Looks like new CAFE rules will be voted on in the very near future.
The source also confirms discussions center around a compromise that preserves a 35 mpg (6.7 L/100 km) bogey, as well as a 2020 deadline. In addition, there is language that that holds cars and trucks to a separate standard.The House debate over new fuel-economy rules deadlocked this summer after Reps. Baron Hill (D-IN) and Lee Terry (R-NE) authored a bill that would raise the CAFE standard to between 32 mpg (7.4L/100 km) and 35 mpg (6.7 L/100 km) by 2022. This target, which has gained the bipartisan support of more than 175 House lawmakers, came in response to a sweeping Senate energy bill that called for increasing CAFE to 35 mpg by 2020.
Most auto makers favor the Hill-Terry bill because it offers them more time to achieve the technical advances they consider necessary to meet the proposed target without pricing themselves out of consumers’ reach. And unlike the Senate standard and others proposed by House legislators, the Hill-Terry proposal keeps cars and trucks separate, another assertion coveted by auto makers.
This deal isn't as bad as some that have been put forth by dumocrats, but at least it isn't to much of an automotive manufacturer killer. But there are winners and losers in this deal and it isn't who you think.
“The winners are the government officials that have perpetuated the issue,” Wolkonowicz tells Ward’s. “The losers are the auto makers producing in the U.S. and consumers.”Echoing a refrain heard throughout much of the auto industry, Wolkonowicz says CAFE has proven ineffective at reducing America’s consumption of oil and the percentage of oil it imports. The solution, he says, is to raise gasoline prices with a fuel tax, which could subsidize other needy government programs.
“But that would be political suicide,” he says, calling a fuel-economy standard a pulpit for politicians. “The sad thing is that we have global corporations and American jobs lying in the balance. Shouldn’t government be caring about that instead of CAFE?”
Studies have already proven the more you raise gas mileage on vehicles the more people drive, there is no saving of or using less gas with increased mileage on vehicles.
Posted by Quality Weenie at November 28, 2007 09:33 AM | TrackBack