, I invite
you to look at yesterday's news about a two phase  tax on cng fueled
vehicles,
the tax so high that their relatively cheap $0.88/gal cost will more than
double. Ah well, all in a days work.
Soap Box switch set to 'OFF'
-- Keith

We can blame the car companies on one hand - for lack of planning and
foresight (and imagination), but at the same time, we, the consumer
share much of the blame as well.  We're the ones that have been
choosing big gas hogs over the vehicles with better efficiency.
Capitalism dictates that suppliers produce what consumers demand.  If
consumers had been leaving the gas hogs on the car lots 5 years ago,
Detroit would have slowed down production of them, and Toyota/Nissan
wouldn't have entered the market for these vehicles (full size pickups
and SUV's).  Similarly, if demand for the lower powered and more
efficient cars like the Ford Focus had been greater, production of
those vehicles would have been increased.

My gripe about the American car companies is that they seem to have
long only paired high efficiency with poor quality - from the Chevette
to the Malibu.  In my opinion, none of the high efficiency American
cars have had very good handling, looks, nor fit/finish.  In most
cases, if you wanted a "nice" American car, it would get relatively
poor mileage - Explorer/Tahoe.  Nothing comparable to a small Acura,
Lexus or BMW in the American car ranks.

The dynamic (unstable) nature of our economy leads to some producers
being stuck in a corner when things go awry.

As far as ultimate MPG (40-60mpg), I think it's a bit of a red herring
for most people.  We (as a consuming body) would be far better off
improving the fuel economy of the worst performing vehicles by ten
percent than improving the best performing vehicles by 30%.  Far more
fuel would be saved.  The miserly vehicles already burn so little fuel
compared to the hogs that improvements in efficiency in that group
yield a small total amount of fuel saved.  I probably need to give
Peter Garrison credit for this thought from one of his articles in
Flying a few months ago - talking about how mpg as a fuel efficiency
metric makes some aspects of fuel use less obvious.  gallons/100mi or
the European equivalent makes more sense...


Regards,

Matt-