Where 50%+ drive gas guzzlers, politicians can't raise fuel taxes and registration fees and expect to be re-elected.

Your neighbour will not buy a more efficent vehicle to please you.

A positive option would be to convince Oil producing countries to raise the price of Oil to $100+/barrel (after the November election) and return 20% to the Federal government to reduce the high deficit.

Politicians could reduce taxes and be re-elected again. Gas guzzlers owners would continue to blame the middle-east and other producers for the $5+/gal gas but would buy more heavier high performance SUVs.

Some (many??) of us would switch to more efficient vehicles. The average MPG would slowly increase. CO2 emissions would eventually go down by 1% a year without new laws or laws suits.

PS: To reduce the growing trade deficit and support the US dollar, Oil producing countries could buy GM, Ford, Wal-Mart, McDonald, Home Depot, Boing, GE etc and the remaining high quality real estates.

lol - Harvey D., do you even live on this planet? Where the hell did you come up with that nonsense?
I hope the college attended gives refunds, because you definately didn't get your money's worth......

"I hope the college [INSERT MISSING WORD HERE] attended gives refunds, because you definately [SIC]..."

It's actually pretty simple.

Take emissions, fuel economy, and safety. Pick two. Regulating emissions reduces fuel economy. Want proof?

Take the Honda Insight.
The manual transmission version is equipped with lean burn and gets 66 mpg highway and an epa emissions score of 3/10.

The CVT version does not have lean burn and gets 56 mpg highway and an epa emissions score of 9/10.

Don't believe me? look it up for yourself at www.fueleconomy.gov

Weight:
The new Dodge Challenger, even though equipped with an all-aluminum engine, disc brakes, carbon fiber hood, etc, weighs 700 pounds more than the 1979 Challenger with it's all-steel body, cast iron engine, and drum brakes. The reason? Safety regulations are outpacing the advance of material and structure technology.

Automakers are doing the best they can to improve all three, but more often than not, fuel economy loses out. There is no simple solution to this conundrum.

Edit to above:
"1979 Challenger" should read "1970 Challenger"
blame my typing skills :-)

To Funny:

I apologize, English is not my original language. In the future, I will attempt to write it the way the Americans do instead of the way I learned it.

It makes sense, after all - they have already seized everything else, why not language, too?

Safety is not the only reason. Comfort and convenience adds nearly as much weight. The weight of a 300W 6 speaker w/ 8" subwoofer & 12 CD changer audio system found in most new cars around $20,000 to $30,000 equals the weight of all the airbags, ECU & sensors for the airbags, and the ABS system (mainly due to the weight of the speakers and none of the other components in the audio system).

Typical power heated leather seat in a $30,000 vehicle weighs 130lbs. Basic 6 way adjustable (non power, non heated) cloth seat weighs 40lbs. That 90lb difference covers the weight of both bumpers & bumper shocks. If you have two of these seats the extra 90lbs of the second seat easily covers excess bracing of the chassis for rigidity (comparing rigidity of a car 10years old a brand new one).

The weight of a typical electrical wiring system for the entire car (engine control, comfort, lights, safety, telematics, etc) can be greater than 100lbs.

Patrick,

I hadn't thought of that. That's probably very true. I still find it odd that my 1979 V8 (all iron) 5-seat Cutlass Coupe weighs less than 300 lbs more than a new Corvette though. Even though a lot of that could be comfort/luxury items. . .still seems like that couldn't account for all of it. . .

In 1993, Honda produced the Civic VX, which got 51mpg -- no hybrid, no cylinder deactivation, no engine shutoff at stoplights. Just a lightweight, efficient car.

Peter,

I believe that the VX model used the same lean-burn technology as the Insight. (5-wire wide-band O2 sensor and lean of stoich operation). There's no way in heck that car could meet current emissions standards, most likely due to high NOX emissions from the lean burn strategy. Sadly, we can't have our cake and eat it too. . .

Low sulfur gasoline could have every engine run in lean burn mode at highway cruise given that the catalysts better at taking care of high levels of NOx work well when sulfur in the fuel is mitigated.

I'm not saying comfort items are the only things adding weight just that they are adding as much or in some cases more weight. NVH (noise/vibration/harshness) deadening & mitigation can account for 200-300lbs of weight in $40,000+ luxury vehicles.

If you took an Acura TSX and stripped it down to the specs of an early 90s vehicle but kept the modern drivetrain you'd see gas mileage go up, acceleration go up, and handling go up because you could probably remove 250-300lbs of dead weight from the vehicle. Then you could even go a step further and downsize the 2.4L i-VTEC for a 2.0L i-VTEC for even further savings or you could give more relaxed gear ratios for the same acceleration (with the aformentioned weight reduction) with the 2.4L and achieve better highway mileage.

Here's an idea: http://www.drive55.org/ Save 20% or more!

Driving at 55mph would be unsafe to do on any road (even in the right most lane) with a speed limit of 70mph or more. With our ever burdgeoning populations expect to face an exponential increase in road rage incidences if you choose to drive slower than the posted limit in heavy, but flowing traffic and remember that everyone will be timing their lane changes based on traffic flowing at the same speed as them...not traffic a good 20% slower.

Driving at 55mph would be unsafe to do on any road (even in the right most lane) with a speed limit of 70mph or more.

What percentage of annual VMTs in the US are on road segments with a speed limit exceeding 55 mph?

Andy

"After the war the engine [Wright r-3350 radial] became a favourite of large aircraft of all designs, most notably the Lockheed Constellation and Douglas DC-7.

Following the war, in order to better serve the civilian market, the Turbo-Compound system was developed in order to deliver better "gas milage". In these versions of the engine, three separate power recovery turbines were attached to the exhaust piping of each group of 6 cylinders, using the power not to deliver additional boost as in a normal turbocharger, but geared directly to the engine crankshaft by fluid drives in order to deliver more power. This recovered about 20% of the heat of the exhaust......"

Not much new in this world is there?

jw:
In California large trucks are restricted to 55 mph on Freeways so one can drive in the right lanes safely because the drivers are better conditioned to accept the difference in speed. I think it's a good law and should be considered for the other states where many trucks are a bunch of speeding tanks just waiting to kill people.

I want to get latest updates on GHG emissions