Thursday, April 1, 2010
U.S. Sets New Car-Mileage Standards
The Obama administration set in place a new and stricter set of mileage standards for cars and light trucks, as a part of its goal to cut harmful emissions and ease the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. The plan is to raise the average mileage of new cars on U.S. roads to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, a 34% increase from the current 26.4 mpg level. On the negative side, the cost of a car will increase on average by about $1,000. And making the cars meet this new target will cost the automotive industry about $52 billion. On the positive side, the government estimates a savings of about 1.8 billion barrels of oil, and translates to fuel savings of about $3,000 per car. It is also expected to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by about 30% from 2012 to 2016.
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4 comments:
This is a great plan (on paper) raising MPG's that much, but is it really feasible? Is this for sedans or smaller cars because I have trouble believing that personal trucks, which some bigger SUVs are considered, will be able to meet this regulation. This would be a very difficult task especially for the struggling American car companies to find a way to get their MPG to meet this standard.
It is a good thing to have higher standards for automobile companies. Perhaps knowing how much money they will spend on this will encourage them to stay on top of their finances instead of relying on the government to bail them out. Also, it will give consumers more confidence in the quality of the products (vehicles) that they buy, thus more likely to purchase them.
I think this is a great idea. It may be hard for car companies to achieve this goal at first but it is necessary. This plan will cut emissions ASAP by 30% which is a pretty big amount. Consumers should not have a problem with this even though car prices will increase slightly, they will be saving more in the long run by not spending as much on gas. I am happy to see new standards being set to improve the environment.
Good example of a market economy being environmentally conscious. Who said participatory economies were better?
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