US President George W. Bush is eager to appear busy as he marks time until the next president is sworn-in this coming January (and it can't come soon enough, for me or our nation). He has recently included meeting the Pope, appearing on NBC-TV's "DEAL OR NO DEAL" and planning the coming US attack on Iran into his "busy work". On a day when the Democratic candidates fought the latest round of their true Heavyweight Championship, John McCain defended NAFTA to a town-hall-style meeting at Youngstown (Ohio) State University full of union workers that, "Last time I checked, NAFTA was a five-letter word, not four," and was ridiculed by the crowd for doing so, the White House decided to roll-out new Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (those much talked-about CAFE standards) while, basically, no one was listening. But these new numbers, while tougher than the Detroit Three would like them to be, nevertheless were a little bit stronger than some expected. But, hey! It's Earth Day! (Photo Above --- Well, just write your own caption!)
The proposal would require each automaker's car fleet to achieve an average of 35.7 mpg by the 2015 model year. Light trucks, which include pickups, SUVs and minivans, would have to meet a 28.6 mpg average by 2015. (Photo Below --- Wonder what the MPG is of the all-new Popemobile? This snazzy new model, with Benedict XVI on his glass-enclosed throne, uh, seat, appears to be built on a Mercedes-Benz M-type or G-type chassis.)
The federal proposal is tougher than the fuel-economy requirements passed by Congress last year, which 
called for a 3.3% annual increase in gas mileage. The federal plan calls for a 4.5% annual increase from 2011 to 2015. If those increases are achieved, Transportation Department officials said automakers would need to increase fuel economy by only about 2.1% a year from 2016 to 2020.
The CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the lobbying arm of the auto industry, said, "Automakers are prepared to meet that challenge."
In the interest of full disclosure, and your own edification, Alliance members include: BMW Group, Chrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, USA, Mitsubishi Motors, Porsche, Toyota, and Volkswagen of America, Inc.
To us, the Alliance's positive comment about the proposed new standards is a major red light. Whenever the lobbying arm of this nation's auto industry (including Germany's Porsche) agrees so fully and so publicly with any government standards ... fuel types, safety, emissions, mpg, whatever ... Then those standards deserve a long, hard look by all sides involved. Our 35+ years of experience covering the auto industry tells us that only when all sides involved are upset with new or proposed standards that they might possibly be good for everyone involved ... including this country and all its citizens. Right now, with the White House trying to look "tough on the car-makers," it only looks laughable. These proposed standards are still nowhere near where they should be, not even what the car-makers could achieve practically tomorrow with just a few simple re-settings of the CPUs in every car and truck built after 1974 (a lot of vehicles could get these updates by a quick trip to their local factory service center, putting the vehicle online with the factory computers, and having the engines re-set for better mileage and even cleaner emissions in a few micro-seconds).
(Photo Below --- Fuel conservation made history this past week. Danica Patrick became the first woman to win an open-wheel Indycar race, her victory coming April 20th, 2008, in the "Honda 300" at the Twin Ring Motegi race track in Japan. Patrick's win came about through her judicious use of fuel conservation "tricks", including one as simple as slowing her racing speed while her competitors all needed to make a pit stop with only about 10 laps to go to fill their need for fuel; Patrick and her pit crew stayed in-communication via two-way radio all through the race, and her crew chief outsmarted all the competition when it came to being forced to make fuel stops during the race.)
Click below to read more about these new "proposed" White House goals for improving your vehicle's "miles per gallon" and how they might affect us all.
Auto companies and environmentalists will offer comments and proposed changes to the proposal over the next two months, so come back for a visit then when we hear what the manufacturers really think of these new, "tough" standards. The rule should become final before the end of the year. (Photo --- The buildings in the lower-right are the headquarters and offices of the Environmental Protection Agency, which was created in 1974 by President Richard M. Nixon, a fact which in itself often comes as a bit of a surprise to many people when they first hear of its history).
The announcement was timed for Earth Day, a day after average gas prices topped $3.50 a gallon for the first time.
Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said the plan had been adopted with car companies' product plans and technologies in mind.
Jim Kliesch, a senior engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists' Clean Vehicles Program, said
automakers could easily reach 39 mpg by 2020 and that the new proposal would "leave us stuck in second gear."
Meeting the final rule is expected to add an average cost of $650 to cars and $979 to trucks by 2015 — a cost that automakers are expected to pass on to consumers.
Our answer to that (actually our question to that) is: WHY? They don't even KNOW what the final rule is GOING TO BE! How can the car-makers be so certain of what these proposed standards, which a lot of vehicles are already capable of reaching with the electronic version of a screwdriver, detailed above, will cost some years in the future? Or even IF these new goals will cost extra at all?
One of the main ways the manufacturers are going to have their vehicles achieve these so-called "increases" is by "adding lightness," the same way race car engineers make their vehicles go faster and achieve improved mileage. Make them lighter; works every time, one change where you can be assured of the result. Every 100 pounds of weight loss in a car or truck is said to equal a minimum of 0.1 miles more per gallon. So it's to everyone's benefit to increase mileage and lower emissions of as much of the national fleet as possible.
(Photos Below --- Fuel conservation enabled Danica Patrick to be the first woman to ever win an open-wheel Indycar race this past weekend, on April 20, 2008, at Motegi, Japan, and thus she gets to enjoy the after-race celebrations; From left, Helios Castroneves, aka "Twinkletoes" for his win in the ABC-TV show "Dancin' With the Stars", took second place at Motegi, race-winner Danica Patrick and Scott Dixon placed second. They were beat by a girl, too! Left to right, the three drivers represent the three strongest teams so far this year in Indycar, Team Penske, Andretti/Green Racing and Target/Chip Ganassi Racing).
With soaring gas prices and global-warming concerns, automakers have been resigned to big increases in the fuel-efficiency standards. But they favor the plan's separate standards for different-size cars rather than a single average for an entire fleet of cars and trucks.
Under the plan, the smallest cars will have to meet the highest fuel-economy targets. That will reduce any incentive for automakers to sell more small cars to lower their overall averages. A 2002 report by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that making cars smaller to meet fuel-economy averages in the 1980s had led to up to 2,000 more car-crash deaths a year.
"The new fuel-economy plan is promising because it may save fuel without compromising the safety of 
motorists," said John Graham, a former official at the Office of Management and Budget who helped develop the new proposal.
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