Wintermane...

No. Not all cars must be able to tow an 18 foot boat trailer and have 800 mile range. Look in the driveways of the average neighborhood, and how many have boats or trailers? 1 out of 20? 1 out of 50?

Part of the sham of SUVs is people being sold on the, "You can drive these off road" dream. Most SUVs are urban commuters and soccer mom cars that never go offroad. They may go to the ski slopes once a year, but so does my 4-cylinder Camry.

Didn't the college supercar competition 5 years ago start with an aluminum Ford Sedan (Taurus/Sable body) and create a bunch of cars that got 60-80 mpg? I think University of Wisconsin won with a 4-cylinder diesel hybrid, and UC Davis was close behind running on unleaded, but passing California smog requirements. Those cars passed all safety requirements, and were comfortable mid-sized sedans, with off the shelf ICE engines!

Engines, batteries and hybrid tech have only gotten better and cheaper in the last 4 years, and will get much cheaper in the next several years.

The technology can do it. Economy and ecology require it. The most salient remaining question is how to prompt the market to deliver it?

Did I say ALL? I said thier future car must do these things.

Extended range trucks are a big market segment.

Around here A TON owb boats.. but then we are a few miles from a wonderful lake...

All my fam needs is a largesedan/station wagon with plenty of cargo room and very comfy seats.

Energy consumption per capita is an inaccurate measure because it doesn't compare the standard of living for an economy when measuring energy consumption. A more accurate comparison is energy intensity -- energy consumption per unit economic output. Countries that are more compact, population dense, non-resource producing, highly service based, and economically well developed, with more temperate climates, will not consume as much energy per unit output as others.

Similarly, g/km are not an accurate economic measure. A comparable measure to energy intensity is CO2 g/passenger-km. This more accurately relates the energy consumed or pollutant released with the economic output or value derived.

So, a 7-seat Suburban with only one driver at the middle of rush-hour in Manhattan is one thing. The same Suburban with a driver and 4 passengers at highway speeds in between towns in the middle of Iowa is another.

cervus,

You are quite correct, A politician does not give a fig about anyone other than himself and his time horizon is the next news cycle to print his ridiculous over promising speech.

Sometimes however they do listen to the organizations that they force to bribe them to be somewhat realistic, in what they promise, or mandate.

This discussion is all about EU politicians used to gouging their docile populations for energy Euros, and determined to do more of it. Despite their "green" images, they don't give a fig about that and keep the standards 10 to 20 years behind just to ensure their money flows and not get diverted to making true fixes possible.

People convinced that a one-off example costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, or a pregnant roller skate can be coaxed to produce enormous mileage figures, proves that each and every vehicle of one hundredth or one tenth the price, can routinely do that, is just plain un-educated in the real world, majored in basket weaving, or is purely daft. Some like him also believe that since it can't be done it must be a CONSPIRACY.

This proposal is just more posturing and preparing the ground to tax every car as a "carbon polluter", the key word is TAX.

Without getting off topic, given that the US has put such restrictions on passenger diesel vehicles, forcing VW (sadly the only one) to stop selling their TDI models here for the last couple years. Leaving out of course all colossal trucks and trailer trucks, which are on the road all day everyday across America for work purposes, and polute a lot more then a mere fuel efficient sedan.
Wouldn't it be a good ideia for the EU to adopt the same emission standards as the US as far as diesels go.
With all the buzz surrounding bluetec and with 2007 being the year where you can already pick up TDI's like Mercedes and other soon to come, and projections of 25% market invasion of diesels for 2008\2009, if the EU adopted the same strict (yet welcomed anyway) emission standards, wouldn't it be much easier for all companies to just ship cars over?
Think about it, if VW,BMW,AUDI,Mercedes are sending their US only diesels over, that means they had to take their time and money to develop technology purposely for our market.
If they adopt US emissions , they have the power to outsell many companies here, even Toyota, all they have to do is change the speedometer backgroud from KM to MPH and put them on a boat.
No one has better diesels then the EU.
Can you imagine test driving a BMW 325 Tdi at your local BMW dealer? (for many years the fastest sedan in europe)
Or even a Chrysler Town & Country TDI, they exist, Chevy has numerous ethanol only cars and mini vans in south america running everyday as I type this long rant.
The US has a shield, the shield is composed by clean emission standards, keeping all the fuel efficient cars outside the bubble.What they don't tell you is that you can burn as much "cleaner" emissions as you want, because at the end of the day, they want the barrels empty and ready to refill again with blood oil.
It drives me balls out nuts to see trucks like the expedition (not to go further) that do realistically 8-10 mpg in the city be put higher on the moral chart then a 40+mpg sedan big enough for all our Mcd's behinds like the BMW 5 series or VW passat.
Has anyone ever done the math?
12mpg car vs a dirtier but 40+ capable sedan.
At the end of the year, with the same miles put on, does the diesel really pollute more then the truck , that ended up using barrels and barrels more of gas?

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